The Innocence of the Spring Chicken

Strange Eloquence

—Poems and Original Artwork by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

THE CHILDHOOD       

It was this way of it:
All the death
was made of murder.
All the death
was made of scream.
And an innocent child
composing all of it.
With her pink crayon and her
tan sheet of paper.
All that time.
Whenever they’d let her.
The old parents who said
they loved her.
Who kept her
safe in her room.
And she would stare out the window
and draw what she’d remember.
After it turned dark.
After the lights were out.
And there was only the ceiling
where her eyes should be.
And she was all the sky.
Her long hair floating against the edges
of everywhere.
And her night hands gathering up
the birds that slept
so she wouldn’t see them.
She didn’t care,
as long as she could keep floating there
among the birds who slept in her hands
and trusted the way
she was the whole sky.


(first pub. in Kudzu, 1980)

___________________-

HER PRETTY SON
(after Italian Postcard, ca. 1920)

This child of shadows
with his far face and innocent pout
standing among the flowers
one finger to his mouth
a golden boy of mother’s kisses
dressed in her choice of clothes
looking that way forever
in the moment caught for him
looking like a paper doll
shining among the dark
of all the years
that trail away from him
he does not know of them
(he’ll never be old or dead)
he is inquisitive
his eyes blue and round
he does not know what the shadows
mean, so close to his shoulders
he does not know why his mother
has dressed him in white
so she can always see him
contrasted and clean
for her receding vision
her pretty son who does not
know what his childhood
means, after all this time
standing so sweet and small
holding a bouquet.
Time still adores him.


(first pub. in One Dog, 1997)

 Indeterminate Landscape

THE STAND-OFF
After Turkeys in the Snow by Liz Hawkes deNiord

1.

We know how the turkeys connect their voices
when we gobble out to them and they gobble back
in a racket-challenge of sound, just milling around
and waiting for us to challenge them again/ and
again/ and again/ till we grow tired of losing
the game—and just stand there—and they just
stand there—sizing each other up . . .

2.

Again the turkeys, in the snow, not straw. I wonder
what they think about : which follows, which leads,
so aimless, so unlovable, though they bobble in
closeness and tremble apart by turn, playing look-
out, bobbing their heads up at any disturbance.
Curious fellows. So innocent of treachery. In the
snow, in the season of the winter . . .

3.

To make this a triptych, I hear they run wild in cer-
tain neighborhoods where they have built up their
courage—still gobbling in unison to frighten any-
thing that startles them. Never engage them in any
sort of discourse if this bothers you. They are like
clumsy pets, annoyances, unapproachable. Just ig-
nore them. Maybe they’ll go away.

__________________

THEIR YOUNG PHOTOGRAPH
(after a photograph)
 
Dressed in a style, old fashioned, prim, two young
ladies, posed ladylike, hands folded in laps, blent
toneless against wall-stone, uncomfortable in straight
postures, eyes of one on the camera lens, the eyes of
the other toward someone who is speaking to them,
perhaps telling them
                             what to do, or trying to get them
to smile, but they are too sober for smiles, they are
being held as they never will be held again, innocent
as children on a gray Sunday after a rain. A shiver
passes over them under the weak sunlight of a day so
long ago it is ever beyond them now.

 Abeyance

THE INNOCENCE

Serpent came and lay down beside her and said, Do not
dream of me. I am not real. Then serpent left her—
half-awakened—wondering what she remembered.

            ~◇~

Serpent awoke one morning on her satin pillow, saying,
Oh, I like this dream—this texture—
smoother than I am. I wonder if this is love.

            ~◇~

Serpent looked for the way out of her mind,
but she had closed everything against his leaving.
Then she hunted all the rooms with her killing power.

            ~◇~

Serpent said, Watch me dance, and lifted into
a hypnotic sway and did not take his eyes off her eyes
until she began to sway in unison.

            ~◇~

Serpent stretched out his shimmering green length
and taunted, See how I surrender?
Come here and touch me.

            ~◇~
                                                                             
So you want to talk about love, Serpent fawned.
All right, I will give you all the words
you want. Every slither toward you will be about love.

            ~◇~   

I am innocent of all my rumors, Serpent swore.
It is all about hunger. I search only for what will satisfy me.
But she could no longer forgive innocence.

            ~◇~

And they grew warily silent—
looking through each other’s windows
which were covering-over with leaves and tendrils.

 Crack in the Ego

IT IS A LONG WAY THROUGH CIRCLES

it is a long way
through circles

how can
I enter places so small

what is
my structure now

I enter the hum
silence grows large within me

I have lost the
texture of have and gone

simplification!

pressure falls away from me
and I drift

as light as an innocent thought
untaught by truth

I dreamed this once
but I was lying underneath my heart

and all
I enter now

was above me
and descending

________________

THE SEQUENCE OF THE CURSE
After The Art of Poetry by Yves Bonnefoy

The curse is part of the mouth.
The mouth is innocent and led by the word.
The word is innocent of the mind,

The mind is contorted by the mouth.

The word must be uttered to escape.
The mind must free the word through the mouth.

The mouth is obedient to the curse.

 Esteem

THE BLAME

There is a blemish in life that began, then perpetuated,
breaking the path-line that snapped away like a broken
branch—a twig only—that left a distortion that grew

into a scar. A wrong that makes the innocent guilty,
that insinuates and insinuates itself between every flash-
back that, itself, learns to disregard and obliterate what

is there, not the elephant, but the ghost—to go around—
to avoid new confrontations, what shapes the will, away
from the refusal, that becomes the blame—

which in itself is blameless, the mind a blockage, not a
discerner. One works with the result, taking it into the
self like the growth that it is. There is a silent howler, a

companion that lives in the head that has closed eyes of
recognition—that has sensate memory that festers in the
odd moment of recollection; that emulates the shadow

you protect, that you cannot bear to harbor because pain
put it there. It has only itself to blame because it is your
discouragement, not your joy—not the guilt innocence

feels under imposition. Strength will evolve
with perfection. It must suffice,
heal over, and
suffice.
 

 Mood Changes

IF IT WERE NOT FOR SADNESS

Life must always bear sadness along,

that dead weight in the heart, the emptiness

 in the arms, the eyes ever-seeking to fill the mind,

the mind in recoil, or probe, the sadness itself,

innocent and guilty both, unable to bear itself.

Life must never blame sadness, it is the probe

at the beginning, and the lament at the end. It is

the one true thread of your existence, the one

that will never let you forget what is most

unbearable, you must love your sadness.

If it were not for sadness, you would lose your

equilibrium—forget to plod—forget to endure

—forget the evolving limit of your strength—

you are the common bearer of your sadness,

that gift that lets you complete yourself.

__________________

Today’s LittleNip:

REASONS
—Joyce Odam

Because we were indelicate at love,
great shifts of light severed like glass.

Bewilderment took place of need.
The mirror wept.

Rage suffered rage—
gone quiet, and inept.

Words did not know themselves.
It was the beginning

and the end,
because we were indelicate at love.

___________________

Thank you to Joyce Odam for today’s potpourri of poems and original artwork on our Seed of the Week: Spring Chickens! Our new Seed of the Week is a sweet one, The Candy Store. Think literal (all those colors!) or metaphoric ("like a kid in a candy store"), and 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.

Next Wednesday, a week from tomorrow, El Dorado County Poet Laureate Suzanne Roberts will read with Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas at the El Dorado Hills Library. So El Dorado Hills’ version of Poetry Off-the-Shelves has graciously moved their meeting date from next week to today, Tues., 6/4, so as not to conflict, and the Placerville version meets tomorrow (6/5).

Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

For more about Yves Bonnefoy (1923-2016), go to www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/yves-bonnefoy or poets.org/poet/yves-bonnefoy/.

—Medusa, celebrating the innocence of herself and others!

 —Anonymous Photo

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
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