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The Portrait
—Poetry and Photos by Joyce Odam,
Sacramento, CA
THE WHITE MEADOW
She fills her hat with flowers.
Soon the summer will be over.
Something watches and shivers,
something saying, come to me.
Her long dress stirs and makes
a rustling sound.
She turns,
and feels
a watchful shadow
flowing near that takes
her mind back to the meadow.
Maybe she is that part of time that lives
for when it was not in the now.
She bends again and resumes
her innocent gathering of flowers
and thinks her thoughts and feels no omen.
She fills her hat with flowers.
Soon the summer will be over.
Something watches and shivers,
something saying, come to me.
Her long dress stirs and makes
a rustling sound.
She turns,
and feels
a watchful shadow
flowing near that takes
her mind back to the meadow.
Maybe she is that part of time that lives
for when it was not in the now.
She bends again and resumes
her innocent gathering of flowers
and thinks her thoughts and feels no omen.
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The Way We Were
ELEMENT
After La Nébuleuse, 1939, by Raoul Ubac
How you borrow madness for your love—
in love with glass and fire, and all its cost.
You tremble at the emptiness of touch,
diffused to someone you have learned to fear—
she’s not an apparition, this you swear;
she’s more a drowning in the drowning light.
You want to follow, and you fear you might.
You close your eyes to make her disappear.
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Even When
ELIZABETHS
(for X. x. and X. x.)
Two men
praising praise
describe Elizabeths
to one another,
amazed
at how coincidence
brings them together
to discuss
them-
selves
at length—
commiserate,
creating facts
to use,
substantiate,
and hold a magic true;
they weep and rave,
agree,
guards down—
in love
with their Elizabeths
ethereal
and perfect
in relinquishment.
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Ruin Takes Time
GLACIAL
After Moving Mountains—The Glacial Erratics
(CD Jacket Cover)
Where all things
allow perfection—
however lame.
All is healed by deprivation,
which is to say, the sky, the snow.
Only the black crow
can glow with purity against
the apparition of the vertical guitar.
Music is in the mind. The sky is clear.
The snow is deep and nothing moves
but these words.
What makes the dream allow such things?
Whose mind makes all this visible?
What skill of power—older than belief?
(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 12/22/11)
____________________
ILLUSION
After King Arthur. Tintangle Cliffs. Rubin Eyedon
Illusion—hollow as air, heat—burning
through. Spectre of something—once
a man. Sea at a distance. Sky flat blue.
Warrior sword stuck in the sand. Cowl-
hood pulled low. No face. No body.
Silence caught at the place of no heart.
His long cape, time-shredded to a rag,
his hands at rest on the head of the
sword, holding his balance from a sag.
Grain of memory—his or mine—what
does he wait for if not some other time.
The day is blue, it should be be mid-
night. He is not diminishing from
unearthly form. Nothing of death is
tended to—I am not moving from the
scene—I am still waiting for a clue. I
am still wondering what to do.
After Moving Mountains—The Glacial Erratics
(CD Jacket Cover)
Where all things
allow perfection—
however lame.
All is healed by deprivation,
which is to say, the sky, the snow.
Only the black crow
can glow with purity against
the apparition of the vertical guitar.
Music is in the mind. The sky is clear.
The snow is deep and nothing moves
but these words.
What makes the dream allow such things?
Whose mind makes all this visible?
What skill of power—older than belief?
(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 12/22/11)
____________________
ILLUSION
After King Arthur. Tintangle Cliffs. Rubin Eyedon
Illusion—hollow as air, heat—burning
through. Spectre of something—once
a man. Sea at a distance. Sky flat blue.
Warrior sword stuck in the sand. Cowl-
hood pulled low. No face. No body.
Silence caught at the place of no heart.
His long cape, time-shredded to a rag,
his hands at rest on the head of the
sword, holding his balance from a sag.
Grain of memory—his or mine—what
does he wait for if not some other time.
The day is blue, it should be be mid-
night. He is not diminishing from
unearthly form. Nothing of death is
tended to—I am not moving from the
scene—I am still waiting for a clue. I
am still wondering what to do.
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An Absence
OF MY BEING
a shadow, an aura,
shape of an opening wing
held from flight,
am I myself
or am I part of another,
an echo of breathing,
an apparition
of mind
locked to my question,
am I a center then,
am I the soul of my existence—
how can I even think such a thing.
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A Passing Moment
RED MOONLIGHT
On the red strand—
in a certain moonlight,
two transparent maidens look for
their shadows in the sun-setting waters,
one holds her hand to her eye
while the other
bends to splash
her image in the seawater
flowing past—all the way
from shore to horizon,
the thin layered sky
becoming their mind-frame now, holding
everything at ebb with no reference
to self but themselves,
wraithlike, transparent,
the enflamed water flowing
from the enclosing pull
of the moon in the flickering
play of light—the willing fire of discovery
for the two ethereal selves,
only this once
in time’s
immensity.
On the red strand—
in a certain moonlight,
two transparent maidens look for
their shadows in the sun-setting waters,
one holds her hand to her eye
while the other
bends to splash
her image in the seawater
flowing past—all the way
from shore to horizon,
the thin layered sky
becoming their mind-frame now, holding
everything at ebb with no reference
to self but themselves,
wraithlike, transparent,
the enflamed water flowing
from the enclosing pull
of the moon in the flickering
play of light—the willing fire of discovery
for the two ethereal selves,
only this once
in time’s
immensity.
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The Ghost of the Ghost
THAT TOUCH
white wings
where hope
lies thinly,
itself, an apparition,
itself, on fire
with loss and longing—
white wings
that flutter near—
touch—
and vanish—
leaving such a loneliness
you fill with fear
____________________
WHAT APPARITION CALCULATED
A mask that stares through time
as if alive—how long so held—
how long now without the hands
that formed the face, assimilated
from mind—whose face—whose
mind—what calculated apparition.
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Moonlight and Footsteps
GHOSTS
…something that lingers
not quite gone
diffusements in memory
hanging on
to the spent realities
like a tune that teases
of a half-remembered song
ghosts stay on
where they are wanted
they belong
to your disturbance
to your relinquishment…
as long
as you want them
ghosts stay on…
(prev. pub. in Aquarian Dream, 1996)
_______________________
Today’s LittleNip:
GHOST SONG
—Joyce Odam
We were not vague
who pushed against the wind
we had flesh
and strength of some refusal
to accept a tide
we beat ourselves to glory
but…we died.
_______________________
The ghosts of Halloween linger today on this day after, but ghosts only “stay on where they are wanted”, as Joyce Odam says. Now that we have this wonderful, ethereal set of poems from her, it’s time to move on, turning our attention to the leaves around us and the message that their falling brings.
Our new Seed of the Week is “Scrapbook”. 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 more about King Arthur. Tintagel Cliffs. Rubin Eyedon, go to www.warhistoryonline.com/news/king-arthur.html?firefox=1/. To see Ubac’s La Nébuleuse, go to www.wikiart.org/en/raoul-ubac/la-n-buleuse-1939/.
_______________________
—Medusa
For more about King Arthur. Tintagel Cliffs. Rubin Eyedon, go to www.warhistoryonline.com/news/king-arthur.html?firefox=1/. To see Ubac’s La Nébuleuse, go to www.wikiart.org/en/raoul-ubac/la-n-buleuse-1939/.
_______________________
—Medusa
For upcoming poetry happenings in
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
in the links at the top of this page.
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.
