Soft Shadows of Delusion

Counting

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

AN OLD SUMMER

I am in my tiny sailboat on
the small pond—one among many
such sailors—up to our knees—

guiding our boats carefully,
that we not bump into each other,
all our parents

sitting on the bank, smiling to us,
so easily pushing our small white boats
around and around in criss-cross patterns.

I am so comfortable,
I simply close my eyes
and drift in my sleepiness,

the sunlight sparkling
on the shallow water around me,
sounds murmuring away,

my parents also are sleeping now,
lying quietly together on the bank,
beginning to dream—

the day reaches its peak
and, all at once, I am alone,
pushing myself around in the small boat,

drifting out and away
     amid the sun-flickerings
          on the smooth surface of the water.

 Evening On Fire

ALL BECAUSE YOU LOVED THE DREAM

Lisa, Lisa, where are you—
where’s your madness—what’s your hue ?

All this summer, do you dance
in a whirlwind, in a trance ?

Where’s your lover—is he dead—
what’s that deathless thing he said ?

Lisa, Lisa, are you ill,
will you love your death until

death won’t have you any more
when he leaves you on a shore

drowned and broken all the way,
waiting for the tides to say—

they will take you now, she’s ours
will you lose your tender powers,

will you always be a child—
mad,    imperfect,    ruined,    wild ?

 Day Into Dark

MEASURING-UP

You thought the stars would move her,
the sentiment of roses,
the well-rehearsed looks
from your adoring eyes—

even long walks by the summer ocean or
braving some tawdry neighborhood with all its
danger : the following shadows : the undertones
of warning : your bravado : her challenge to you :

and you obliged—her own star in the heavens,
endless roses, suffering looks
from your adoring eyes—the way
you never understood her.

__________________

MY DAUGHTER DROWNING

                                 You tell me of that time
                             you entered the
                         summer water
                      and swam into depths
                   so curious
                you wanted
             to belong . . .
          a skilled swimmer,
        swimming  . . .
     down . . .
   and down . . .
 until . . .
you were out of breath . . .
and realizing
you did not know your way back . . .
could not tell in that directionless element
which way was up . . .
 when some last point of clarity
    allowed you to solve yourself
        by surrendering . . .
           relaxed and limp . . .
                  and letting
                         your own buoyancy
                               drift you slowly . . .
                                       upward . . .
                                               into air . . . .

 Broken Time

SANS BACKGROUND MUSIC

You were still a stranger, as I was to you—two
strangers pretending to love each other, walking
out on the long pier on a hot summer night to
stare down at the water and feel the perspectives
of danger. You stood behind me, the world so
real just then with some young anguish felt for
what was not : I wanted us to be like in a movie—
the waves crashing wildly—shuddering the night.

It was the emptiness that turned us back at last—
the end of the pier reached, the way we had no-
thing deep enough to say—the night stayed deep
behind us, the pier swaying with its long motion,
jutting out over the sea-edge that gushed and
swirled and broke its waves under. We wandered
back to the lights and simply disappeared from
each other. Only now do I reach back to tell you
how sharply I remember this.

 Gloaming

SOFT SHADOWS OF DELUSION

by dark waters of daylight
long summer sea-edge
and clockless-ness

mermaid child
never again
to know tears

those bright beads
never to reach the end
of this continuous beach

____________________

THE SAD END OF SUMMER

The sad end of summer looms
while we learn early breezes
from open windows.

A few hot days and we anticipate
long nights with no relief—
yet dread the winter.

 Dusk

SUMMER SKIES

What kind of courage
paves the way
for those
who can only
pray
their way through life,
unwinding—
the fires continue,
the forests keep burning,
the sky pollutes with self-loathing—
the hopeless wonderment
of rage that is also burning
the skies scream with terrible release—
even the matches burn with regret
finding their innocence
burnt,
too,
in the ashes.
Such a beautiful sunset.

_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

THE UNDOING
—Joyce Odam

“She’s a poet,” my daughter
whispers, hushing them,
“she writes poems.”
And in the other room children‘s chatter
unwinds to an ear-teasing hum.

“What’s a poet?”
one of them stage-whispers.
Another snickers.  A door
slams
as the stampede moves outside.
The silken threads of my poem
unravel.


(first pub in The Archer, 1967)

_____________________

Cheers to Joyce Odam for today’s post-Labor Day visions of The Last Ghost of Summer, our current Seed of the Week. Our new Seed of the Week is Poems Hidden in Plain Sight. 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.

Tonight from 5-7pm, Poetry Off-the-Shelves poetry read-around meets in the El Dorado County Library on Silva Valley Parkway in El Dorado Hills. 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, celebrating my own personal delusions...

 “Mermaid Child…”
—Anonymous

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.