Fringe
—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA
BIG MAMA LAUGHS
Big Mama laughs
and points her hand.
Her pretty laughter
shoves the air between.
Her flirting eyes
grab everyone.
Her dangling ear rings
dance and shine.
Her dark-blue-satin coat
shudders and clings.
She laughs
and laughs.
She is a happy woman
all the time.
(first pub. in Urban Voices That Matter, 1994;
also in Profiles [Mini-Chap], 1998)
Austral
BY THE WEIGHT OF MY SHADOW
I lean to the light, which is slanted in the
wrong direction. It is Wednesday, or maybe
some other day in another poem.
Perhaps it is dark . . . or twilight . . . and I
am leaning away from the light by the weight
of my shadow.
Or maybe I am in a blue car driving into the
bright sunlight of another morning. I may be
on some weeping errand that I think is a final
one.
Wednesday is just a day to choose out of all
the others. I could make it a month, or a year,
or a single moment—this one.
But I am too slow. I linger on my own thought.
What is the unknown here? What is the known?
I am full of questions.
The Dream of the Rose
COURTSHIP
I am the dark.
Come marry me.
I am cold.
Feel my heart.
It is still.
It is not breathing.
It is not connected
to my life.
Will you marry me
like this?
I am without promise.
I will hurt you.
(from My Best Regrets [Mini-Chap], 2008)
_________________
THESE DARK POLARITIES
It was the link,
what we knew and did not know,
what held us together and apart . . .
.
Softly the sorrow came to me,
whispered, oh, whispered so strangely,
my name, the condition of my dark . . .
.
Lies! Darling, Lies!
Your own angels distrust you,
fastened like pain to your shoulders . . .
.
We have no heaven here.
Pass through the curtains and see
for yourself . . .
.
Frail as ecstasy, this tower of ash
in the light of candles,
or was it incense . . .
.
Two crows, under the fan,
turn ever so slightly,
turn toward and away from each other . . .
.
Oh, grievance, thy name is love,
and all dark solitudes,
and all reachings into harsh light . . .
.
Oh, tender stone. My heart. My pillow.
My book of sorrows. My weapon and my fist.
I don’t know what else to call you . . . .
A Tangle of Fringe
DARKNESS COVETOUS OF LIGHT
Where sparkles merge
I bring my flat substance.
Glint and glimmer
oh image that I enter,
see me turning in the
prehensible center.
I am become a jewel.
The light is my lover.
I dazzle its gathering eye.
Loudly I am broken.
I am torn color.
I am sharded reflection.
I go as far as mirror dimension.
Sing me as I am,
new-faceting—
oh bright love,
wear me upon
your wedding finger.
(first pub. in South and West, 1970)
Prayer
INSIDE
It all splits into darkness; something fol-
lows the light, and the small room tightens.
It’s not like this is where you need to be—
the world outside expands—
tries to pull these walls away from you.
But there is glass in the light—
wavering back—confusing you.
You know how it is with imagination.
________________
NAMING THE DARKNESS
After Stanbury Moor (Photograph by Fay Godwin)
from Remains of Elmet (Photos by Ted Hughes, 1979)
What shall I name this darkness with its torn black sky,
its shadows that sweep the distances.
I know this night is strange but it has brought me here
to mourn, so I mourn. I fasten to the horizon
with bleak unwilling eyes—it is too far.
I am where I am, at another beginning, no strength
and no provisions. One silver path cuts through
the land, one curve of hill outlining land from sky.
A last thin rim of light hangs low enough to sharpen.
I’ll aim to that—still bright enough to beckon.
Midnight Roses
FULL MOON, MIDNIGHT
(July 25/26, 1999)
today it still is summer—last night cool enough
to think about the change of season still to come
though not yet August, not yet those unbearable
days and nights of swelter—that yearn
for rain, for rain, for rain,
last night’s moon
so full outside my window,
so full it seemed to move—
it seemed to move—this pearl-white
moon of midnight—so perfectly
aligned for me to babble on and on
about the full moon,
window-framed,
and I attuned to everything—
not summer-weary yet but drifted down to one day’s
closing hour—yielding—groping for these struggled
words to celebrate that simple admiration.
_____________________
Today’s LittleNip:
THE POETRY BITCH
The dark bitch of
po-e-try has a
thousand things to say
at the drop of a
thought—at the end of
a quip, or nag,
or complaint—as if you
could prod or coerce her
to your bidding.
___________________
Our thanks to Joyce Odam for her passionate poems and photos today on our Seed of the Week, “Hotter’n Hell”. She says she “went with the darkness of red, for the hot summer nights, for the passion of whatever works for the passion of life.” Her “Escort” is in the form of a Doriece: 4 syllables; 4 lines; 4 stanzas. For more about Remains of Elmet by Ted Hughes with photos by Fay Godwin, go to www.bl.uk/collection-items/remains-of-elmet-by-ted-hughes-with-photographs-by-fay-godwin/. Godwin’s photos can be seen at ingridnewton4.blogspot.com/2013/01/elmet.html/.
Our new Seed of the Week is Paperwork. Surely you have some opinions about that! Surely the very thought of it stirs the writer in you to new artistic heights. 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.
Poetry Off-the-Shelves poetry read-around will meet in El Dorado Hills tonight, 5-7pm, at the library on Silva Valley Parkway. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about this and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.
—Medusa
Celebrate poetry! Sacramento Poet Jane Blue
has a new book out,
Obsession with the Dogwood, at
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.