Cobwebby Shadows

 Meow

 —Poetry by Joyce Odam and Robin Gale Odam,
Sacramento, CA
—Photos by Joyce Odam

 

 

When I am in a certain mood,

feeling black about certain things
(though not as big as wars,
or famine, or something
as small as bee stings)
but more like the broken heart
love has occasionally,
or a bad hair day
or any irksome
turn that ruins a day,
and I, truly morbid now,
am building to a mood
for dark music, low lights,
and doors closed against everything
when all I can think of (grateful
for the comic relief it seems), am
down to cobwebby shadows, strong
black coffee and black jelly beans.

—Joyce Odam


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 9/29/15; 12/1/20)

 

 

 

Storyteller

THE WHITE DREAM—2
—Joyce Odam

In the dream again, two white egrets in a
quiet pond making ripples where they

always choose to be—two resting egrets
that I can learn from. They always hold

the meanings that transfer their instinct
into mine—light shifted from the

moon that will not cross again, this dream
dominion. What could I learn from this,

this tranquil moment before the answer
drew me awake into the brimming

silence startled back into the white
shadows of my sleep?

 

 

 

 Herself

DUST
—Robin Gale Odam

He took the best of her poetry
with him—he is gone away

She can barely remember—
there are stuttering consonants

and vowels unfolding,
the pencil in the heavy green jar

and the dry paper with curled edges,
and the little box of matches

and the candle blown out—
she cannot fathom the ache in her

bosom, the mark on the calendar,
the cold diamond on her hand

____________________________

WITHOUT VOLITION
—Joyce Odam

I would
that I were
caught in that
space of indifference
to be completely without
the complexities and care
that are so heavy—I would
that I could float within
myself and be safe—
surrender to all my
entanglements
and they be gone
  because I finally release them

 

 

 

Roadrunner

 

THOSE SONGS KEPT FOREVER
OUT OF HEARING
—Joyce Odam

I have dreamed them, soft as lullabies
from ache of childhood,

songs that come in fragments
and tease—

tease for the missing line
or word,

songs that haunt like a broken need—
old, lost songs—sung only by the ghosts.


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 8/7/18; 4/12/22)

 

 

 

Bringing Time

 

THE DAY
—Robin Gale Odam

A way of being
somewhere in time—  

clockwork in a garden,
desire poised as shadow,             

measure of lament sung,  
harmony and counterpoint,

silver sheen of heaven,
yearning tempered. 

 

 

 

 Thought

MIND WANDERING
—Joyce Odam

I am taught.
I am taught to obey.
And to hold still.

But I do not obey.
And I do not hold still.

Look—I am over there
on the sunlit wall.
I am making poses.

You think I am funny
and you laugh.
I am not funny at all.

I am taught.
I am taught everything
you want me to know.

But I cannot listen.
I am in an ear—
the ear of deafness.

I am in the sea—
the sea of myself,
and the shell’s silence
goes inward to where
I am hearing the silence.

I am taught what to do
with my patience
which is loud
which is loud as snow
after it has blinded everything.

And there is my footprint
going into myself
just before the sun
shines upon it
from the patterned wall.

                           
(Complete poem from Poets-On-Deck,
Deck of Cards, fragment selections}

 

 

 

 For Keeps

THE QUILT   
—Robin Gale Odam   

heartbeat stitched from
memory—a last glance

sorrows old and dim
the night grows long

the clock ticks restless
days—the winds blow by

the grasses grow
the children dream

sorrows brittle now
from the lightning bolt of words
quilted into sleep

 

 

 

 A Flower in Her Hair

 

THAT ONE ROAD
—Robin Gale Odam

there could have been another breath of
time. the sigh of the greater day could ripple the
grasses, near the edge of the road, then veer inward
through the brackish prayers of souls.

far ahead, the muse could approach the shore
of the mirage, motion for us to depart, disappear
into the illusion of water beneath the haze of night,
at the bend where shadows turn—that one road
we all must go.

___________________

IN THE MOVEMENT OF LIFE
—Joyce Odam
After “Farley Mowat”, Photo by
Elisavietta Ritchie, 1994

The year you were dying.
a man stood on a vast plateau of ice

and looked out over the horizonless reaches
at the vast calmness and imagined your death

as his own. He knew nothing of you,
nor you of him.

This is a later recognition.
I give it to you as a gift of human connection :

that one could connect to another
and not be aware.

It is internal—
a thought one has when

there is a silence to fill with something more
than unnamable longing.

____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

THE WINDS OF CHANCE
—Joyce Odam

That balloon lost in the sky . . .

That kite stuck in the dead tree . . .


(prev. pub. in Brevities, December 2019)

____________________

Many thanks to the Odams for today’s collection of snapshots, our Seed of the Week. Our new SOW is a preview of the scary season to come, “Alone in the Woods”—or maybe you like being alone in a beautiful forest. Send your poems, photos & artwork with thoughts 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.

____________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

 Snapshot of Twila-Star Odam, Sacramento, CA

~In her recent puppyhood~
—Photo by Robin Gale Odam

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For future poetry happenings in
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
(http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html)
in the links at the top of this page—
and keep an eye on this link and on
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that might pop up
—or get changed!—
 during the week.

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