With What Bird's Wings?

Poppie

—Photo by D. R. Wagner, Elk Grove

DAYTIME DREAMING

—Tu Fu (712-770 A.D.)

In the second month, sleeping a lot, all sleepy and dazed,

Are the nights not shorter?—asleep at midday.

With warm air of plum blossoms, eyes grow drunk,

At sun's set by the spring sandbar, dreams lead one away.

The gate and path to my old home lie beneath brambles and thorns,

Ruler and officials in the Central Plains lie by wolves and tigers.

When, when, may one attend to farming, the fighting ended.

And the whole world be without officials seeking money?

(trans. from the Chinese by Vikram Seth)

____________________

MOONLIT NIGHT
—Tu Fu

In Fuzhou, far away, my wife is watching

The moon alone tonight, and my thoughts fill

With sadness for my children, who can't think

Of me here in Changan; they're too young still.

Her cloud-soft hair is moist with fragrant mist.

In the clear light her white arms sense the chill.

When will we feel the moonlight dry our tears,

Leaning together on our window-sill?

(trans. by Eva Shan Chou)

___________________

TRAVELING AT NIGHT
—Tu Fu

Slender grasses,

A breeze on the riverbank,

The tall mast

Of my boat alone in the night.

Stars hang

All across a vast plain.

The moon leaps 

In the Great River's flow.

My writing

Has not made a name for me,

And now, due to age and illness,

I must quit my official post.

Floating on the wind,

What do I resemble?

A solitary gull

Between the heavens and the earth.

(trans. by Grey Whincup)

Duxbury Reef

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

THINKING OF MY LITTLE BOY

—Tu Fu

Pony Boy     though it's spring we're still apart

oriole songs     in the warmth are at their fullest

separation     seasonal change upsets me

quick and clever     who chatters with you now

a canyon stream     a road in the empty mountains

a rough gate     a village among old trees

I think of you     I grieve and almost sleep

toasting my back     I lean on the sunny rail

(trans. by David Lattimore)

___________________

DREAMING OF LI PO

—Tu Fu

Death at least gives separation repose.

Withough death, its grief can only sharpen.

You wander out in malarial southlands,

and I hear nothing of you, exiled

old friend. Knowing I think of you

always now, you visit my dreams, my heart

frightened, it is no living spirit

I dream. Endless miles—you come

so far from the Yangtze's sunlit maples

night shrouds the passes when you return.

And snared as you are in their net,

with what bird's wings could you fly?

Filling my room to the roof-beams, the moon

sinks. You nearly linger in its light,

but the waters deepen in long swells,

unfed dragons—take good care old friend.

(trans. by David Hinton)

___________________

Heads up! We just got word that frank andrick and Josh Fernandez will be reading tonight at the Nevada County Poetry Series at 7:30pm in the Center for the Arts (Granucci Rm.), 314 W. Main St., Grass Valley. $5 general, $1 under 18. Open mic too! Host: Bill Gainer. For info, see thecenterforthearts.org/josh-fernandez-frank-andrick

Tomorrow (Thurs., June 20) will be action-packed with poetry readings in our area, including Third Thursdays at the Central Library at noon and, in the evening, Keynote Poetry Series with Shawn Aveningo, Emmanuel Sigauke and Dafina Everhart; Poetry Unplugged with Las Hermanas/Sister Souls JoAnn Anglin, Graciela Ramirez and Luz Marie Gamma; and (in case you missed them at Sac. Poetry Center on Monday) the Squaw Valley Review readers at the Natsoulas Gallery in Davis (not to be confused with the Squaw Valley Benefit Reading at Crocker Art Museum on Friday). Scroll down to the blue box at the right of this column for details!

And in case you missed Sharon Olds on Capital Public Radio yesterday, go to www.capradio.org/news/insight/2013/06/18/insight-061813

___________________

Today's LittleNip:

MOTHER'S SONG

—Anonymous

it's quiet in the house so quiet

outside the snowstorm wails

the dogs curl up noses under their tails

my little son sleeps on his back

his mouth open

his belly rises and falls

breathing

is it strange if I cry for joy

(trans. from the Inuit by Stephen Berg)

__________________

—Medusa

The Conversation

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

Ah, Those Old Nudes...

ART DECO

Dear Ladies, of the fountain,
of the age,
of the year that holds its place in time,

self-mesmerizing in your glamour,
bobbed hair, bow lips,
posing so pretty, oh,

and so
expressionless—
by the columns, by the arches—

by the naked caryatid
holding up the fountain,
the yellow glow of sunrise

pouring through
the motionless water,
reminding you how late it is . . .

but vanity has captured you,
become your mirror—fawning
mirror of time—never releasing you.


(After: Art Deco Women’s Collection
Illustration by Julian Robinson)

______________________

THE CLACKETY DOLLS

Boy-Girl-Dolls, hand-carved, cleverly
jointed, so they can move arms and hips

and legs in a clumsy hand-held walk,
their clothes pulled off for body-

inspection, then left to stare at
each other with painted smiles and eyes.

Some child has arranged them in a forest-
setting of tiny trees and out-sized birds

to act-out story after story in the
story-voice of children who

left them there, weathered from
neglect with no more lines to say.

Maybe they’re worth something now:
Handmade archaic toys—Relics of lost art

—beyond the lost imagination of a child.

                                            
(After: “The Babes in [the] Wood”, 1875 
lithograph by Parsloe, Vance & Co.)

_______________________

DANCE OF THE BLUE ILLUSIONS

Three nudes perform
the dance of blue
in time with light and light’s pale hue,

in tone with dark
and dark’s disguise;
don’t look in their romantic eyes—

how they come close,
and then recede—
don’t look at them, or else believe

you’ll never love them—
nor they you,
three nudes who dance the dance of blue.


(After: "Three Nudes", 1943, Henry Miller)

_______________________

DEBRIS

Ah, yes—the old drowned doll—that mystery
again. Foul play, I’m sure—cliché of broken
childhood: play turned cruel, indifferent to the
sadness of dolls. This one awkward upon wet
sand as if up-flung by a rejecting wave. Poor
naked doll, its face ground in, one arm raised
as though to swim out of this flailing—one
foot dug in—the day turning cold—night coming
on, and no one to grieve its dying.


(From May Sarton’s "Well")

______________________

GREEN TANGO

They want to dance together
but the music is stiff and awkward

and they don’t know how
though they have their arms around each other.

But he twists one way, and she another,
as if they were dancing in different directions.

His arm is in firm position around her,
and her hand is tender upon his face.

But the music can’t seem to get it together.
And they discover they have no clothes on.

But they want to dance together, and he goes
ta dum ~ ta dum ~

and the music starts over, and goes discordant,
like a suffer of green,

and his face goes tragic, and she looks resigned.
Still—they want to dance together.


(First pub. in a chapbook of the same name
by Joyce Odam, Poets Corner Press, 2003)

LATE SEPTEMBER POEM

I, not beautiful,
not sad,
sit at my table
naked in the morning

the windows are cool
and open

no one is looking in

I might
sit this way forever
looking at the nothing
of the wall

I might sit here
till midnight
or till the telephone
or doorbell makes me move

I love the contour of
the chair
the wood-feel
beneath my elbows

I am not thirst
or hungry
or lonely

I am
sitting here

                  
(First pub. in The Wormwood Review, 1973)

______________________

THE OLD NUDES APPRAISE THEMSELVES

Remember us?
We are the beauties you once loved.;
and how we loved our mirrors

as we love them still.
We surround ourselves with mirrors—
loving how we are familiar.

Remember how you hounded us—
promised and cajoled—
all for the surrender of our kisses?

Your hands were Braille to our bodies.
Your eyes were as deep as mirrors.
You wanted to undress us.

Now we are nude for our appraising eyes.
How serenely we settle into our ravages—
give ourselves permission to be old.

                                         
(After: a drawing by Kumi Pickford, "The Fault IX", 1976;
First pub. in A Tiny Book Of Nudes Mini-Chap
by Joyce Odam, 2002)

_____________________

PROGRESSIONS

She bends down to feed a cat
and she praises her own goodness.
        .
Her eyes are quieter than a statue’s
and her skin is cold in
the thin hands of beginners.
        .
Consider her smile.
She is opportunity and loss.
She is patient and her anger smoulders.
        .
She is basic,
letting her naked children
rise to her shoulders like angels.
        .
She belongs to the mirrors
which disembody her
mood by mood and season by season.
        .
She will not complain
unless she be cruel about it.
        .
How can she be old . . .
she is humming her safe tune
to the brevity of flowers.

                                  
(First pub. in The Poets Guild, 1996)

______________________

THE SKELETON DANCES WITH THE
NAKED LADY

This has nothing to do with death.  This is
a dance of love—his costume of bones, her
naked flesh—danced before a black curtain.

They do not ask each other’s names.  They are
anonymous;  this is a masquerade and they are
mysterious, mesmerized by each other’s roles.

A spotlight watches them with its praise.
They arch and improvise in a single flow
across the wide oblivion of the stage.

The music has long since died,
but the night has consented to stay forever.
His bones are supple, and she glows.

He holds her against his cold intensity,
and they dissolve. This has nothing to do
with love. This is a dance of death.


(After: photo-album of historical “pornographic”
portraits made between 1850 and 1950, from the
collection of French author, essayist, and critic
Serge Bramly)

_____________________

Our thanks to Joyce Odam for today's poems and pix, winding up last week's Seed of the Week: The Antebellum Ladies' Nudist Society. Our new Seed of the Week is Inconsolable.

Trina Drotar reminds us that Sharon Olds will be on Capital Public Radio's "Insight" this morning from 10-11pm. And Trina has a review of the new showing at the Crocker Art Museum; see www.sacramentopress.com/headline/83761/An_Opening_of_the_Field_opens_at_the_Crocker_Art_Museum

_____________________

Today's LittleNip:

ANCIENT BEAUTY

These old nudes
water-bathing at the spa . . .

No. These old nudes
voluptuous in the mirror . . .

Or: these old nudes
challenging the deaf eye of the artist . . .

Ah—these old nudes.

                                
(After: a drawing by Kumi Pickford, "The Fault IX", 
1976; First pub. in A Tiny Book Of Nudes Mini-Chap
by Joyce Odam, 2002)

______________________

—Medusa

The Poem of Your Life

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock

WE'RE FINISHED

—Robert Lee Haycock, Antioch


We're finished now with lost keys, the dust

of accidentals and half-rests, the sheet

music disarrayed and uncollate, the song

was Rhapsody in... Naked Feet... the Prelude

to the Afternoon of... Malaguena, the coda

Schumann's, Robert can't del capo al... the head

is gone and recapitulation, the sympathetic

vibration of octaves resolving to tonic, the hand

____________________

THE CHICKENS WERE CACKLING

—Robert Lee Haycock

The chickens were cackling
Over some off-color joke
About a man running around
With his head chopped off
I didn't get the punchline

____________________

THE FRONT DOOR BEHIND ME

—Robert Lee Haycock

The front door behind me I've quietly closed
Shutting in warmth and dear ones and light
The heart of the Scorpion, not-Mars, red as rose
Stands guard this close watch of the night

___________________

ATMOSPHERICS
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

In an out of whack world—
cities crowded together with no
space left for design—
it was no surprise to see graffiti scrawled
across blue sky, six enormous
chalk marks like knife-slits in faded
denim, all aimed at one target.
Carson Pass? And a seventh slash,
sliced diagonally across, as if
angels were on a lark. Contrails,
said my rational mind. I rejected it.
I liked the pattern and
the texture, white on blue trying to tell
me something. Already changing
with upper-level winds.
It's June. Temps expected in the 90's.
I think I'll head on up-country,
see where the lines converge.
Poems airy-bright as sky-lines before
you ink them down on paper.

*
That afternoon the clouds piled up across
the lake, thunder-towers, castles with forked fire
in their keeps, rising out of cirrus that floated
mid-level above water, angel-skirts, shapes
dreaming themselves by moments changing.
I didn't know what to guess about the weather.
It had a mind, it had a wind of its own.

 —Photo by Robert Lee Haycock

IN THE WILDERNESS
—B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

Hearing on the beach
sea voices
to listen like doves
at the Japanese yew
by a Zen garden,
my leafy eyes
open at first light
in face of the shore,
wanting to thank
Thomas Merton
explaining
for the living
the presence
of an absent sky
or earth at play
here in deep breaths
from my plenary nature
as stones wash ashore
by scribes now passing
to us with eyes
of visionary love
here by the Coast
and share a flurrying wind
on fields and ocean
by those prophetic poets
who are able to fast
far from movable feasts.
 
______________________

ATLANTIC PACIFIC POET
—B.Z. Niditch

Ebbed showers
disguised as rain kisses
by a mourning dove
for company
on the thousand year
Evergreen branch
as a lighthouse keeper
here in Maine,
near the language
of this tall tree
also remembers
the Redwoods
on the Pacific Coast
their conical crowns
as I wrote
by my first sequoia
from a luminous light
under in the tender sky
of an emerging sun
consuming a poet's
alembic words from
a newly seasoned solitude.

______________________

MY MAINE MAN



—B.Z. Niditch

Late as usual


without directions


sidelined and lost


on a back road


by a fruit stand


with no signs pointing 


for this city slicker,


you rent a bicycle


from a speechless man


my sleeping bag left


on the bay side


of ditch water well


weary from insomnia


with no one around


by a ripening landscape,


even the skylark here


only speaks in French


as this song bird


embraces a branch


clasping the foreign body


of a lonely Japanese maple


with a welcomed countenance


fringed by woody leaves


and June bugs


on early maritime hour


taking a run with towel


in hand 
through the wilderness


to swim in a coral lake


nature gives me


an inexpressible bear hug,


as I spy another lost soul


from neighboring Canada


with a guide book


aided by the muted farmer.

______________________

ALONG BOSTON'S DOCK
—B.Z. Niditch

No loss
reciprocal letters
of your childhood friend
who has passed away
unexpectedly
now in the shock
of being overwhelmed
here at the ocean dock
where we sailed
in the regatta
on the Charles River
harboring memories
by the sea's waterfront
throwing pebbles
to the shore,
wanting to recover
our past adolescence
wanting again
to be spontaneous
with a school companion
who envisioned
our reunion
by summer,
yet there is joy
in countless encounters
with the orange kayak
you named "the B Z"
or you going underwater
swimming cautiously
in the language
of these shining waves.

_____________________

Today's LittleNip:

Every poet's life is one poem until its translation.

—B.Z. Niditch

____________________

—Medusa

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock

He Never Missed a Game

BASKETBALL
—David Iribarne, Sacramento

Orange with black lines
sphere-shaped
smooth surface.

Like the beat of a drum,
it hits against the concrete.

Whenever I play, I think
of how my father introduced
me to the game.
How he spent hours with me
night and day
showing me how to dribble,
shoot and pass.

I would practice long hours,
the sound of the ball clanging
against the rim—
etched in my brain.

Sometimes when you’re playing
with a bunch of guys
it doesn’t feel like they’re there,
it’s just you, the ball, and the basket.

Father traveled many miles
stayed awake long hours
watched his son play many games.
He never missed a game,
always there to see what his son had learned
to see him pass that ball
grab that rebound
shoot that winning shot.
Smiles as he watches his student.

This ball and I have been
through a lot together.
Color fading from hours
being beaten against the concrete.

It hits the ground,
black lines fading
from long hours of playing and learning
memories ever awakening.

_____________________

—Medusa

From the Other Side of the Poem

—Drawing Given to D.R. Wagner 

by Tom Kryss, 1968

A PARTIAL VIEW

        all by all and deep by deep
        and more by more they dream their sleep
                            ...e.e. cummings

He caught the wind just coming through the door
But would not say he did for the sores
He saw upon its back were frightening
And more than that, no one would believe
A language made of such damp, of ancient
Lands and shards of stories cobbed
To that quick back.  There should be
More he thought and closed his mouth
As though it were a thicket through
Which one must pass to obtain
Even a partial view of what might, just
Might be a fabled castle and its keep
Or just a shape that dreamed itself:
A castle full of dreams of others
None of his own, not his kingdom
At all, rather a deliberate trick
Time might play, sunlight on a broken
Column and a mouthful of half-seen
Visions mouthed by an adolescent boy
Inventing a tale without evidence
At all.

“What was it lad?
Surely you can tell?”

But no, all we knew was that when
We reached the fires with their
Shadowy travelers and their liquor
And their crude speech, no one
Knew a thing of what we were saying.

They were plugged into their phones
And draped their ears with headphones.
The cities around them crowded together
Closer and closer in a vain attempt
To not look the same, not speak
The same, not have a thing to proclaim
That was not stuffed into their ears.

The thunder disappeared.  We would
Not stay.  We could not stay.
We must move with the bastard wind
To find some barren field where
We might speak to one another
And be understood as seekers
Of the light, shaking from having
Known too much of the sea.
And now this confused and over-ripe
Dream of civilization wrought in an exile
From the physical, from beyond the mainland
From what we once knew made up the world.

Now, only islands.  The sailors madly
Making their way from one to another
Place trying to convince one and another
That here they had seen the light.
Here they had heard a particular name.
Here they saw brighter fires, higher flames.

Stop.
Stand upon this headland
And watch with me for a little while.
For now I can be with you
And then again in a little while
I shall not be with you.
And you shall believe that time
Cannot erode such a memory as this.
But it shall erode indeed and give
Itself to the mist and yet another
Shall see the back of wind
Come through yet another door
And once again declare it a jewel, not a wind
At all, but the clear light of the present.

“Keep this in mind,” the king declared
Leaving the executioner's block,
His head tumbling upon the floor.
The crowd cheering, more, more, more.
The visions opening up before
One can find defense, before
One can find one’s presence.
Can find love.
Can find no thing.
No more.

 Architecture

—Gouache by one of D.R. Wagner's

art students, UC Davis

MULBERRY

Without my hat on, the moon looked different.
Ramon had said that would happen.
“Hats transfer energy in a peculiar way.
They make the tides leap back and forth
So one never knows if they will be high
Or low or if you will be welcome
When you get back to the camps."

I didn’t think much about hats when
We went out to hit the dam.
I felt that, if we were successful,
It would unite the groups living
Near the edges of the cliffs—
At least stop them from moaning for awhile.

I knew I could handle this, but
Hadn’t counted on what a difference
A hat might make.

I could not start the job without the
Wire comb that kept all the lines straight.
Ramon began to complain that I was too slow.
“Don’t scold me, Ramon.  I’ve got this entire
Thing just about ready.”

“Take your hat off, mister," he said.
"You are in the house of the lord.”

The next thing I knew all the power
Lines came down and a hole
As big as Rhode Island opened
In the face of the dam.
“Now put it back on and get the hell
Out of here,” he said.
He didn’t have to tell me twice.

We decided to head for the cliff
Edges.  Maybe the people there knew
More about this hat thing.
Ramon began to sing the mulberry song.

__________________

AN UNREADABLE POEM

I have come to believe that
The words of this poem will
Be lost forever, that the language
In which it is written will
Also never be translated.

I will further place high winds tearing
Through forests of dark fir
Trees here.  Winds that will shriek
And drown these words beneath
Their terrible noise.

That one will not be able to read
These words because deep snows
Will cover them and wherever
One looks, only white will stretch
Away from the eyes in all directions.

That white wolves and white bears
Will dwell there totally unnoticed
Within these words until it is too
Late to stop their fury.

That oceans of incredible depth
Will cover these words and even fish
Will think the pages upon which they are written
Will be washed away, or the page devoured.

Or that these same words will become
Part of the body of a great fire
That destroys any civilization capable
Of making sense of the marks
Made here,  the paper curling
To gray ash with only the voice
Of fire as its own voice.

No one will ever know this poem
Is a most beautiful love poem
That tells of my longing for you,
That speaks of your beauty as no one
Has ever spoken before,
That the hearts of birds stop dead
When they see you in the green,
Such is your beauty.  The stars will
Bow down to you and the Angels
Become as dumb as these words
Upon setting sight of you.
No one will ever know.

 —Photo by Taylor Graham

YELLOW

He took the fish out of the water
As if he had put it there.
It was yellow.  He didn’t want it
To be yellow.  Aaron, the one with the lazy
Eye, said it first. “It’s a yellow fish.”

“Yeah it is.”  He looked at the hook
Coming out of its gills, sucked in
Through the mouth.  That must
Have been when he felt it and pulled
The line tight.  There was red coming
From the gills.  Fish blood.

"Are you going to keep it?’ Aaron asked.
“No,” he answered, “I don’t want a yellow fish.”

On the way home he talked to himself.
Sun, yellow, corn, yellow, squash, yellow,
Peppers, some of them yellow,
Cheese, yellow, lemons, yellow,
Her hair, yellow.  She said it was
Blonde but it was yellow.
The Tailor’s cat with the bent tail,
"Yellow, Yellow. Yellow. Yellow.”
He said it over and over, “Fucking yellow.”

___________________ 

CARDS

“Do not believe the cards,” she said.
These belonged to people who kept dragons
But could not untwist their own tongues
To make words one could understand.

They drew comets in the sand and waited
For them to come across the sky.
They did.  Then they would simply get up,
Make a couple of marks in the sand
And go wash themselves in the sea.
They left the place by roads
We did not know were there.

When we saw all the pictures on the cards,
They brought bouquets of feeling to us.
Some were red like blood or love
And just as difficult to understand
As both these things.  Jason
Did cut his arm badly, shortly after
Seeing the red card and insisting
On cutting wood for the fire.

Another had a picture of a man
Planting something in a field.
There was a grand house
In the background,
But no one in the picture seemed
To notice it.  There was no smoke
Coming from the chimneys.
In the foreground there was a large
Blue bird sitting in a tree and at the bottom
A picture of a ripe apple that my sister
Said looked like it was an afterthought.

The last one I remembered was
Of a great fish.
Three men are in a boat trying
To pull the fish aboard with their hands.
Two little check-mark birds flew above them.

A depiction of the wind as the
Face of a man blowing air was on the left side.
The fish itself was blue and green
With big teeth that looked sharp.

“Watch out for that one,” Mary said.
I had no idea what she was talking about.

 Sara Kline

—Gouache by one of D.R. Wagner's

art students, UC Davis

SAFETY IN NUMBERS

The poem only awaits the words
So it can begin to exist.

It cuts as a border between
One kind of emotion and another
Or merely to entertain the shadows
Of what one once felt for another,

A love for a brother or a sister,
A friend who lived on the other
Side of the poem and who could
Only imagine what he might
Discover once he got past those
Final few lines and got a good look.
What was really going on there?
A description of a place, perfectly said?

Suddenly everything looked like a city
He had seen before, but which
His memory refused to identify
So that wonder might have a home.

___________________

Today's LittleNip:
 
THESE WORDS WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING

The last poem that was this
Beautiful wasn’t allowed to stay
In the world very long.

It was put in a drawer and later
The house burned to the ground
With the poem in the middle
Of it all.

This one stands a better chance.
It doesn’t have any tricks
Or difficult words in it at all.

It will just sit here before you
Staring back into your eyes
And will be far more beautiful
Than anything you’ve ever seen so far.

___________________

—Medusa, with thanks to D.R. Wagner (and Taylor Graham, Tom Kryss, and D.R.'s students) for today's poems and pix!

—Gouache by one of D.R. Wagner's

art students, UC Davis

Under the Sun

—Photo by Charles Mariano

WHERE OLD TRACTORS GO TO DIE
           (Bright’s in LeGrand)
—charles mariano, sacramento

driving down Plainsburg road
just off the 99,
on an overcast, early eve
miles and miles
of orchards, fields

from a distance,
could make out shapes
long lines of something,
ghostly silhouettes,
in the middle of nowhere

i stopped, for a better view
and stared
at rows and rows
of old tractors, lined up
solemnly,
tires flat, treads broken, rusted

a once mighty army
chugging, clanking loudly,
silenced,
brought to a standstill

no more ground to cultivate,
a final resting place

just before the sun sank
into an ominous
dusky haze,

i thought about all the old farmers
gone now,
on these great machines
who bled, sacrificed, worked the land
under that brutal, central valley sun,
side by side,

with my father

___________________

THE BEGINNINGS JUSTIFY THE MEANS
—Caschwa, Sacramento

It was a street about 3.5 miles long
With 2 starting points
Always heavily trafficked
There was no end

Like a sentence with an
Initial capital
And no period
There was no end

Words and vehicles
Collide at all angles
Fenders distorted
Grammar tortured

someone is goinG
the wrong waY
look ouT!!
there was no enD

Flower with Green Bee

—Photo by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

BURSTING
—Carol Louise Moon, Sacramento

Bee Balm: nature's fireworks.
Blossoms of crimson surprise
bursting on midsummer days.
Brilliant-red seen buzzing with
bumble bees.  Search along stream
banks to find these flowers;  leaves
brewed become Oswego Tea.

___________________

OUR SUMMER LAKE
—Carol Louise Moon, Sacramento

Summer's lake is clear, and once again we
open up the cabin near the hedge.
Two snails slide along a flowered ledge
untouched by any sense of urgency.
In morning light we're moving silently
to drag our family's boat to water's edge
past nestled geese along a sandy wedge.
Our cat has found a curiosity;
he chases waggling goslings he has found
while romping in the heat of early June.
A hawk seeks taller trees amid the sounds
of oars and geese.  Our summer lake so soon
engulfed in muted sunlight all around—
a wondrous view beneath a fading moon.

____________________

WATCHA PIKA
—Carol Louise Moon

Pick a day, a summer day
to watch a pika making hay.
He dries the grass on rocks nearby;
he'll sniff the air, he'll watch the sky.

He pulls his hay-store underground,
and when he does then I have found
it's going to rain! It's going to pour.
Meantime, watch him dry his store.

Watch him closely.  You'll see
he knows his meteorology.
Pick a day, a sunny day
and watch a pika making hay.

____________________

POOLSIDE PARTY'S OVER
—Carol Louise Moon

The party's over, and now for the cleanup.
I survey my backyard of what-its-nots.
There beneath the grief-stricken willow
I see the stub-my-toe stone, the laughing
gnome, and the dead-as-a-garden-snake
hose I forgot to coil in a threatening
manner;

the cremains of the chicken barbeque and
Great Aunt Edie's brilliant birthday pastry
with a million and eighty-one tiny burnt-out
torches; an over-flowing twice-recycled
brown bag full of frosty paper plates filed
helter-skelter A to Z;  six flammable
Japanese lanterns

exploding into shades of red and greenish-
yellow with a hint of hot blue flame;
wadded tissues whispering the phrases
lations, Hap, Birthd and con in silver.

Much ado about nothing, I say, as I fall
headlong into a fully-clothed pool—
stark naked.

_____________________

Today's LittleNip:

another rejection
they can’t all
have their heads
up their asses

—charles mariano

Charles has a wonderful story about bootlegging on the San Joaquin County Historical Society and Museum blog; see sanjoaquinhistory.org/blog

_____________________

—Medusa

Phillip Larrea, Gene Avery, Keith Ball, Stan Zumbiel,

Annie Menebroker, Mikey West (w/Eva behind him)

at the recent Poetry With Legs reading at

the Shine Cafe in Sacramento

Photo by Michelle Kunert

[For more photos from the reading, see

Medusa's Facebook page]

Erect Pucker??

Natalie Diaz reading at Sac. Poetry Center

last Monday (June 10)

—Photo by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

D.A.R.
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

My proper Methodist grandma church organist
organized spelling bees, sewing bees.
What she didn’t tell: how she doffed
her fine organdy, 100 degrees in Maysville,
Kentucky, 100 degrees of separation
from her corset, from her slip
and pantalettes. Oh, such abandon

demands a faction. If one’s to go
naked in the Ohio, skinny-dip
when girls are young yet no one’s
yet named the naughtiness, form
a society. Here’s backatcha, Walt Whitman:
A hand at a window parts soft curtains,
a hard masculine hand. Twenty-five women
bathing, and all so beautiful. Laborers
outdoors forget to whistle: this purdah of nudity
takes the breath from the erect pucker.
Have these toughs forgotten woman
the butterfly, man the well-hung net?

And what, what shall we call this corybantic
naked aggregation of lady antics?
To us, D.A.R. equals Daughters
of the American Revolution. To
the sweet cavorters of the summer wind
kissing water lightly south over
the cresting-at-Maysville current,
the sacred letters Delta, Alpha, and Rho
cast a more secret spell:

Derrière as in Oh my lily-fair, Ass daringly
bereft of bustle, Rump aloft and riotous;
all the delectable bucknaked cravings
women savor in throngs of women.
Or the secret delights each lass could enjoy
face to face with the long trouble
and pleasure a boy delivers her,
two little together nudes shuddering
in the shuddering bankside grass.

______________________

ON THE RIVERBANK
      (from an old painting)

—Taylor Graham, Placerville
 
Stormclouds drop their curtains over this private
ritual. At any moment these ladies could be
drenched. Still, they go about their bath as if they
had all the time in the world; as if nothing but
evening could catch them without their dresses.
Don't they know, beyond the edges history
gathers for another war? Not far from the world
they know, tattered flags wave in the streets,
mobs of people shout slogans; generals marshal
their troops and cannons. But for now, chores
done, three young ladies arrange themselves as
Graces for an artist's brush. There will be time
for another war, another cloudburst. The river
flows away beyond its banks, this timeless
moment of the bath.

_______________________

LADY GODIVA'S HORSE
—Taylor Graham

All those ladies throwing off
their dresses, wrapping themselves
in nothing but their undone
tresses, copy-cat heroines
pretending they're protesting taxes.
And here he stands stabled
waiting to be saddled up
for the next battle; wishing nothing
but unlatched latches,
unfenced pastures, to buck and rear
and pivot, running
naked as the wind, long white mane
lashing, hooves
to the free horizon flashing. 

 Patricia Killelea at SPC last Monday

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

HANDS, QUESTIONS
—Taylor Graham

The TV sounds are a foreign language
meant to sell him something. Nouns
from another planet without cardinal points.
Products without a clue—objects
a kid could wield with knowing fingers,
zombies emitting hectic flashes of light.

Through a door he hears music
he used to think joyful, until he learned
its story. Eternal clockwork of loss,
music as sad as anything in this old town.
He shuts the door, walks out into dark
where the Owl hunts in silence.

Tracks in sand—small open hands
with fingers. Their trail stops abruptly
as if lifted into sky. He can’t
recall what makes those prints. He spreads
his arms; might the Owl carry him
away? But the Owl’s forgotten his name.

___________________

THE OLD FARMSTEAD
—Taylor Graham

The pond that a year ago last spring
was her brightest poem—a pool
for skimming water as a depth of words,
for churning, splashing, leaving green-
blue ripples after she was gone –
    small waves of time collapsing
    one atop another—
and the shed, chinks of rotting wood
held together by spider-webs, line on line
singing soundless at the slightest
breeze, the shed leans more earthward
now to listen—
    a voice of light
    from the dry creekbank—
and the path to the grove of oaks
sheltering a gravestone, lasting sorrow
of loneliness, where someone
left a poem, a sprig of purple brodiaea
from grasses, already wilting—
as if only fields under sky know
the dimensions of evening.

____________________

Our thanks to today's contributors, including the TG's, Tom Goff and Taylor Graham, for their riffs on the naked ladies, our Seed of the Week (The Antebellum Ladies' Nudist Society). Interesting how many of this week's poems on the subject have brought up images of water, yes? Taylor Graham will be reading this Saturday at 10am at the Sylvan Community Center, 7521 Community Dr., Citrus Heights, sponsored by the Citrus Heights Area Poets (CHAP). Also reading will be Tim Kahl and Ruth-Marie Chambers of American River College who has a new book of poetry, Eight Forty-Five. Saturday will be a busy, busy poetry day, with CHAP, Crossroads, and Foam at the Mouth. Scroll down to the blue box at the right of this column for all the skinny!

And TONIGHT at Crocker Art Museum, join Sacramento area poets James Moose, Paco Marquez, Danyen Powell, Shawn Pittard, Allegra Silberstein, Marilynn Price and Katy Brown as they read poems created in response to the new exhibit featuring the work of Robert Duncan, Jess Collins and their circle of art friends. Poets will be reading between 6 and 7, so you'll have plenty of time to enjoy the exhibit and other goings-on as part of Sacramento Pride 2013 because the museum is open until 9 p.m. (Thanks to Trina Drotar for this announcement!)
 

____________________

Today's LittleNip:

EMPTY
—Taylor Graham

Birdbox with its swallow’s nest
of neat white feathers;
in one dark corner a spiderweb,
and in another,
catacombs of paper-wasp.
What secrets brooded here?
In June light
swallows swoop over the fresh-
mown field.

___________________

—Medusa

Robert Esperanza reading at SPC last Monday

—Photo by Michelle Kunert