In My Shadow
—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA
THE DAY FORETOLD
This morning the moon rose too high in the west—
round and parchment white—yet shining bright
upon the windowsill, filling the pulled-back curtain;
it was early—and I had risen into the too-dark
earliness to find the moon staring down like that;
and I stared back—filled with its silver light—
my hand on the sill transparent and cold and
bright with energy—my heart felt like parchment.
Dared I touch this day with anything but love?
(first pub. in Hidden Oak, 2004)
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WHEREVER YOU HEAR MUSIC
After back cover photo, "Book of Longing" by Leonard Cohen
Sitting off to the edge of music, you watch her
play the piano—your expression as oblique as ever.
Your concentration is on the surface.
But something about the silence of her eyes
says more than silence.
To put a soft word in your voice
would be as startling
as the sudden burst of song from a bird on a wire
singing its heart out for the love of singing.
You—who are master and student now—
find the very least of music brings you
a child-like joy that you finally have no words for.
The Broken Stem
TRICKERIES
She is captive to the song of the nightingale.
It is a trick the forest plays on her—to keep
her here—to charm the bird so it will sing.
It is a ruse of twilight to linger past the hour
so she will forget time and lose her way back.
And the nightingale conspires, singing sweetly,
sweetly to her, from its branch. And the forest
settles its slow shadows over the path, and
flutters the sunlight above her with its leaves
that flicker for her eyes, until only a small patch
of closing light remains where she leans against
the comfort of the tree, where the nightingale,
with all its heart and praise, is singing.
(first pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 2010)
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THE BEARER OF SUCH MEMORY
Ah, sweet bird,
sweet yellow bird,
with such keen eye and forest-heart,
wherever you go
a tree waits for your resting;
when you rest, tree calls to forest
and forest listens.
Your eye leads, and
the sky follows.
Speaking to the Wall
IN THE BLUE HEART OF DREAM
A bird winds slowly skyward
lifting a bronze shadow out of the murk.
It is heavy and lonely,
the last thought of a dying dreamer
who has heard the faint call outward.
What follows is grief, freed of weeping,
though it is heavy too
and folding like a weariness,
too much effort needed
to be free of truth and imagination.
A fan closes as if by itself, ending
the escape. The sky goes dark again.
Or stays bright. Who can say?
The delicate art is saved from eyes.
Nothing depicts.
Everything moves in relation
to everything else, even the stillness
which must breathe and wait.
A word is being offered to the silence.
A listener must make a choice.
Who am I to grieve over such things?
A dream cannot live without the sleep.
Let the bird go.
It is only your thought of it.
If it loved you, you will know.
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SUBJECT MATTER
water
is glass,
imaged by night
night
is part glass
and part river
each night a small boat
drifts dreamward,
carrying its sole passenger
each night
the passenger
is prison to the dream
each night the depth
pulls the dream
downward
each night
the boat
is prison to the river
The Wall Listens
PROVING WHAT IT PROVES
Here is where the dark thickens. I reach in and pluck one
silver thread of light from the center to let my hand and
eye be amazed at my skill. I take it to the heart of the mirror
where the other waits . . .
the other is in need of proof,
something to verify its need of existence. The light shatters
when it touches glass. The dark closes its wound. I don’t
know what has just happened.
__________________
This wound of man,
made of sand,
I need to re-write him,
make him real—
not an ocean man
edging toward land,
but a real sea-man with sad human eyes.
The tides erode him,
taking years—
taking a life-time.
His heart is open to love,
to despair,
to every reason to care—
more or less,
as the tides
decree.
Essentially,
he is free to become,
or return, to his beginning.
One to Bear All
GOD, IN HIS WANTING—
After Rumi (“to form one pearl”)
unknown myth of being, what is he?
impenetrate mind—
blesséd heart and soul, what is he…
if he is insentient,
if he is neither kind nor cruel,
but just there, in the perception…
if there is nothing.
if there is all,
how does one prove the difference…
knowing is the same
as unknowing,
each absolute, each wondering…
faith—
that abstract word
without elaboration…
god of
miraculous response
or fathomless disregard…
of what is belief comprised?
of fear? of dread?
connected to the great what if…
only the mind,
against, or with,
the mind of the unanswerable…
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WORDS AS WORDS
After “Ars Poetica” by Jorge Luis Borges
There are some words that are only words,
until they are pressured into meaning—
there is always that struggled search for meaning
to be understood with the quizzical use of words.
Sometimes the reach is made of echoes,
intensely listening beyond hearing
until each sound is out of hearing,
ghosts of voices given to echoes.
Words can be made of speeches and babble,
oratorical with persuasion and power,
until the speeches run out of power,
sounding at last like only babble.
Words, the tools of such potential
to plead, or threaten, or exploit for love.
Oh, that words can be used for love,
else fail the heart and the mind’s potential.
Words that are only words…? Oh, never—
there are shades of intention when words are spoken,
with only silence, then, for words not spoken.
Words that will never hurt you…? Oh, never.
The Following Light
ON THE NEXT POEM YOU WRITE
Let it be new to your heart, and old
to your mind—long-hidden—seeming new.
Let it be meant to be unforgotten
for it is as true as new discovery can be.
Let its words be easy on the eye that sees them
and the voice that reads them out loud.
May you recognize it and receive it with
gratitude. You alone can receive it.
And if it comes to you, and you let it go,
it will be mourned, for it will never be.
(first pub. in Sr. Magazine, 2014)
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Today’s LittleNip:
STROKING
—Joyce Odam
If I can make the cat purr,
might I, then, also praise
some silent heart
to love . . .
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So many thanks to Joyce Odam for her poetic and photographic meditations today, as we end another year. Speaking of which, our new Seed of the Week is Reboot, Restore, Renew. 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, wishing you a Happy Kwanzaa (Dec. 26-Jan. 1)! See the official Kwanzaa website at www.officialkwanzaawebsite.org/index.shtml/.
Making the Cat Purr...
—Anonymous Photo
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