The News We Bring

Center of Attention

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

DESCENDING FROM A TRAIN INTO
THE NEXT PART OF THE JOURNEY

a moment suspended
out of the other moments
out of the lifetime
a frozen moment
somehow pulled out of the others
to become memory
a foot stepping down to a platform
someone’s balancing hand
at an elbow
assisting
polite
the cold, night-air on the face
or the hot, day-air
or a sound at the edge
or a movement
a moment of contemplation
what now?
or a moment in which
all the awareness gathers
and will stay forever in
its collected sensations
its forces that brought it together
like a new
or a déjà vu
moment
or even a moment
of hesitation
or relinquishment
or something about to be
the mystery of the next moment
not this one
the foot
steps down upon the platform
the hand at the elbow
pulls away
the vertigo of realization
shifts back into balance
sounds, sensations,
distractions, decisions,
fit back into place
the shudder of awareness
passes
and time is entered
once again.


(first pub. in Poetry Depth Quarterly, 2001)

 A Rose is a Rose
 

THE INVISIBLE TRAINS AT NIGHT
After “In the Train Compartment” by Gustave Fischer

Who sits near you in travel—
in the next seat? or across the aisle?
It’s hardly romantic.

Maybe in novels :
the handsome man, the pretty girl—
too old for her, too young for him.

Or, the teasing thoughts
of a dangerous fling
worked out in the imagination :

the glance, the smile, the surroundings,
the fast train rocking on the rails,
the world floating by in the old direction—

who does this nowadays?
But ghostly trains
of yesterday

clack slowly through the city at night—
the hollow mourn of their warning whistles,
waking you. 

 Eye of the Beholder

DISCORDANT PRAYER

Dreams.
Wrapped in slumber.
Transparent and intangible.
Body going through a pane of glass.
Becoming shimmer.
Becoming ghost of sleep.
Return-prayers on echo.
Never-dying echo.
Sound become soundless.
Portal of light.
Of dark.
Why is this important?
Answers turn away.
Into.
Always into.
Answers are not important.
Only questions.
Variegated light breaks upon glass.
Only the delusions.
Hope for nothing.
Nothing hopes back.
Cry ‘save me’ and be saved.
Save me. 

 Imbuement Qu

THE EVOLVING
After “Mourners in half light” by Carol Frith 
 
Here where mourners struggle in the half light
of your poem, I remember the occasion of life.

Words are not that different, you remind me.
They are common to the errant usage of love

and how it endures. The light is so artificial here,
I marvel, so thin and transparent along the edges.

You murmur that darkness is always the reason:
bracing the energies—building the center

with a constant treading. Then how, I ask,
can you explain that color—and that color,

blurring by at the speed of slowness—
slow enough to wonder at the strangeness,

You tell me that color always moves like that . . .
like that soft goldness . . . and that thin silvering.

When will we truly find each other, I question.
You hear me and mention the time spent

in dreams —in conjurings and forgettings—
all that will evolve into all that we ever wait for.

__________________

ROAD SIGNS: DRY COUNTRY
After Coreen Spellman, “Road Signs”, c. 1936

a confusion of distance
a mis-read of signs
turned every-which-way by the winds

a metallic ring of bullets against the posts
directing
each way to go

the ground swivels its post holes
and the poles resist
placed there forever for the traveler

who finds himself lost
reading the directions
of places no longer there

a few small rooftops try to suggest a town
the sky passes easily overhead
in all the directions

and the old winds bluster forth
whenever they want
tugging and shuddering against the signs. 

 Showing Off
 

INARTICULATION

I’ve gone the length of this day’s sorrow
            and I’ve come home to tell you
                        of the sameness of the journey.

                        __________________

I hear the birds crying now
            in a fierce delirium of telling—
                       how do they know what to say?

                        __________________

I listen to the heart distort the sounds
            of this closing, heavy day.
                       It feels like a dying.

___________________

THE NEWS WE BRING 

The news we bring has burned a tardy path in our slow
journey, looking for you here, at peace, involved with
simpler thoughts—not thoughts of the news we bring.
The news we bring has bodies of small birds that were
sent too far. They broke their wings. They could not
find you—strollen from the door—thinking of ram-
bling paths, not thoughts of what we were sent here for.

The news we bring has lost its urgency. We took
wrong turns, stayed over, here and there, were never
paid enough for what they paid us for. Eventually, we
brought the scraps and rags of chances that had time if
we just got here soon enough. We did not know you
were in need of time—in need of chances, and of
better memories than you had—not these cold clues
you could have used—not these regrets. 

 The Third Rose

THE MANY ILLUSIONS

This is our penance:
that we go
into
the many
illusions
as believers

that we enter the
virgin
places of love
with a vague regret

that life is
intense weather,
with moments only for

the fragile-scented
lilacs
and the insidious journey
of the leaves

that what we find
is never what we looked
for

that in
the questioning age
we do not know
the answer

that we are
unmade
just as
the mind
has put the self
together. 

(first pub. in Poet & Critic, 1967)

 Spent Roses
 

WHEREAS . . .

the water seems to lean toward the boat,
its image shuddering with drowning light—

reflections of the mind, the day, the way the
boat responds with creakings, how we cling

as though in earthquake : vertigo that’s new
and old—remembered and forgot.

What are we doing here? It’s growing dark—
moonlight crossed with clouds, and still we

ask where are we? in a tone of apprehension.
Where we are is here. And when is now.

And why is not enough to ask. The water
makes a sound. It lisps and leaps with little

murmurs while the light goes deeper with
its echo made of dark.

Our little ark is safe enough for now,
a simple journey over time’s remorse.

And who are you? And who am I? Two
strangers, each with a different shore.

Our quarrel lasts. It’s not enough to love.
How true is that . . . ! The boat nudges

the dark then bumps away. An island,
or a myth. Not here. Not yet.

The water stretches out the quietness we feel.
Perhaps we’re but a dream that will forget.

____________________

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…


(first pub. in Acorn, 1999)

___________________

Our thanks to Joyce Odam for today’s fine poems and photos, as she talks about expeditions, our Seed of the Week. Our new Seed of the Week is My Misspent Youth. (Or what you can remember of it…) (If anything…) Send your poems, photos and 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

Gymnasium for Cats

—Anonymous

Celebrate poetry!—And our Misspent Youths…

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