Landscape With Bed

 

The Brooding Skies

—Poetry and Photos by Joyce Odam,

Sacramento, CA

LANDSCAPE WITH BED

Out in the muted daylight, a bed is
waiting for my sleep, a soft sky
floating like a dream about to happen.

I note one pillow, plumped, and a
small end-table with nothing on it.

I lie down and drift, a sense
of gray beginning, and a solitude
so deep I want to enter it.

I feel the lack of walls like a relief
and think past the thought of ceiling

to this vast and perfect stillness
that pulls to the stillness
that I bring out of all my chaos,

that tempts me out of insomnia to the
safe and promising comfort of this bed.

 

 

 

The Mother Whispers

 

HUSH

Now in the dream of the bed, on the raft of night, 

the child remembers the slowness of the day—the 

quietness of the mother, the rustlings in the other 

room. The bed floats on the dark fear. The child 

lies beside the mother and tries to sleep. The 

mother whispers to the child . . .

Now in the memory of the dream, in the dream 

of the raft, which tries to float out of the room and 

down the stair; out of the day, which has leng-

thened from night; out of the dream, which tries to 

release her—the chance is exciting, but the walls 

impede . . .

Now in the dream of the mother which tries to re-

lease the child from the fear—from the raft—from 

the rustlings of the other room, from the whisper-

ing, comes the secret door of instruction : Be 

patient.  Be quiet.  Be still.  Tomorrow we will 

leave here.

 

 

 

 The Broken Mind

 

I DREAM OF RAIN

There is a glass of rain
at your elbow. I have saved it
for you. All night. Under the rain.
Holding the glass out in your name.

Now you lie under such a
great weeping your face drowns
and your eyes cannot stop.
What is the matter with you?

Now you lie quiet. You are
your own dream at last. The glass
of rain knows you will reach for it.
You are its thirst.

I lie beside you on a small, narrow bed.
We are far away from each other.
As if in different times. I sleep.
You lie awake. I dream of rain.

____________________

THE BED-LIFT

Each night she hangs him in the air and lets him 

turn—a mobile—his body helpless as she smoothes 

the hours till they flatten into sleep. He thinks life

is his dream that she does not remember. When

morning pulls its threads again, a ravel at a time 

into a shrinking calendar, another day is earned, 

and he is just as heavy as the broken night is long.

                                                
(prev. pub. in Parting Gifts)

 

 

 

The Movement of Time

 

THE FUTURE OF SLEEP
After The Reckless Sleeper by René Magritte

Each night I put my sleep in a little box
with the dreams—
I am not involved—I do not accept
responsibility for the madness I create.

                 ~

Last night I dreamed I killed
someone I loved—
that is not my dream, I cried!
Someone else is there, directing me.

                 ~

Each night I press my symbols into a melting
sleep-stone, soft as wax.
I show you the bruises on my fingers.
Guilt is optional I claim, when I am accused.

 

 

 

 The Whole Moon

 

MOON SIREN   

Why fight for sleep when the whole moon is
shining white and near through the window—
when words are waiting to become your poem,
the one you try to grasp out of such moments
as this—the clock anonymous with numbers
that mean nothing except how they trouble
you moving forward into more of them.

How easy it is to give mind to such intrusion
of the spirit which strives to know itself.

A siren, and the moon shudders a little bit more
into the dawn; a siren, a little howl from
somewhere in the night—near or far,
it makes no difference, the trailing
echo swallows sound, turns it
into brimming silence;
a siren, more like the
pulling of distance,
both fading now.
A shadow blots
out the moon.

_____________________

IN THE CENTER OF SLEEP

The cat yawns and stretches
and curls her paws beneath her
and closes her eyes again.

_____________________

OLD SHOES

Somewhere an old shoe
lieth under a bed—
all dusty
and lost
from its other—
lonely as someone
dead
and searching still
for its mate
in a cadaverous closet
and making death
real for the
abandoned shoe.

 

 

 

The Endurance

 

 

 

STRANGE DREAMS

Now is the endurance—we all must
endure—we with our sins—our crimes,
even our loves—what will save us?

Now we blindfold ourselves against time
lest time outwait us. How long the waiting,
how long the glance toward the thought
of windows.
Doors mock us—
we who are locked
in screams and silences.

Tonight, a tenderest crow brought its
diversion, woke us from our realities
and proved its power : the electricity
stayed on, and then it rained, a long
quiet rain, we listened and grew calm.

I had a strange dream : a turtle was placed
before me. I pitied it. I cupped my hand
around its head and it licked my hand.

Then it turned into a large gray
rabbit, wild with fright.
I let it go—a car
went skidding
by in the night.
Then a siren.

 

 

 

Ephemeral

 

LENORE
After Edgar Allen Poe,
in Great American Poets
Artist: Edmund Dulac (1882-1953)

Upon a high bed now, she lies,
underneath the brooding skies,
huddled figures writhe below
huddled in their robes of woe
—woe to beauty, lying there
in the ghosted, roiling air—

ghost of beauty, ghost of love,
silent soul that will not die—
rising gently now into
the invisible heavens of the sky.

 

 

 

The Calling

 

SLEEP

Everything here is memorized : the glowing wall
behind me with its calendar, the crack in the night
that turns into a window.

I am a shimmer of light come home from my dark-

ness; the bright air illuminates me; curtains billow 

in, and I am wrapped in dusty lace.

A sleep thread catches on me—pulls—and I unravel.

_______________________

Today’s LittleNip:

I learn to sleep sideways
in a narrow bed.

My books confine me.
My dreams are made of thread.

—Joyce Odam


(prev. pub. in Brevities No. 200, 2020)

________________________

Today Joyce Odam has sent us her musings about sleep and its strange bedfellow, dreams—which are often strange indeed! Thank you, Joyce!

Be sure to check each Tuesday for the week’s Seed of the Week. This week it’s “Compassion”. 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 news of readings, contests and submission possibilities, both in the East Bay and beyond, go to Deborah Fruchey’s “Strictly East” at www.strictly-east.org/.

_________________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

The Reckless Sleeper

 —Painting by René Magritte

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For upcoming poetry happenings in
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