Muse of the Flowers

 

The Change That Will Change Again

—Poetry and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

 

THIRTEEN

I am playing dress-up
in my mother’s wedding gown.
I am posing in her mirror.
I am wearing her
lipstick and perfume.
I am wearing her face.
I am acting out
the stories of her life.
She is an actress.
She smiles
in my
performance.

 

 

 

The Capturing of Time

 

 

LAST NIGHT IN THE DARK

we planted the avocado tree; you dug
the hole by the half-light of the moon.

I wore my white sweater, standing by
with folded arms until you needed

the water. Then I turned the hose on
while you held the tree steady.

I picked up the shovel and lifted the
heavy dirt around. And when we put

our arms around each other’s waist,
you told me you liked my perfume.

 

 

 

Exotic With Reference

 

LOVEBIRD

strangely luminous
you fly to my throat
a gauze-bird humming
bent wings around my neck
your beak in my hair
looking for perfume there
your gold feet pinned to my collar
your cold eyes lacking communication
how can I feed you
how can I love you
drops of blood run down my skin
into my clothing
your pin slips position
you fasten again
soon I am apathetic
drained
I hold a glass of tear-water
in my hand for you

____________________

SORROW AND LAMENT
After “Song of Rootless People” by Chung Ling  
from The Orchard Boat: Women Poets of China


I want to hold you
in my faithless arms—
a wilting flower,
scented and fallen.

The winds could not hold you,
nor can I—
my hands are too full
of sorrow and lament.

I have touched
the window
of your absence
for the sensation,

you are cold in the loss,
you are full of travel,
you have fallen from the tree,
you wait for the ground to love you.

 

 

 

Muse of the Flowers

 

If she were real,                
                             
she would bend toward the light of
yellow flowers before this dull background
of rain, or sea;

her white hat would shade her face
and her hand reach endlessly toward
some touch she craves;

she might expect response,
for the scene lives—as she lives—
in the capturing of time;

whatever her name, we would call her
some beloved name of our own,
for, even as we watch,

the brush-stroked blue
is fading with loss,
and the flowers merely bend away.


After “The Lady in White” by
Charles Courtney Curran, 1861-1942

___________________
                       
PARIS STREET SCENE, IN THE RAIN, 1882
After Fernand Lungren, Paris Street Scene, 1882

I promise not to use the word huddle when I speak of
these black umbrellas, imposing under rain, each taking up
all the space it can, grouped and bobbing like so many
parachutes in the sea of air . . . the wet streets shining back
at them . . . the huddled people blurring in the rain . . .

funny how I
just now remember
those small blue
bottles
of perfume
that used to gleam
on dime store
counters—
exotic with reference :
Paris—
in the evening—
farther away
than fantasies
of my
pubescent dreamings . . .
 
funny how I never imagined Paris in the rain—if so—
I would have imagined umbrellas of midnight blue,
reflecting blue-lit cobblestones, with melancholy
music floating all around—blurry and sad—and me,
in there somewhere, under a streaming blue umbrella.

 

 

 

Time is Elastic

 

IN BLUE REFLECTION

After “Water” (Photo enhancement
by D.R. Wagner, Medusa’s Kitchen)

Now water separates against the land.
Now earth has broken away.

Now there is only sky and water,
there is only dream, with its
ancient illusion.

The sky is caught in blue reflection
of nothing there—

where is the gasp of warning—the
change that will change again—
surge back against

the awesome beauty of destruction.
Is this but a held breath—
 
time’s elasticity
that lets go a cosmic sigh
that settles back into a reflection.

                 

 

The Season Turning

 

WARP

Everything is tilted now—this law; this life;
this patient flaw; this red bottle of perfume
leaning to the lamplight; this string of
fallen beads.

Oh, things gone wrong—the emptiness is
full—of dragging time, of speeding time—
the emptiness is all.

 

 

 

The Intensity

 

THE MANY ILLUSIONS

This is our penance :
that we go
into
the many
illusions
as believers

that we enter the
virgin
places of love
with a vague regret

that life is
intense weather,
with moments only for

the fragile-scented
lilacs
and the insidious journey
of the leaves

that what we find
is never what we looked
for

that in
the questioning age
we do not know
the answer

that we are
unmade
just as
the mind
has put the self
together.


(prev. pub. in Poet & Critic, 1967)

 

 

 

Damp Perfume

 

 

 

MY LAST RUN-AWAY

in the pretense of myself
i am made honest :

coming back from my last escape
i find

I am put among the candles and the figs

like a note left by someone
who loved me when i was not there

i came back when the wind
was blowing the curtains in

and found a smile
hanging in the room

and a small death
made of damp perfume


(prev. pub. in Red Eye, 1989                                         
and Oregonian Verse)
                          
____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

THESE NIGHTS OF DISTANCE
FROM THE REAL
—Joyce Odam

I think the street light is the moon,
the layered air,
the sifting fog,
the season turning
on the world…
how long before the morning…?

____________________

Our poet Joyce Odam has sent smooth-scented poems and colorful photos about this week’s Seed of the Week: “The perfume of poetry”, and the fragrance of it all has somewhat cancelled out that nasty smell of smoke in this Valley and its foothills. Thank you, Joyce!

Our new Seed of the Week is "Caretakers". 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

 

 

 

 —Public Domain Photo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

“I think the street light is the moon . . .”