Cycles of Green/Wishing at Wakamatsu

—Poems and Photos by Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA

—Bonus Section by Taylor Graham and Katy Brown

TO SLAUGHTER THE OLD RAM

Herd-hero of harsh heather, droughty domain   
heat-driven, that rock-rimmed range restless
with famine-forage, fox foray, cougar and coyote.
Skull-casqued he guarded, agate-gazed gaunt
with watching, wither and waste. Just as age   
judges not gently, this waiting for weather,
for wet grasses greeting each grazer; worry-worm 
awaits what wanes. Stoic past stockyard he stands,
ruminates no rain rushing ruts, heavy wheels   
hunching uphill a dim dirge dulling his doom.

 —Photo by Taylor Graham

CYCLES OF GREEN

Through years of heat-drought
sheep cropped whatever green grew
and meditated
green with patient jaws, rumens
making soil fertile for rain.

 —Photo by Taylor Graham

WHITE FLAG

Two flaming torches
on the withered field—Flanders
poppies, unplanted
they appear. Just see the white
moth flitting bloom to blossom.

 —Photo by Taylor Graham

HILL’S BACKSIDE

Field of butterweed,
wild oats, vetch, golden poppy,
and sunburst thistle
all unmowed, keeping itself
to itself under blue sky.

 —Photo by Katy Brown, Davis, CA

CALLIGRAPHY

Under sun-strike shade
he writes my name in pen-stroke
two dark characters
I can’t read, mystery between
and graceful as a bird flown.

 —Photo by Taylor Graham

STRANGER RENSAKU

Hot drive home, front gate—
what’s that? young doe in noon-light
disappears in trees.
Gracefully awkwardly odd.
She must be a stranger here.

Out our back window
newborn speckled long-leg fawn—
just learning to stand.
As mother doe leaps away
I’m the sudden intruder.

From fence’s far side,
macro-ears are tuned on me.
Where is her baby?
Where is my place in all this?
I retreat inside our walls.

Between live-oak shade
and my garden, doe grazes
then lies down at ease.
Her fawn must be nearby, safe.
I must be the stranger here.

Our oak tree shadow
turns the most amazing ears
harking to our world,
our world spinning toward twilight.
Open every window wide.

  —Photo by Taylor Graham

Today’s LittleNip:

READING HAIKU
—Taylor Graham

the shorter the lines
the slower they leave the tongue
savoring

 —Photo by Taylor Graham

__________________________

But wait! There’s more! In addition to her usual, mighty Thursday poetry and photos, Taylor Graham and Katy Brown have put together a portfolio of their poems and pix from the recent WakamatsuFest150 in Placerville—a bonus treat for those of us gathered around in today’s Kitchen! (See below.)

But before we get to that, let me remind you that today (Thursday) brings poetry events to our area, starting at noon today with the read-around Third Thursdays in the Sacramento Room of the Central Library (bring poems by someone other than yourself), then continuing with Sac. Poet Laureate Indigo Moor reading at Poetry in Davis at the John Natsoulas Gallery on First St. in Davis, 8pm, plus open mic. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa, celebrating poetry!

SPECIAL BONUS: MORE TREATS IN THE KITCHEN!

Wishing at Wakamatsu
by Taylor Graham and Katy Brown

The Wishing Tree

—Photo by Taylor Graham 

THE WISHING TREE
—Katy Brown

It’s the sound of all those
haiku wish-flags snapping and clapping
blown in the wind, that I’ll remember.

All of those beautiful words—
oak, blue, hills, frog, love
—all those words pollinating the wind.

            ~~~~

That Blue Oak—radiating light—
even the undersides of massive branches
that should be in shadow—cast a glow.

            ~~~~

In the afternoon a pair of vultures
circling and circling low over the golden hills,
their wings tipping, dipping—
as vultures will—tacking above the oaks.

            ~~~~

Maybe it’s the haiku
so early in the morning
before coffee clears the haze
—I can’t sustain a thought,
can’t make the big connections:
Blue Oak, dusty road, ghosts,
samurai in gold country,
me—150 years later.

            ~~~~

The Taki-kazi
swoosh slices brisk summer wind
—sound of sharp Sword Wind.

 Josh McKinney demonstrates Taki-kazi

—Photo by Katy Brown

ON THE WIND
—Taylor Graham

Under the grandmother blue oak
we watch green grass sublimate to leaf-
hoppers, to swifting air.
Heat-shimmer becomes egret lifting
off its wetland—snow-
white egret we haven’t seen since winter,
dissolving now in cloud
as we watch thunderheads build
over a distant summit.
We’re grounded here, feet in grass
summer-gold at edges, here in blue-oak
shade. We try to entice
festival-goers to sublimate
their thoughts into haiku
for hanging on a wishing-tree
for today’s fierce wind
to dissolve in flight farther than egret flies,
farther than flatlands or summit.
We tell them, their words are released
to the world. 

 Under the Grandmother Oak

—Photo by Katy Brown

Wildlife circles, observing
alien tents, smells, noises
—Wakamatsu comes awake
with mingling cultures.

Soon, ghosts return
whispering in the shadows,
shimmering in the moonlight,
remembering the breathing world.

—Katy Brown 
 

—Photo by Taylor Graham

HAIKU PASSAGES
—Taylor Graham

softly three ladies
in kimono pass us by
on path of their thoughts
~

my straw hat
heeds the wind’s tales
of far-off
~

couple long married,
each writes a private haiku—
linked by one image
~

speak into the mic—
words taken to air instead,
poems in the wind
~

graveside ceremony
nothing to offer
in my hand a stone
~

manzanita walking stick
born of the earth
unrooted
 

 Obi

—Photo by Katy Brown 
 

IMPORTANT
—Taylor Graham

Delegated last-minute to attend the ceremony, I found canopied shade occupied by the living. No room for me. Skirted perimeter to shade of oaks behind the gravestone—rooted oaks dug-in to hilltop. My leather-bound toes dug in too. Cooling Delta breeze lifted up the skirts of slope. Dodging dark-suited photographers, I jockeyed a view. Skulked and snuck, hovered and moved on, a refugee intuiting the passion of speeches I couldn’t understand for language, wind and distance. What could I take back? 

 —Photo by Taylor Graham

I.
It was the look on your face
—that jaw-dropping shock
as you looked over my shoulder

II.
Something coming behind me
—over my shoulder
—something silent,
approaching

III.
I turned to see

IV.
A soundless marching snake
of children
—sneakered feet silent in the dust
—an endless coil of moving bodies
—marching fast
as only children can
—fast, silent, snaking
horde of youngsters

V.
Advancing up the road

VI.
The Zombie Apocalypse?
Migration?  Looking for food?
Coming for us?
Why?
Where to hide?

—Katy Brown

 Volunteer Poets Sue, Patty, Taylor at the Poetry Table

—Photo by Katy Brown 
 

TO UNLOCK POETRY
—Katy Brown

Play with words, the marbles of language
—let them roll against one another.
Listen to the muttering leaves;
paint your face with primal mud;
sing with crickets in summer moonlight.

Take a pen with turquoise ink,
engrave your words in a leather notebook.
That judging voice you carry from childhood
—tell it to take a vacation—better yet,
lock it in the basement.

Write the words you sift from the wind,
the words a blue heron traces in the sky,
the bubbling syllables of a common frog.
Wakamatsu calls you in a thousand dialects,
dictates to you in the golden meadow.
Take notes.

 Three Explorers

—Photo by Katy Brown

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.

Ships Solidly Built

—Poems by Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA
—Anonymous Photos and Paintings of Tall Ships

METRONOME

How weary dark the closing days of May.
Ceaseless rain, or gloom announcing it.
What poisoned apple from a jilted, stray
Bad fairy left in day’s craw the tainted bit?
No sun arrives to kiss and to dislodge
The cloud stuck like a solid thing inside
Her throat. Warm day will soon dismount, disgorge
That chunk from her gullet, free it to outslide

On spittle. But speaking of sleep, I nod at sleep
In the cafeteria, counting student heads.
One tosses her foot, one more girl dangles legs,
Both metronomes. I may well slump to heap
My head on this grimy crumb-sticky table. Leads
Like sinkers on ankles. Dream subsides to dregs.

THE TUTORING SPELL

Today is for old body—and young soul,
the mending spirit first Christians labeled girl—
to leave aside creation for the whirl
of tutoring. Help with school folderol,
the drill-to-kill that threatens psyche, soma
in every student:  stiffen their defense
against the academic rigors, against trauma
that hides in stout pomposity, the dense

in opposition to the free and clear.
If I can directly help, let it be so.
If others aid, let me still linger near.
Tutors, it’s thought, possess an aura, glow
to counter defeat in any woman student,
to oust from warped young men the hidden serpent…

MacNEICE MUSIC

You stood where a window bathed you in light.
The powder-blue late-day sun backlit
you, nineteenth-century-silhouette-night.
Soft blur against glass, dark flicker and flit,
You stood where a window bathed you in light.

Poised at a far distance, I still felt your skin.
Your silent voice reached into my throat.
Nerves tingled wherever your hands hadn’t been.
You sang without sound. I lost my one note.
Poised at a far distance, I still felt your skin.

Expectance, remembrance, blended in time.
Eyes probed for you close. Heart cast you out far.
The tension. The scent of the sundown, lime.
Aiming at shadow, my gaze came up star.
Expectance, remembrance, blended in time.

What ecstasy outlives its place and its date?
Our dream-tributaries must mingle in flow.
Commencement so urgent must consummate.
What long-ago dreams must I no longer know?
What ecstasy outlives its place and its date?

SHIP SOLIDLY BUILT

I am reading William Yeats.
Within his salley garden gates,
So peaceful is the quietude,
I indulge my brooding mood.
In prose, Yeats recollects an old uncle.
Once expert, fast as a barnacle
Latched to quays and commerce ships,
His mind now twilights down to the slips.
Nuncle clings to a crazed late dream,
Cracked in stem and stern and beam.
His newest vessel will not sink,
This uncle in his derangement thinks:
The hull’s one solid mass of wood.
Could seaworms not make this a snood
Crawling all with worms for hair?
Strange, when the mad feel scant despair.
Can he not sense so stolid a thing
Down waterlogged and softening?
No ship’s all-filled-in, solid stuff,
Unless pure balsawood, flimsy enough.
Such cranks and conceits in a mother’s brother;
Such are my reveries of my loved Other.
I’d launch, hull and bridge, my big solid ship
From off the flimsiest of ship-
Ways, given Her safe aboard and soft.
And on that mahogany bridge aloft,
Myself. Less pilot than fragile nail,
In densest wood driven, of nil avail.
When, oh when did I last not dream
Of this same rootless enthymeme?
Clasping the loved Girl mine, on an island?
Pipedream archipelago, lie-land.
Braindrift, the sweeter for being unreal.
Odd to taste such a drug slipped in my meal.
To sail with sweet She, my big solid ship
Bellying over the world’s long lip
Toward islands that narrow forever their taper.
Sands lost in the finding; I knew them for vapor.


(first pub. in WTF! from Rattlesnake Press)

DORIAN GRAY, READER’S DIGEST VERSION

I read the Reader’s Digest Dorian Gray
Years ago. It’s rather a rough sketch
Of Unabridged Dorian’s quest to love, betray,
Self-satisfy, at cost of lines that etch
His brow, once that of Youth in Bloom, now Wretch
Of Utter Degeneracy, downfall so fey
And sly, his skin’s not touched, though Sin will fray
The portrait: scabbed, like petals loosed from vetch.

My faults, carved clearly in my skin. So Good
Must be my inner Shape, Gray-Logic claims?
So Dorian-Me might dare to declare; but would
That be my Self? Wilde-Logic shames, no, lames
Me in truth’s mirror. I wander hobbling forth,
Like limping Shakespeare seeking Love’s True North.

BAX: SYMPHONY ONE
(originally a Third Sonata)

Transformed from Liszt-inspired piano piece
to fiercely experimental symphony,
this typhoon-fisted work beats out release,
frees age-old demons infesting the Irish Sea.
For all that our Composer may disclaim
precise locale or incident beneath
this tempest whose broad keyboard span must aim
to mimic the Russian steppes or King Lear’s heath,
we strongly suspect those Great-War whirlwinds:
sheer Bacchic frenzy shrieks through (almost) each
last bar of the first movement. While storm spins
its drill bit, lyricism resists the screech:
it’s Dublin being fought through, yet flute song,
fit for a James Galway, sings and softens wrong.

***

So central an opus demands two Movement Twos:
one, ocean-rhapsodic, strictly for ivories
and ebonies; Bax’s “default setting.” Brews,
brumes, glitters from the Otherworld seize
control of the piece away from the poet. Grand
and moving, yes; but what of the second try?
Ode to the Minor Second, this must be:
the gauntlet Discord, wristed to defy
Fate, glints by intervals, enigmatically.

Dawn fog over battlefield, lit red, first sun.
Dark harp, reined in for subsequent attack.
Basses, contrabassoon hues ashen or dun,
yet lit with embers. Trombones make to crack
the misery curtain. All crescendo from here.
Lead coffin, gilded rage, enameled fear.

***

The tension breaks on still more tension. Taut
yet ceremonious French horn battle calls
herald homecoming, themes we thought fought out.
This lurch from the mournful to the sardonic galls
with bravado, yet is it not the symphonic way?
Both impudent scherzo and triumphal march.
Unhampered by a piano’s note-decay,
each thrust of percussion under the victory arch
rips conquest from hands of strings, winds, even brass.
Gong, glockenspiel, crashed or suspended cymbal,
then, over the cresting roller, soused with sass,
malleted chimes intend to upend our gimbal.
So spiked, with Tchaikovsky vodka, errantry
from Shakespeare, is this not flagrant Irishry? 

DARK FLOWER

In the transports of their new-born love they pour out their mutual affection in a rapturous game of chess…
         —J. Thomas Looney, Shakespeare Identified


Aging Sir Arnold Bax must needs romance
one Christine Ryan: note the Irish name.
No Kerry or Derry blossom to entrance
with music or verses. London-bred, no fame
connected with her or her family.
Dwelling in a shabby-genteel flat,
preserving sweetness, vulnerability,
some bright small talent, not to be sneered at.

Bax terms this young Christine his own “dark flower.”
Black Irish, one might imagine, eyes deep blue.
Quite able to give love; not underage;
touched breast to breast; or displaying a native power
at chess. How many games was it they drew?
Who first played pawn, girl-woman or her mage? 

ROMANTIC OVERTURE

(Bax)

On the radio, a plummy British voice,
sounding as if he’s swallowing his mustache:
is it Julian Herbage?
Well-intentioned, yet without panache,
he introduces Sir Arnold. Thank God, brief verbiage.
Now, a reedy baritone, short-breathed,
staccato, lecture-style. Small voice-breaks
turn still reedier tenor notes.
Bax conjures up his first hearing of Edward Elgar.
Fog floats through packed Queen’s Hall.
Sir Henry Wood’s orchestra lost in a pall
of coal-dust-suffused gray vapor.
Applause like a thousand tiny rakes
tines up damp forkfuls of primal smog that’s wreathed
itself around the premiere of Pomp and Circumstance.
Amusing story; but what a difference
(shock, really), next burn by a friend on this CD,
young Bax’s true voice: Romantic Overture!
Small orchestra, rumbustious six-eight time.
View it through Romantic (stereophonic) aperture:
Woodwind flourishes. Drowsy lone trumpet stirs!
Arpeggios, keyboard correct as an astrolabe.
Pastoral Baxian blend of rough allures.
Hoof-appointed, goat-furred, uncouth, without rhyme,
Bax’s familiars, lecherous Satyrs, chase
soft-skinned, rose-milk-faced maenads through glades
and “sun-stained” passages of meadow-grass
so light to the touch, so suave not one sharp blade
would sting bare soles of feet on the merest babe.
Drunk with inducements to languor, what maiden
would not give up the run to the pursuer,
collapse in trances on pastures Arcadian,
and part her desiring legs to the life-renewer?
Subsiding almost to slumber, the lingering music
turns in on itself: discordant soft sighs like jazz,
relinquishing all touch of proportion, physics,
for indolence that steals over the one who has
enough rapture…now, the rebound of rhythm.
Veddy British (chin-chin!) with a right bouncing bass.
Reverb off rock walls over valley; pious hymn
in style, but belted with ungodly grace:
Baxian accent, punched out with smiling face.

TOMBEAU DE LA TOMBEAU

So utterly French, this elegiac streak
Of light across a gravestone’s epitaph.
Grief so civilly rendered does not shriek:
A stifling hand, discreet across a laugh
Of rue and remembrance, less content to speak
What crumbled obit-tongues twilight can graph
Than savor what smacks of Klingon more than Greek.
We find tombeaus etched gravely across a staff. 
Ravel mourns Couperin? Oblique Forlane,
Whose compound meter, accent on the urbane,
Triplets out sweet propulsion, grace; forlorn
Yet cheerily distanced; patters of night rain
Tap out quaint soft vivacities on glass.
Poe’s Mallarmé Raven emits a chic Alas.
 
______________________

Today’s LittleNip:

The wind has a language, I would I could learn!


Sometimes 'tis soothing, and sometimes 'tis stern,

Sometimes it comes like a low sweet song,


And all things grow calm, as the sound floats along,


And the forest is lull'd by the dreamy strain,


And slumber sinks down on the wandering main,


And its crystal arms are folded in rest,


And the tall ship sleeps on its heaving breast.

—Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802-1838)

______________________

Our thanks to Tom Goff for his fine poetry today! For the “13 Most Beautiful Sailing Ships of All-Time That Will Give You Travel Envy”, see interestingengineering.com/13-most-beautiful-sailing-ships-of-all-time-that-will-give-you-travel-envy/. And for more about Letitia Elizabeth Landon, see www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/letitia-elizabeth-landon/.

—Medusa, celebrating poetry! 
 

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
 

Diving Into Light

Dog Days

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

This is too far with reach,
    cover the tracks of effort, vow not to
    infringe on what is too far to reach…


There are things too beautiful to see,
the mind cannot hold them—
nor the eyes,
they only borrow till forgetting

I remember a certain white summer moth
fluttering slowly,    for my view,    replicating
the sunlight     as it danced,     danced,
for me,     in the shining air,

I took the light to my body,    my mind,
my eyes,    which
could not stand the glare, 
I had to look away, the light kept pouring.

____________________

WE HOLD ON

Diving into light,
we are
a scatter of outgrown darkness.

We break on the shore
of summer,
eager to drown.

We are the brilliance of love,
apart and together
in tenderness and rage.

How long will we suffer the bliss
of self at surrender?
How dare we love?

We will never regret—
or promise—
we will only remember.

Days are long now. We become slow,
winding through the hours
like thieves.

The sea-light is everywhere.
Gold flecks.
The whiteness of gulls.

Let us steal this light.
Keep it forever. 
Inhale it.

We hold onto the memory
of this, our first and only
perfection.

 Attraction

THREE DOORWAYS

First Doorway: The Curtain

Inside the first doorway an old woman stays hidden. She knows we come to her for pity. She is the mother of time itself and the daughter of anguish. Over her bright threshold an old rag curtain hangs like a spell against futility. It holds back the glare from the dark interior where we can hear her chanting an old composite prayer. She rocks a dead child in her arms. But we will enter and pay her whatever she asks—she is so poor and our wealth is so heavy. Perhaps she will love us this time and send us away, healed, and bearing her own map back to our mirror, already filling with amnesia.


Second Doorway: The Brilliance

This is the doorway we must choose when we leave—no scenic view, only the late day glare that wipes out everything. This we must see for ourselves: It is a white silence. No sound drifts back. The doorway stays open to it as though nothing can pass through. We feel it ring with brilliance. We stand just inside the white doorway and feel the pull. When we look back, all will have vanished in the moment of our leaving—that blank place we wondered about.


Third Doorway: Doorway Full of Rain

It wasn’t her weeping (or it was) that we had to pass through—that hot rain. We had to trust the grieving, always in the doorway—pouring, pouring—reminding us of old and new regrets. Sunlight danced in the glitters, became entangled, got wet, and could never be mere sunlight again. Imagine promises like this: Bright. On the other side of things. Imagine passing through sunlight in the rain.

 The Long Hours

ALL BECAUSE YOU LOVED THE DREAM

Lisa, Lisa, where are you,
where’s your madness, what’s your hue?

All this summer, do you dance
in a whirlwind, in a trance?

Where’s your lover—is he dead?
What’s that deathless thing he said?

Lisa, Lisa, are you ill,
will you love your death until

death won’t have you any more,
when he leaves you on a shore,

drowned and broken all the way,
waiting for the tides to say

they will take you now, “she’s ours”.
Will you lose your tender powers?

Will you always be a child—
mad,   imperfect,   ruined,   wild”

__________________

BETWEEN

Tag-end of summer, with its wilt and drag.
Then rain.  Soft.  Brief.  With its relief to see
the sky fill with clouds, a few inland gulls—
sense the renewal of energy—sweet.
Then back to summer, with its wilt and drag.

 Clay As Art

SANS BACKGROUND MUSIC

You were still a stranger, as I was to you—two
strangers pretending to love each other, walking
out on the long pier on a hot summer night where
I stared down at the water and felt the perspective
of danger. You stood behind me—the world so
real just then with some young anguish that I felt
for what was not : I wanted us to be like in a
movie—the waves crashing wildly—shuddering
the night.

It was the emptiness that turned us back at last—
the end of the pier reached, the way we had
nothing deep enough to say. The night stayed deep
behind us, the pier swaying with its long motion,
jutting out over the sea-edge which gushed and
swirled and broke its waves under. We wandered
back to the lights and simply disappeared from
each other. Only now do I reach back to tell you
how sharply I remember this.

 Perseverance

IN THE MOVEMENT OF LIFE
After photo of Farley Mowat, naturalist, 1994, 

by Elisavietta Ritchie

The year you were dying.
a man stood on a vast plateau of ice

and looked out over the horizonless reaches
at the vast calmness and imagined your death

as his own. He knew nothing of you,
nor you of him.

This is a later recognition.
I give it to you as a gift of human connection :

that one could connect to another
and not be aware.

It is internal—
a thought one has when

there is a silence to fill with something more
than unnamable longing.

 Beautiful Day

RAPTURE

The midnight bird sings to midnight now,
and to me—his listener—and the
summer window that lets his song in.

And the late cars push through the singing
with their muffled sounds—a block away—
like far off echoes of the noisy day

or a soft wind,    sighing,   
sighing,    for uncluttered wilderness.
And the midnight bird,

perhaps on the moon-lit rail
of my fence, or from the nearby tree,
enjoys his variegated soloing.

And I am in the auditorium
of his life—
an auditorium with perfect acoustics

for his rapturous self-singing,
until even that
moves in and out of my attention.

and I realize I have drifted back into myself.
Such is my loss. Such is the loss 
of tone-deaf time that refuses to be stopped.

____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

SUMMER’S DEAD GERANIUM
—Joyce Odam

The plant is in need of water.
It gasps in the sun-hot window
and curls its leaves in the feverish air.

If she, in her chair, rocking and staring,
should hear a dry, green moaning,
would she think of water?

                                    
(first pub. in Acorn, 1996)

____________________

A red-hot thank-you to Joyce Odam for tackling our Seed of the Week: Heat Wave! Our new Seed of the Week is Luscious, which means different things to different people, which means each poem will be interetingly different—and photos, too! Send your poems, photos & artwork about this (or any other) subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com. No deadline on SOWs, though, and for a peek at our past ones, click on “Calliope’s Closet”, the link at the top of this column, for plenty of others to choose from.

—Medusa, celebrating luscious poetry!

 Dog Days of Summer
—Anonymous Photo

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.

Pretty Cool

Green Tomatoes

—Photos by Caschwa, Sacramento, CA

BLOOMIN ONION
—Jeanine Stevens, Sacramento, CA            

Cal Expo, walking along blistering cement,
our crusty, deep-fried onion in hand,
daughter, granddaughter and I rush
toward a small table in scarce shade.
We cannot resist fair food.  I’ve just
finished a large order of fried zucchini.
Now, our onion has exploded into a sweet,
crunchy, greasy blossom. We dig in,
thinking one will not be enough
for three. Each slender piece
is swirled in the ranch dressing,
white as its Styrofoam cup. The first
few bites fulfill their promise,
but saturation catches up, we slow
down, leave half for the birds.

I remember the old fair grounds,
pregnant, sitting in filtered shade
on a worn cement curb, eating melon
in scorching 104 degrees, feet swollen,
shoulders sunburned, chocolates
melting. We all thought it was permanent: 
brick buildings, one for each
—Swine, Equine, Poultry,
and the barns for sulky racing—
all uniform, white wood with green trim.
You could sit near the bandstand
under trees, leaves big as dinner plates,
spend the day lounging with lemonade
and local musicians. Or, wait till evening,
when Curly the clown would lasso
the bull riders and your son
was thrilled to get his autograph.

We traded candy apples and classic buildings
for progress, concrete and indigestion.


(prev. pub. in Art with Words)

___________________

CINDER CONE
—Jeanine Stevens

Wanting to write about small things,
like violet lupines, tangled sweet peas,
wild rose and redbud, four stallions
interrupt me, roaring, barking
like old dragons at the sky, barn, pond—
anything that will listen.
They make me think of larger things:
green chaparral dotting scorched
flower falls and fire eroded canyons.
I’ve seen scant streams fed by thin springs,
a few spewing silent as a baby’s easy
regurgitation, leaky mountain milk
from a weak wet nurse. Those withering
breasts slump arid and dry as Black Butte,
the cinder cone around Mt. Shasta.
Born in a firebomb, this earth reveals
so many remnants of a molten birth,
now dull, fading like striped awnings
on old brick porches. I shade my eyes
from scalding arctic ice wedges, sinking,
leaving spongy depressions. Spotted rinds,
like over-ripe fruit, render the soil useless.


(prev. pub. in South Dakota Review)

 The Secret Life of Grapes

 
 

 A WEB TO TRACE THE SKY

—Joseph Nolan, Stockton, CA

My little friend,
A spider,
Shares my computer corner,
Resting on his web
Between meals.

My cockatoo frowns at me
From inside its cage
Trying to understand
What I
Have to do
With a spider!?

I envy my spider’s vision
Since only flies
Have more eyes.

We are at truce,
My spider and I,
While spinning, I,
A web of words
With which to
Trace the sky.

__________________

POETRY AND TATTOO OF LOVING TOUCH
—Joseph Nolan, Stockton, CA

The soul of poetry
Does not float
Above a page;
It sinks
Into ink,
And dries
Itself out
Into a
Silent shout.

The ink of tattoo
Into your skin
Is something
You might rue
After you do.
What you
Wanted to say,
One day,
May go away,
But ink will not.

An infant-child learns
By tones and sounds
Bounding from his
Mother’s mouth
With loving rounds
Of milk-soaked breasts,
Holding and caressed,
Harmonies of lullabies
And you’ll know why
Poets are the
First to cry,
Branded by the ink
Of loving touch!

DETROIT
—Joseph Nolan

When the world comes apart,
First, the paint peels.
Next, the shingles on the roofs
Bend and buckle
From years and years
Of beating-hot sun.

Rain leaks in
And mold begins to grow.
Plaster bubbles up
And splays upon the floors
In white-lump rubble.

And no-one goes in there
Anymore
Except for derelicts,
Harpoon junkies,
Homeless and ne’er-do-wells,
Who bide their time
Seeking satisfaction
In their self-immolation,
Until the roof or the walls
Fall down or in,
Or the whole thing goes up
From burned-out candles,
Calling and end
To the proceedings,
When crows fly off
For other fences’ sitting.

____________________

A CROW’S SEVEN STEPS OF REASONING
—Joseph Nolan

A crow is not kind.
He has something in mind,
With his seven steps of reasoning.

Does he think of forgiveness?
Can he put seven bundles
Of reason in a row?

How deep in thought
Can a crow go?

Does he think of seven-times-seven?
Does he plan on going to Heaven?

 Luscious in the Making

MOTHER’S DAY
—Joseph Nolan

It doesn’t matter to her,
“Why?”
Why it is broken or how,
Not unless
Knowing those answers
Would somehow
Allow her to fix it.

Knowing a hinge is broken
Won’t repair a door
That goes ajar,
Each time
It’s opened and closed,
As so many doors
Are wont to do
When they grow old
And rusty hinges break
And need replacement.

But children aren’t like doors
And cannot be so easily fixed
When they go ajar or astray,
That happens in so many ways
When they are broken.

But she doesn’t care that much, “Why?”
She only wants to know “How!”—
How to fix
Her broken children!

 Berries!
 

BESIDE HIS BED…
—Caschwa

…lies a great, big book that may very well
foretell the future our nation faces:

“Rise and Fall of the Third Golf Ball”

The ball has been driven far up in the air.
Will it land nicely on the fairway, or plop
hopelessly deep into a hazard?

On-site onlookers stand by, sometimes
whispering their opinions, sometimes
shouting instructions like drunken bowlers
do, telling which pins to fall first.

The media audience at home watches
impatiently while certified experts shoot
down each other’s theories and spoon-
feed us logic that defies logic, analysis
that fails the smell test, etc.

Meanwhile, at the bottom of the largest
pond rests the unredacted Mueller Report,
while delegates assigned only to retrieve
stray golf balls make repeated futile attempts
to find something worth sharing.

___________________

IN MONEY WE TRUST
—Caschwa

Some priests and cops
prey on nearby easy pickin’s
that put them on top
like a fox among chickens

big banks, too, are not
worthy of our trust,
kiss your money goodbye
the institution’s gone bust

our whole democratic experiment
is just a fish out of water
Lady Liberty can’t help us, since
another nation has bought her

but the life of a dollar
is impervious to abortion
as long as the top dogs
each get their due portion 

 Strawberry Leaves
 

PSYCHO BABBLE
—Caschwa

Sensitivity for a belligerent incident,
training a government temperament that
kills evidence of a predicament, in
time to splash the media with an event

____________________

BY DESIGN
—Caschwa

Just stepped out of a long, soothing
shower and there is an adult, female
with no more clothes on than I have
eyeing me intently

The element of accident is totally
missing here

She will continue to fix her gaze
until I go and refill her
water and kibble bowls 

 Sneaky "Volunteer"

PRETTY COOL
—Ian Copestick, Stoke on Trent, England
 
Next week it will be exactly a year
Since my first poem was published.
In the space of one year I have had
Nearly 150 poems and 6 short stories
Published online. I have also had my
First book released. For my first
Year I think that this is pretty cool.
To look at it another way though,
I have been writing poetry for 20 years.
Then it's not so impressive, but at
Least I've started getting somewhere
With it, at last, and that's still pretty cool.

_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

TRAIL MIX
—Caschwa

Esther passed away and then
we needed to interest here we
go again to find arrest room to
spare tire iron ox, I’d never
leave you a loan me some
cashmere sweat urban the
bomb a deer squad run for
off issue made me love ewe.

_____________________

Our thanks to today’s contributors for a lively Monday morning around the Kitchen table, including a paean to being published by Ian Copestick from Stoke on Trent over there in the UK, and these luscious, luscious (did I say luscious?) photos of Caschwa's garden from poet/photog Carl Schwartz.

The Red Foxes are coming! Tonight at Sac. Poetry Center, ten power-packed poets from Red Fox Underground Poets in the foothills will read, beginning at 7:30pm, plus open mic. This weekly workshop has been meeting for years-n-years, and listening to them is a real treat!

Sac. Poetry Center workshops this week include Tuesday Night Workshop for critiquing of poems at the Hart Center (27th and J Sts.) on Tuesday, 7:30-9pm (call Danyen Powell at 530-681-0026 for info); and MarieWriters Generative Writing Workshop at SPC for writing poems, 6-8pm on Wednesday, in the Women’s Wisdom Art room, facilitated this week by Linda Collins.

Third Thursdays in the Sacramento Room of the Sac. Central Library, 828 I St., meets at noon this week, hosted by Mary Zeppa and Lawrence Dinkins. (It’s a read-around; bring poems by someone other than yourself.) Then in the evening, Poetry in Davis will feature Sac. Poet Laureate Indigo Moor plus open mic, 8pm at the John Natsoulas Gallery on 1st St. in Davis.

Speaking of power-packed, a heady line-up of well-known poets will read in Grass Valley this coming Friday as a benefit for the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, beginning at 7pm. On Saturday morning, Writers on the Air features Capital Story Tellers Sue Hobbs and Suzi Boyd plus Poet Mary Zeppa and open mic at Sac. Poetry Center, beginning at 9:30am. Then in the afternoon, ride up to Placerville for the monthly Poetic License in the Placerville Sr. Center lobby, starting at 2pm. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

And finally, check out yesterday’s Verse Daily (hwww.versedaily.org/2019/nightmare.shtml) for a poem by Sacramento Poet and Ekphrasis Co-Editor Carol Frith! Congratulations, Frannie-Alice!

—Medusa, celebrating the poetry of the garden

Did I say luscious...? 

—Anonymous photo

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
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The Cottage

A COTTAGE IN THE WOOD
—Russell Edson (1935-2014)
  

    He has built himself a cottage in a wood, near where the insect rubs its wings in song. 
     
    Yet, without measure, or a proper sense of scale, he has made the cottage too small.  He realizes this when only his hand will fit through the door.          
    He tries the stairs to the second floor with his fingers, but his arm wedges in the entrance. 
    He wonders how he shall cook his dinner.  He might get his fingers through the kitchen window, but even so, the stove’s too tiny to cook enough food; the pots are like thimbles and bottle caps.
    He shall also lie unsheltered in the night, even though a tiny bed, with its covers turned down, waits for him in the cottage.
    He curls himself around the cottage, listening to the insect that rubs its wings in a song . . .


______________________

Today at 1pm, Poetry of the Sierra Foothills presents Deborah Shaw Hickerson and Allegra Silberstein, plus open mic, at Caffé Santoro in Diamond Springs near Placerville. And at 2pm, Davis Arts Center Poetry Series features Patrick Grizzell plus open mic at the Davis Arts Center on F St. in Davis. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

For more about Russell Edson, go to www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/russell-edson, and while you’re there, be sure to check out one of my favorite poems at www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50780/with-sincerest-regrets/.

—Medusa, celebrating the metaphor in poetry!

 

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa. 

This World Goes Around

—Poems by James Lee Jobe, Davis, CA
—Photos Courtesy of James Lee Jobe

A fan in the window to pull in the cool, night air
Sleeping under a favorite blanket—waking once
Around 3 am to read a couple of poems
—Wang Ping’s Ten Thousand Waves—
Then sleep until the soft sunrise
Sings me awake to go make the coffee
That’s a nice night, isn’t it?
Yes, nice indeed

__________________

A rainy day, cold, gray
And empty.
Drinking coffee alone by the window
When a lone sunbeam breaks through.
Hello, world.
I’m still with you.

__________________

Not yet sunrise. Another day.
I take the washcloth and soap it up,
And I wash away the number written on my wrist.
785. Written with the ink of a ballpoint pen.

“785 what,” a friend had asked yesterday.

“785 sunrises without my son in the world.
785 sunrises since he died at age 26.”

My friend, who had no way of knowing
That I do this thing, looks away,
Trying to think of something to say.

“Maybe you should try to... move on,”
He suggests in a whisper, touching my shoulder.

“Everyone gets to grieve in the way
That is best for them,” I say,
“So I keep the count of how many days
I have carried the weight. I’ll never stop.”

I have that conversation every few days,
Whenever someone see the number on me.
It’s alright. I don’t mind
And I am not in the least embarrassed.

It is what it is.

5:29 AM. I haven't slept much tonight.
That’s alright. There is always tomorrow,
And until then I will keep the count
For one more day.
One more sunrise.

I take the pen and write 786
On the inside of my wrist.
Then I write it again,
Tracing it over so that the ink is bold.

Do you want to see what grief looks like?
I’ll show you. 786.
I’ll show it to you anytime.

We met when we were still young, but just barely. I was the river and you were the trees, the forest. Your woods were filled with many creatures, deer, rabbits, owls. My river held trout that flashed like silver and they recited quick poems in the deep quiet. My body was a river. Your body was the woods. The world went spinning around the warmth of the sun.

___________________

Is the universe endless? Why, sure!
And I am the universe
And the universe is me.
I am also endless, but I am also impermanent.
How can that be? I don’t know!
(And it doesn’t matter anyway.)
When I die, I will go on and on,
And yet there will be nothing.
I hope I have time for a good laugh
On the way out.

Two days of rain, then a break,
Followed by two days of clear skies,
Cool air. And tonight? No moon yet
As I ride the bus downtown
To hear poet William O’Daly
Read his fine poems and translations.
I stop for a coffee and scribble
In my notebook for an hour.
          My goodness!
It's a pleasant life to be a poet
In this Northern California valley.

___________________

My mother whipped me with a belt, a serving ladle,
A hairbrush, a spatula, and her fat, heavy hands.

Every blow was like being struck down by God.
Every blow held the taste of terror to me, a boy.

When the whipping was through, Mother held me,
Whispering, “I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t want to.”
Do you see how she loved me with scars? Fearing her
Taught me compassion. I did not whip my own children.

A perfect darkness, no moon
As the Sacramento River marches south.
This river is an army on the move.
And what am I? I am a pine tree,
A bristlecone pine obscured by pitch black night
Among all the trees along the river bank.
        Well, no man is really a pine tree
And no river is really an army.
It is the strength of living I am talking about.
Midnight here, it is morning in London and Paris,
Along the banks of the Thames and the Seine.
A dark night, a new day.
Rivers in motion as the earth is in motion.
People in motion.
Light and darkness, life goes on.
This world goes around.

_____________________

The trees are here to watch over us. In turn, the mountains watch over the trees, and the sky watches over everything. Is it true? I don’t really know, of course, but I can tell you this; the thought comforts me, and the pine tree above me is perfect and true.

Today’s LittleNip:

The true person is one with the earth,
One with the sky and the seas.
And the self? Left far behind.

—James Lee Jobe

____________________

Thank you, James Lee Jobe, for today’s poems of resonance! Tomorrow, Sunday the 16th, James will host Davis Arts Center Poetry Series with Patrick Grizzell, plus open mic, at the Davis Arts Center on F Street in Davis, 2pm. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about this and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa, celebrating poetry!

 “One with the sky and the seas.”

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.