—Poetry and Photos by Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA
AT THE WOODS LINE
You might take Jake for a clown,
trousers held up with bright blue baling tape.
He’s out there where pasture becomes oak woods.
Fixed a break in the water system and now,
with a length of old pipe, he’s fashioned a flute.
He serenades his sheep; they go about
their browsing without applause. His grandkids
worry every time he fetches a ladder
from the barn, work-belt at his hip, and gazes
skyward. They know better than to talk him
out of it. He’ll find that roof-leak. With his vertigo
of years, they worry. He just talks about Harry,
old friend bedridden for years, making a profession
of opening his eyes and mumbling something
before slipping back to sleep. That kind
of death’s a dead-end job, Jake says, you can’t live
like that. Rather fall off the roof and go flying.
You might take Jake for a clown,
trousers held up with bright blue baling tape.
He’s out there where pasture becomes oak woods.
Fixed a break in the water system and now,
with a length of old pipe, he’s fashioned a flute.
He serenades his sheep; they go about
their browsing without applause. His grandkids
worry every time he fetches a ladder
from the barn, work-belt at his hip, and gazes
skyward. They know better than to talk him
out of it. He’ll find that roof-leak. With his vertigo
of years, they worry. He just talks about Harry,
old friend bedridden for years, making a profession
of opening his eyes and mumbling something
before slipping back to sleep. That kind
of death’s a dead-end job, Jake says, you can’t live
like that. Rather fall off the roof and go flying.
GRIZZLY FIGHTER’S COUNSEL, IN TIME OF COVID
(Chief Coppa Hembo of the Hill Nisenan, 1812-1898)
These days are bad, but you can survive
bad. Here are the scars
Grizzly’s claws left on my face.
It’s true, a living bear is easier to fight
than a contagion, smallpox in the blanket.
This new virus is tiny but in strength
more massive than Grizzly. You can kill
a bear, though he scars you for life.
This new killer, you can’t kill
nor drive from your village. It knows
no borders. It’s like hate.
It sneaks up stealthy
so you don’t recognize it
for what it is. This
more than ever is the time
to love; to help your brother, your
neighbor, though you meet him
at a distance, masked and wrapped
in protection, as I returned to my village
wrapped in bearskin.
We can learn so much from our wounds.
SURVIVOR
Without a sound the oregano
migrated. Greek or Mexican? I have
no idea; the tags got lost among green
below the solar panels, above tended rows
we diligently watered. In drought
we forgot the speechless herbs,
we let them die. Oregano would not
die, but crept silently along walkways,
clung to box-corners and where boards
began to warp and separate. You
can’t keep oregano where you plant it.
It’s too vibrant green, and migrant
as something that wants to live.
I WEED-EAT (a Sonnette)
With my motor-scythe I cut down the green
soon to turn flammable in summer’s breeze;
spare the blooms that bring pollinator bees,
and try to miss rocks, stumps, hazards unseen.
A mindful task, imagining the fright
of nesting twitterlies and skitterlies—
brief living beasts who breathe in morning light.
BLACK PHOEBE STOPS TRAFFIC
In these virus days with everything cancelled,
they stopped construction on Greenstone Road
for a bird’s nest. Migratory Bird Treaty says
the new bridge must wait while the eggs crack
and hatchlings wriggle out like worms in straw,
and mother Phoebe goes fly-catching, foraging
to feed her chicks till they feather-out and fly.
Here at home, phoebe sings from high on dead
TV antenna. She hawks bugs from the lowest
twig of a great live-oak, paying me no notice
at all. I praise this everyday small bird who
takes my breath, and leaves me full of song.
Buckeye
Today’s LittleNip:
NO MASKS (a Soledad)
—Taylor Graham
Apart from crowds, a peaceful space
of fiddleneck, buckeye and oak—
unseen here, we’re sheltered in place.
________________________________
FORM FIDDLERS’ FRIDAY!
Thanks to Taylor Graham this morning for Jake who looks like a clown, for Coppa Hembo and his grizzly bear, for baby birds, and for her update on keeping the weeds cut down on their land! Her LittleNip is in the form of a wee Soledad; for info, see www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/soledad-poetic-forms/. On there, Robert Brewer says that the Soledad is “a Spanish tercet form” that uses “internal consonance”(literarydevices.net/consonance) and “assonance” (literarydevices.net/assonance). Both of these tools are ‘way fun, and some of the heart of poetry, I say.
Taylor also sent us an example of a Canopus (note that the link spells it wrong): poetscollective.org/poetryforms/canapus/:
BABY BLUES
—Taylor Graham
Huddled in the nesting box, a mass
of feathers, bills, and black beady eyes.
Seven chicks in a bed of dry grass.
I count them twice, calculate their size—
birds overflowing what the box can hold.
Soon they’ll overfly our summer skies,
blue flashes above pasture’s sunburnt gold.
Baby Bluebird
—Photo by Taylor Graham
—Photo by Taylor Graham
Sue Crisp has sent us a Prisoner’s Constraint, a form which we explored on the very first Form Fiddlers’ Friday, but which is fun to re-visit. Also known as the Prisoner's Restriction, it is a Multiple Lipogram (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipogram). The premise is as follows:
You are a prisoner in a solitary cell. You receive a small piece of paper and a pencil. In order to conserve space as much as you can, you decide to write only using letters that do not extend above or below the line. This means you may use the following letters only: a, c, e, i, m, n, o, r, s, u, v, w, x, z . You can't use the letters: b, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, p, q, t, y . Here is Sue’s smooth example:
SEA SIRENS
—Sue Crisp, Shingle Springs, CA
Orcas, sea sirens en masse, seem curious
as our sea caravan weaves
a scenic course. No cause nor concern.
An azure sea, no snow,
no ice maze, no ominous aura.
Orca music, a sensuous
marine croon, in unison.
A newness in our unaware universe.
A commune, a sea murmur
removes our armor.
Here is a very short little nip from Carl Schwartz. Carl likes to make up forms as he goes along, according to how he envisions his poem. This one says a lot without saying a lot:
THE MISSING MAN FORMATION
—Caschwa, Sacramento, CA
Electoral College votes—check
MAGA hat—check
Podium and microphone—check
Ability to close umbrella—
Ability to tell the truth—
Ability to lead—
Compassion—
And Joyce Odam sent this poem for her Tuesday post, but I couldn’t resist setting it apart ’til today for its charm about love and poetry. Don't bother to look up "faux sonnet", though. This is just a, well, faux sonnet . . .
RELEVANCE
(Faux Sonnet)
—Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA
This simple poem,
trying to be
a sonnet—
reduced to groping
for words—
any words
—wanting to be
eloquent, but failing—
masquerading
as what it’s not.
Oh, listen—
listen to me,
telling you
this secret . . .
and this next one
—never resolving,
never resolving,
caught in mirror—
caught,
held captive
in doubled light, enamored.
You hear me, see me,
now we can
love—self and each other.
This is not the first time—
so guilty of love.
Now skim the light for texture.
I am here.
_____________________
So there you have it! Another action-packed Friday with the skill of Taylor Graham and the fine music of all these fiddlers—a fun-tastic way to start June, indeed!
—Medusa
Chief Coppa Hembo
—Public Domain Photo
—Public Domain Photo
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.
