Wolf Shadows of the Morning

  Synonym For a Beginning—Sleep to Wake
—Poetry by Joyce Odam and Robin Gale Odam,
Sacramento, CA
—Photos by Joyce Odam

 

 

FIRST DRAFT
—Robin Gale Odam

They’re at the door again,
the wolf shadows at the tick of
every morning

Like memories or dreams from the
future, silver-throated bird shadows—
damn, I forgot the best of it . . .
                        

(prev. pub. in Brevities, May 2020) 

 

 

 

 This Meaning

AT THE EDGE OF MY THOUGHT
—Joyce Odam

Choose me,
said the word—pristine and new,

as a possibility for remorse, or even
love—such a word,

translucent and shimmering,
one I could see through,

clear to the other side of meaning:
Oh, word, I cried,

(for this was a word one could cry to)
Oh, just-right word,

how I want you in my poem—
the way you shimmer there

at the edge of my thought, willing . . .
but something streamed between us

and the word was gone—
gone in a pulse of light, like a flicker

of one tremble to the next—something
not quick enough to capture.
                                     

(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 1/31/11) 

 

 

 

     Scarves of Gray

      THE FAR END OF TIME
     —Joyce Odam

     Here in this haunted time and
     place a woman whispering by
       woman made of memories
       your name on her cold lips
        following the shadow of
        your life—woman made
        of shadow out of the far
       end of time, she whispers
       and you answer, she turns
      and looks back—you grieve
     for her—floating in scarves of
        gray and you wish she would stay.
       How often have you imagined this?
                                 

       (prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 6/1/21) 

 

 

 

Flight

TWO BIRDS DROWNING IN THE SEA
—Joyce Odam

So when you decided together
to try that glittering sea,
borne on momentum
of beauty-shared flight,
the guessed-at arrival,
we, of the heavier wings
and held by the shore-winds of fright,
looked after you, our beaks screaming open.

Your feathers were silvery white
in your love, like the ghosts
that you wanted to be.
Your wing tips would touch,
fall apart, and deepen again
for improbable climb
as you courted
the rhyme of dark waters
and sweet agony
out of sight.

                             
(prev. pub. in The Ninth Circle; and
Medusa’s Kitchen, 4/22/24)

 

 

 

 Want

 

FAÇADE
—Joyce Odam

After Origin of the Greek Vase
by Auguste Rodin; and
“You—Who Never Arrived”  
by Rainer Maria Rilke


She enters through your mind,
caught unaware
unready for the pain

that thinking lets return—
yearn
after yearn—
 
more perfect now
by all that absence,
all that loss.

She enters through your mind
in flawless reproduction,
sensing your recall

and happy to return
to love that is ever restless for
perfection such as this.

 

 

 

 Anything is With Itself

 

GOD AS CONCEPT / CONCEPT AS GOD:  
A Poem
—Joyce Odam

Audacity in doubt, doubt in abeyance of belief.
Here, the void—the grasp, the reach across the void

—hollow—as echo at its beginning.
Only sound knows where sound comes from

—from silence—echo knows this and waits.
Waiting is patience. Concept, Is.  God, Is.

‘Is’—as metaphor—
'As'—as “belief”—as simile.

Belief is hollow, resounding like echo.
Void is full, overflowing into listening.

Here is everywhere, and now.  
All is abstract.

Abstract is perfect with reality,
which is abstract, as is disparity.

Words are puzzles, and puzzling—both
authentic as source, and origin of source.

What Word
Says

As, as ‘as’, is abstract.  As, as ‘is’,
is mindful of mind, which is cumulative—

fragment of whole, which is entire in itself—
each self of itself—whole, like shadow

which, in ‘the real’, is abstract—
leaping from bound to bound,

which is escape—
another ISM.

 

 

 

 Home

HAPPENCHANCE
—Joyce Odam

We met in a mutual memory—

stranger to each, but familiar,
one of us told the other why :

as if ordained . . . there was
a sort of sadness we shared,
tears came to our faces—

we
held
each other
in mutual sympathy.
                      

(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 4/5/22; 9/20/22) 

 

 

 

Color of a Word

PLAGIARISTIC
—Joyce Odam

After “Disillusionment Of Ten O’clock”
by Wallace Stevens


The word is disillusionment. Let’s study this.  
Has it not to do with expectation, say, or
one’s ability to sort out truth from truth.

How variable is this? How does assumption
involve one’s relevance to random outcome?

Let’s say a color is involved. Say green to
replace white. Other colors come edging in :
purple rings, and blue umbrellas, as many as

you need for argument. Say time is involved—
a moment—to never. Some specific, some example

to garner arguments of reference. Night will do.
Ah, distraction. You’re good at this. Only envy
now remains, and not the ‘not’ of poems—

as if you could have written this—the old
sailor—the white nightgowns—the baboons,

the periwinkles—all the old originals.
Where goes the point of this? Put something
there and let us get to the tigers in red weather.

(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 3/2/21; 1/23/24)

 

 

 

Fahrenheit

THE POET, STEALING TRUTH

—Joyce Odam

We saw how you stole
line after line from
yourself and called it
original, how
you threaded strands of

sunlight into your
hair when you stood at
the burning window;
how light entered you—
the transparent light

with you shining there
—an apparition,
alive and screaming
until a din of
silence received you.

How will we find you
among the golden
ashes that still hold
your original
presence. Your words were

written on the glass
where rain erased them—
your tears, as you turned
back to us—unchanged
and we believed you.
                                      

(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 10/3/17; 7/23/24) 

 

 

 

Songbird

THE SCRATCH OF A DRAFT
—Robin Gale Odam

Outside in the garden, only the
morning—the sheet of plain paper, the
birds in blue feathers.

The hum of the laundry, the comfort of
dishes piled up in the kitchen—the short list
of something to do before nighttime.

The plain sheet of paper. Eight birds
in blue feathers.

                              
(prev. pub. in Song of the San Joaquin, Spring 2019;
and Medusa’s Kitchen, 9/26/23)

____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

DRAFT
—Robin Gale Odam

Breathless, the poet scribbled
with sharpened pencils—breathless
in the turning of the hour, in the hour of
gleaning, in the placing of the flourish.

Fragile curls of pencil lead and broken
points lay scattered over pages of
endings.

                           
(prev. pub. in Brevities, July 2018;
Song of the San Joaquin, Fall 2018; and
Medusa’s Kitchen, 7/18/23)

___________________

Thank you and thanksgiving (giving/thanks) for Joyce and Robin Odam today for thoughts about writing. Our Seed of the Week was “Embryo”, and they’re talking about the embryos of poetry here, those wolf shadows of words that haunt us until we do something with them.

Our new Seed of the Week is “Blustery Day”. 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.

___________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

 

 —Illustration by E.H. Shepard

 

 

 

 

 

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
the daily Kitchen for happenings
that might pop up
—or get changed!—
 during the week.

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.

Find previous four-or-so posts by scrolling down
under today; or there's an "Older Posts" button
at the bottom of this column; or find previous poets
by typing the name of the poet or poem
 into the little beige box at the top
left-hand side of today’s post; or go to
Medusa’s Rapsheet at the bottom of
the blue column at the right
 to find the date you want.

Would you like to be a SnakePal?
Guidelines are at the top of this page
at the Placating the Gorgon link;
send poetry and/or photos and artwork
to kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world—including
that which was previously published—
and collaborations are welcome.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!