Photo by Katy Brown, DavisSEASONAL CHANGES
—Joyce Odam, Sacramento
At once the season changes. Every tone
of light is on another plane. The day
constricts. A shiver in the air finds bone.
Trees shudder and release the birds
that flutter out and briefly fly away.
Then time resumes its count, shifts back in place.
Summer continues, canceling what was there:
a touch of winter in some kind of race,
something to mock the lack of words:
which season choose, with no time to prepare?
___________________
Broken promises: life is littered with them. Spring seems to promise eternal life, but now the leaves are starting to fall, to “turn” on us. The political season is choked with promises that we know won’t hold up. I remember how duped and betrayed I felt when I found out there was no Santa Claus, no Easter Bunny. Life and our relationships with others (including our kids!) are full of promises we don’t—and maybe never could—keep. And maybe that's okay! Write about the broken promises in your life for our Seed of the Week and send ‘em to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726.
The Fall '10 Issue of CONVERGENCE is online!
Look for work by Myles Boisen, Marlene Burns, Vince Corvaia, Tim Keane, Paul Lewellan, Paul Nelson, Sophia Pandeya, Francis Raven, April Salzano, and Jasmine Dreame Wagner in the Fall 2010 issue: www.convergence-journal.com/fall10
In addition, Editors' Choice pages and photos throughout the website are updated monthly, so stop by often. The site currently features new work by poet Michelle Johnson (on Linville's page), photographers Myles Boisen, Allyson Seconds, Tom Lux, Baxter Jackson, Katy Brown, Keith Moul, and artist Marlene Burns: www.convergence-journal.com
SOLO NOVO 2011/Wall Scrawls
Solo seeks poems that “scrawl on a wall” to tell others This is life on Earth! This happened! This became us. Solo seeks strong narrative, striking images, passionate voices and pauses when it all made sense or didn’t. Take on the hard stuff. Take on poems that need to be. New submission deadline is October 30, 2010: www.solopress.org/Solo_Press/Home_Page.html
Workshops!
•••Starts TONIGHT (Tues. 9/14), 8 sessions, 6-7:30pm: New Voices (free poetry writing workshop) at Valley Hi/Laguna Library w/ Sac. Poet Laureate Bob Stanley. Reg: 916-264-2920
•••Starts Tues. 9/21 thru 11/9, 2-5pm: Writing Your Memoirs w/Nick Rotondo, El Dorado Hills Sr. Center. Free, but must pre-reg: 916-358-3575.
For more upcoming workshops, click on Workshops/Retreats under SNAKE ON A ROD on our b-board, or check eskimopie.net
__________________
REARRANGING LIGHT
—Joyce Odam
She is a long way from time and home
in a summer room with breeze-lifted curtains
and restive shadows. Bent to a task of memory,
she sorts through long-forgotten clothes—
lifting them from an old travel-trunk she
had thought would remain closed. But tonight
she wants the things of her other self.
In the fidgety light, she moves like a
dream-walker, trying on all those outgrown
years—the tiny balcony open to the night.
__________________
THIS LONELINESS
—Joyce Odam
I borrow grief for these old journeys.
Grief is heavy but will sustain me
with experience and
advice for slow, cold nights ahead
when there is none to know
or care
that I am going anywhere.
Yes, grief is what I need
to take along
as an offering to each new place
where nothing can
assuage this loneliness
for somewhere that is home.
___________________
THE RELIABILITY OF DOORWAYS
—Joyce Odam
Through doorway after doorway
life enters—lingers—continues—
the sunlight slanting over the floor
like a path inviting you through,
here and there a chair—empty
or filled with someone reading,
or sewing, or only resting—testing
an impulse to simply let time pass,
while the hours change the look
of time, and the slow dust
settles, and a clock ticks softly
to assert its dependability.
___________________
Today's LittleNip:
JOURNEY
—Joyce Odam
Oh, but I shine for distance
which must follow me
as I go down its
straight-away
its curve
and its
horizon
I am the
mark at the
beginning and the
end…I am the map between…
__________________
—Medusa
Thanks, Joyce and Katy, for helping us with our "movin' on".
