Go With Joy

Empathy

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

CROSS STITCH

My grandmother sings the blues to my mother in
heaven.  Lullabies. Hymns. Toneless and beautiful.
How did they find each other?

This is how long it is between stories never told.
Who makes the rules for memory?  Soft, folding
things that make up patterns.

Once there was a riddle. Its name was love. It
carried a long distance, like faith and loneliness.
A riddle solved is a disappointment.

Sometimes I carry a tune for years, remember it
differently—think I composed it. My grandmother
holds my infant mother and asks about me.

She is almost complete now and I feel a ravel begin,
a slow sensation.  I tie another knot and move more
carefully.

My mother used to teach me embroidery: “This is a
French Knot,” she would tell me, “for the centers of
flowers, and this is a Satin Stitch for their leaves.”

And we would sit in my childhood for hours, making
arm rests, and head-rests, pillow cases
and pretty dresser scarves.

 Manifestation

THE CHARCOAL SKETCH
After Child on Horse by William M. Duff

Lines
drawn simply

like a primitive mural
on a gray wall:

a thin-legged, feisty horse,
rounding its back—

joyous child
astride—

grinning
and flinging

Watch Me arms
out wide.

 Praying

TREMOLO FOR A VIOLIN

This exalting music—its power—
to be moved beyond listening,
to merge into and become
what it is—find my soul—
weep for the healing
I trust to find
in this sad
vio-
lin

_________________

FOUR TREMOLOS

The Dying Note
        
Listening still to music’s echo  
fill the long-empty theatre  
where the old violinist—
in his last performance,  
holds the bow just a    
bit longer—all    
his music    
dying    
there.       


The Cacophony               

Raucous music, holding its noise still,  
like a metronome at a loss,
before the measuring of
the echo—the silence
that rings in the room
memory—
thrill.                           


The Still Air        

All the driven winds have done their worst,
wind chimes have quit their clamoring,
the air no longer trembles,
tiny breezes steal in,
two unbroken chimes
touch each other—
make little                                
chiming                                            
sounds.                


In Loving Memory       

Do you remember how the old bell
of the tiny church would echo
to all the listening dead
and those who did not stay,
how the church tower
can still echo
its heart out
to the
birds.    

 Not Necessarily a Bramble

                
THE SIGN-OFF HYMN ON TV

Once
late at night

we wept
in each other’s arms

and you
comforted me

for a reason
other

than
why I wept, and I wept the harder…

____________________

SIMPLE THINGS

Fragmentary. This old light out of older light. Repetitions.
Believe in it. Let it lead you into its farther self. You can
go as deep as you dare. Its name is night. It has many stars.
Count them. Take forever. A child sits watching you, blow-
ing soap bubbles into planets. Wings without angels fly
everywhere. Oh, this is such a night. Go with joy, that old
foe of sorrow. Tell the child not to cry. The child does not
listen. The child rubs an old tear into its eye, watching you
for pity. You are both lost and at home in this night-city
which has opened up its wing for you. Do not try to under-
stand this—you are not here. The child has dreamed you.
Hold the child until you die.

                                                         
(first pub. in Blue Violin, 1999)

 Resurrection

STREET BLUES

The music that haunts the most
is always blue, the kind of blue
that merges into black and gray,

that comes from every ragged hurt
there is to share and what the
inarticulate will ever try to say;

some city-street-musician plays it
every day—wailing inward like a
winter soul, long-beaten down and

long-removed from hymn or lullaby,
though, here, the lost still try to
pray—too poor for more than what

they have become, scavenging at
emptiness with hungry hands, being
everything the street blues say.

__________________

THIS HORIZON

It is only a thought away—and reachable—this
horizon. There is enough strength and enough
breath. There is the path, already traveled. Oh,
how many, and how many more. I dig into
memory. Have I passed here before—is there
a valley beyond—another mountain?

 The Glory Of

WHAT BELLS

for
what ringing,
what singing sound

what silence to fill
from where
and why

not then—
for then is now
time for the celebration

someone has told the bells
and they ring
who will come

from where do they come
—all this echoing—
spreading

and
thinning.
silence now . . . .

_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

MY SHOES FILL WITH FLOWERS

—Joyce Odam

My feet are bare—
     it is another winter.
          but where am I—

I am on a far hill
     counting cows
          that moo at me—

they frighten
     me,
          but I love them —

the soft grass of distance
     the strange maneuver
          of my winter mind.

______________________

Many thanks to Joyce Odam for her bells and music on this Christmas Day, 2018! Joyce says the tremolo form is “a gradation form of nine lines in descending order of 9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 syllables with subject matter that evokes a tension of human emotion as can be felt in response to music (such as a perfectly-executed ‘tremolo’ of a violin).

Our new Seed of the Week is for New Year’s: Starting Fresh. 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

 Celebrate poetry. . .
. . . and let there be peace.

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