Altar of the Heart

 

Weedflower

—Poetry and Photos by Joyce Odam, 

Sacramento, CA

GUARANTEES

good fortune! good fortune!
over all the years

having eaten all the
Chinese dinners

to learn the reward
the good news

I am going to be happy
and prosper

the warnings are gentle
and surmountable

everything good
is coming to me

I can prove it
with little

strips of paper I have
saved for guarantees

                   
(prev. pub. in Gallery Series/Four, 1970,
and Dandelion Milk [mini-chap], 2002)

 

 

 

I Choose Wine

 

ON CHOICE  

At the altar of my heart lie many vintages.
I choose wines to say this.

I am not without memory of
scents and flavors.

I am open to the dark coolness,
and the stairs, the little door between

the entrance and exit
to everything chosen, then un-chosen.

 

 

 

 Everything Chosen

AMALGAMATION
After “I Remember You as You Were”
by Pablo Neruda, from Twenty Love Poems
and a Song of Despair

In the pool—  
in the pool of light,
I float
and look up at the sky
which is pouring through me
in the leaf-ridden water.
I listen to
the sorrowing tree
nearby.
It whispers
to itself
and to
the leaves
that are falling.
I watch the sky
turn to leaves
in the water.
I embrace the sky
and become a cloud.
I am the sky.
I am the water.


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 1/10/17)

 

 

 

 Dreams Dream

ON DREAMS
After Flowers and Birds by
Shen Chuan (ca. 1682-1760)
(Two Butterflies on Lilies)

At night, on the dream river,        
where has sleep taken me?         
What is meant by waking?       

I have been of two lives—              
bewildered in both.                        
At night—on the dream river,               

I meet another self,                         
with passage between the two.     
Then what is meant by waking?       

If one becomes the stronger,          
does one release the other,                
created by night’s twisting river?        

Should I not want to return,             
would something still hold me?            
What, then, is meant by waking?     

If I had a choice,                             
would something relinquish me?      
At night—on the disturbed river—   
would there be a waking?    
      

(an unrhymed Villanelle)

 

 

 

 Stealing a Shadow

PANTOUM FOR ANOTHER

If you are lonely a bird will sing all night.
Do not look at the clock.
Let only the birdsong through.
Time does not measure anything.

Do not look at the clock.
The bird is a messenger from life.
Time does not measure anything.
Let suffering heal you.

The bird is a messenger from life.
Somewhere another is weeping.
Let suffering heal you.
Whatever is lost is lost.

Somewhere another lies weeping.
Even night’s sirens cry for what they find.
Whatever is lost is lost.
Another silence takes over.

Even the sirens cry for what they find.
Let only the birdsong through.
Another silence takes over.
If you are lonely a bird will sing all night.

 

 

 

 Time Passes Through

OLD MAN

An old man crossed the field to the house which
was the last house on the road and asked at the door,
“A pity, please, for I am tired of wilderness.”                             
The woman looked at his hands which were strong,
at his eyes which were kind, at his height which was
average, and she asked him in. She told him stories
while he praised her food.

“And where are your children?” he asked. “Oh—one
is off in the berry patch and, one is lying on the small
hill and dreaming at the sky, and one is tangling in
the stone field with a playful lover.”

She asked him, of course, to stay the night and in the
morning she found him sleeping in a chair facing the
sunrise which was softening his face. She fell in love
with him.

He woke and told her a dream : how he believed he
was first a boulder, and then a path of traveled stones,
and then a mass of sand which could go no farther.

 

 

 

 The Altar of the Heart

 

IN MYSTERY

One cannot reconstruct.
The mind is locked,
lost in its mystery
which is sacred.

One cannot undo—the
thought is purely wrought
with option to believe,
or be suspicious of.

Thus is the rot
that fills the world with
evil—as god-given
as a holy curse—the

sinners named and locked
in the name as given—the sin?—
the forbidden difference
of the mind’s opinion.

 

 

 

Love as Memory

 

INNOCENCE 

After Chen Yen Ning, 1945, a painting

When I began, I was a child.
I loved my mirror—it was my mother.

She proved my profile with her own.
Our eyes always gazed at each other with love.

My hands were untrained.
My way was not made.

I wore a kerchief over my
hair, which I never combed.

It grew long in the mirror.
I watched it grow.

I would not guess at anything I knew.
Life was my own. I would catch up.

My mirror never broke,
even when my mother broke hers.

We looked at each other through shards,
I learned how to be broken and live.

Love is the memory—
love in the minds of each other.

Love is umbilical.
No knife will cut.

My eyes hold my own eyes—
true to self, as mirror-self is true to me.

__________________

Today’s LittleNip:

ON APATHY
—Joyce Odam

Find
or lose
the moment,
but don’t despair,
admire the effort,
if the effort is there
—some possibility—if
only chance with its reward, some
try—forgive the plagiarism, please,
but seize or lose the moment. This one. Now.


(an Etheree, prev. pub. in
Poets’ Forum Magazine, 1998-99)
 
____________________

Good morning, and many thanks to Joyce Odam for her poetry and photos today! Choices: that’s our Seed of the Week, and Joyce has sent us some choice poems about choices, including three forms: an Etheree, a Pantoum, and an unrhymed Villanelle. Watch Form Fiddlers’ Friday for more forms from the form-adept Joyce Odam! And be sure to check each Tuesday for the week’s Seed of the Week.

Our new Seed of the Week is “Strange Bedfellows”. 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. And see every Form Fiddlers’ Friday for poetry form challenges, including those of the Ekphrastic type.

For Pablo Neruda’s “I Remember You As You Were”, go to allpoetry.com/I-Remember-You-As-You-Were/.

____________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

 —Public Domain Photo Courtesy
of Joe Nolan, Stockton, CA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




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