It Is What It Is

Shelter in Place
—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

AWAKE TO LISTEN

The birds felt the early hour and began their
singing, a music of notes that took over
the silence and the sleep—

and because I was awake at this time—at this
hour—I listened and wept inside
to feel the harshness

as you cried out in your sleep and I felt your
anguish hush the little burst of singing—
so sweet, I couldn’t bear it.  

___________________

DAY OF SUB-TITLES

Leaning as you do between decisions
and indeterminations, plans unformed,
summer a threat to the energies—
what shall the day be famous for?

The hours slip, and the minutes snag
and nothing is done, one needs a plan
and this day is a muddle, too much
to do so there are no beginnings . . .

The cat takes over—young cat—
drone of helicopter
overhead—buzzing the sky window
with its persistent hover . . .

So you watch the cat—impervious
to helicopter drone and lazy curiosity—
a diversion, something to do with yourself.
You watch the cat play . . . oh, gaining day. 

 Dream Dreaming Itself

THE WAITING DAY
After Summertime, 1943 by Edward Hopper

What is left for the young woman
of yesterday to do

but go on waiting, poised and ready
to step down from the stair.

But she is held by something :
the sun on her face—

her hand on the white pillar,
perhaps to balance her indecisiveness.

The door-shadow behind her
seems to draw her back,

an open window-curtain
sucks in.

Her white dress
flattens against her.

Wall-shadow stays perfectly still
as soft green sunlight swiftly changes

to the harsh light of the lengthening hours
while she still stands there, as if frozen.

 Days and Days

HUNGRY—HUNGRY FOR WHAT

For what is hunger if not interpretive yearning—
not a reason, not the quest through madness,
that state through mind-rebellion,
the first birds singing in the trees.

Morning again. The night sleepless.
The birds singing. I would sing.
Tears are easy. Moaning is harsh.
Night is full of useless pain.

Suffer. Suffer.
The house goes silent,
the cat stares, looks at you,
you and the cat, suffering together.

This is new.
This is not.
It’s all shamble.
The house shudders. A block of silence

waits to burst. We are not through with this. 
There is no solution.    
Bear it.  Bear it.  Let it continue.
In and out of sleep. 

Mind is mirage.
In silence now, confusion caught
in mind’s trap.
Its door open. No key. How it is.

 It Is What It Is

     
BLURRINGS
After On the Shore by Anne Magill

He stands there yet—
silent as a pillar,
his black robe
dragging in the sand.
I catch his distance—
his stand of persistence.

We do not acknowledge
I am too far in the future,
no longer meant
for memory
as love and love
composites now 
foolish and harsh
harsh and beautiful
lost in the religions
fragmentized by time
the long dark beach
the drowning sand
the tokens of resistance
the sorrows of the dead.

He stands there yet
in my mind,
our futures read,
having not come true
as The Other said.

 Honey Bee and Lavender

DEARTH

note how sullen
the rivers-of-time
shallow against shores

receding
from rush of water,
drought years triumphant

metaphoric now
since prayer gains no edge
and time is relentless—

desperate rivers
gasping against
drowned bodies of trees

that surface along with
other drowned things
sacrificed to rivers

boats no longer race
each other
it does not snow in the mountains


(prev. pub. in Medusa's Kitchen, 2012) 

___________________

FOR THE TEN OR TWELVE OT TWENTY POPLARS
      After “The Binsy Poplars, felled 1829"
                            by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Grieving these trees, these green leaves,
these branches that reach, and beg,

these trees that sway in the currents of the day
and at night when the moon glows

and nothing knows the grieving
of these trees;

how we link the air with
so much stricken care

that cannot
release—

that must ever
reach and reach

to here
from the razing of these trees,

how no words can save
what life would crave of itself

and continue to be alive
in the wondering air,

so stunned at the loss—
at the merciless loss, of these trees.

(prev. pub. in Song of the San Joaquin)

 What We kept

POET AND MUSE, AN EXPLICATION :
(After Rousseau, Poet and His Muse)

The pose of seven purple flowers at the
hem and trouser legs of Apollinaire,
his Muse—Marie Laurencin, in 1909,

her gown a pleated forest green,
a garland at her throat—but it is the
purple-headed flowers that instruct my

mind to pursue the vision as Muse—
huge of body, waving her hand
(to me…?)  what else did I expect…?

untouchable beauty, I suspect,
Apollinaire holding a pen and scroll
and glowering beside her—

the perfection and the flaw—
the precise position of the flowers
suggests a diversion I cannot resist.

I stare at them, stealing the scene
of her power, overshadowing
even the exotic background trees,

lush-leaved and perfect,
the dense and brooding light, but
Apollinaire’s Muse does not flinch

from my depiction, she keeps her hand
waving, and her eye in a relentless gaze
that  keeps  pulling  me   back   to   Her . . .

_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

PEDESTRIAN DILEMMA
—Joyce Odam

           this splotch of movement, this
hurrying-through-the-rain-on-a-slipping day,
this melting into drowning images under wet
city lights—the smeary-ness of red, the nerv-
ous yellow the quick - green /of traffic lights
out- of- sync with the blurry motions of hurry
through the relentless rain /spattered / by um-         
brellas and eye glasses, squinting through the
        hurrying, worrying, race with time

____________________

This week, Joyce Odam has worked with our recent Seed of the Week, “Relentless”, teasing out the many faces of that-which-just-keeps-going, and we send many thanks to her for her fine poetry and photos. Poets are the songbirds of the planet, relentlessly raising individual voices, no matter what’s going on around us. (And sometimes we sound the alarm, too!)

Our new Seed of the Week is “Missing”. There’s a LOT missing these days! Write about it, or take photos, or sketch it out 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.

For more about Anne Magill and her painting, On the Shore, go to www.annemagill.com/cards/saturday-afternoon-3/.

For “The Binsy Poplars” by Gerard Manley Hopkins, see www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44390/binsey-poplars/.

For more about Edward Hopper’s Summertime, 1943, go to www.edwardhopper.net/summertime.jsp/.

For more about Rousseau’s The Muse Inspiring the Poet (The Poet and his Muse), see www.henrirousseau.net/the-muse-inspires-the-poet.jsp/.

____________________

—Medusa

 
 

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