Dewless Morning

 
—Poetry and Photos by Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA

  

DRAGONFLY

Red sun-splinter, vein-&-membrane wing, huge eyes focused
on the dead tip of an oleander twig on which you balance,
red as oleander blossom about to open,
mimicking your flame.
What draws you to this dead twig-tip
long lost to red?
You poise and angle your pairs of wings,
tire of me with my iPad,
dart off then return to the twig
and pose—not for me.
You stay, betraying nothing, no curiosity
at me and my lens. You’re live-red twig while oleander
awaits full bloom. You flirt, flit, leave, return again
to balance, red angel on head of the dead,
then fly, taking oleander’s color
with you. 

ODE TO LEAF HOPPERS

You,
tiny startle-rockets launching all at once
beside the well-house.

At first of dewless-morning,
after my stint of weed-eating I find you
wearing Nature’s dark mask,

socially-distant on the leaf,
a verdant blade
I missed in mowing.

You’re a caution
against my whip-string
upsetting dawn’s thin peace.

You, whose pale green I wore
at Japanese festival, bowing to wind
in wide sleeves,

bowing to blue-oak shade
and beyond, bowing at midday
to unanswerable sun.

 AS THE GRASSES TURN (Fugue)

“Work is the scythe of time,” Napoleon said but maybe not standing knee-high in annual grasses going dry and flammable, in need of mowing. Was he thinking of The Grim Reaper in a field of battle? Or some peasant harvest-song? “Nothing runs like a Deere,” they say. I have no Deere, but

rip-gut brome, foxtail
and wild oat shoving up lush
and heady as spring

Time’s scythe rusts in our shed. I fit my hands to its S-curve snath. Imagine peasant-soldiers ripping ripe grain with scythes, women with sickles, children gathering fallen seed-heads. Their songs mimic the swing of grass whispering to grasses. Swing and dip of blade on its snath, a dance of S’s. Knee-high green falls in tangles with purple vetch; dies to rise again from seed—

soundless in shadow
wild deer run—a scythe sighs through
silent grass at noon 

BUTTERWEED BETRAYAL  (Tanka)

Golden field flowers—
look close, is it butterweed?
no, an imposter
invading garden—vibrant,
jungle-tough, tiger whiskers.

HOLDING FAST (Boketto)

Brittling foxtails grow
over rusty barb-wire coils
leaned against an oak—
man’s incursions on the wild
where no fence remains.

And here, red-purple
snakeweed among spring grasses,
twining without barbs. 

RELATIONSHIPS

News alerts, sabotage or incompetence,
another mass shooting; betrayals of
trust; press conferences mixing reality
with fantasy. Too many deaths by number
without a solitary walk among
tombstones scribed and weathered.
Have we been sheltering with ourselves
too long? The hue of faces
on the screen’s gone pasty, pekid,
out of style waiting for
the salons to open. Flick off the TV,
let’s walk outside. Sun is shining.
Grass in need of mowing is blowing
in the breeze. At ease.
We’ve got a long way to go. 

Today’s LittleNip:

AT HOME WITH COVID (Limerick)
—Taylor Graham

That socially-distant girl, Mingy,
wore fashion both threadbare and dingy,
thus no one would ask
her to take off her mask
when the world was again gay and bingy. 

_________________________

Good morning and thank you to Taylor Graham as she sings to us of late spring in the foothills, and her never-ending task of trying to keep those hardy weeds (snakeweed!) from taking over the property that she and Hatch call theirs. “… a scythe sighs through silent grass at noon”. Can’t you just hear the scythe?

Don’t forget James Lee Jobe’s online reading on Facebook tonight at 7:30pm, featuring some Tomas Tranströmer (james-lee-jobe.blogspot.com), or Nick LeForce’s workshop on Zoom at 4pm. Reg. in advance for the latter at zoom.us/meeting/register/upwkde-opjkpnyQECAVBKolY4hKCdl61uA/. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. (If you have registered before, use the same link.)

For other upcoming poetry readings and workshops available online while we stay at home, scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

__________________________

FORM FIDDLERS’ FRIDAY!    

It’s time for more contributions from Form Fiddlers! Each Friday for awhile, there will be poems posted here from some of our readers using forms—either ones which were mentioned on Medusa during the previous week, or whatever else floats through the Kitchen and the perpetually stoned mind of Medusa. If these instructions are vague, it's because they're meant to be. Just fiddle around with some forms and get them posted in the Kitchen. In other words:

   A Frenzy of Forms for
                Hunt

                And
                Peck
                Poetry
                Yoga

 

Thanks, Caschwa (Carl Schwartz of Sacramento), for this wee-est of poems about my hunt/peck typing these days, due to my fractured arm. But at least our poetry hive continues to produce sweet poetry with its usual flurry. Tom Goff, for example, has sent us a Paradelle (www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/poetic-form-paradelle):
 

RIVERSIDE FIG TREE (Paradelle)
—Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA

The moon looms large as the crater drifts across.
The moon looms large as the crater drifts across.
A lavender sky yields young raccoons in the oak-branch crook.
A lavender sky yields young raccoons in the oak-branch crook.
The moon yields raccoons. In an oak-branch crook,
across lavender looms, a crater drifts, large as the young sky.

What we thought only great blue herons knew here.
What we thought only great blue herons knew here.
Drought-dry grasses, star thistle, heat shivers and high dust.
Drought-dry grasses, star thistle, heat shivers and high dust.
Great blue shivers, high star-and-thistle dust here.
Drought-dry herons knew what grasses we only thought.

Then a crone, all knucklebones, branch-reaching us.
Then a crone, all knucklebones, branch-reaching us.
Wild figs dangling, none too green to tongue-test, to devour.
Wild figs dangling, none too green to tongue-test, to devour.
Crone, tongue-test all branch-reaching, dangling
green, us none too wild: devour figs to knucklebones.

All, only none, across drought-dry star thistle, crook large
what the grasses knew, branch-reaching here, shivers
us to devour. An oak-branch, dangling in, yields the dust-high figs.
We tongue-test a lavender all-crater heat. The great green yields
            thought raccoons.
As the sky too drifts, then looms the crone moon. Young
            blue herons, wild, all knucklebones.


(prev. pub. in Poetry Now and, I believe, Medusa's Kitchen)

The Crone, All Knucklebones . . . 

  __________________________________________

Caschwa has tackled the Ghazal this week. Here are a few links for that tricky form:
 

poets.org/glossary/ghazal
www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/ghazal
www.shadowpoetry.com/resources/wip/ghazal.html


MOMENTS (It’s a Ghazal puzzle!)
—Caschwa 
 
supersonic booms above, tectonic plates
shifting bombastically below

four generations attended the wedding
meaning statistically hollow

we moved both Heaven and Earth to consummate
love that would drastically mellow

my feelings for your touch grow stronger daily
you say sarcastically hello

Pier 39, the alpha, male sea lions
join to fantastically bellow

back home, big on small talk and lying in bed
Caschwa from Italy, well, no 

 Guzzle-Puzzle

__________________________________________

Also from Carl, some Haibuns:


BACK IN THE DAY (Haibuns)
—Caschwa

way, way back in ancient times
before there were databases or
instantaneous computer retrieval
of digital bytes, people actually
stored information about what they
saw or heard in their own memory

one nanosecond
reach into the canopy
and rain the results

***
a large, ugly bug was on the
bathroom floor, and I, the palace
guard, was called upon for duty
grabbing one panel of paper towel,
swooping down with immense
force and slaying the rascal

our survival mode
has us killing creatures all,
no ceremony

***
I used to eat out a lot and got
terrific service from one young,
blonde waitress with a pony tail
held in place by a bright, red,
ribbon, who would place my usual
order when she saw me parking
my bicycle; by rights, I should owe
her a fortune in tips

forest fruits from hard-
working trees nourished by the
sun, take all you can

The "large, ugly bug on the bathroom floor . . ." 

_______________________________________

And here are some treasures that are, as Carl says, “Aiming to portray some nature in my Haikus”:


TREASURES
—Caschwa

a bearded iris
doesn’t wait for an invite
to spring up and shine

night blooming jasmine
competes with the decadent
chocolate truffles

coffee, freshly brewed
asking for a larger mug
to dunk the donuts

berries covered with
straw to shield them overnight
ripe, ready to pick

plum tree branches rise
like castle spires reaching for
white, magical clouds

ants hard at work to
carry away discarded
matter of all kinds

squirrels planting their
pecans in the raised bed soil
patiently waiting

_____________________

Thanks again to all of today’s Fine and Fancy Form Fiddlers on Medusa's 15th birthday! And don’t you be shy—send us your renditions of any forms and join us on Friday’s Medusa’s Kitchen! Those Snakes are always peckish, especially on their birthday…

—Medusa, that troubled teen . . .

 Happy Birthday, Medusa!

—Public Domain Cartoon

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.