Residue

 

The Sun and the Sea and the Land

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

THE RESIDUE

the burnt trees—hillsides—
here and there a roof-top,
scorched but saved

and the sky—thick with wind-borne
stench and flare—the fiery sunsets,
the quiet that remains, like a hum

—like the hum of a great chorus
building its crescendo
to a wail

and how many animals were too slow. . .
for years the hillsides gape—
for miles the charcoal-sketches of dead trees . . .


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 5-13-2014)

 

 

 

The Gray Air When You Breathe

 

 

ASH ?  WOMAN

She is ash-woman, come with death for your bones,
come with years full of mythologies. She is fragile.
She does not fit the world. She clots in wet air. She
wears the rain like an amnesia. Her touch is soft
upon you—you are not aware—you are never aware—
of her simple meaning. Without her love, you are
nothing. You have no mirror for her heart. You find
her in your own memory, which is only prayer. She
is the gray air when you breathe, when you suffo-
cate, when you hold yourself in a trance of unreality
and simply yield to the changing condition of some
presence you name despair. She is scattered within
herself—like an offering to kindness—like a sacri-
fice to the superstitions of belief. She sweeps herself
into the shadows that take her so willingly—that are
so cold and total she has to believe them.

________________

WOMAN FLOATING ON A BED OF LEAVES

In a floating soliloquy of leaves, among flicker-
ing water-lights, among vanished sound of ripples;

among the sweet and carrying sounds of birdsong,
and the complete, stunned, listening of the bright

air, and the vast, prolonging sound of time stand-
ing still, and the powerful bunched feel of the

shoulders of the shoreline as it suspends its own
breathing—among the great forces of waiting at the

end of this sentence—among all these—the woman
floats—asleep on the eddying surface of the water

(her floating arms stroke the water in assistance)
slowly following the buoyancy of its own motion,

her eyes closed forever and her mind tuning inward—
not here to remember or forget—not here to sink

into death’s oblivion—but here to shine against
the sweet instant—the imagined something caught

in a flash of someone who glances up, or someone
just staring to see if she is real—or just another

glittering illusion of this sun-lit, moving water . . . 

 

 

 

Lavender

 

MAN BENDING TO LIGHT A CIGARETTE
IN THE WIND

On a cold morning—in drifting sunlight—on a walk
with a companion who helps shield with his body the
act of lighting this cigarette so they can continue their
walk—pausing just outside my window while their two
shadows wait in the patience that it takes to be shadows—
then the man turns—as does his companion—and they
laugh sharply in the voice-carrying morning, and con-
tinue down the sidewalk.


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 9-15-2020)

_________________

MAN OUT FOR A WALK IN THE RAIN
FAILS TO REMEMBER HIS WAY HOME

In a halo of rain
the man under his umbrella
trusts his umbrella to save him
from the drowning he is beginning to feel.


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 9-24-2019)

 

 

 

Little Sand Garden

 

 

MEAN LOVE

I would say Sorrow waits in every love—
in every vow—in every lie, well-meant,
intensified by doubt and mean despair.
Love hurts, it cannot help itself—

falling short of expectation lets it love
the moody rain and light, the way it
loves its tears, wept often and alone.
Forget all that—love needs itself—

despite the woe—the absence that it
leaves in retrospect. Why else give up
the power of the risk—how else define
the indefinable for what it means?


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 2-14-2017)

 

 

 

Untitled

THE INSCRUTABLE UNIVERSE

how much of the ungraspable allows the eyes        
of obverse : from forward-face, obverse imagination  (???)

how much of the mystery holds still for the
instant of viewing

how much or how little can the mind
know what it seeks to know

how many strange and lovely birds fly over
or rest in stillness before harm finds them

how much does the painterly world
become real

the distortions and the perfections entangle,  
sharing color and form

what encroachments yet wait to use and
despoil the lost perfection

___________________

LIKE THESE TWO WHALES….

So often it happens that the time we turn around in
soon becomes the shoal our pathetic skiff will run aground in.
                                                —John Ashbery


Like these two whales in their pitiful floundering in
errant waters that we find our own selves caught in
with our risen sympathies—our hearts made tender
again—how helplessly we suffer for them : their
huge condition—the cruelty of nature—the mystery
of self destruction—what we would solve if we knew
how. And now we watch the news of them unfold,
wondering how and when they will find their way
from river channels back to huge waters.

Oh, do allow the use of ‘huge’ again to offer them
assistance—our minds too small, too hollow, to find
a way back for them—those driven creatures we newly
love. How can we know what else to do but suffer for
them? We are in the same situation—the same drown-
ing—life after life of us. We feel that underwater cry-
ing. We answer and answer.


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen)

 

 

 

Blue Butterfly

 

MOTION
After Timepiece, Ceramic Vessel
                      by Rudy Autio

wrestles with itself
too fast for stillness
shadow and clock

dance and resistance
coil of love couldn’t be
closer than time

torn energy
and fountain
one or many illusion

or fascination
made real
why dance   why clocks

time is not guilty
force is not jealous
they are in this for the art

 

 

 

 Something Precious

 

MY FOOLISH WAY OF PLEASING YOU

Watch me dance upon the approving air,
holding me aloft
in my pose to charm you,

while you
watch secretly
from under your lashes.

The blue night is soft
with distant moonlight
and the songbirds

have remained—
singing
and out-singing each other,

Help me remember the truth of this
when time
has taken us away from each other.

Look how shadow-memories play
at the edge of our attention—
how quietly the moon goes past the horizon.


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 7-2-2013)

_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

TO AN UNSEEN BIRD SINGING AT NIGHT
—Joyce Odam

Pretty Bird, Pretty Bird, where is your cage—
not this tree of rain, not this room of poem.

Bird of childhood, I found your feather
and saved it.  It is purple and blue.

The rain has left it scraggly.
I remember you.


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 3-28-2011)

____________________

Many thanks to Joyce Odam today for her poems about Caretakers, our recent Seed of the Week. It’s interesting to note that many of these poems have previously been posted in Medusa’s Kitchen—remember, the Kitchen definitely takes previously published poems!

Our new Seed of the Week is “Contentment”. 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.

Poet Laureate of San Francisco, novelist, painter, performer, book store owner, publisher, activist, and all-around literary and social Titan Lawrence Ferlinghetti died earlier this year at 101 (www.theguardian.com/books/2021/feb/23/lawrence-ferlinghetti-obituary). Bay Area poet and publisher David Alpaugh writes to say he is “looking forward to exploring his exhilarating, musical, witty, wide-ranging, original poetry next month via an online class for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI).” There will be five Monday ZOOM sessions, 1-3pm, October 4 through November 1.

Although Ferlinghetti published Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and promoted Kerouac, Corso, and many other “beat” poets, he saw himself not as "the first of the Beats but the last of the Bohemians.” Too protean for either label, the workshop will look at the thing itself—his poetry—to understand why he became, and still is, one of the most widely read and dearly loved of American poets. For more on this class (including registration info) click on this link: www.scholarolli.com/product-category/programs/?_sft_pa_instructor=david-alpaugh-m-a-english-ucb-writer-poet-dramatist-editor/.

 

For more about artist Rudy Autio, go to www.invaluable.com/artist/autio-rudy-a-j2b4s1vk5h/.

___________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

—Public Domain Photo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Rhumba Snake