Love, Come as Rain

 

The Quietness of Trees

—Poetry and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

THE EARLY MORNING RAIN

Early morning
hearing the rain
the long-awaited rain
that even wants in
that patters against the house
and flickers through the trees
I can see it through my listening—
I can feel the rain-shadows
under the street lights.
What is this absorption that I feel,
that I listen with such attention as it builds,
that I close my book and listen to the rain . . . ?

 

 

 

Hearing

 

THE VERY SOFTEST OF RAINFALL

The very softest of rain-fall.
One of the last mornings of winter.

The waters of the world rise in the night
and drought danger lessens.

The streetlight shines through the green curtain.
It is the quietest hour.

It is the insomniac hour, the reading hour,
when solitude is possible.

A swift sadness plucks at everything.
Vague body-aches assert themselves.

The disorderly room is heavy with obligations.
The clock is crowding the peacefulness away.

Preference and ambition are not in tune.
Music is not the answer.

Sleep is the only way back, sleep which returns
when everything becomes too much.

I drift back into the very softest of rain-fall.
One of the last mornings of winter.

 

 

 

Freedom

 

 

 

ON CATCHING AN IMAGE OF WIND
AND RAIN IN UNMOWED GRASS

The rain is in love with the grasses.
It touches them with wet, green kisses
and they glisten in its windy murmurs.

Love, come again to all such places
where I have lain, the inner weeds
insinuating, the small, tame flowers,

around me dying. Love, come as rain,
when my mouth can know such bruising,
soft is the pain.

                                               .
(prev. pub. in Retrospect, 1969)

__________________

THE FOREST MUSEUM
A Response Poem After
“We come to the Forest Museum”
     by Taylor Graham

How easily I recall the dark and pungent
smell of green, the instant coolness,
the shadowy depth, the mystery
that overcomes the known,
the little sounds, heard and imagined.

Here is calmness, mixed with a slight fear :
Where is Where in all of this—
pathless and deep,
the sun streaming down
the trees—

the patience—the intense listening—
the humble reverence, realized—
the nostalgic way
the forest claims a part of you
every time you leave it.

                                                
(prev. pub. in Poets’ Forum Magazine)

 

 

 

Found by Sunlight

 

 

 

GREEN TWILIGHT

what am I looking through :
far from my face

leaves
growing out of the mirror

the window behind them
reflecting twilight

I am so still the leaves begin to move
in the still room

for what do I yearn?
my unhappy face

caught in leafy green light
the room empty except for this

except for the leaves

 

 

 

The Beauty of Shadows

 

 

PATIO

Mother is waiting for me
on a white chair
in a small green patio.

Tree leaves
are
flickering all around her.

She is watching the squirrels
who freeze
then scamper.

She laughs and hushes me,
when I approach,
bringing her tomato-beer.


(prev. pub. in Poets’ Forum Magazine, 2007                          
and Senior Magazine, 2009)

____________________

PLAGIARISTIC
After “Disillusionment Of Ten O’clock”
                  by Wallace Stevens

The word is disillusionment. Let’s study this.  
Has it not to do with expectation, say, or
one’s ability to sort out truth from truth.

How variable is this? How does assumption
involve one’s relevance to random outcome?

Let’s say a color is involved. Say green to
replace white. Other colors come edging in :
purple rings, and blue umbrellas, as many as

you need for argument. Say time is involved—
a moment—to never. Some specific, some example

to garner arguments of reference. Night will do.
Ah, distraction. You’re good at this. Only envy
now remains, and not the ‘not’ of poems—

as if you could have written this—the old
sailor—the white nightgowns—the baboons,

the periwinkles—all the old originals.
Where goes the point of this? Put something
there and let us get to the tigers in red weather.

 

 

 

To Find the Sky

 

 

 

BLUE, GREEN, YELLOW IN
A MARGIN OF BLACK
After Blue Remembered Hills by Howard Hodgkin

Take the blue—how dark it is—
how it forms a deep curve,
like a rising wave,

and the yellow that fits-in where it can—
like splinters of sun
and a bit of brown becomes the land,

and the heavy, closing, border of black
becomes the eventual night—
that pends,    and pends

_______________________

THE TURN
After “Turn in the Road” by Charles Burchfield, 1917

green trees
a woods
a gnarled tree
holding up a
lowering piece of sky
above a darkened building,

empty eyes staring at the turn
two white clouds (or headlights)
that grow larger and nearer
from the imposing distance
through the twisting trees,
an unnerving sound
in the breaking silence

almost a weeping (for the loneliness)
almost a cry (save me)
or something darker (find me)
from somewhere beyond
the unlit turn that keeps turning

_______________________

Today’s LittleNip:

POEM WRITTEN WHILE SLICING
A GREEN ONION
—Joyce Odam

And right in the crotch
of the long-stemmed onion
the good soil lies

just where the translucent
white
meets the shiny green.

Black grit
is wound in the tiny slices,
absolute, contained.

Something wise
and poetic in me
leaves it there.

We shall eat the earth
today.
We shall realize

grateful communion
with the source
of such good fare.   

_________________________

Heaps and heaps of gratitude to Joyce Odam for these spectacular poems today, all about green (our most recent Seed of the Week) and love and gentle spring rain. How smoothly she weaves together her poems, punctuated by her photos! 

 

Our new Seed of the Week is “What Really Matters”. 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 “Blue Remembered Hills”, go to howard-hodgkin.com/artwork/blue-remembered-hills/.

_________________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

—Public Domain Photo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
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