NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCES
—Joseph Nolan, Stockton, CA
Nostalgic
Reminiscences
Rise in soft ambition,
Aloft like kites at play,
On breezes of a summer day,
Above green fields
Where children play,
Run and scream and squeal.
Such sweetness!
Was it ever real?
Or has memory
Dripped honey
Over all
Our cornbread,
Just warm from the oven,
We ate on winter days,
Washed down with cocoa
Or Ovaltine,
On Saturdays,
With cartoons on the TV?
MY WOMAN WANTS ME ALL IN
—Joseph Nolan
A kaleidoscope of dreams
A whirlpool of whims,
Calliope of lunar eclipses,
Mirrors facing mirrors,
Always too soon to tell,
Cauldron of ambition,
Wishes collide into wishes,
My woman
Wants me
All in!
I ante up.
She calls my bet.
She wants to know,
No matter what the cost,
If it’s all a bluff.
I’m holding aces,
She’s holding nines,
But more than mine.
She wins,
This time.
She’s cleaned me out.
We deal again,
Just for fun.
CHILD’S PLAY
—Joseph Nolan
A pencil,
I hold,
To tell a
Story told,
On a paper page,
Yellowed with age.
It’s been awhile
Since I was a child,
But the child
Inside’s
Not gone;
He’s there to
Play along,
If I give him
But a smile,
To set him on
The way
He likes to play,
As he’s always done
And always will,
Since children never age,
No matter how yellow
The paper or page,
On which their story’s told.
OUR LOVE OF LOFTING ZEPPELINS
—Joseph Nolan
Dirigibles,
Drift across the seas
Upon the air.
Soft and light,
Composed of air-frames,
Driven by propellers,
Compensating
For when
The wind’s not right,
Covered by the thinnest
Canvas skins.
It seems,
Full-well,
They might have drifted
Thus,
For centuries,
But for New Jersey,
Which somehow
Had the gall
To light it up,
The Hindenburg,
With a blast of lightning
No-one needed,
Wrecking our imagination
FOGGY MORNING MIND
—Caschwa
my thoughts are the leaves
you don’t want clogging your
rain gutter
dripping with fluid Epiphany
that rushes to escape in the
downspout
nourishing both welcome
plants and weeds alike
poised to suckle
from the moment the daily
newspaper is tossed into the
driveway
until the later eventuality
that I arise from deep slumber
to make coffee
and begin the morning regimen
that includes drip irrigation
front and back
that definitely excludes any
climbing of ladders to attend
to gutters
UNWRITTEN LAWS
—Caschwa, Sacramento, CA
in high school music theory class
we studied from our Walter Piston
books about harmony, coming away
with the notion that Johann Sebastian
Bach did not so much follow rules set
down by someone else, but rather,
his own compositions presented
patterns of favored usage that others
later took to be their rules
it would be easy to look today at the
enormous talent of Olympic competitor
Simone Biles, and conclude that
whatever moves she makes sets a
pattern for others to follow as their rules
except her skin is too dark
deal breaker
CRT
good, upstanding white folks would never
accept that any black girls could be the
standard bearers for them and their
families, it is just not supposed to work
that way, let them paint by number dots
ENTRY FEE
—Caschwa
there was that time
when I stepped up
to take a leadership role
and the man behind
the counter said I had
to pay him first
jelly rolls were $3
apple fritters $4
so I got a glazed donut for $1
and stepped outside knowing
leadership wasn’t my thing
WHEN PROSE IS SLEEPING
—Caschwa
it could be in the middle of the night
when beds are forsaken for comedy
shows on TV, when the proudest
limbs of the biggest trees offer cozy,
nocturnal sanctuaries for small critters,
when flashbacks from long, long ago
suddenly skip to the front of the line,
shouting clues that had been aching
to declare freedom from the bondage
of one’s memory train
when the owner of the donut shop
unlocks the door, turns on the lights
and starts blending huge gobs of
ingredients to put in the giant dough
mixer, sitting like a precious urn,
plugged into the wall socket
it is at this time that poetry is brewing
for all to smell, taste, and savor
_____________________
Today’s LittleNip:
SHADOWS-IN-THE-BRIGHT
—Joseph Nolan
Back-lit,
Silhouetted
In the light,
Blurred by mist,
Shadows-in-the-bright,
Drifting slowly,
Toward destiny,
Watch them,
Feel them,
Coming through the night.
______________________
Our thanks to today’s contributors for some first-of-August hot poetry and photos, including Caschwa’s ironic take on CRT. For more about CRT (no, not cathode-ray tube), go to www.edweek.org/leadership/what-is-critical-race-theory-and-why-is-it-under-attack/2021/05/.
By the way, our Seed of the Week is “Those Good Old Days”, but unfortunately it’s been posted wrong (“Big red, juicy tomatoes”) in the green column at the right of this. Something’s gone cockeyed with blogspot, and I couldn’t access any of the items in that column. But finally I found a way to make the proper change. Sorry about that… In general, blogspot behaves itself very nicely. Say—maybe it was me who was cockeyed…
This Thursday (8/5), 7-9pm, Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis presents Susan Flynn and Laura Rosenthal plus open mic (4 minutes or 2 poems) at the John Natsoulas Gallery, 521 1st St., Davis. Please wear masks. Host: Andy Jones. Info: www.facebook.com/events/1166298757180953/?acontext={"source"%3A"29"%2C"ref_notif_type"%3A"plan_user_invited"%2C"action_history"%3A"null"}¬if_id=1627770183491922¬if_t=plan_user_invited&ref=notif/.
______________________
—Medusa
Photos in this column can be enlarged by
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in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
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Just remember:
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