—Poetry and Photos by Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA
GOLDEN MOMENTS
We’re waiting creekside, Bella Rose and I, for her people. A hot day, but shady along dry creek under live-oak, wild plum, buckeye. I pick stick-tights from her fine blonde hair. She’d been running so hard she lost her home. Thank goodness for tag on collar. We’re waiting for her people to fetch her, waiting as for creek to run with rain;
waiting in thanks for
shade, breeze, unexpected luck
of a golden dog
DOE FLIGHT
As I drove home, just a glimpse
of deer who leaped our fence; gone
to oak woods on our hill—then
speckled newborn learning to walk on our lawn.
So young and skittish the doe
glimpsed by the creek among trees,
free-leaping away; her fawn
mastering legs, learning to fly with the breeze.
Now, from shadow, an instant
sunlit gold—the selfsame doe
who birthed her babe on our lawn
then led him hence? Where does such shy beauty go?
PAPYRUS
Paper of ancients before
parchment (a writing surface
produced not of green plant but
processed from dead sheep)—you say
papyrus grows among rock
pressed from our hillside, creek-gouged,
penned in Nature’s ageless script.
DREAM SCULPTOR
His
newest:
monolith
cube of darkest
marble balanced by
one vertex on concrete.
How did he manage that? He
says, “Symbolic. That cement &
aggregate base is our paved city.
The shining cube is rock heat- and pressure-
formed by natural forces, which man—that’s
me—has perched one-toenailed as the
crown of his own creation.
I wonder, myself, he
says, how long before
it loses its
balance and
simply
falls.
BUT IT’S BEAUTIFUL
Color accent in
a sunburnt land, glossy green
and vibrant crimson,
thriving where it seems nothing
survives—yes, it’s poison oak….
CREEKSIDE DEN
After Joyce Odam’s “Fox, Going Extinct”
A glimpse of Fox
might light a poem,
striking flint-against-steel—
a spark to catch dry
tinder of the brain with all
its twiggy tangles.
Shall the free-flow
flare of Fox be caught
in our human trap
of words? The words
that Fox sparks
burn live in the mind’s eye
long after the living
fox is gone to roadside weed
and what wild survives
beyond our fences
and pavement’s shoulder;
grace of low-to-earth
stealth, and shyness
of the too-much-explaining
mind in which we’re trapped.
Today’s LittleNip:
ANALOGY
—Taylor Graham
When the great screaming
hawk soars overhead, must hawks
of other colors
scatter across the low swale,
silent, to shades of woodland?
__________________
Our thanks to Taylor Graham for sending creekside poems and photos, our recent Seed of the Week. She writes that today she’s sending a Pleiades; an Endecha (“Doe Flight”); an Etheree (“Dream Sculptor”); also a Tanka; Waka; Haibun; and a poem (“Creekside Den”) inspired by Joyce Odam’s recent fox poem (medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/2020/07/tomorrow-we-will-find-moon.html) , itself a response to someone else's fox poem.
__________________
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. (See the end of this post for links to all the forms used.)
Tom Goff tends to write in Sonnets; here is a lovely, timely one from him:
THE GLOW OF WORK
—Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA
for Aaliyah
An El Pollo Loco girl, in COVID mask,
Holds a glowing green coal up to her face,
Keeps clamped, that Kryptonite glow, to her black mask,
At least in profile view. But then I trace
It to her drive-through headset fully “on.”
She works: as men did once at an old steel mill
In silhouette against a red-pouring cauldron
Spilling the melted fiery slosh to fill
An unseen mold. As her green light-gem stains
Her image lethal, so the steel man seems
—Asbestos-suited, masked from flaming rains—
A god who tends, while firework syrup teems
And brims, a lone dark shape in a sky of gleeds:
Like Kryptonite Girl: both made of the light each bleeds.
Joseph Nolan has sent us a two-stanza poem which the first stanza is a classic Limerick. Then the second stanza veers a bit, with its first line rhyming with lines 3 and 4 instead of 2, 3, 5. Joseph does indeed fiddle with forms, making them his own in his own charming way! I’m calling this a Limerick-ish…
NUMB TO RAGE
—Joseph Nolan (Limerick-ish)
Unable to fully engage
With a state of rage
He numbed his thumb
Into a plum
And thought, “All life’s a stage.”
Some people just can’t go there
Where mouths fill up with froth,
Where garments tear
Under burning hair,
So they just wander off.
______________________
Janet Pantoja sends us a handful of poems in interesting forms this week. Check these out:
AN EAGLE'S NEXT MEAL?
—Janet L. Pantoja (Palindromic)
While walking my dogs to the beach,
I saw a bald eagle—
sharp-eyed and sharp-taloned—
perched high on a pole.
Hidden in the tall beach grass,
my small leashed dogs seemed safe . . .
or, would they this eagle’s next meal?
My small leashed dogs seemed safe
hidden in the tall beach grass.
Perched high on a pole—
sharp-eyed and sharp-taloned—
I saw a bald eagle,
while walking my dogs to the beach.
MARINE ENIGMA
—Janet L. Pantoja (Octo)
We’re waiting creekside, Bella Rose and I, for her people. A hot day, but shady along dry creek under live-oak, wild plum, buckeye. I pick stick-tights from her fine blonde hair. She’d been running so hard she lost her home. Thank goodness for tag on collar. We’re waiting for her people to fetch her, waiting as for creek to run with rain;
waiting in thanks for
shade, breeze, unexpected luck
of a golden dog
DOE FLIGHT
As I drove home, just a glimpse
of deer who leaped our fence; gone
to oak woods on our hill—then
speckled newborn learning to walk on our lawn.
So young and skittish the doe
glimpsed by the creek among trees,
free-leaping away; her fawn
mastering legs, learning to fly with the breeze.
Now, from shadow, an instant
sunlit gold—the selfsame doe
who birthed her babe on our lawn
then led him hence? Where does such shy beauty go?
PAPYRUS
Paper of ancients before
parchment (a writing surface
produced not of green plant but
processed from dead sheep)—you say
papyrus grows among rock
pressed from our hillside, creek-gouged,
penned in Nature’s ageless script.
DREAM SCULPTOR
His
newest:
monolith
cube of darkest
marble balanced by
one vertex on concrete.
How did he manage that? He
says, “Symbolic. That cement &
aggregate base is our paved city.
The shining cube is rock heat- and pressure-
formed by natural forces, which man—that’s
me—has perched one-toenailed as the
crown of his own creation.
I wonder, myself, he
says, how long before
it loses its
balance and
simply
falls.
BUT IT’S BEAUTIFUL
Color accent in
a sunburnt land, glossy green
and vibrant crimson,
thriving where it seems nothing
survives—yes, it’s poison oak….
CREEKSIDE DEN
After Joyce Odam’s “Fox, Going Extinct”
A glimpse of Fox
might light a poem,
striking flint-against-steel—
a spark to catch dry
tinder of the brain with all
its twiggy tangles.
Shall the free-flow
flare of Fox be caught
in our human trap
of words? The words
that Fox sparks
burn live in the mind’s eye
long after the living
fox is gone to roadside weed
and what wild survives
beyond our fences
and pavement’s shoulder;
grace of low-to-earth
stealth, and shyness
of the too-much-explaining
mind in which we’re trapped.
Today’s LittleNip:
ANALOGY
—Taylor Graham
When the great screaming
hawk soars overhead, must hawks
of other colors
scatter across the low swale,
silent, to shades of woodland?
__________________
Our thanks to Taylor Graham for sending creekside poems and photos, our recent Seed of the Week. She writes that today she’s sending a Pleiades; an Endecha (“Doe Flight”); an Etheree (“Dream Sculptor”); also a Tanka; Waka; Haibun; and a poem (“Creekside Den”) inspired by Joyce Odam’s recent fox poem (medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/2020/07/tomorrow-we-will-find-moon.html) , itself a response to someone else's fox poem.
__________________
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. (See the end of this post for links to all the forms used.)
Tom Goff tends to write in Sonnets; here is a lovely, timely one from him:
THE GLOW OF WORK
—Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA
for Aaliyah
An El Pollo Loco girl, in COVID mask,
Holds a glowing green coal up to her face,
Keeps clamped, that Kryptonite glow, to her black mask,
At least in profile view. But then I trace
It to her drive-through headset fully “on.”
She works: as men did once at an old steel mill
In silhouette against a red-pouring cauldron
Spilling the melted fiery slosh to fill
An unseen mold. As her green light-gem stains
Her image lethal, so the steel man seems
—Asbestos-suited, masked from flaming rains—
A god who tends, while firework syrup teems
And brims, a lone dark shape in a sky of gleeds:
Like Kryptonite Girl: both made of the light each bleeds.
—Public Domain Illustration
Joseph Nolan has sent us a two-stanza poem which the first stanza is a classic Limerick. Then the second stanza veers a bit, with its first line rhyming with lines 3 and 4 instead of 2, 3, 5. Joseph does indeed fiddle with forms, making them his own in his own charming way! I’m calling this a Limerick-ish…
NUMB TO RAGE
—Joseph Nolan (Limerick-ish)
Unable to fully engage
With a state of rage
He numbed his thumb
Into a plum
And thought, “All life’s a stage.”
Some people just can’t go there
Where mouths fill up with froth,
Where garments tear
Under burning hair,
So they just wander off.
______________________
Janet Pantoja sends us a handful of poems in interesting forms this week. Check these out:
AN EAGLE'S NEXT MEAL?
—Janet L. Pantoja (Palindromic)
While walking my dogs to the beach,
I saw a bald eagle—
sharp-eyed and sharp-taloned—
perched high on a pole.
Hidden in the tall beach grass,
my small leashed dogs seemed safe . . .
or, would they this eagle’s next meal?
My small leashed dogs seemed safe
hidden in the tall beach grass.
Perched high on a pole—
sharp-eyed and sharp-taloned—
I saw a bald eagle,
while walking my dogs to the beach.
—Public Domain Photo
MARINE ENIGMA
—Janet L. Pantoja (Octo)
Waves tumble, crash onto the shore—
the ocean is roaring tonight!
Is there a storm brewing at sea?—
makes me wonder when the sea roars.
So I wonder when the sea roars . . .
is there a storm brewing at sea?
The ocean is roaring tonight—
waves tumble, crash onto the shore!
—Photo by Janet Pantoja
The Decannelle is new to me. Janet sends two of them:
UNPRECEDENTED
—Janet L. Pantoja
UNPRECEDENTED
—Janet L. Pantoja
Churches are closed, the doors are locked.
RV trips are cancelled too.
The music club is now tacet.
When will life begin anew?
The wait often feels long, endless--
What is a person to do?
Jigsaw puzzles help pass the time,
As does a good mystery.
Covid 19 has changed our lives,
Locked us into history.
—Photo by Janet Pantoja
MUSIC IN THE AIR
—Janet L. Pantoja
Music cannot be stopped at all
even if you really try!
Covid 19 the world shut down,
silenced concerts by and by.
Yet music soared from balconies,
windows, porches to defy
loneliness. Zoom concerts sprung up
and musicians played on. So,
harmony reigned as supreme, and
to its crowned head, no deathblow!
Janet Pantoja, Cellist
Today’s forms from Caschwa (Carl Schwartz) include a Waka, an Octo, and an Acrostic:
TRUE LOVE
—Caschwa, Sacramento, CA
she was limping so
I bought my wife a Waka
Texas Ranger kicks
but lives alone on a ranch
everything’s hunky-dory
* * *
Carl writes, “An old friend and I are leaning toward different presidential candidates. But there are more points we agree on than disagree on, which inspired this Octo”:
ALL THE VOICES
—Caschwa
the choir members met to hear
the beauty of their blending tones
from high to low and in between
director’s wand began the piece
a trail guide’s lead through new frontiers
from high to low and in between
the beauty of their blending tones
the choir members met to hear
* * *
And here is Carl’s “caustic acrostic”, as he calls it. Caustic, indeed!
SWEET LAND OF LIBERTY…
—Caschwa
At most, Stephon Clark was a low-order criminal
Murdering the quiet of peaceful neighborhoods,
Endeavoring to defeat car windows,
Retreat to his family’s back yard
In an urban residential area
Carrying in his hands just
A cell phone
Then the law’s
Hottest band of
Executioners
Began to sift through the
Evidence to confirm yes, yes,
Absolutely, “black guy!” and they
Unloaded a barrage of over 20 rounds, 8
That ended his life, to set an example for his people:
If you are black, you are the worst order of criminal
Fess up now or we will keep shooting you
Until you tell us what we want to hear…
Lies!! all lies, keep shooting, guys
…OF THEE I SING
____________________
Our thanks to today’s fiddlers for their fine poetic use of forms. References for the forms on this post include:
•••Haibun: www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/haibun-poems-poetic-form
•••Pleiades: www.shadowpoetry.com/resources/wip/pleiades.html
•••Tanka: poets.org/glossary/tanka
•••Palindromic (Mirror Poetry): www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/poetic-asides/personal-updates/poetic-form-palindrome-poetry-or-mirror-poem
•••Octo: poetscollective.org/poetryforms/octo
•••Waka: poetscollective.org/poetryforms/waka
•••Limerick: poets.org/glossary/limerick
•••Etheree: www.thepoetsgarret.com/2008Challenge/form22.html
•••Decannelle: darksideofthemoon583.com/2018/01/26/10-line-poem-challenge-15-decannelle
•••Acrostic: literarydevices.net/acrostic
•••Endecha: www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/endecha-poetic-forms
•••Sonnet Forms: blog.prepscholar.com/what-is-a-sonnet-poem-form
Party on!
_____________________
—Medusa
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.
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
All you have to do is send poetry and/or
photos and artwork to
kathykieth@hotmail.com.
The snakes of Medusa are always hungry!
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
All you have to do is send poetry and/or
photos and artwork to
kathykieth@hotmail.com.
The snakes of Medusa are always hungry!
