A Burst of Crows

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento

BRINK OF AUGUST

Morning’s white moon hovers in the flat blue sky
—metaphor for silence, or whatever you prefer
of personification—it is what we share here.

Two crows quarrel past the window
and take my attention, leaving a scar of sound,
an empty space of staring.

What I need now is a connection—contrast
against similarity.  I reach and find only the
fading moon and the absence of the crows.

You, whom I addressed before, are no longer
a part of this—I am watching the perfect moon
and listening for another burst of crows

—which happens even as I express this thought.

 SOUND ARROWS

The dogs bark in the hollows of morning.
The echoes listen.

Through the listening air, an invisible
mockingbird—both make echoes.

The dogs bark. A silent interval.
Then other dogs bark back.

Flat summer sky.
Mockingbird morning.

Soon the echoes are lost in the din.
Street workers. Trucks.
Someone hammering in a backyard.

Low-sounding airplane
scars the morning—from where to where?

Dawn’s lingering silence yields
to the sounds of the assembling day.

Dog rules once more, barking at
everything and everywhere.

From tree to tree the agitated crows
sound like invasiveness and misery.

THIS DAWN, THE OLD MOCKINGBIRD

I know he is an old bird,
for his song is very rich and long

—made of pure melancholy
and mad joy in the same true notes.

He fills and fills the brimming sky
with his deep singing.

______________________

DREAM STRUGGLE

At dawn, a silence, thick as air,
gray as morning. Some despair
lays its heavy hand
on troubled sleep and
smothers there—
sleep’s strange land

where sleep becomes an anxious place.
If guilt lives there, so must disgrace.
Mind unlocks—relearns
what always returns:
old concerns
it must face.

                                    
(first pub. in Poets' Forum Magazine)

LISTENING TO BLUE

Blue is a dawn word
and a twilight word; at dawn 

it sounds like the moment just before
birdsong; at dusk it sounds like a shadow.
       
Blue is sometimes an alto saxophone
and sometimes a flute sound in the rain.

Blue moves in slow motion to hear itself
move.  Blue is heavy with saturation.

Blue is a kind of prayer spoken
by loves who have lost each other.

Blue can dance to its own blue music
to which reunited lovers are slowly dancing.

THE BOOZERS                                          

They were bleary old.  They lived in a ground-floor apt.
off the alley.  They were alcoholics.  She never combed
her hair.  Her face was bloated.  He seemed to love her.
They looked sad.  Her eyes were unfocusing, beyond tragic.
She had been crying.  He was out of words.  His yellow
hand held the stub of a cigarette.  The room was blue
with smoke, his clothes rumpled, spilled upon.  The
bottle, a prop, stayed between them, its label turned,
just so, like an advertisement.  Their glasses gleamed
with the burnt-amber color of  its contents.  It was all
they could afford.  The drank slowly, pacing it like
time.  It was 10:00 o’clock in the morning.

                                                              
(first pub. in Parting Gifts, 1996)

_________________________

ABSENCES (OUTSIDE OF THE PAINTING)

“I’ll get them to delay the train for Rouen
 half an hour. The light will be better then.”
‘You’re mad,’ said Renoir.
                                      —Monet (Gare St. Lazarre)


train silhouette at dawn,
passenger silhouettes in cold huddle . . .

the turbulence of time—
its railway tracks—its flurry . . .

night-fog dispersing its heaviness,
impatience of the hour . . .

long thread of excitement—anxious for
the ‘all aboard’—the long ride to here . . . .

WHERE LIFE GETS STUCK

Small Town,     Small Town Blues,
on the only juke box in town—its only song,
no matter how many slots of selection.

I sing it to
my self-hugging dance:
circle    circle     circle    to the tune.

At night
the same old crying winds
return—howl through my dreams—

sound like a train I wish I were on—
as long as my nowhere to go—
as long as that.

I feel like a bend in time.
Mornings I feel the wide cold distance
hollow back with the echoes I know are gone.

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:

GLIMPSE

bird shadow on white wall—

             morning’s first poem

_______________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Joyce Odam for today's poems and pix (many of the latter from Locke), and a note that our new Seed of the Week will be stolen from her "Brink of August" poem: A Burst of Crows. I know—a flock of crows is known as a "murder"—but I like the image of a burst of them. Send your bursts of creativity (poems, photos, artwork) on this or any other subject to kathykieth@hotmail. No deadline on SOWs.