Conjuring Calm
—Poems and Original Artwork by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA
TRAGEDIENNES
Mademoiselle at her balcony would look out over the city
with its far away lights and windowed sky around her
and soft music coming through the doors. She
was always lovely and lonely, wearing
a long clinging dress and perhaps
setting a drink on the railing;
she would sigh into
the night and lean her head back
and close her eyes
and never know how I was watching
from my front row with my candy bar
and mesmerized attention as she flickered
before me—reel after reel—the music telling
me what she was feeling so that I felt it too, though
the end of her story always gets lost in my remembering.
___________________
THE CONJURED MAN
he is in his room
waiting for some soft dreamer
to call him
then he sidles forth
under the tall bldgs…
under the muted trees…
sliding against the walls…
pulling his slow shadow
after him
he will be what she wants :
her dark betrayer
he has practiced himself for years
Dream Within the Dream
GIRL WITH GUITAR IN LATE WINDOW LIGHT
The day evolves to twilight.
Light goes dim.
The late sun makes a path across the floor.
The window fills with flickered leaves.
The girl indulges a twilight mood—
strums a soft music on a sleepy guitar,
leans her head back—closes her eyes
and hums.
The leaves diffuse.
The gold path widens until it’s gone.
The music mesmerizes all.
Night plays with shadows on the wall.
_________________
THE YOUNG MAN PLAYS HIS FLUTE IN
THE SUMMER GARDEN
At various stations of listening the listeners pause
in their musings and conversations to hear the
lyrical notes of the flute carry and dwindle. The sad
girl leaning against the tree on the shady slope that
goes down to the pond simply sighs and closes her
eyes. An animated couple on the veranda look at
each other and smile then stare off into the quiet
distance. An old woman at her watercolors suddenly
dips her brush into orange and draws a flower. And
the one who is mesmerized by the flautist falls in love.
Wheel of Many Chances
CLUSTERED
After Figures in a Setting by Henry Moore, 1942
They smear in the gloom-light that follows fear
in some cave of thought expanding around them;
even the children look toward the nameless mood
that mesmerizes; something listens for them
at the breath-held edge—a pending realized—
a white diffusion that begins around them
and spreads to their last denial and waits.
Soon they will close their eyes and let
the smudging darkness win—the last of the fates.
_________________
CONJURING UP MEMORIES
Oh, broken childhood,
full of places and fears—
tears and forgotten
faces—who,
and who, and who,
are these others flowing past,
forgetting you—
you who are so small
and must go where life leads,
all the ways toward the center
past the quick
forgotten friends,
you who promised them
forever : goodbye, goodbye,
and more goodbye.
Now you spiral back
and arrive where you are :
questionless,
and answerless:
everywhere is here,
has always been here,
moment upon moment,
hour, and year—why grieve
for what you cannot know.
A seagull appears in your dreams,
and another, and another—
those old cries.
Leftover Childhood
MAKING YOU UP
Look, look, look at all this.
I am telling you.
Listen, listen, listen, and tell me
what you hear beyond my telling—
Nothing enters that does not leave.
Nothing, nothing, up my sleeve;
all the sorrows now believe
there is nothing left to grieve.
Somewhere in the city, somewhere in the
city—long screech on wet pavement—
who is awake now—who knows all this—
hollow as aftermath—a completion.
Now the promised rains begin
sounding distant, sounding thin,
and a patient wind
signs of winter, giving in.
I have wasted my words once again.
It was not rain. It was not wind.
It was never the named thing.
Nothing was as I said it was, even you.
Study in Pink and Green
WHEN I INVOKE THESE MEMORIES
You are to blame for them. You are
the veil that wraps around my mind—
smothering thought—the suffocation
of your eyes—the way you died.
Gone to your death, your presence is
within me where I grieve and try
to separate myself from you.
Layers of life (we called them years)
have found their place to be. My heart
contains all this, symbolically,
my heart, too frail for love, my heart
that breaks in symbol, as hearts do.
This also is a myth—but words,
for those who can articulate,
are only words. Emotions rule,
and memories—too few—too dim,
to find their own reality, too quick
with pain. It is no use—they’ll have
their way—guided by you, my ghost.
How can I be the self I own
within my mind, haunted by you,
held in your aura, which is black—
black and passionate with death,
this new design by which you rule?
Ways In, Ways Out
STAIRCASE WITH CONJURED FIGURES
And now, these long stairs—this last poem—the
lovers halfway down, their shadows falling ahead
of them. The stairs are as wide as two distances,
there is no top or bottom to them, they are merely
steps toward a metaphor. What is the metaphor!
What must I discern from this : two lovers moving
down the stairs without a sign of apprehension.
Why am I afraid for them? The stairs are half-toned
with shadow and dull sunlight, rock texture in relief;
and they, themselves, diminished against the length
and width of this stair-path that is so steep, with no one
else going up or down. They are so trusting of
these lines that writes them there. How long it takes
to reach to one stone from another, the same slow
motion that is felt in waiting for what one can never
face. I make them mysterious. I give them choice,
a way to alter fate’s design : they are halfway up and
halfway down : time to go on, time to turn around.
___________________
Today’s LittleNip:
PATTERN IN MESH
that curve in the window-
screen — a gray finger-wave
against the pale skull of
the sky — such a precise
pattern — caught on the
morning window — at
just the right angle —
I turn my head from
side to side to make it
move — the art of caught
light — a falling-into-place
of things — I move it back
and forth, staring, mesmerized.
—Joyce Odam
___________________
Thank you, Joyce Odam, for conjuring up some magical poetry and artwork for us today on our Seed of the Week: Conjuring! Our new Seed of the Week is super easy: Halloween. 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.
And don’t forget to send your poems about Sacramento Poetry Day to kathykieth@hotmail.com by Thursday night, so we can post them on Friday, Oct. 26. Think loosely: rivers, the Capitol, the Kings, trees, the Zoo, fine poets, Farrell’s Ice Cream…
—Medusa
—Anonymous Artwork
for some thoughts about Halloween.
(And celebrate Poetry!)
(And celebrate Poetry!)
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