On This Planet of Ours...

—Photo by Joyce Odam

CIRCULAR

—Joyce Odam, Sacramento

I go to the moon

for the first dream—

how far and round.

I fit.

I lie down and sleep.

A round dream enters my mind,

like a moon. I fall,

then fly.

After I have flown/fallen

a great distance, I enter your sleep

as a dream. How curious—

to know you like this.

(first pub. in Chrysanthemum, 2001) 

_________________

DO YOU KNOW ME

After SNAIL—Federico Garcia Lorca

—Joyce Odam                                                     

Love brings me this puzzle:

It says, solve me,

I am a one and only—

yours if you want me.

I will take forever or never.

I am made of loss and longing.

I am the first and the last.

I am made of memory and

forgetting—I will change you.

Do you know me?

Love brings me this puzzle.

(first pub. in DAD’S DESK,  2011)

_____________________

FIRST LIGHT

—Joyce Odam

dawn

the rooster

wakened birds

first

gray

light

refrigerator hum

the cat

batting its toy across the floor

in my neighbor’s sleep

his all night

porch-

-light is hung

like a star

in his dark green tree

in a farther tree

the first crow-

shape

on a yonder street

the first

car

(first pub. in One (Dog) Press, 1998)

 —Photo by Joyce Odam

The hurt of this…

the way it is ordinary,

as if it had no realization

of what was, and never is again,

layers and layers

of what takes the place

of life and its first drift of

sunlight over a gray day,

opening again

into another tomorrow—

a flash of yellow,

as if that bore

some importance here—

maybe only a shift of leaves

outside the window

as if a memory just happened.

 —Joyce Odam

 _______________________

A MOMENT TOO SOON

like a vibration of music,

or a flicker of rain

light caught but unheard

outside the window

like a token of shadow

when a face turns

the first vibration of the air

toward the rain-light

—Joyce Odam

 

_________________ 

OPPOSITIONAL 
—Joyce Odam 

What is first in the light

that over-dims?

What is the dimness

that the light betrays?

What force against what force

redeems what it repels—

this against that, and not for?

Oh, the quarrel—mind and thought

in torment that desires itself.

Why mirror this?

Light and dark at melting points

pour through each other.

_________________

SECOND DRAFT OF A FIRST DRAFT POEM

(from Mixed Voices:

Contemporary Poems About Music)

—Joyce Odam

It was a thin music

on a white page—

it was hidden inside

a book cover—

it was just waiting

for my green pencil,

the one I happened

to have in my hand,

the one with the blue eraser—

and it was silent until now,

waiting for a random word

to begin it—

I never heard it before;

it was stolen—

I was its thief,

but I was jealous—

I had been reading

poem after poem about music—

I wanted my own:

flute, piano, voice, harmonica,

tambourine,

and my old guitar

that I sold,

and the way I must be

my own sad audience—

reduced to radio,

cassette, CD—

then this little thin

strip of paper

that just happened

to be there

when I thought of this.

__________________

Thanks to Joyce Odam for today's tasty fare, including photos from her birthday bouquet. Our new Seed of the Week is On a planet like ours…  This one is wide open: you can talk about strife and hatred and people who want to leave so badly that they go walk on the moon. You can talk about love and human kindness, or basketball or crocodiles. It’s up to you. What happens on a planet like ours? Speak to me.

Mo Hurley writes:  Only FOUR days left to reserve your space for an AMAZING California Poets in the Schools poetry fest, "Passing the Gift Forward," a full weekend of readings and workshops with something for poets, writers, and teachers—as well as Poetry Out Loud poets and Youth Poets Laureate. The annual CPITS Symposium will be held at IONS Institute high on a bucolic ridgeline near Mt. Burdell, on the Novato-Petaluma (Sono Marin) border on Sept. 14-16. Super economical Saturday Day Passes (including a fabulous lunch): 32 spots left. Join us Saturday for a full day of writing workshops—from creative writing to arts grantwriting/publicity workshops. Or drop by for a reading. Or become the reading. The panorama alone is breathtaking. Walk the labyrinth. Listen to the hawks cry. See cpits.org/events.htm; contac Tina@CPITS.org to reserve a spot. CEU units available.

 

_____________________

Today's LittleNip:

THAT OLD LOVE

—Joyce Odam

What, indeed, has become

of that old love—existent for all time

in the nurtured heart—that pit of memory.

What power it pretends—

pressing you to it

like a heartbeat shared.

Forget it. Or remember it. I don’t care.

But quit assigning it the first position.

It has forgotten you.

_______________

—Medusa

 —Photo by Joyce Odam