I Am

San Francisco Bay, as she leads us out to

the Pacific Ocean and its many adventures 

—Photo by Kathy Kieth, Diamond Springs, CA

JOURNEY HOME
—Rabindranath Tagore
 
The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long.

I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my voyage through the wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet.

It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself, and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.

The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.

My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said "Here art thou!"

The question and the cry "Oh, where?" melt into tears of a thousand streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance "I am!"
 

______________________

—Medusa

These Crusted Dreams

Houseboat at Walnut Creek Marina

—Poems and Photos by D.R. Wagner, Locke, CA
 

WHERE THE MEANINGS ARE

Where the meanings are
Left out on the street
To find their own way home,
Distressed at their own inability
To recognize anyone who had
Anything to do with their discoveries.

Once, on the top of mountains
Streams began from florid
Displays of weather; snow,
Sleet and freezing rain,
Then rivulets and finally streams
Cutting canyons where entire
Groves of trees might hide
For hundreds of years.

I see you standing by the curb
Looking at the debris wash past,
Your hair wet with rain,
Paper and bubbles, oil and small
Stones, patterns in the water.

We suddenly beheld a great meadow
That seemed to stretch for miles
In a westerly direction and from
Which we could hear the thunder
Of a great waterfall in the distance.
All effort was to reach the
Sound before the darkness came.
Even the horses were alarmed
At the voice of the water,
Where all meanings are.

________________________

A SWEET WHISPER

A sweet whisper clipping the tops of waves.
The humidity changing the colors to pastels,
Opening my eyes in already late morning.

I can hear the birds arguing in the palm
Trees.  They seem to have important things
To do.  Then they abandon the yard.

I am working over the lyrics to a song
I can barely remember.  It says that heartbreak
Can be overcome if one stops feeling.

I am amazed at the way afternoon
Lopes into the room, recognizing everything,
But how my heart never quite understands distance.

I begin to sing my own song.  There is a
Moment where everything that prompted it
Becomes real again.  I can hardly continue.
The birds return and gather near my windows,
Silent except for their beaks tapping the glass.

 Edge of My Garden Plot

CLIFF

Near the edge of the cliff
Tiny lights dance in the air.
They are the souls of those we knew

As children, lost to us now.

They seem to move back and forth
And then wink out, only to reappear
Years later in dreams, moments
When we least expect them,
Glowing in the corners.

How we are filled with longing
As they burn the air with
Their lovely energy.  We travel
To far places to see them.
We cultivate memories so they
May have food in this state
Of being.  You may find yourself
Among them, playing near the border
Of a pond, thinking, the light on the
Water is beautiful.  You are eight
Years old.  The summer, lean in
Your muscles, the shade trees glistening.

 Blue Chairs

RED WATER AHEAD

Red water ahead.  They are biting the
Stars in half down at the corner.  The
Flames in the garbage cans burned
Yellow, then white.

About a block away a rain of steam
Locomotives is exploding into the
Ground.  Huge sheets of flame and
Clouds of steam light up the fields
Just beyond the fence.

We are not living here any longer.
The long arms of desire run across
Our limbs, begging us to touch
Everything more intimately
But without attachment to anything.
I kiss those places of your body
That remain without names and stumble.

We are assaulted in the forest
And all words are surgically
Removed, like dreams upon waking.

I am able to touch parts of you
That I would never be allowed
To explore without the skein new
Words have armed me with tonight.

I know I will not sleep at all
Without your mouth upon my body,
Explaining the salt, these crusted dreams
They dare to attempt.

 Reflection

STANDING MUCH TOO CLOSE TO THE FLAME

I can smell the murder
Of ten thousand children.

Wax pulls itself toward me
And astonishes me
Without opening my heart.
Everything becomes a map.

How do I know where
I am supposed to be?

They are burning sulfur
When we walk into the room.

I had no idea how to dress.
There was so much happening
I forgot what I was supposed
To think, but I began to suspect
It had something to do with you.

I began shouting into the sloughs,
Watching the devil do that dance
He does.  Most things are going away.
I burn my face.

 A Languid Slough

MILK

We have recalled what night really is.
It was hidden from us for a very long time.
Its people walked our streets in the daytime.

Look into the wind.  Tell us what you see.
The charts don’t show us very much.
There is too much milk racing
Through our blood.  You point out
The signal fires, the houses made of bone
Against the sides of the mountain.

This is no a familiar way to travel.
We are used to walking behind the dogs,
Watching what they are doing, checking
Darks that are not the night, holes in the soul
Where we can hear the water rushing below
Our feet, so close and yet so insistent that
It remains hidden.  The dogs bark to raise
Those spirits from the soil.  They too are milk.

______________________

Today’s LittleNip:

STONES

The stones below the surface
That transform the garments.
I can hear it all the way to hell.

I pulled you to me
But I could only
Speak in falsetto,
My mouth filled with stones.

______________________

—Medusa, with thanks to D.R. Wagner for this morning's fine fare!

Mike's Cat

   

Those Good Tomatoes

Taylor and Hatch Graham's Chicks When They Were Little

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis, CA

—Poems by Donal Mahoney, St. Louis, MO

STRIKE!

It’s a big book, a thousand pages,
a million words, a bestseller,
and the verbs are mad as hell
because the nouns get all the credit
even though the nouns go nowhere
if the verbs don’t take them,
never mind the adjectives,
those leeches on the nouns,
getting the same free ride.

It’s reached the point where the verbs
have had enough and plan to quit
the book and leave the pages blank
unless they get $15.00 an hour
to keep on dragging nouns
and adjectives from cover to cover
plus overtime tossed in
for adverbs and prepositions
and a nice bonus for conjunctions.

_______________________

THOSE GOOD TOMATOES

          Chicago, South Side
 
Late July and I am waiting
for those good tomatoes
brought to the city from farms
on trucks with a swinging scale,
brought to the city
and into the alleys
by Greeks and sons
in late July
and early August,
tomatoes so red they reign
on the sills of my mind all winter
too perfect to eat.

 —Photo by Katy Brown

WILDLIFE IN THE GARDEN

Birds and possums,
coons and squirrels
frequent my wife’s garden.

Dawn to dusk I spy on them
from an upstairs window
next to my computer.

They remind me of the city
poor foraging in Dumpsters.
This morning a coon dispatched

a possum that had
frightened away two feral cats
I feed every day at 4 a.m.

When I went out on the deck
and waved my arms to dispatch
the coon, he sat on his rump

and stared at me with a glare
I saw 50 years ago in the eyes
of a girl who became a nun.

She is still a nun today.
She said cut it out back then.
As did the coon today.

____________________

WHEN SPARROWS MATTER MORE

Find the book
and blow
the dust off.

It’s somewhere
in the house.
Every house

used to have one
if only to record
births and deaths.

Find the passage
about the sparrows
and you will see

that you and I
and every man
are worth more

than any sparrow
yet you and I
and every man may

spread seed
or old bread
for sparrows 

on a winter day
yet hustle past
the homeless man

who squats
in sun or snow
outside McDonald’s.

______________________

MOVING ON

Mrs. O’Toole is raking leaves
at 93 with vigor as strong
as Tim has seen for decades.

He crosses the street and asks
his neighbor how she's doing.
Not good, says Mrs. O'Toole.

Her doctor has told her
she doesn’t have much time.
She has a blood problem

with a long name and no cure.
She’ll fade away without pain.
May have a year at most.

Cancelled her daily paper
and now must rake her leaves.
A young couple bought the house.

 —Photo by Katy Brown

AN OLD NUN’S OPINION

An old nun sitting
on a bench in front of her convent
saying her beads was

interrupted by a young nun
coming home from school
to the convent for the night.

She asked the old nun if she had heard
about the Supreme Court passing
the gay marriage law

and the old nun said she had.
The young nun seemed surprised.
“Well, Sister, you don’t seem upset!”

The old nun looked at her beads
and said, “This isn't Roe v. Wade.
This law won't kill anybody."

___________________

NO MORE TOILETS FOR LUPE

If The Donald gets his way
Lupe will no longer
clean toilets in America

working in hotels
following her husband,
Pablo, as he follows

produce ripening
on vines and trees
and in fields from

California to Alabama
picking peaches
and melons every day

week after week
during the harvest
for you and for me and

The Donald who says
if he gets his way,
Lupe and Pablo will

go back to the village
where a toilet has
yet to be seen.

 Whitey 

—Photo by Carol Bales

 

WHITEY

On a hot summer day
when no one goes outside
unless they have to, I think

of Whitey, the cat we
found on a December day
in the garage of a house

we had just moved into
and how Whitey
neither tame nor feral

stayed on the property
for years and used the
seasons to her advantage

especially winter.
After a heavy snow
I'd shovel and leave

a clear sidewalk and
small walls of snow
Whitey would sit

next to motionless
waiting for my wife
to spread seed for

cardinals and jays
and mourning doves
to come and feed.

The cardinals and jays
got away but sometimes
a dove would stay behind.

_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

APRICOT GLOW

In the apricot glow
of sunset two

hummingbirds come
to the red feeder

show a little one
how to sip

_____________________

—Medusa, with thanks to today's fine chefs for a hearty breakfast in the Kitchen!

Tiny Life

An Unwritten Life

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

—Photos of Pollock Pines, CA by Sam the Snake Man

AUGUST AT CAPE ANN

We know how quickly
the excitable rain
will quicken a crowd
at our outside jazz gig
playing in a trio recital
of sax, piano and bongo
on the beach-red sand
in late afternoon's exodus
at a summer's vacation day
deserted for a five-minute break
as the sunshine returns
with runaways and black birds
knowing miracles
are for the weekend leave
of a returning veteran actor
in his motel
expecting to hear
from his overheated agent
during the torture
of his rehearsal week
unpacking his itinerant gear
hoping to remember the words
for BZ's play, Opera Bluffs
by his epigrammatic mirror
as a poet wanders alone
by the rough blue-white sea
watching the kites
on a parasol sky
under thunder and lightening.

____________________

ON THE CHARLES RIVER

Grass has grown
no wiser. Permit me
to speak just tonight
as an adviser to nature
asking the trembling wind
on my orange kayak
to be less vocal,
exhale to expunge
the cool sailing-ship air
as my blowing sax riffs
from a Garland tune
cover my fingertips
with Dizzy notes
sponging tousled kisses
from my chafed lips
provoke a July of laughter
between lonesome children
from nearby tourist boats
below the visionary sky
not being a latecomer here
forgive me, Charles
on this your river
smile with one wave to us
by a chorus of songbirds
to the underhanded runners
on sun-timed torsos
by cruising bacchanals
in glacial and facial memory
on this canal of a crystal sea
near the Esplanade's trees
where this poet played
by burdocks and jonquils
in a floating anniversary
of a thrilling jazz parade
life motions the currents
along the Atlantic ocean
as a metamorphosis of memory
chills the warm breeze.

ON THE ESPLANADE

There's a passion
between us tonight
the August heat
from the whole dog day
has abated on the hammock
behind the primrose bushes
of midsummer's open spaces
sweat enters us
and I'm in a four-letter word
as the sprinkler turns on
the lovebird feathers
near the fountains
of the Esplanade
telling my partner
I despise the phrase
"genuine leather"
who speaks in a quiet twilight
with a Catalan accent,
it all seems compelling
just to be mutely held
under electric city lanterns
glittering like stacks of stars
wondering if the memory
of these revolutionary stone statues
we walk by in hot weather
in our stammering adolescence
will fulfill promises
of these wonderful pink petals
on greensward tall grass
we hand to one another
passing the wispy esplanade
for another day.

_____________________

AN UNWRITTEN LIFE

An unwritten life
seems dismantled
until our dream verse
is complete
as a stopwatch on a runner
is suddenly smitten
by the marathon heat,
when we are on the defensive
in our syllables star of shame
to gamble, forget and forgive
our lost, secret, or rattled
which we must tame
just to take the matters
of meters in our rhythmic cause
to adjust our musical hands
from scattered thoughts
for the panegyric laws remain,
on our beautiful table
we ate in a repast of grammar
our language's delicious fruit
yet sometimes wish our plate
to be as shellfish now mute,
as a pastoral poet with a story
we run a victory lap
at the marathon
hearing the claps for a laureate
yet hammering our roots
from any self-made quarrel
we continue on
finding in our thesaurus' mind
the right rap in any dispute,
like a heavenly songbird
with its own sunflower dish
remembering where he once swam
off the Blue Hills lake
where under the August rays
we salmon fish,
masked by small gulls
a few sparrows call to sing
entering at my geranium window
awakening the neighborhood
outlasting shadows
on floral bushes to be heard,
remembering after the war
the poor Russian urchins
and orphans who took bread
with all their gall and nerve,
breaking it above the cupboard
to serve us at the cookie jar,
we ask for a sugary connection
for just that pronoun or verb
in our bakery's confection,
for it's not an easy game
to write poetry into perfection
not unlike pitching pennies
near the curb,
wishing for a lexicon's right word
to give us satisfaction
like a green tea, confection or herb
without a gaff's partisan reaction
to the dictionary's adjective
wanting a perfect paragraph
not willing to lose any expression
from any colorful photograph
or lost telegram's reflection
in a daily lively T.V. scam
or to leave us alone to believe
only in the garden's primrose
or like Adam's promise at Eve
wish to find the right trajectory
to parachute and seek pardon
over every Eden's word
with an anagram's own history
to scramble, land and disclose;
for poetry is a creative mystery,
being as rambling herald or Beat
or like Dizzy Gillespie
Judy Garland or Ella Fitzgerald
working riffs at dancing feet
knowing at downtown crossing
someone is walking by the street
recalling his own quotes,
another is in a red sports car
disclosing her business notes
in a relaxed new summer outfit
or a guy at the music bar
as a sax or trumpet player thirsts
with his critic's notes,
a starry-eyed beggar is in trouble
offering a gentle curse
when life stops at the traffic lights
at Mondrian orange or red
another pedestrian goes crazy
and manic in a tiff,
someone sees his double instead
another is in a panic to wed,
a brother drops his vegetables
by chance
on the farmer's market table
Esau forsaking his own
anger and defiance
wanting assurances like Abel
for an Almighty blessing
or like David, a poet and shepherd
as a small child had a staff
for his reliance to lean on
we hear his ominous laugh or cry
as we read of the psalms
in a glorious epitaph's goodbye.

A NEWS DAY IN VENICE

Overgrown with tall grass
with pawns on a chessboard
August directs you
to a paper cut and iodine
after reading the Venice news
when laughter from the comics
even fails your words’ mood
a new sky-writing line
keeps me awake as the wings
of the beckoning gulls cover
over my blank verse metamorphosis
and interpreting my day dream,
waiting for the heat wave
to assign you to a bluish sea
filled with seven swans
we're diving off familiar docks
by the flying gulls
in the home harbor quay
near the tourist ships
on a weekend holiday
we survive on the ocean's barge
floating at the highest tide
to encircle my kayak journey
assembling a large tube by my side
from a feverish sandy beach
knowing in the news
in a Seventies time of images
a reporter will publish texts
or a camera showing
their T.V. secret sightings
of us on rope's lorries
back to back
or trying my sorry hands
at poker
as certain as I'm playing
the blues next morning too
so you play your guitar
near a motioning tourist boat
brooding near the rocks
by the jacaranda plants
silence covering us
from the shouting faces
by runners on their marathon
races by as the sunset leaves us
until the curling stars are out
as a my neighbor Diana
the actor in my last play
disappears as a huntress
with her understudy proctor
as the goddess hovers by
covering me with secret kisses
with favors for our late afternoon
reads me back my poem
until it is regretted to be late
with birds flying in the winds
in Venice's twilight of the moon.

_____________________

TRIBULATION DAY

The rose gardens
of our childhood
suddenly disappeared
and the cold authorities
have taken sister away
books lie in carnage
on burnt fields
in a glitter of brown leaves
of hapless remembrance
only the old styles are back
a general in a devil cape
all in black hides
behind the engraved portraits
of my once-lighthearted family
who plays bridge or charades
bleeding by tree brambles
the nights seem lonely
busy doorways of bars
hear assassin's bullets whistle by
a grey van pulling up
and arresting a honeymoon couple
ships of exiles float by
baptized late at night
and a boy poet in the rain
wearing a laurel wreath
from the garden
stands by the wet feet of a sparrow
as faceless men in overcoats
try to drive over him.

ANNA AKHMATOVA'S CENTURY

All her lovers have left her
to take cover
for the underground
only novel thoughts
of past artistic dreams
seem to keep her alive
wishing to harness bells
of Tchaikovsky's 1812
blaze above her roof
needing repair
empty and damp
from a hundred days
of rain in the summer air
with too few birds on trees
crying gulls,
and swans off the river
hide by a refuge and bees nest
near the cold movie house
of this city's glare
where actors’ greatness played
in Chekhov's Three Sisters
as performance art
there is now a motionless despair
in an unfinished yearning
Anna putting aside the world
for wisdom's discerning
in a trampled demolished time
and all her friends
have gone far away,
all the names of the dead
in exile, revolution and war
have taken their call
in a chorus of Da Rimini
so many souls scattered
and slaughtered from immobility
all shadow-days of her century
have left her
the newsstands are empty
except for the Arbat headlines
of crimes against humanity
humiliated with fainting brows
even your son Lev is gone
only the wind gnashes
over the breezes on the Neva
yet on radio Moscow
there is Mozart, con brio
and in words and letters
of her legacy
will slowly do her part.

______________________

GRANDMA MENDES

Perhaps because grandmother
is Spanish
to expect tragedy
is already one
to keep in silence
in this century of Civil War
for a poet to deny
history's wronged words
is to have vanished
by farewell songbirds
when morning wears
her own children out
by her ungovernable piano
in her rented rooms
overgrown with Joaquin Rodrigo
feeling at home
with a Segovian lesson
on her Catalan guitar
resting now in her orange groves
tasting the imagination
of a child's surprise
in her prisms of dark eyes
you expect
to adopt her optimism,
even options of miracles
are the easiest daydreams
above stars in the open canopy
to brambles and trees
under the tabernacles we love
as children to enter in.

JAMES MERRILL'S MIRRORS

The sky and earth
will receive you
no longer living
by inscribing visions
in your poems, lovers, songs
when August days
offer vibes and embraces
over warm nights
planting yourself
in vocal and visual corridors
by repeated believing mirrors
covering green reading rooms
in summer playhouses
workshops, chances of parlors
as intrusive car horns
prompts a dream interpretation
of mood in drawing seances
once of a reborn solitude
with orchestrated
sated trumpets, sad cellos
on an FM radio
driving out his city moods
in pedestrian nature's ways
drawing mature faces
doing his insight business
by boudoir doors
in a full circle at midnight
from the fullness of summertime
in a New York minute
sighing over
a Long Island hammock
pausing on votive stones
charts, maps of stars,
changing all the clocks
teasing all of us
along the world's market places
by sailboat cruises on docks
in the rain-soaked seas’ last floor.

_________________________   

Today’s Middle-Sized-Nip:

IDEAS

When ideas crowd us
suddenly on a beach
or at the supermarket
searching for a peach
or when Nina nods off
kneeling at church
during her daily morning Mass
or at the unveiling of the sacraments
or someone makes
a railing disparagement of God
or at a past or current government
in a master class on Dickinson
or the noon sun dries out our clothes
putting miracle thoughts on the line
and life discloses the good
from all human disasters
as clear as alabaster or wine
or we read John Donne metaphysically
in his metaphors as divine
watching the birds as harvesters
during an August recess
we pick up wood as words
and can only guess
how they become yours or mine.

___________________________

—Medusa, with thanks to today's fine contributors! Don't forget to check Medusa's Facebook page for Michelle Kunert's photos of last Monday's Sac. Poetry Center reading!

What Day?

Cloud Keeper from the Tales of Fae Acting Co.

Time Travelers' Bazaar at Great Escape Games

on Howe Avenue, Sacramento

—Photos by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

—Poems by Allison Grayhurt, Toronto 

WHAT DAY?

    What day will I be like a stallion,
copper-coloured, brimming with
restlessness and love?
    What day will I be looking at the lusting sun
and still remember the small—small
as a mouse's eyes, small like a dew drop
or a sparrow's swift heart?
    What day will I know my luck has run out
and be brave with such a secret?
    What day will the fear leave me
and when it does will I be warm and will the nightmares
limp out to rot in the backyard,
gaining nothing on eternity?
    What day will I lose my shoes,
run my road free of judgements and
the cold ghosts haunting, in pursuit?
    What day will my being sleep,
sleep like a sculpture,
unknowing of hunger, unaffected
by its own inadequacies.

 Stone Keeper from Tales of Fae

A DEAL

He spoke in half-measures,
justifying each moral-ill.
He spoke of relativity and of substance
in the greed of the superficial.
He spoke to me under the rooftops
of the rich, caressing me into believing
that there was no absolute truth,
demanding the fingerprints from my body and each drop
of my worldly self-worth.
He came to me with gifts for my children
and wanted my gratitude eternal, my nodding
and smiling and happy-go-lucky awe of each
of his earthly treasures.
He offered me ease without relief and
a Sunday-morning-only duty.
He brought me down, brought me into
his thick shadow for a day. For a day
he confused my heart away
from its steadfast meat, fragmented my mind
at the feet of his brittle god.

________________________

CHOICE

I will sink your boat and struggle
with your scaly arms.
I will not let your hot sea swallow me
or let the light I earned from the birds
be extinguished in the deadness of your embrace.
One time, I was gentle with myself.
I took the remedy and widened my path.
Then you, with your ashen red-soul minions, ripped
the blood from my throat and I have been lying
here ever since, a victim—not the woman
I was made. I am not fragile, but I am of the sun
and of the darkness and I know the pure joy
of home. I cast you from my heart,
you who stole my fire, left me
weak-kneed and dependent upon an outer outcome.

Guide me down the shaft of this axle,
let my strength rise, dependent on only you.
I am not a single voice, ghostly in the darkness. I am
your servant—let me serve you—release me
from this fatalism, this consuming toxic tar.
Stand by my window, I will fight to save myself—
it will be just you and me at the bottom
of this grave and the demons I allowed in
and allowed to conquer.
At the bottom of this grave, I will cling to you.
Raise me up. I promise, my part will be played—
I won’t let go.

 White Lady of the Wells

NOTHING

Nothing is wasted—not
time deposited into an illusion that
never was, not love laid out
like a sliced fruit, taken, then
spat back out—so utterly tasted and
so utterly refused.
Nothing is wasted, not women
counting the babies that once graced their arms,
now grown and gone, so rarely showing
tenderness or need—
not men who were babes, who were once able
to weep and were able to treat all with
unquestioned equality.
Nothing is wasted, not years spent in ambiguity
walking hospital halls, years of blood tests
and ultrasounds, offering no cure or
nameable disease.
Nothing is wasted—not poverty, not wealth,
not death, not grief.
Nothing is wasted if held out to God
held out, naked on a bed, under
the cracked ceiling.

 Wood Sprite

THE LUMINOUS LIGHT

The settling light
that bends a path through my woods
is placed again into the chamber and
has constructed something miraculous.
It has brought what was needed to the forefront
when the shattered, the held-together-by-a-pinprick world
mastered the decree of reality,
and all around and before was grey
and sheered off wings,
when it was hard to remember childhood trust
that trusts that every engraving on the bark
of every tree is deliberately carved with love,
that the sacred purpose of that love is absolute love, is
the purpose—and yes—there is no other plan but
to return to the moment of sweet creation.

____________________

Today's LittleNip:

There is a tide in the affairs of men, 

Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. 

Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. 

On such a full sea are we now afloat. 

And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

—William Shakespeare

____________________

Our thanks to Canadian poet Allison Grayhurst from Toronto, Ontario for sending us her fine poems, and to Michelle Kunert for photos of the recent Time Travelers' Bazaar in Sacramento. Our Seed of the Week is Voyages, and today we traveled both in time and distance, thanks to these two! Allison was featured in the Kitchen on May 11 of this year—don't be a stanger, girlfriend!

Note also that, thanks to Michelle, we have a new photo album on Medusa's Facebook page: A Hot Night of Hot Poetry, featuring some readers from Sac. Poetry Center's event held in Fremont Park last Monday night. Check it out!

—Medusa

Mermaid Aimee from Sacramento Mermaids

Time Travelers' Bazaar

Where is the Song . . .?

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento

THIS QUIET MORNING—

after the white dream—the sun
not yet filtering through the tree
outside the window, an unseen bird

brightly singing somewhere in
the morning—repeated now for quiet
emphasis on the bluish gray sky. 

And as I record this, the bird stops
singing as though arrested by
my thought—and a hum in the air

that may be the wind or the far
day-sounds beginning—is sounding,
like ocean against shore. I can smell

the salt—I can hear the sea gulls,
lonely as ever, circling and
crying—only above the traffic now.

And the clock says 6:00
though I know it is really 5:00. 
And the unseen bird is singing again.

Soon the sun will fill the dark leaves
of the tree with gold fluttering light
and I will close this poem.

PARIS STREET SCENE, IN THE RAIN, 1882
(After Paris Street Scene by Fernand Lungren, 1882)

I promise not to use the word huddle when I speak of
these black umbrellas, imposing under rain, each taking up
up all the space it can, grouped and bobbing like so many
parachutes in the sea of air . . . the wet streets shining back
at them . . . the huddled people blurring in the rain . . .

funny how I
just now remember
those small blue
bottles
of perfume
that used to gleam
on dime store
counters—
exotic with reference:
Paris—
in the evening—
farther away
than fantasies
of my
pubescent dreamings . . .

funny how I never imagined Paris in the rain—if so—
I would have imagined umbrellas of midnight blue,
reflecting blue-lit cobblestones, with melancholy
music floating all around—blurry and sad—and me,
in there somewhere, under a streaming blue umbrella.

____________________

MY MOTHER, DANCING

My mother is dancing to the jukebox in a
small smoky bar, playing an old song that
she loves.  No one is dancing with her;
she is dancing—in place—to the light of
the jukebox, reading the names of the songs
and watching the record spin.  She has
used all her quarters for this.  She wants
to take the music with her when she goes.

        ~ ~ ~

My mother is dancing with the angels
in a small smoky bar.
One of them has shining white wings
that keep folding
and folding about her like love.  See?
she calls back to me
as she dances out the bright door into
the spinning moonlight.


(first pub.. in Coal City Review, 2007)   
 

THE SMALL WOODS

There is a woods that keeps its wilderness,
a fallen tree-log stretched over a stream
where children like to cross.  Swift water
glints beneath.  Trees fleck golden in the air.

The tree-log settles above the rushing stream.
Nothing sinister here.
Gold trees dapple the air.
The sky is blue.  Leaves drift down.

There’s nothing sinister,
the daylight lasting from dawn to dusk
with sky that’s blue forever, leaves drifting down,
and nothing but play to do.

The brimming daylight lasts from dawn to dusk,
the children serious, centered, alone,
with nothing but play to do.

The brimming daylight lasts from dawn to dusk,
the children serious, centered, alone,
with nothing but play to do—
exploring time, and life, themselves—

serious children.  Centered.  Each alone
on the log-bridge, the gurgling water close beneath
as they enter time—and life—themselves,
the small, still woods keeping its wilderness.

_____________________

THE FUTURE OF SLEEP
(After The Reckless Sleeper by Rene Magritte)

Each night I put my sleep in a little box
with the dreams.
I am not involved.
I do not accept
responsibility for the madness I create.
        ~
Last night I dreamed I killed someone I loved.
That is not my dream,
I cried.
Someone else
is there, directing me.
        ~
Each night I press my symbols into a melting
sleep stone, soft as wax.
I show you
the bruises on my fingers.
Guilt is optional, I claim when I am accused.

LOVE LOGIC

When it came time to love I took its machine
apart and checked for lies, which were vague
with disillusionment, but I believed them.

The machine lay disassembled,
in methodical order : the heart at the center,
surrounded by all the other parts.

I studied them for accuracy :
the nerve-endings raw and the mind
not clearly instructed.

Still, I knew it was reliable :
if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,
came the old reminder.

______________________

O, SAD SONG,

I am unhappy.
Where are you now—
where are your words for me
to sing with my sad voice,
lowering and rising
with every breath
in a tragic hum.
My mirror knows.
I watch myself—
my throat that throbs
in rhythm
with my breathing.
How else can I endure
this feeling but to sing words
written by someone who knows.
Oh, where the lexicon to record
my mood that rises and lowers
with the passion of my heart—
my poor heart,
so confused.
Where is the song for this....?

THE OLD MUSIC
(Our Song)

Let us go by terrible design through the old words.
Apologies and blame.
The pleading.
The heavy silences that are so full of pain.
Your shouting and my response.
Quarrels made of doubt.
The way we can still chisel out
the stubborn stone of each other.
All the trivialities and old crushed syllables
flung together and swept out the door.
The way the floor settles with our weight
of pacing or standing
for such long and ominous whiles
at suffocating windows.
Doors are no good for this.
They lack forgiveness.
Or the car we would grind into service
with a last gesture,
squealing down the driveway to the street.
And the fierce hot eyes
that glare with indignation
at the stiffened back of the other.
How often will we repeat this
before language dies into rusty silence?
And all for what—!
for that sacrificed word—Love?
I laugh at that
from my ultimate stance:
I will not dance to your old discordant music
anymore.

We put the scratchy record back on the turntable
and once more set the needle in the groove,
and we who know this song by heart
play it over and over on our old Victrola.

_____________________                                        

Today’s LittleNip:

BLUE HEAVEN
(for Anna—1929)

The scene is wide-dimensioned—a-tilt, the sidewalk
curving past the lawn back to the house, the house
shock-white—the top floor window open and the
record flying out of it to land at the feet of the child—

just that—no voices come down through the stark-
white memory—the house sharp-white against a pale
blue heaven—the monotonous song of the record bro-
ken, and the shocked house drawing back its tantrum.

_____________________

—Medusa, thanking Joyce Odam for this morning's buffet, and noting that our new Seed of the Week is Voyages. Send your poems, photos or artwork about this (or any other subject!) to kathykieth@hotmail.com/. No deadline on SOWs.

Reaching to Catch the Gulls

Deck Chair

—Photo by Taylor Graham, Placerville

WHARTON IN HEAT
(Edith Wharton, poet and novelist of The House of Mirth)
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

Strange to read Wharton’s poem, “Terminus,”
turn right away from that to her Lily Bart
and see evolution made flesh, one novelist’s art.
Her antennae go quivering equally stern in us
and in old New York; they probe through verminous
strata in rich and poor. Delve deep as the dart
of the fatal chloral now stopping Lily’s heart.
No, deeper, to Lily’s last moral thought—her worm in us.

Fine gradations of downslide, from well-bred to poor,
three years before “Terminus,” a brief clutch of lines
orgasmic and blushing, enshrines the writer’s own lurch,
the clench of a woman under a man in spoor.
The mildewed hotel-bed inveigles odors like vines
into her nostrils, confirms what she thought research.

________________________

ON A LINE BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
—Tom Goff

This tall, oblivious gaoler eyed with stars
must have human form…transcending the known?
If I could just see the operative through bars.
But no bars contain me, just sheets of airy stone.
Those stark, dark backlit contours seem to hew
a strongly feminine swerve out of light and dim it.
Still I spy a fine-boned woman shape, far too
translucent a flesh for mortal skin to limit.

I strain my gaze below the hoyden hair
massed in a rough sweet cap; I’ll penetrate
those eye-stars. No: in her pupils, a naked pair,
myself by myself, two fetal, coiled small fates,
that’s all. Doubly repelled, twice mirrored, I’m sped
back to the lockless cell of my own head.

 In the Woods

—Photo by Taylor Graham

BUT IT COULD HAVE BEEN
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove, CA

A well-meaning
Old aunt gave me
A diary to take
To college.

Lost the key almost
Immediately. 
Roommates all read
It of course,

Said it was all
Lies.  Curious thing,
The people I made up
Said the same thing.

_____________________

EDDIE ELLIS WAS FROM


MY HOMETOWN
—Kevin Jones

For years, he was known
By Guinness, by
The New York Times,
As the world’s most
Prolific diarist:
1927 till his death in
1998. A thick volume
A year, every year.

Needless to say,
He left
My hometown
Very early on.
 

_____________________

PASSOVER

—Ann Privateer, Davis, CA

recalls children's laughter
echoing from the dunes
where pelicans and cormorants
glide on wind currents.

memories pounds in my head
like the lighthouse moan
slumbering ghosts
lament the moment

to mingle with the ocean's
pulse in an hypnotic ebb
and flow, to know what shore
birds know, to dig in silver sand

where spoon bills walk, unmindful
of our migration. I discover
my girlhood vitality mixed with womanhood,
the bitter sweet Passover herbs,

the forgotten cliffs where I once
reached to catch the gulls.

 Shoreline

—Photo by Ann Privateer, Davis, CA
 

Whenever school started in August in Sacramento
   It was often just “too hot”
   Especially if they had no air conditioning—
   Interesting why so many classes had heating instead when it was rarely ever needed!
   I couldn’t yet wear my “back to school clothes”
   and I could get in trouble for having too-short shorts outside of gym class
   In my freshman year the first day got over 100 degrees
   and in that afternoon a P.E. teacher I had told the students to run laps around the football field
   He said something like “You’re all so lazy, get running…"
   The other students and I protested that he had to be f—crazy!
   Did he want us to possibly pass out in the heat?
   (Getting overheated and heat stroke in late summer is a real risk in Sacramento)
   We even found out the water fountain in the football field was totally broken
   which ought to piss off the school football team players in this heat
   and we agreed to tell our parents on that gym teacher who wanted to show a   “lesson” to new freshmen

 —Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

______________________

 In my second year at Arden Middle School
 There were students who still didn’t get into the flow of things—
 They wouldn’t go to school prepared
 and weren’t my friends—
 but they’d bother me in class with, “Do you have a pencil?” or “pen?" or “paper?”
 These kids obviously had their own money, too
 For instance many would go buy lunch at the nearby Taco Bell
 I’d tell them, “You go over to Taco Bell,
 but not to the Payless across the street to buy stuff for school?!"
 They’d do nothing for me, either, to deserve to get something from me
 even name-calling me as a “sped” when I was in advanced classes
 Even if their mothers sent them to school with notebooks with pens and pencils
 they probably ditched or “lost” those things
 and of course they wouldn't do their homework either
 because in their minds it wasn’t “cool” to do

 —Michelle Kunert

Fence Bramble

—Photo by Taylor Graham

DEAR DIARY,

Another weird dream: peerless social gathering
in the formal gardens, all the ladies in war paint.
No one walked among the flowers, or noticed,
over the koi pond, the intricate choreography of
insects skinny-dipping to bullfrog bass and cello.
No one delighted in the full moon light but just
its madness. I woke up wondering, why are so
many flowers born to blush if no one sees them?


—Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA

_______________________

JOURNALING TREK
—Taylor Graham
 
He chases ice cubes around the floor, does bark-battle with empty stainless bowls and garden soaker-hoses (how I loved to play in irrigation ditches!). He found a pair of soft fleece shoes—I’d almost forgotten those long-ago survival nights, bivvied in the snow, till he dragged them out to chew on ancient histories. He wakes me at all hours of the dark to Nature’s calls, owl song or a sudden August breeze, a full moon walking the deck. Before dawn he’s ready for the day. Good morning, Trek!

Splash in the bird bath—
could it be wren, warbler, thrush?
Just the new puppy.

 Brave in the Woods

—Photo by Taylor Graham
 

MATRIX
—Taylor Graham          



I hold in the palm of my hand


messages: Sit, or


Watch. My fingers making wings—


my pup would rather watch the birds


not listening for my


words, letting paragraphs


lie as deadfall.


Another message, my hand


held steady before his face: Stay,


shadow on a stone-
wall, a standing storm.


One sun-streak in dead-leaf woods.


His eyes wise as daylight


watching shadows of my hand.


A puppy emerges as he will.   

____________________

BRAMBLE BERRIES
—Taylor Graham
 
From the sweet
of summer’s tang,
dusty feet

tramp a creek trail
that’s lost in the dim.
Your empty pail,

all spring’s blossoms gone.
A voice says, you’ve seen this
before: night and dawn,

evening settles to snow
or a hard, dry freeze, then May
again as seasons go

from the sweet
of summer’s tang
dusty feet.

___________________

WHAT THE CHARTS DON’T SHOW
—Taylor Graham

This river—boats we run aground on a sand-


bar, or let them carry us a way down-


stream with no thought to current or a safe


landing. Boats of bone and deadfall,


roots like spirit released from soil; boats


of weathered skin, the paper-drafts of poems—


whatever we can find or fashion. Yes, this


boat, whose port- and starboard-lights


got switched in the making, the way you hear


me cockeyed, we can’t decipher each


other for the noise of blood in our ears, water


underneath it all, river leaving its cloud-


land of birth, its springing again


out of mountain, forever seeking delta


and beyond, its release, where it disappears


into itself its poem, ocean.


____________________

Today’s LittleNip(s):

NOT THERE YET
—Ann Privateer

A frozen daiquiri, please.

All we have is lemon ice
and a bottle of whispering
angel rose wine, shall
I bring you a frozen rosary?

        * * *

DEAR DAIRY
—Kevin Jones

Miss-read the phrase
For years,
Always wondering
What to say
To cows.
 

____________________

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

   Bottles

—Photo by Ann Privateer