Zombies, Spiders & Chicken Bones

—Poems by Donal Mahoney, St. Louis, MO

—Poems by Katy Brown, Davis, CA

UNDOCUMENTED ZOMBIES

The nice thing about being dead
is you no longer care if the doctor
mucked up your diagnosis and the 

pharmacist gave you the wrong pills.
You're cozy now in a comfy casket
six feet below all the carnage 

in the world, without a worry, when
a mastodon tsunami rolls over your
peaceful cemetery and uproots

thousands of caskets, tossing them
high in the sky and forcing you
and all the other zombies to float.

You discover no port will take
undocumented zombies.
You have no papers, after all;

you can't prove who you were or are
so you and the other zombies float
for God knows how long since

God may not believe in zombies.
This is a rupture not a rapture.
And while you float, your lawyer

meets with your relatives who
no longer weep about your passing.
They smile as he reads your will.

They plan on taking a family cruise
with the proceeds from your estate.
They'll dine on lobster and steak,

lay waste continuous buffets while
you and the other zombies float
farther out, unable to find a port

where citizens will bury the likes of you.
Property values will drop, they shout.
They can't drop their signs and let you in.

CHICKEN BONE STUCK

We’ve been married 40 years
and we eat dinner together
every night, Maisie,

except when I'm out
of town on business.
That can’t be helped

with bills and a mortgage.
But never in 40 years till
the other night did I ever

hear you say something
that stuck in my throat
like a chicken bone.

That bone is still there
and I feel it whenever we
eat dinner but never

at lunch eating alone.
So after dinner tonight
I’m packing my bags

and going to a hotel.
We can have dinner at
the diner sometime

and if the bone's not
stuck in my throat we
can kiss and make up,

provided you admit
the hairs in my nose
aren't crabgrass.

THERE'S A CLIFF AHEAD

Sixty years ago,
the two of us rode tricycles
up a little hill
behind our school.
Nothing stopped us till 
mothers called us home.

Sixty years later,
we ride mountain bikes
in this wilderness.
We'll keep pedaling till
someone takes our bikes.
We know that someone will.

Your wife told me
you haven't been
to church in years.
She's worried
about your heart.
Skips a beat?

Let's stop for coffee
and you can fill me in.
There's not much time.
Maybe we should stop
for a beer instead.
There's a cliff ahead.

THE SPIDER AND THE SPRAY CAN MAN

He's my buddy, this tiny spider
sitting in his web, not moving,
waiting for a fly that never comes.

The problem is, he spun his web
in a bathroom on the 30th floor
of an office building

where in 20 years I've never
seen a fly or other insect,
never mind a spider.

The man from pest control
comes after hours
and sprays in silence.

We call him Spray Can Man,
He has "Butch" on his shirt
and creases in his pants

pressed by a wife who packs
hearty lunches, I suspect.
I've watched Spray Can Man

twenty years and never heard
him speak to anyone working
overtime in a little cubicle.

Years ago we'd say hello to him 
just like Trash Can Man and Mop Lady.
I said "Merry Christmas" to him once

and Spray Can Man never looked up.
He kept looking down, like an anteater,
spraying one baseboard after another.

When it comes to insects,
Spray Can Man is a serial killer.
Yet the spider in the bathroom

has escaped his gaze and lives on
despite the lack of any flies to eat.
The spider doesn't know death's

his destination even though
I know some day soon
his life will be swept away,

perhaps by execution if
one of my fellow workers
sees him waiting for a fly

or if Spray Can Man spots him.
This spider will discover
life is just a belch in time

as I'll find out too some day.
If I'm wrong about what's to come,
I'll have missed a lot of fun.

Green Heron

WAITING IN HOSPICE

This time, why
doesn’t matter
all that matters is

what and when
it’s finally over
he'll know

who was right
the last time
he saw them

at the wake
20 years ago
his big sister

the atheist
his little brother
the monk

YOWLING

Ed's wife found a sinkhole
in the yard a year ago
a foot wide, several feet deep

and she wanted it filled.
No problem, said Ed.
The sinkhole is hidden

behind a big bush
next to their garage. 
Sometimes a feral cat,

good as its eyes may be,
falls into the hole at night,
never to come out.

The yowling can go on
longer than a week.
Neighbors around

Ed’s stockade fence
ask where the yowling
is coming from and Ed

asks them if they
have a cat in heat.
They always say no

and the questions stop.
Meanwhile, feral cats,
once a plague in Ed's yard,

no longer crouch
in the foliage and leap
to pluck robins and

cardinals out of the air.
Birds can worship now
at Ed’s suet and feeders,

wipe their beaks in peace,
serenaded at times
by the yowling.

SEASONS OF THE YEAR

Let’s not worry about it, Dearie,
life gets better, life gets worse.
We’re no different than

the seasons of the year except
we’re luckier than most having
lived our lives in summer.

We're falling now among
the leaves of autumn
and we have winter yet

to face with ice and snow.
Let’s put the kettle on for tea,
grab a blanket and stay warm.

We'll light a fire and discover
if we’re evergreen or tropical 
when spring arrives next year.

Today's LittleNip(s):
 
A CRITIC COMES TO DINNER

I told my guest
it’s just a poem
doesn't mean a thing

a salad tossed
with colors bright
while listening to

piccolos of
wrens and robins
overcome by spring

       * * * * *

FIRST TULIP

Sometimes you sit for days
sucking yourself in
praying the right words
will fall in your ear
toboggan over the whorls
pierce the canal
and settle in your brain,
an embryonic delight.
Sometimes you sit for days
and finally the words come
and they're always a surprise
like the first tulip in April
or a sudden
orgasm for your wife.

_______________________

—Medusa, with thanks to today's Master Chefs in the Kitchen!

Shy Bluebird

Shortcuts Through Expectancy

Spirit Reclining

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento
 

CONTENTED

The old fat couple lived in a tiny house
with their fat white cat who caught no mouse
but ate and slept throughout its years.

The old fat couple smiled and sat.
She cooked. He read.
The old white cat stretched and purred.

The breezes stirred. The tiny house
breathed out its ribs and settled back.
Each covered chair and polished top

rejected dust. The shining appliances
clicked and whirred.
The wiring and pipes traveled and rattled.

The fairy tale was not complete.
The cat and the couple had more to eat.
They ate all spring. They ate all winter.

They watched for mail and they
watched for hunger. The shiny eye
of the shiny cat would slit and glitter;

it shone with dark till dark was stronger
and the old fat couple rocked and talked
and clapped and laughed.  And that was that.

IN THAT LIGHT

she broods
in afternoon’s half light
on a long soft couch
the cat beneath her hand
the day untold
the long soft hours
filtering her inattention
to the way
all things compose
and rearrange
beyond her care;
she will not long
for anyone,
for anyone not there;
she is removed;
the last light
lowers,
takes her in,
her white dress
glows a moment longer
in that light

____________________

THE GATHERING ROOM
(Rimas Dissolutas)

She stares toward soft window light
—shadowings adrift in the room;
the way the bare walls seem to glow;
the way silence clings like a sound;
a hypnotic feel to the air,

a white bowl becoming more white
deflecting the texture of gloom;
the way time can falter and slow;
a feeling that breaks all around—
a white cat asleep on a chair.

Whatever you wonder is right—
whatever you want to presume.
There’s nothing of this you must know;
whatever you think you’ve discerned
of forces that might define her.

It’s how she can hold back the night,
a lost look that she seems to own,
a trance that will not let her go,
the way time will not be returned
to the fathomless blank of her stare.

THE UNEASY HOUR

(After "Piranha Alley" by Ben Kaja) 
 
A basement window.
An alcove doorway.
The sallow green of city dusk.

Old writings on the door.
A dim light from the window.
Shadowy motion in the street.

Someone lives behind the door.
Someone stares up through the
basement window.

Something will happen here.
It is too soon.
Let us not tempt fate.

Footsteps on the sidewalk.
Then and now.
Never and not yet.

Sounds caution down to hear echoes.
There are none. Someone completes
their detour by turning the corner.

NIGHT SPOTS

Down a long wet alley on a night of
shadows, following the blues of music
and elusive love, following the dim

path of light from late-night windows
where someone always stares down
through shifty curtains, wanting their

own love mended; down a wet alley
toward the other end of its depth and
darkness, wanting a shortcut through   

expectancy—whoever follows you
following like a ghost; a furtive wind
cuts through, stirring a few stray

leaves and ripples in the alley-puddles
where rain has ended; and now you
come out on the other side where a

lingering street turns in both directions,
and what you hurry to is restless for you
in all the late-night taverns.


(first pub. in Poetry Depth Quarterly, 2006)     

_______________________

FERAL

the night cat slinks
through the yellow moonlight
trailing its enormous shadow
             
night smudges its dark,
rustles its leaves,
muffles the sounds that follow
            
the white fence gleams
where the lane curves
the stars inspect the gravel
           
the late night warns
the sounds crunch
the slow moon loses its yellow
            
the hushed leaves listen
the cat returns
dragging its ragged shadow   

                         


THIS MILD PERSPECTIVE

(After "The Cat That Walked by Himself",
an illustration by Rudyard Kipling)

this mild
perspective
made of winter
this focal cat
beginning the dream
of its ninth and final life
this moseying forth
this going toward
a tall white distance
with all space narrowed
between
a leaning dance of trees
no shadow
but that of light
all color drained of it
such a delusion
this focal cat
so nonchalant
its final path pulled thin
in simple black and white

THE WORLD IS MUCH TOO SLOW WITH WAKING

and there is the white moon hanging
and a dark cat passing under,
prissy-footed in a stubble-field,
and a slow-motioned dog is barking,
far away it seems,
and the moon is sharp and full
and the cat is slowly stepping
through the shadows
and has almost reached the end now
and is just an abstract motion
in the field’s absorption
and the dog has hushed
and the moon has not quite paled
and the soft blue tone of morning
is just beginning
and a slight cold breeze
gets through as a crow takes
its dark silhouette across the window
and a long block away, across the field,
a jogger runs, tiny as a toy, and the cars
flow by him with their headlights on
and the spell is breaking.

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:

THE ALLEY

Each night the car pulls up and stops
just ahead of her—blocking her way

—the man sneers
then revs past her with a dark laugh . . .

_______________________

Our thanks to Joyce Odam for today's sumptuous fare! Our new Seed of the Week is Great Escape; send your poems, photos, and artwork on this (or any other subject!) to kathykieth@hotmail.com (no deadline on SOWs). 

Also note that, like most weeks in NorCal poetry, this is a busy one, with readings and with two workshops of note: Thursday's Cal. Lawyers for the Arts workshop on copyrights,  and Saturday's annual Sac. Poetry Center Conference. Scroll down to the blue box (under the green box at the right) for details.

_______________________

—Medusa

Joyce Odam (left) with Allegra Silberstein

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis, CA

Phzzt!

The White Cat

—Painting by Pierre Bonnard

AFTER BEING FEATURED POET
—Claire J. Baker, Pinole

Dear harvest moon, I'm back
listening to your melody
over village hills.
You greet me with a sublime chorus,
separate notes emerge
into a nocturne.

Unlike you
on your lofty throne,
I was pinned to a podium
by a small glaring light—
room dingy, audience blurry,
darkened, distant.
I wished listeners were moons
in all phases, or that
I could tell beyond silence
or delayed applause
that my poems moved "someone"
in some little way.

Windowed companion,
my words and I are home,
grounded, looking up,
enrapt by your pizazz,
your expansive poetry
lavished over earth and sky.   

____________________

OFTEN
—Claire J. Baker

When I "stop
to smell the flowers,"
they stop swaying
to smell of me.

_____________________

POPPY  
—Claire J. Baker

We lie
on a hillside.
Native grass frames the sun.
The giant poppy stretches, then
opens.

 Tailgating

—Photo by Taylor Graham

IT’S SPRING AGAIN
—Taylor Graham, Placerville



Dogwood’s in bloom,


this year’s puppies on the loose



discovering the sky has thrown down


cedar-cones, a utility trailer



with no idea what’s going on or how


it landed, tailgate’s extruded steel



rooting into soil, wind-music through its


metal pores as invitation for a pup



to climb, explore & how do you danc

e
on a landscape of woven mesh?



She dreams of what she knows


not, a boy whose hand becomes a moth,



wing-eyes like sockets of a


skull with fluted horns, music telling



its tale, a wail of perfectly wordless


song. It’s spring again.  

_______________________

PARSING
—Taylor Graham

You walk the back alley at odd hours,
beyond a neighbor’s over-leaning orange tree
dispensing fruit that no one plucks but you.
Your pockets sag with puckered gold,
wind-fall plunder. You find letters
among leaves blown into corners—
S for the sound wind makes, L for sun lazy
on spring air. In that alley far from streetlights,
once a white cat called down to you
with a quill-sharp PHZZT. Not quite a hiss;
a summons? syllable unknown to your
alphabet, repeated until you wished to form
that song with your own mouth. It tasted
of letters mulching to leaf-fall, citrus-zest tang
past sundown; a question, like hunger.

_______________________

WHITE CAT OF THE ALLEY
—Taylor Graham

Moon makes a chessboard of lattice behind
the old seaman’s snug cabin with nets
hung from the siding, and jasmine twining
like the arms of the tattooed lady. Oh tonight
the moon is cast and crew, just now aiming
its light on ovine droppings like chocolate
chips scattered by the lamb who follows its
Mary through a boarded gate, pastoral
creature contrary to city ordinance,
but this alley somehow evades the sophistry
of what’s allowed by writ and what is not.
The white cat sees it all with moonglow eyes,
withholds judgment, or keeps it to himself,
as the spirit of such a place must do.

_______________________

PARTS OF A MILLION RAINBOWS
—Taylor Graham

Green-collar girl’s our old dog’s shadow
wiggle-shifting under-foot
no matter sun-angle, no matter how carefully
he steps. He lifts the corner of his lip
but never bites.
   
         Blue-collar boy will leave today

with a new master. How does he know he’s
chosen? A flaming bird—fine, soft sable
puppy-feathers in the low but lifting sun.

               Red-collar feisty girl sets her

mother off again, gets mother-scruffed
back down—again. Yesterday she climbed
the rocks. Who could love her? she nips
the sky to catch its light, she feels all golden.

                      Yellow-collar boy

is ours. Red-sable tiger of the puppy-
yard—annual grasses ripening their seeds,
the grist of creation. He sleeps beside our bed
at night, breathing silent as tomorrow.

 Puppy Dreams

—Photo by Taylor Graham

Today's LittleNip:

For he will do

As he do do

And there's no doing anything about it!

—T.S. Eliot, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

______________________

—Medusa, with thanks to today's fine contributors!

 Why Me?
—Painting by Vicky Mount

      

 

Smiling Alone

 

Sleeping Cat

—Painting by Kawanabe Kyōsai (1831-1889)

THE CATS WILL KNOW
—Cesare Pavese (1908-1950)

Again the rain will fall


on the sweet pavements,


a light rain
like a breath or a footstep.


Again the breeze and the dawn


will blossom lightly


beneath your footstep


as you reenter.


Among flowers and sills


the cats will know it.



There will be other days.


There will be other voices.


You will smile alone.


The cats will know it.


You will hear antique words,


tired and empty words


like the disused costumes


from yesterday's festivals.



You too will make gestures.


You will respond with words—


face of Spring,


you too will make gestures.



The cats will know it,


face of Spring;


and the light rain,

the hyacinth-color dawn,


that tears the heart of one


who no longer longs for you,


they are the sad smile


you smile alone.


There will be other days,


other voices and awakenings.


We will suffer at dawn,


face of Spring.

_____________________

—Medusa, noting that more cat poems may be found at www.poemhunter.com/poems/cat

Only the Tiger...

D.R. Wagner at Shine, April 2015

—Photo by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

—Poems by D.R. Wagner, Locke, CA

 I AM NOT HERE TO TELL YOU
SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL

No one will let us pass.
I hate to tell you this, chaps,
But I don’t really have
Any idea what is going on.

The sky is looking around
For something to throw at us.

We have no weapons
That can help you now.

Our steps become quieter
And quieter until only the tiger
Can hear us walking through
This creation.
Listen to that breathing.

I’m not here to tell you
Something beautiful, but
I recall that, years ago,
Tiresias showed us a flaming bird.

Sit here for awhile again.
A flame.  Look!  A flame.

Some joy right under your chair,
I am beginning to feel all golden.

 Geese

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

I PUT MY MOUTH ON YOURS     

I put my mouth on yours.
There must be cities like this
Somewhere, with all the lights on,
People dancing in their rooms,
Music flowing from their pores.

Rain reflects a million rainbows.
Streets glistening like your lips.
I can feel your breath move over
My face.  It is like coming through
The clouds over a gentle country,
A landscape like your cheek brushing
Mine.  I understand this is a way
Of communicating.  What are we
Saying?  How do we know where
All these doors lead?  Here, come
Quickly, look...it is a heart,
Full beyond belief, unable to give
Itself away fast enough, so full it has
Become.

I put my mouth on yours.
There should be feasts like this
On every table, homes like this
For all the homeless, stars like this
For the night sky.  I open my eyes.
It is impossible to believe that
It is ourselves only.  When I say
Your name, you answer.  I put my
Mouth on yours again and again.


(first pub. in Medusa's Kitchen)

Ducks and Doll Leg

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

BEFORE FORGETTING

I have followed you around the world.
Homer told me to do so.  Homer
Is dead.  I heard this in Far Niente.

Let it grow like fungus beneath
My song dreams.  Nothing came of it.
The wail of words through tale
After tale.  The surprise that
Characters could come into the
Words, take control and help
Me believe the music actually
Stopped after the last notes
A sonata could explain so perfectly.

Watching fireworks talking among
Themselves on the shore of a river
Near the end of Spring, just as
The sun had made up its mind
To set a bit later that night,

I ran my hand up your back
Caressing your shoulder blades,
Fell asleep before I could forget
That language gunpowder had exploded.

______________________

A HURRAH

These words hate me tonight.
They see me sitting before midnight
Unnerved and disturbed that I am unable
To say anything to my friend whose wife
Is so ill she must write words on paper
To say what is her life.

I am destroyed upon dark rocks
On a darker sea.  They cast my
Bones against the foam and moan
Oh moan to me like sinners in
Their discontent.  I am unable
To say anything at all.  Sometimes
It gets like that.  Weeping up
The back stairs.  I sit reading
About men drawing closer
Across the plain.  Eventually
They will come together.
Words will be unable to harm them there.

 Wheelbarrows

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

BROKEN HEART

My heart is broken now, so
I’ll take it in my hands,
Carry it outside and throw
It in the light brown garbage
Can, the one that goes to the landfill,

Not the recycle bin with its blue
Serenity and white logo, RECYCLE
ONLY, or the gray of the lawn waste bin,
A brilliant concept in itself
That I am never going to understand.

No, the brown one will do.
Tiende basura, por favor.

-*-

Among the coffee grounds, wrappers
From lunch and wadded paper
Towels, a good place for a heart
Like this, then go back into the house

Alone, consider the quality of light
In the kitchen, sweep the floor
So there isn’t anything to indicate
That anything is very different.

A broken heart, oh dear, says the clock.
Now just relax.  I have another
Minute here for you or an hour
Or a month, or the mystery
Of the noise made by some flying machine
High above the house.

I open the door again
To better hear it, it and
The music-moving that wind attempts.

I think of it as song.

 Iris

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

I WON’T SAY YOUR NAME

Chorus:

And I won’t say your name
When I talk about you,
I’ll say there’s a mountain
And skies that were blue.
Descriptions of places
That will always seem true
And are just now and then quite forgotten.

I can remember a time
When your eyes were pure sparkle,
When kisses were breathing
And heaven was near.
When I told you I love you.
It seemed like a love song.
When I’d look in my heart
All the landscape was clear.

(Chorus)

We never noticed
That everything changes
Though we all have been told that
Since time first began.
And I guess we were always
Part of those changes.
Though we tried to deny it
They were always at hand.
   
(Chorus)

There’s a place where I keep you.
It’s near where my heart is.
Has views of the past
And the future is there.
Sometimes I can see you
And at other times nothing.
Now I can taste your lips.
Now there’s only the air.

(Chorus)

 Pansies

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

HEAVEN DARE NOT LOOK          

Heaven dare not look too long
When soft, my darling, says the moon,
The stars, the whirling balls of stone
That are the planets, to their sleep.
For soft is the song that rises, clouding
Those towers that are praising in those
Fell halls full of angel wings and dawn.

Heaven dare not keep the night long
From around her shoulders where she
Wears it like the cloak it is and
Brings it to our bed, still full of stars
And singing, such shining is herself.
I gaze upon that which angels fear
May tear them from the face of God,
Even for a moment, such is my darling
In her sweet good-nights before we sleep.


(first pub. in Medusa's Kitchen)

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:

FOR JOHN DORSEY

I always think
This pain
Can’t be that bad
Until I see the point
Of the knife sticking
Out of the palm
Of your hand.

______________________

—Medusa, with many thanks to D.R. Wagner for the fine poems and pix, and to Michelle Kunert for the fine photos of D.R. Wagner!

D.R.'s shoes

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

   









  

With Plangent Mews

Ellen Bass, Keynote Speaker at Berkeley Poets' Dinner

April, 2015

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

WHITE CAT IN THE ALLEY

—Carol Louise Moon, Sacramento

I was relieved to find a white cat
whose eyes have shown yellow, and lit
the way I should walk home at night
to my cold, cold cottage in town.

Whose eyes have shown yellow and lit
as much as the white cat in the alley?
To my cold, cold cottage in town
I depend on every sign and token of luck

as much as the white cat in the alley:
the coin in my boot, my cloak and swagger.
I depend on every sign and token of luck.
All these, plus a green moon, fool-proof as

the coin in my boot, my cloak and swagger.
One never knows what lurks in the shadows—
all these—plus a green moon, fool-proof as
a fool with DT’s, now a limp not a swagger.

One never knows what lurks in the shadows,
the way I should walk home at night.
A fool with DT’s now, a limp not a swagger,
I was relieved to find a white cat.

 Connie Post reading at the MIND Institute Benefit 

held by Sac. Poetry Center

April, 2015

—Photo by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

NEWS FLASH: ALL ALLEY CATS WHITE IN GLEAMS OF MIDNIGHT

—Tom Goff, Carmichael
 
At night all cats are grey.
So proclaims a chapter heading
in Dumas’ Three Musketeers.
I distinctly remember reading
the words, thoughts glancing awry, astray.
Deep in the night, deep into fears,
do not all cats register black?
Black and soft and secret gears
mesh inside the arching back
as the slinking catly footpads
conjure visibly shaped silence
foaming a noiseless surf 'round islands
velveteen in pitch-black plaids.
This silence curvets into valleys,
caresses omens into alleys.

Or so I thought.

As many years past musketeer
as go to making iron masks,
I see the supple cats at night,
one of them marked black and white
who sweeping with plangent mews and swiftest whisks
brushes these alleys:
sweet but uncaught.
I see her most in plenilune moonlight

painful as mating

cat to cat, all silver plating.
May we say, lead light?
In such dread light, aren’t all cats painfully,
utterly white and utterly lonely,
coats steeped in ghost-milk, in glistening midnight,
souls bathed in loss rubbed to a high gloss?

 Max Rivera at the MIND Institute Benefit Reading

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

WHITE CAT
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove
 
Hannah would never
Deign to hang
In the alley, that
Was for her dirt-colored
Brothers, noisy, fractious
Band of barbarians
That they were.

She could never
Believe they
Were from the same
Litter.  Surely
There was some
Mistake.  No, she
Was regal. They
Were peasants.

She watched them
Quarrel from her
Perch on the book
Case, licked an
Imaginary spot
Of dust from
An immaculate
Paw, noticed her
Pillow needed
Fluffing.  Someone
Would be by soon
To take care
Of that, she knew.

 Dr. Andy Jones at the MIND Institute Benefit Reading

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

Today's LittleNip:

Having slept, the cat gets up,


yawns, goes out


to make love.

—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827)

_____________________

—Medusa, with thanks to today's fine contributors, and a note to check out the diverse Tweetspeak Poetry at www.tweetspeakpoetry.com (cat poems at www.tweetspeakpoetry.com/category/cat-poems).

 

Davis Poet Laureate Emerita Allegra Silberstein (right)

hugs outgoing Song of the San Joaquin Editor Cleo Griffith

at the Berkeley Poets' Dinner recently. Cleo has served SSJ

long and well, and she deserves her up-coming rest!

 —Photo by Katy Brown

Skies of Monet

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA
—Photos by Katy Brown, Davis, CA

TWELVE NOON

April visits me
in the shade of noon
a gull on my porch's gate
is doing stretching exercises
sprawled out for a rest
watching me paint
a watercolor
as warblers sing
in a wordless address to nature
amid a repast of lemony fruit,
here in that restful time of day
seasoned by a trance
of bartering for warmth
along the shadowy willows
by the shore
a dancing light moves by
the soft winds off the Bay,
there is a brief showery rain
and suddenly a melody
in a minor key for lute
floats in my private landscape
with a clear harmonious sound,
swallows sway by me
and sweep the dust on the road
as if saints are at their prayers
coming from quietus to life,
now the sky is full of sparrows
and a host of other song birds
who drift along cirrus clouds
chirping to their own tune
in a upturned spring rapture
from a transparent light
at noon from a daydream
sustaining unison and vision
a poet leans out his window
to restore a vase of geraniums
put away for a season,
the air off the ocean floor
recalls a daily rumbling seaweed
you would wade through
where he in the triangle mist
of hedges, flowers,
and woodland trees,
would run a half-mile
even take a quick dip at the shore,
now his words
are curved in silence
remembering those hours
in chimes of the abbey
where Merton silently passes us
rejoicing in the intimacy
as grace is a refrain in our ear
knowing even at this noon
we cannot go back
to embrace the self-assured
morning shining like rubies
in the effervescence of light
or at a kaleidoscope of diamonds
we would emerge from the sunshine
feeling the watchful eye
of the white cat
whom we shelter in our arms
under the once-shivering Elms
it is the stroke of Thursday noon
draped in our grey eiderdown
napping over a hammock
in a downcast chill of memory
knowing we survived
the boxed-in winter
and longing to watch
from the beach house
a merciful sky of Monet.

______________________

CHANGES

You ask for change
from strangers
outside the bank
but have no interest
except for words
without thanks
it's still April Fools for me
and like any southpaw
you try to change
your melancholy expression
from behind your bearded jaw
to play kickball
with a new life at a wall
after doing a confession,
you find a lucky ten
from a lottery ticket
and find yourself
doing a cool tango
with Juanita in a jazz club
she calls Daniel's den,
we drink and eat tacos
before the place closes
after a chance for love
a poem emerges
from that time spent
feeling like Dostoyevsky
in California's nineteen-sixties
with his Crime and Punishment
gambling for rubles on his knees,
we're not a member of the law
or clergy
more like Pushkin or Whitman
writing his elegies
or a blackbird
in a stage of flight
here on the sands of Ocean Beach
like a San Francisco Beat.

 Light on Glass

A MOZART MINIATURE

A Mozart miniature
stands on my piano
after long cold winters
of an obscure slumber,
he cannot turn my way
to lift his musical gaze
or argue any gifted formula
in our modernist culture
with my interpretations of days,
if he could hear my chanting
mouthfuls of prayers
to high praise
or my playing
rhythmical jazz tunes
while watching the snow
with me on the island shadows
of my memory's ways,
as he listens
to new lyrical cool
sax exercises and exposes
in metaphors of my confidence
he may make sense
or be moved by my tempo,
yet we are both alone
staring at the new moon
with my clicking of a scale
in a merciful shade of my solo
with schooled instructions
composing riffs and numbers
on those evenings of ours
we have a dance of the hours
when music cannot fail
our reed and powers.

_____________________

VALERY'S MEMORY

We follow your eyelids
of words under winds and hill
watching the snapping
of trees along the boulevard
as any Parisian
of the avant-garde
attenuating the good nature
of a Rousseau
capturing love's rendezvous
in the April breeze
by the Seine's flow.

____________________

REMEMBERING APRIL

Hands of acting
in a Beckett play
too deep for words,
you rubbed out
my initials
on the Elm tree
on opening night
consenting to live
for another day
like Godot
recollecting my lines
in the studio basement
still on this April dawn
trying to feel enlightened
for a voyeur and voyager
here estranged from family
and frightened
by breakdowns from friends
praised by the directors
then slapped down
by my punitive understudy
the dressing room awash
in so much nervous energy
we decked out
in satin or black gowns
feeling like being
one of the actor's clowns
and living like tiny birds
in nests trying to survive
yet wanting to flee
from so much hurt
with tiny cups of goat yogurt
packed away in my suitcase
near a book of psalms
in Latin and French
found at the bus stop bench
as if a sign were sent
when I got this part
at the positive audition
and could pay my rent.

STUDENTS

Students making a movie
on Emily Dickinson
here on the Common
on an April dawn
by sweeping swan boats
near Puritan statues
where Ann Hibbins
was hanged as a witch
and Crispus Attucks
gave his life
in a revolutionary act
and I'm asked
for commentary
and facts
on this documentary
across a hundred memories
where we swam as children
in Frog Pond
running the Boston Marathon
by rose vines
and memorial stones
over enriched cemeteries
of famous gentlemen's bones
hearing bells at Advent
after barely paying
the Beacon St.Chambers
monthly rent
with my long-hair appearance
always quoting Whitman
and Baudelaire
in the dark hallways,
a professor and former editor
near a tall Elm
asks for a camera shot
for public exposure
and we remember
Robert Lowell
eating out with us
at Dante's on the hill
knowing in still-life mood
hobnailed in my profession
by so much intensity
poets like me
need a day of solitude,
yet am thrilled
I'm still recognized here
amazed at the sunshine
and fresh air
after the grey winter's
voiceless breath of snows
gave us solitary shadows
where the cool winds
near drifts of white beds
helplessly recover from
its death blows
to trace the night.

 Candles

SEAMUS HEANEY
(1939-2013)
APRIL 13 BIRTHDAY

Birds are on long Elms
here in Cambridge
my face pressed
against the glass
of the auditorium
early on a twilight spring hour
amid resonance and recital
to hear you read Beowulf
now you too are translated
from a visionary's words
still hearing your awareness
of our natural lyrical world
your suggestive voice stills us
in a life affirming read.

________________________

ANNE PORTER'S DAY
(1911-2011)

A mystical glow
on a warm island wind
as the noon sun
drips icicles
in the loving glen,
friend to O'Hara,
Schuyler, Ashbery,
your artist husband
Fairfield,
my unsealed eulogy to you
who loved St. Francis
of Assisi
when a greater love
is revealed in this elegy.

AN EXILED POET

When snowdrifts
fall asleep
and a poet is exhausted
under the portico
with wounding dreams
and sorry sightings
of dark walls peeling
not knowing when reality
from diary or dowry
of our brief journey
will inherit us for
another day
on this planet earth
between images of light
in visionary desire
from deep mirrored nights
feeling awkward
on the track
of the marathon
with old sneakers and socks
left by a go-go dancer
from Boston
with a broken back
who fell
the morning before
on the newly painted
bottom stair floor
near the motionless clock
with me reciting to him
from Homer's Odyssey
he also returned lonely
from the navy
injured by former lover
over the laughing swells
of the China Sea
reading my last collection
asking me to autograph it
under the cover of my poetry
not standing on ceremony
by telling of a desperate flight
and of his comradely feeling
like any exile.

_________________________

Today's LittleNip:

CINDERELLA OR A FELLA

You thought
some day
your princess or prince
would fit in
like the right shoe
but then you realized
as a young adult
that she or he loved you
not in the singles' ads
or in movies, cartoons
or fairy tales
which were unreal
almost without reason
that when the secret language
of love poetry emerges
everything will line up
in its silent place
intently gazing at you.

________________________

—Medusa, with thanks to today's contributors for their tasty poems and photos! See www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/anne-porter for more about Ann Porter.

 Katy's photos today were taken at Boa Vista Orchards

in Camino, CA.