Loons on the Lake

 Sunday Afternoon

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

 

 

 DEADLINE
—Robin Gale Odam

Sorry I’m late.
The poem wasn’t finished.
There were still five dishes in the sink.
My hair lay the wrong way.
I finally found my brush
in the cabinet next to the coffee.
Just one more cup, hot.
I couldn’t remember if I was
forgetting something.
I couldn’t leave without my heart.
It was somewhere in the house,
or maybe in the garden.
The key turned three times in the lock.
It took the whole morning to reach the car.
Then there were red lights and a slow train.
I wrapped myself in music
loud enough to fill all my empty places.
I am here.
My heart is beating in the garden.
I am yours for this long day.

                             
(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 9/26/23)

 

 

 

 When Shadows Fall

 

THE SADNESS OF AUGUST
—Joyce Odam

Music came from nowhere—so we listened
thin—breathless to believe that it was really
there—small breezes swayed the currents
of the night air—
aimless and thirsty, as if a rain was wanted
to cool night’s dying flare—re-kindled
at the sudden sigh of an old forgotten tear.

 

 

 

 Saturday Early

 

THE STREET LIGHT
—Joyce Odam

The street light serves for the moon—so
low in the sky it glows through the window.
It is always full—a bright watch-light
for this shadowy corner of the night.

Sounds illuminate with recognition—
song or sigh? No sky is farther away than
any reach of mind in this proximity—
low enough to make an aura of wellbeing,
till dawn turns if off—just like the moon.


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 8/8/17; 8/29/17)

 

 

 

Branching Out

 

 
STAR-FALL
—Joyce Odam

Come to me, Love. The room is cold.
Stars line the window ledge.
The mirror holds you
much too long—
would you go in—
enter some other world?
You say you hear a loon cry
on the lake.
There is no lake.
The wind groans through the tree
outside the window.
There is no tree.
The window glints
to the mirror
You look at me
through the glass.
But you are staring
at yourself.
Tree branches shake.
A loon cries on the lake.
The room is cold.
You do not see how I’m not there—
afraid and lost in the room’s shivering.

 

 

 

The Problem

 

STUNNED
—Joyce Odam

why can’t I get to you faster
how can I get out of
this slow motion
and reach you

you are living a whole
desperation before my eyes
and it takes me all that time
to begin one futile gesture

I want to be
what is needed of me
but I am so heavily caught
in slow motion  

_______________________

               STARING AT COMPOSITION WITH 

        BLACK LINES ON A WHITE BACKGROUND
            After Painting by Piet Mondrian (1917)
                            —Joyce Odam

                     . . . Whorl   of   time . . .
               Clock-parts . . .  Circular chaos . . .
       Compressed  and  random  detail . . . Birds
     in  conflict  with each  other  in  crowded  sky :
 Or  flecks  of  dark  that come defined  as  doodles
on  flat  field  of  white : Or  maybe  only dust-swirl
under  microscopic  staring  into  floating  sunlight :
Or   tiny-distant-planes-in-dog-fight  in  some movie

war-sky of World-War-I : Or any pattern to describe
such  floating,  never-settling   marks   of  dots  and

lines that must mean something to the mesmerizing
  eye :  and  how  get  through the openness to next
      beginning  through  time’s  death  at  edge  of
           white-space-dwindle  into  nothingness,
                 with  white-space  nothingness
                       as time’s  defining line?

                       

(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 4/3/21)

______________________

A STUDY IN SEPIA
—Joyce Odam

I focus on a brown paper sack
being blown by the brown wind
over the afternoon sidewalk
of this brown day,
a helpless tumbling thing
weightless as a used-up
wandering thought
of someone homeless
or otherwise discarded,
wrinkled and torn-edged,
rolling free and useless,
simply blown about,
and stopped
and blown again . . .

what it contained
is not of relevance
nor is its ineffective part
in anything, except
as random image caught
by my attention—
a plain brown sack
in a dry brown day that I watch
for the simple act
of watching it—
blown here and there,
then blown away.


(prev. pub. in Poet’s Forum, March 1997;
and Medusa’s Kitchen, 4/10/12)

 

 

 

On Texture

             THE SUBLIMITY
             —Joyce Odam

                                 swimming underwater into
                         the dimension of green
                 into the world of no time but that of 

             held breath
         a whole length of effort continuing
      beyond possibility
  freed now from the difficult world of air
from the heaviness
. . . of . . . mortality . . .
swimming delirious
and . . . deep . . .
  into the arms of hallucinated ones
     who have drowned
         who are there now beckoning . . . guiding . . .

             and gesturing with the easiest of 

                    movements . . .
                        to . . . how far . . . and where . . .

                              the palaces are . . .


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 6/22/21) 

 

 

 

Purple Flowers Gathering Light

 

 
WHITE FLOWERS
—Robin Gale Odam

She rose into the dark morning
and gave her candle its flame.
She placed it behind the stained glass
hummingbird of lavender
with green wing feathers
and a soft yellow sky.

She dropped a lemon peel
and three ice cubes
into a glass of water.
She dusted her body
with the scent of white flowers
and put on her tiny diamonds
set in white gold.
She sipped the bitter lemon
and stared at the translucent bird
in its yellow sky.
It looked as beautiful as a sunrise.

She knew the day would steal her away.
She would cook oatmeal with raisins
and count lunch money
and remind them all to please 


hang up their wet towels.
She would navigate traffic
and wait for every red light
and her secret would be
that her music was turned up full blast.
She would cling with all her life
to the heavy sound of the drums and the bass
and her heart would pour itself out again.

She would be nine minutes late.
She would accept every task
and turn every way
and do many things at once
and eat crackers for lunch
and forget to breathe
and not stop once until the end.
She would fall through a dream
of traffic and red lights
and a stop at the store
for something she would not remember
and children in the schoolyard
and the five steps to her front door.

She would say she loves them
and remind them to please
pick up their shoes and socks.
She would slide into her old soft gown
and place her diamonds into the red silk box.
She would lean into her feather pillow
and close her eyes for just a moment.
Her sons would blow Pachelbel’s Canon
through their flutes.
Her daughter would draw her a picture
of a wolf with long eyelashes
wearing a saddle and bracelets.
She would not be able to open her eyes.
She would smell the faint scent
of white flowers.
                           

(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 12/20/22)

 

 

 

Early To Bed

 

THIS HOUR, FULL OF OLD TWILIGHT
—Joyce Odam

Mark you, my love, this hour—dwindling
and slow—full of old twilight,
heavy with summer.

How certain we’ve been of everything we know
which is only what we sieve
out of pour and clog,

how we waste what we want
out of squander. Note how easily
we’ve become our own shadows, lacking detail

and substance, assuming the thoughts
of darkness, how silence expands and surrounds
where we are to each other.

How easily we say what is true
and untrue, though we mean them differently.
We are through with our sadness.

__________________

Today’s LittleNip:

STREET SHADOWS
—Joyce Odam

Play of street shadow
where old Sacramento trees
connect their branches . . .

Drive slowly . . . city squirrels
risk crossing through these shadows.
                                                         
__________________

Our thanks to poemsmiths Joyce Odam and Robin Gale Odam for today’s fine post, as we ease on in to the month of September and its Autumnal Equinox. I used Joyce’s photo, “Sunday Afternoon”, with Robin’s “Deadline” because Sunday afternoon is the time when Robin and Joyce get their poems to me for Tuesday. And I’m imagining it’s usually a bit of a scramble—deadlines always are…

Our new Seed of the Week is “Shifting Gears”. 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.

__________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

—Public Domain Art Courtesy of Medusa

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For info about
future poetry happenings in
Northern California and otherwheres,
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UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS

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Time to dump old ways 

of stinkin' thinkin'~