Midnight Reading
—Poetry by Joyce Odam and Robin Gale Odam,
Sacramento, CA
—Photos by Robin Gale Odam
IT'S WINTER STILL
—Joyce Odam
a little cold
a little sunshine in the air
a scent of rain
a promise of more
windows blur
and puddles rise
and cars swish by
too fast we say
and watch the door
and city lights go off
and we alarm
and lights go on again
and I still like the sound
and color of the rain
—Joyce Odam
a little cold
a little sunshine in the air
a scent of rain
a promise of more
windows blur
and puddles rise
and cars swish by
too fast we say
and watch the door
and city lights go off
and we alarm
and lights go on again
and I still like the sound
and color of the rain
In Circulars
FALLING ROAD
—Robin Gale Odam
I am plunging down the falling road.
I cannot fall fast enough.
There are slow things in my way.
The minutes race ahead of me.
I scream profanities no one will hear.
My lips are cool rose.
I grip tightly.
My nails are luscious lilac.
My stop is far ahead.
Someone waits impatiently.
When I arrive I will be invisible.
Someone will look through me
at the swift hands of the clock
spinning the circle
that will not let me go.
The Everness
THE SUBTLENESS
—Joyce Odam
fly to the sky, you have wings,
you have need, you have fear,
fear has need and you have
certainty, but the sky is high
and you want to touch the colors
that blend and bleed when changes
change in all their subtlety, and you
belong to the everness of time . . .
but now is now and blood is true,
to belong to all the reasons, to swim
through all the reasons again with all
the ways to be worthy of existence . . .
___________________
STRANDED IN THE
DEARTH OF A FABRICATION
—Robin Gale Odam
the page of phrases all scribbled over
and tossed in a wad to the corner of the
room not one apathetic idiom discernible
underneath the graphite applied in circulars
of varying dimensions so as to conceal the
origin.
the page with no worth no compass not one
potent stanza or even one truly true periphery
only the very tag end of the last line was all
that was visible it was a punctuation.
The Air Rests
CONVEY
—Robin Gale Odam
count back ten
fluorescent eclipse
someone said yellow letters
high ceiling all risk
the long white coat and the
dark hair
corner window four straight
trees
home is over there beyond
winter solstice
(prev. pub. in Brevities, March 2014)
The Rounding of Time
STRANDED AT
A MOMENT IN TIME
—Robin Gale Odam
and then there's that—the
one moment in time, trite as it
is, but the imprint on a life
for something such as a
quandary or grief—a dire
event for an enfolding,
an event preceding the
rounding of time within the
territory of a life that finds one
forsaken—an event of disquiet,
some bygone or even earlier pock over
something seemingly futile to shake
Song to Dusk
GO WITH ME TO THE MOUNTAINS
—Robin Gale Odam
I will paint them here, at dusk.
At bleed of sunset I will dip the brush
and sweep the hills with the gray of dust.
I will sweep the trail with ashen grasses,
dry from the parch of arid devotion.
We were young—you said we would go—
you said you loved me—now I am old.
Now I paint them here at dusk—
here at the fracture above the foothills.
I lick the brush and paint with saliva—
the rock is thirsty. The slate is black.
I am old and the summit is silver.
Come to the mountains. I paint with starlight.
At bleed of sunset, I dip the brush
and sweep the hills with the gray of dust.
The summit is silver. I paint with starlight
and I am old—come to the mountains.
(prev. pub. in Song of the San Joaquin, Fall 2021)
—Robin Gale Odam
I will paint them here, at dusk.
At bleed of sunset I will dip the brush
and sweep the hills with the gray of dust.
I will sweep the trail with ashen grasses,
dry from the parch of arid devotion.
We were young—you said we would go—
you said you loved me—now I am old.
Now I paint them here at dusk—
here at the fracture above the foothills.
I lick the brush and paint with saliva—
the rock is thirsty. The slate is black.
I am old and the summit is silver.
Come to the mountains. I paint with starlight.
At bleed of sunset, I dip the brush
and sweep the hills with the gray of dust.
The summit is silver. I paint with starlight
and I am old—come to the mountains.
(prev. pub. in Song of the San Joaquin, Fall 2021)
The Next Day
Today’s LittleNip:
SHADOWS IN SUNLIGHT
—Joyce Odam
All afternoon the sun
lowers into the afternoon
and the warmth of the shadows
and the timings of the day, and the
world slows, and the air rests itself
and soon enough, the city streetlights
go on—and the next day is tomorrow.
_________________
Many thanks to Joyce Odam and her trusty daughter, Robin Gale Odam, for today’s thoughts about our Seed of the Week, Stranded.
Our new Seed of the Week is “Aggravation”. I’m guessing you have plenty to write about on that subject. 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.
Be sure to check each Tuesday for the latest Seed of the Week.
Tonight, a new reading series, Twin Lotus Thai Fourth Tuesday Poetry, debuts in Sacramento and will feature Mary Zeppa, Kathryn Hohlwein, Victoria Dalkey, Tom Meschery and Kathleen Lynch plus open mic. Click UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS at the top of this column for details about this and other future poetry events in the NorCal area—and keep an eye on this link and on the Kitchen for happenings that might pop up during the week.
____________________
—Medusa
“…fly to the sky, you have wings…”
—Photo Courtesy of Public Domain
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.
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
