Becoming What We Are

Pathos
—Poetry and Original Art by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

OF THE MOON

The gold water drowns into the night,
the light of the moon…

Save me, says the full moon,
orange and low.

I hold out my hands
to catch the moon…

The moon drifts into the water.
I am too far.

I follow the moon-path of the water.
My eyes do the catching.

My eyes
are full of the moon.

I close my eyes
and lose the moon.

I sleep and the moon escapes
into the sky on the water.

The light illuminates my wonder.
I am in my dream now—

the drifting dream,
the falling moon—

the moon-filled pond that is now
a shallow desperate river.

 

 

 

Earth Weather

 

AS THE COLOR ORANGE THROUGH WATER
          In Festen Grenzen by Paul Klee
         “of endless agitation”, William Wordsworth

It’s the design :
one sees what one
sees in this sharp-angled maze,
the light coming from all directions,
as of orange shimmer of water over orange tile;

one might imagine
fish in a bright aquarium—
captured sunlight shimmering through
the exotic movement of the fish
moving in slow familiar patterns

in their small world with its
distortions : seams like arrows, tones of
quivery light through glass and water—
not that walls impede, or even imagination.

 

 

 

And Now is Now

 

Of all the colours I feel,

Orange overwhelms me with its warmth
and soft lingering around the edges in
my colouring book. I love the smoothness
as I go around and inside the lines.
I move the dull clumsiness around
and feel for the brightness of colour
and wish my hands were not
so much a blame as a joy
of simple creation.
And, lo!    And, lo!   
to all my scribblings
of frustration—how I
can admire the result of
my realization : I can see this,
I can feel this, I can claim it for my Art.  

__________________

OLD DIVA
After Orange Soprano by Otto Mjaanes

Her voice is gone. Her slow eyes search the room
for some old admirer, one who still calls her Diva,
tips his glass and mouths endearments.

This she believes and counts on. Music fills the
background—subdued and polite—the musicians
careful not to play something she was famous for,

to let her presence still amaze, but demand
nothing beyond the legend of her fame. Even so,
she floats through the indifferent room with a

particular air of disdain, faltering slightly before the
hallway mirror that observes her with a commiserate,
—but still flattering—returning look of sympathy.

 

 

 

Poem for the World

 

CAPON CANVAS
 
Blue fringe petticoat edging. Orange
layers in petal pattern. Rust detail at
the throat. Length not quite long but
longer than average—shorter than
extreme, sleeve similarity for cape
effect—tighter weave for warmth.
Fashionable drape of blue fringe.
Model   struts,   pauses,   struts,
pauses,  struts, turns her head
a bit—her eye on you. She
cackles, and scratches
at the ground.

___________________

THE RED DREAM
After He Sees the Road, 1990 by Wonsook Kim Linton

The dream-bird leaves all its blood behind, and the
red dream holds me under the beat of my own heart.
Two beckoning shapes waver at the door of the room-
size arrow—my Self and my duplicated Self—in
tenuous reality. I am loath to go with them—to leave
the orange room-light of the floor, which spreads until
it contains me. I kiss the stone pillow with praying
lips to bless me on my way. I am warm and full of
reluctance, though the winding night is impatient with
its answers and the hovering shapes are voiceless and
insistent, connecting their hands across the opening
that is slowly growing smaller, and receding—but not
insisting anything.

                          
(prev. pub. in Red Owl, 2002)

 

 

 

The Bird Didn't Have a Name

 

SCRIBBLES OF UNFETTERED ENERGY
After People, Birds and Sun, 1954 by Karel Appel

People are meant to become what they are.
They open themselves like a box of paints
and hastily draw themselves—each one
a masterpiece. Their paint never dries,
still, they look at themselves
with dissatisfaction—
wondering why they seem
so primitive—so unfinished—
why they are so critical they
cannot love themselves.

The birds—
flapless and extinct—
hobble through muck of dribbled paint
as if looking for their memory.
They bump into swirls of innocent color
and cannot find the sky.
Nothing is in scale.
The air is heavy and orange.
Huge children are stuck in story poses—
frozen with accusation.

And the sun—melting into circular abstraction,
burning the paint of which it is made—
smearing all over the hastily-painted world,
its black rays pointing every-which-way
as if groping for balance—
does it, too, wish not to die?
It staggers through the thickened sky
with a bewildered look—
blinks—and other suns form
from its direction of destruction.

 

 

 

Love is in There Somewhere

 

WANING

A helicopter overhead.  Blue evening at
the window.  TV
off.

Books in hand, they separate toward
their silence:
he to couch, and she to bed.

The orange sun has fallen
from the day, making one statement more
for them to speak :

They glance and say : Oh yes, they love
the view . . .  Oh yes, it is so beautiful . . .
It is enough . . .

The twilight trees become old silhouettes,
like they are.  The helicopter
flaps and drones—as if to stay.

They frown and glance
away from that annoyance and finish their
errand of goodnight—that separation.

__________________

Commas,

last night the sky,
so subtle,
taking daylight down,
a streak of orange on the blue,
white clouds here and there—diffusing,

my-god! the words we knew to say,
but didn’t say, we only glanced, remarked a bit,
then turned away, the sky took on the hue
of quiet change, showing separate parts
of a marriage, so subtle…,

__________________

Today’s LittleNip:

MIRO’S ‘RAW CHROMATIC EXUBERANCE’
 —JoYce O-Dam

After The Peasant [dated 1912] by Joan Miro


How he BbLlUuRrSs in a rage of painted MuSiC
!FLASHing! In!YELLOW! PreeNing in !RED!
BeaTinG the CONE OF MUSIC under his RaPiD
HaNdS—his face gone lax and lost in the Churn
of Rhythm—ORANGE and LOUD—with cool
under-mute of brown and green—the very air
around him charging with !BEATEN SOUND!
—his body—tensioned—He Is The Sound Now—
He Is . . . The Beat . . . The Beat . . . The Beat . . .

_____________________

Thanks to Joyce Odam for her poetry and artwork today; she has splashed her canvas with “orange and loud” in celebration of the season and of our Seed of the Week, “Orange”. Our new Seed of the Week is another ekphrastic one:

 

 

 

—Public Domain Photo

 

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.

______________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

 

People, Birds and Sun, 1954
—Painting by Karel Appel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 It's not that easy being orange...