Curiouser and Curiouser

—Poems and Photos by Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA

RAIN IN THE MORNING

You slept too long. You ask what time it is, what day and what’s the plan? All the same old questions on a new gray morning, rain at last in a long dry winter. What’s on the news, you want to know? It’s all so far away. Open the door and step outside,

this morning’s blessing—
wild plum blossoms on the bough
bowing down to rain

ENCHANTED FOREST   
       a quilt by Linda George

I know this place, or saw it years ago
or was it just last month? Its details fade
with distance as some trees dissolve in shade
of closer trees, and time that moves so slow
then speeds away. Such guardian trees, I know
they must be evergreen, yet with a glade
of fireweed as purple as if made
for dreaming leaf by leaf as oak-woods grow.
What chance, this place already gone today—
drought or fire, chainsaw? A lost bird’s call
is flown, except to memory where it’s true
as anything that was, and couldn’t stay.
A quilted remnant, layers of leaf-fall
with still some slanted sunrays stitching through.

IT COULD BE A STRIP-MALL

Will they tear the one-room schoolhouse down
or leave it standing to recall the days
of learning letters without cap-and-gown?
Will they tear the one-room schoolhouse down
where pupils could decline a Latin noun
with slate or pen and inkwell, simpler ways?
Will they tear the one-room schoolhouse down,
or leave it standing to recall those days?

CURIOUSER & CURIOUSER

What source the urge that lifts
sandhill crane from stubblefield to cloud?
& what nudges the hawk on fence-
post to ruffle his feathers like an old man’s
hand-me-down coat, the hummingbirds
to hide their iridescence from a cold gray day?
Does moon snail’s mood mimic the tides?
& what’s the mangrove’s secret code?
Don’t you know, curiosity killed
the pelican. Quit your questions, please.
But what fun would that be?

DIGGING FOR GOLD

What does gold-flake feel like
in a pan of river silt and gravel, gold
finding its gravity in shiver-swirl snowmelt
water rushing gouging its way down canyon.

And that absolute dark that beckons
at the adit entrance to a mine, to go deeper;
the pull of void hacked into bedrock following
a precious vein to the heart of mountain.

What’s down there? How did those
old-time miners feel, cramped in tunnels
so far from daylight? Can you
survive your curiosity?

A CAT’S CURIOSITY

You stopped to sniff ponderosa bark;
lulled by sweet scent of vanilla on this fine
spring morning, sunlight filtering
through canopy of pine and cedar. Birds
have paused their song. You’ve come
just minutes from your new home,
what they call the wildland-urban inter-
face. Almost inaudible—more a change
of pressure in atmosphere, or forest floor.
You turn, and there she is, silent
padding on needle-fall. A cat big enough
to eat you. Cougar making her rounds,
maybe fifty-square-mile circuit
of her ancestral range. You’re new here.
Is she hungry? You freeze against the tree.
Can she smell fear eating you inside?
How to measure time by counterclockwise
circling of a cat: does it last an hour?
Curiosity satisfied, or just bored,
at last she leaves. A blessing. Welcome
to your new home; to hers.

Today’s LittleNip:

CURIOUS GUEST
—Taylor Graham

Through the schoolyard walked a living bear.
Who saw, through classroom windows, rare
and wondrous vision? What child would dare
meet a mythic creature open-handed, open-air?
Each imagining what was or wasn’t there.

__________________________

Taylor Graham’s poems are full of questions today, celebrating our recent Seed of the Week, Did Curiosity Kill the Cat? We’re grateful to her for those and for her photos catching the greens and the fast-moving water of our early-spring foothills.

—Medusa

 —Anonymous Photo

Celebrate poetry!

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa.

The Boulder is Us

 Sawmill with a Waterwheel, Bauernhausmuseum

—Poems by Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA
—Anonymous Photos

BY OLD MILL WHEEL THE SHY KINGS LIVE

Too much water drowned the miller,
writes a student, knowing the proverb.
Since folks think “saws” work by sheer reverb,
let’s verify—axioms aren’t just filler.
Ulterior me wants “ocular proof”
folk wisdom’s Erasmus, the eons’ wisdom,
not only Grandmamma’s in Lisbon,
contrary to the noses-aloof.

Too much of water, sweet Ophelia,
Gertrude chants to the millstream-drawn
drowned body, saturated lawn
dragged deeper, deeper and wetter mill-wheelward.
All waters are silk, all millers shy kings,
and Shakespeare sticks proverbs in all his things.

 Dreamstime Custom Waterwheel

DOWN IN THE WORLD

In my time I’ve worked with people
of every definition, the worldly
articulate; the worldless insofar as they may
be or seem wordless, dark moonsides, whole
quadrants of them cratered invisibly, silent.
One microdiamond set of them: the left-behind
relations of the famous. Up-in-the-world
dads or grandads or grandmammas so famed
as to stride cloud, their bones lightened
to ride thermals alongside the vultures. Only
their descendants live down in the world,
dumped off the stern, just missed by the outboard,
shoved down in the muck, abandoned asphalt-sprawled.
Poor carrion their renowned forebears
have for all intents picked and plucked from their
scarcely delineated young bone-systems.
Crushed like Salomés under the Herod-shields
of expectations, wriggling out from under
and moving sideways elsewhere.
I’ve met Edith Wharton’s great-grandniece;
a near relation of Yul Brynner; a many-greats-
later offshoot of Alexandre Dumas: this
branch cast, as Shakespeare would say,
into the heat of the sun—Caribbean sun.
Not one man jack or jill bequeathed one useful scrap of ancestral
glory, those riches of intellect and lucre to cling to.
Well, let’s just say we are all descended
in every sense, we struck-off splinters
of grandsires careless whereto their loved ones’
loved ones might go, all diaspora toiling to infinity.
All of us dropped from a golden cliff, lost to a Homeric epoch
that forever exists to the extent never attainable:
Hektor of the glittering helmet picked up
a boulder, a fieldstone such as two of our times,
well-muscled, could not strain up and into a hay wain:
lightly Priam’s son picked up that boulder
and hurled it at the great bronze gate. The broken-in
gate is us, the boulder is us. This world’s
a down-in-the-world dune, upthrust from the sands
an undeciphered black-figure potsherd, one last
Hellenic chunk of space-alien communiqué…  

 Molino de Agua en Grecia
 

MUCH MISSED

            Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me…
                        —Thomas Hardy

I miss my friend in poetry and music:
you would dart in and out of my life, ten
minutes here, ten minutes there, and when
most urgently wished soft at my side, you’d trick
me, mystically melt back into an old brass lamp.
That lamp itself was too soon whisked away.
I’m left today yearning to tell my fey
young ally of an Amy Beach trio, camp
almost in its tango posture, rhythmic gesture
(would you, sweet, find it funny, roses in teeth;
do we grin as we clench the weedy tough stem shorn
of points, or do we floss with the still-sharp thorns?)…
You’d love the Beach trio’s Astor Piazzola dips
and parlor piano—like neon bandoneón—
pincushioning cello and violin unison…
I hope soon to see you robed in seraphic vesture,
my dark-haired lady of the midnight mists.
But you are upswept into cloud…me, left on earth.
Last night you came nightmare, hair lopped Hathaway
(Les Mis), strawberry-bruised face and scuffed-up lips:
yet you held my hand hard, sweetest of all violists,
sang horsehair to string, then glided how far astray… 

 Medieval Waterwheel

THE TALE THE PINE-TREES KNEW
(symphonic poem by Arnold Bax)

What motivates the tale, not only Romance.
That vacant ache nostalgia plays a part,
yet if these trees bend, their sway’s to the chance
of wind’s disordered dithyrambic start.
Less reason here than in most of Bax’s things;
the passion aleatory as a gale
fanged with xylophone. Unsettling blings,
random as wind chimes, flung from the glockenspiel.
As is his wont, the inmost portion slows;
one dissonant sour melts into each chordal rose.

* * *

So moved is Tania by Adrian Boult’s rendition,
she cannot speak of it: what unstringing glows,
horn, cello, viola, headwind her tear-strewn fission?
Friends think this Bax’s best: he confides: Not true!
Disjointed, I agree. Characteristic rue,
expanse of vista—and vision beyond the vista.
Not flummery, for certain; through thick mist,
a vital essence to sting the warm tears wept
by Tania—but flawed somehow albeit windswept.

Still, hear what the Baxian pines tell, to a sway
dictated much less by the ear-stuffing thrum
of iced windshear: more the inaudible drum
provoking the tree-branch beat to vibrate war.
In each last-needled spar
the limbs’ give, play or dismay,
crescendoing to the fray
clear from Bax’s Nordic forest floor
to the pine bard rhapsodizing outside my door.

 Wheel with Water

OUR WILD ONES
            composed in a drought year

A student reminisces with me at lunch
in the glassy cafeteria around which loom
the Folsom hills: growing up, she would see,
on grasses just south of Highway 50, a small
herd, not of cattle, but horses, the purest
of wild horses. Few enough to count;
she counted them. Five; then three; one,
then gone. Did they starve, were they sold?
What cattle now graze there, we prefer
not to mention, but murmur of the lost
ones a while. We’re looking out on these
expanses, green hills the rainless heavens
have grayed one by one, in small batches
rich with houses, not horses.

And what of our wild ones? Where do they go
dwindling, these lyric horses? Will our wildest
lutenists plant themselves on Parnassian slopes
resembling that brave new Tuscany all around us?
When whole species of feeling are gone, how
is that fair, how can we even speak of
a herd being culled? My student lives
high up in the green uplands of Lotus,
where downhill
what rapid cold water there is
runs Lethe.


(previously posted on Medusa’s Kitchen)

___________________

Today’s LittleNip:

Burnout is grist to the mill. I write every day, for most of the day, so it's just about turning into metaphor whatever's going on in my life, in the world, and in my head. Every nightmare, every moment of grief or joy or failure, is a moment I can convert into cash via words.

—Grant Morrison

___________________

Actually, it’s ALL grist for the mill, yes? Anyway, thanks to Tom Goff for today’s fine poetry! For more about mills and the waterwheel, go to wonderopolis.org/wonder/what-is-a-waterwheel/.

The Spring Equinox issue of Canary Magazine is available now at canarylitmag.org/contents.php/.

—Medusa
 

 The Old Mill, Arles, 1888 by Vincent van Gogh

(Celebrate Poetry!)

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa. 

Circle of Blue Thought

Singular

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

CURIOSITY
(after a child’s drawing)

The red fish fly around the spinning sun
in the painted water:
blue… blue…

truest blue. The sun grows dizzy
and melts at the edges;
the water spins,

until it begins
to froth from the fishes’ mouths.
The red fish swim

—mouth to tail—
to mouth—in a blurry circle,
a red fish whirlpool—

whirl—the red fish are caught—
caught in their red momentum.
They don’t know how to stop.

All is blended—blended now.
Everything freezes
into a churning circle of blue thought.

 Curiosity

QUESTIONINGS

What is this affirmation made of doubt,
all contradiction and page-turning
of ideas and simple philosophy?

Now is the right time
for everything to evolve,
the only sharp edge of decision to allow.

             _____________

One window looks out on the confusion,
harsh winds tearing at the glass, leaves
and birds struggling in the gusts of winter.

How long before shadows lie quietly again
on the ground, like whispering, like murmuring,
held in retrospect to fill the now with such consoling.

__________________

WONDERING ABOUT OUR FACES
IN RAINY WINDOWS

What do we know of rain upon the glass,
our faces blurred and moving in the way
that weeping moves them—the way the
rain distorts our features from within?
Should we look away
                                    and watch ourselves
grow distant to the day—just close our
eyes and feel the actual rain run down
our faces? Would our hair grow wet, and
all the walls and floor, and all the moods
we cannot drown?
                           I wonder if the glass
remembers what it was before it grew in-
sensitive to rain—before it knew the
power it possessed—to mock our brooding
faces with a separation
                                     it controls.
Can glass become the rain? And can the
rain break glass with all its force? And
does the running-sound rain makes remind
the glass of rivers?
                            I wonder if they
know each other still—disparate now,
the way we are—the way we stand here
now—all rained upon and, through our
moody faces, stare out—stare out—
at the moody day through rainy windows.


(first pub. in Poets’ Forum Magazine, 1997)

 Not a Waver

NIGHT EASE
         “The black oyster of night opens
            to release a white moon…”
                     —from “Desolation” by
                    Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni

The countless stars spill freely from the sky. The
white moon stares after them. The cold darkness
pulsates as the sea accepts the stars that pulsate
with sensation as the stars touch the water. There
is nothing lost from the sky—nothing to prove of this.

Children at bedroom windows recite their prayers,
then sleep under the restive sky. The sea makes a
hollow singing that sounds like the wind. The moon
is a luxury tonight—a white wish for those who used
to be sailors. The sky takes back the moon with a slow
gathering of dark clouds. In city trees, nightingales are

easing the hours of the sleepless. 

(first pub. in Poets' Forum Magazine)

 To Be Nameless

THIS GRAY HOUR

Above this sorry gossip-town
this slow emerging skyline,
this gray hour—Oh my love,

where you and I have stolen,
one more thieving time, ourselves,
away from obligations and disfavor

from those who censure us
who own a piece of us
who do not like the other.

Oh how it grieves the moment
to lose its hold on timelessness
no matter how we pray, deny, despair,

and vow defiance. Do we dare
yet linger for the blissful savor
of exotic time together? Look—

the shapes of things emerge—
the buildings and the trees, the very
road we took, unhidden now.

And now we face each other in evolving
light that does not pity our desire
or note the sudden way we shiver.

And now, that meadowlark—
that distant rooster—that crawl
of light your nervous eyes reflect.

And look, the stars have vanished,
and the full but fading moon.
Hold me tighter. Kiss me.
                                          

(first pub. in Poets’ Forum Magazine, 1998)

 Except For Her

                                    
TITHES

She is standing in the way of dying time in her torn
dress, the light behind her darkening her face. She
will not promise what we would have her say : that
beyond her the lions in the grass are gold lions of
heaven who will let us pass to the blue hills where
we can rest.

She says we have to know—have to trust—the
desire of lions—gauge their enigmatic stare at our
hesitation, her children playing amid them, dressed
in the same fragmented light she wears. We are here
for mercy and we bring no gifts. We have only our-
selves, weary and beyond redemption.

All we want is to reach beyond the gold lions to the
blue hills, which she says are full of blue shapes of
wolves who wait for our faith to reach them, and who
will then lay themselves at our feet like answered prayers.

 Loved

TO ASK ABOUT OUR LIVES

To ask about our lives,
come through the door.
Sit on the chair.
Invent a topic we can use.
Ask if we care or do not care.
We do.
Ask us about our love.
We love.
Inquire about
the worst, the best,
our hearts can bear.
Avert your tender eyes.
The way we answer
is a snare,
the snare we make and live in
year to year.


(first pub. in Muse of Fire, 1997)

__________________

AMBIGUITY

Let things become as they will be.
Fact then assumes fiction.
Dry facts. Exotic fiction.

Rituals need substance.
Holy and unholy. Iconic knowledge.
Let us bless. Let us pray.

The answers come as mystery.
Mystery assumes its own necessity.
Thus do we believe what we believe.

_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

AUTUMN QUESTIONS
—Joyce Odam

What is today?
     Today is the little climb
     toward tomorrow.

What is tomorrow?
     The light gone out—
     the last caress of sorrow.

_____________________

Many thanks to Joyce Odam, who continues to be a bit under the weather, for today’s fine poems and photos celebrating Curiosity, our recent Seed of the Week. For more about Arkansas poet/suffragette Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni, go to allpoetry.com/Rosa-Zagnoni-Marinoni-/.

Today marks the Spring Solstice, so our new Seed of the Week is The Death of Winter. Send your poems, photos & artwork about this (or any other) subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com. No deadline on SOWs, though, and for a peek at our past ones, click on “Calliope’s Closet”, the link at the top of this column, for plenty of others to choose from.

A reminder that tonight, 6pm, on the Capitol Stage, 2215 J St. in Sacramento, 916 Ink presents Stones in the Road, the reading/release of their new student anthology. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about this and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa

 (Bob)Cats on Ice

(Celebrate Poetry!)

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa. 

Curiosity, Cont.

—Photos by Katy Brown, Davis, CA

WHAT KILLED THE CAT
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove, CA

1.
Mom.
At my birth.
Cruel, but
Moms always
Seem to know.

2.
My sibs.
Greedy little
Bastards
Anyway.
Ugly too.

3.
Evil neighbors.
A few crafty ones
Out. After dark.
Even after
We go home.

4.
Dog.
Damn dog.
Big drooly monster.
Even likes
The mail carrier.

5.
The Road.
You're always
Wondering about
The Road.

6.
Bird. Big
Bird. I saw its eyes.
Hawk.
Last thing
I saw.

7.
Rooster.
One of those
Dropped off
After a sporting
Event. Much bigger
Claws
Than mine.
But I was brave.
Very brave.

8.
Age.
Look for me
Under your
Front porch.
The warm weather
Will tell you
Just where.

9.
Disdain.
Major disdain.

STATUE OF LIMITATIONS
—Caschwa, Sacramento, CA

Real, live people posed nude in
bright sunlight, exposing every
angle for the sake of art in stone
that would survive generations of
civil unrest, volcanic eruptions,

the plague, and famine, until now
when that artwork has been gathered
together to be fixed rigidly in musky
museums, adorned with labels pitting
the epitome of elite literacy against the

fleeting attention span of snickering,
bickering, furiously curious elementary
school children taken on a field trip in
a stinky, clunky old bus by a young
substitute teacher who had no idea.

I AM ONLY BLESSED WHEN I SNEEZE
—Caschwa

(Response to the phrase “My knees lack cartilage”
by James Lee Jobe, Medusa’s Kitchen, 3/17/18)


There it is!
Poet puts pen to paper
and out comes a message

one that surely needed to be told.

The words form
thoughts that convey
ideas, that trigger a host of

memories of stories below the fold.

But, but, but….
will everyone else already
know what needs to be known

to drive home that important point?

Sometimes fate
just posits us among
ambiguous distortions and

fuss, like flailing limbs without a joint.

 Cool Piggie

THAT CURIOUS CAT
—Caschwa

Snooping unabashed in
places unappealing,
unbridled curiosity
pumped up on its own feeling.

Uncooked meat a treat,
uncouth breaks no rules,
nothing unfavorable here
only some human fools.

Ignoring one’s senses is unforgivable,
unusual is just fine to do,
OK to eye unsavory scraps
as a gourmet feline fondue.

Leave failure to the unwilling,
and dare to try the untested,
everything must be sampled once
until the very best is bested.

 Bridal Veil Falls

Today’s LittleNip:

SORRY POEM
—JD DeHart, Chattanooga, TN

I’m sorry, dear words,
for promising you place
then being fidgety.
Tossing you out.
I’m sorry, dear poem,
for failing to write you
down. You see,
I thought you’d stay
awhile but then you
ran away with whatever
else was in my shopping
list, never to be reclaimed.
Sorry at last for being
fickle with art, instead
of tender, reassuring, true.
Instead of a space
I offered a vacuum.
No amends can be made
now except a new draft.


(first pub. in Poet Community)

_________________

Our thanks to this morning’s fine poets and to also-fine photographer Katy Brown! Most of these photos were taken in the Kieth environs when we lived in Pollock Pines in the early part of this century. Bridal Veil Falls is located between Pollock Pines and Fresh Pond; Katy’s photos of the Falls, both freshwater and frozen, are spectacular. Do I miss the snow? Nope. Besides, we get a dusting once or twice a year here in Diamond Springs—just enough to avoid snowblowers.

As for JD DeHart, more of his work will appear in the Kitchen this coming Friday, March 23.

Poetry readings in our area begin tonight at Sac. Poetry Center with readings from FROM SAC Literary Magazine plus open mic, 7:30pm. On Tuesday at 6pm, 916 Ink presents readings by Luther Burbank High School students celebrating the new 916 Ink anthology, Stones in the Road, which has over 50 poems from area students.

Writers on the Air meets Saturday at SPC from 9:30am-1pm, with featured readers and open mic. Also on Saturday, Poetic License poetry read-around meets at the Placerville Sr. Center, 2-4pm.

And save Sat., April 28, from 9am-4:30pm, for the annual SPC Writers’ Conference 2018! Go to www.sacramentopoetrycenter.com and scroll down for info, schedule, and to purchase tickets.

Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa

 —Photo of Bridal Veil Falls by Katy Brown
Celebrate Poetry!

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa. 

What REALLY Killed the Cat?

CURIOSITY
—Alastair Reid (1926-2014)

may have killed the cat; more likely
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. To distrust
what is always said, what seems
to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,
leave home, smell rats, have hunches
do not endear cats to those doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
much wagging of incurious heads and tails.
Face it. Curiosity
will not cause us to die—
only lack of it will.
Never to want to see
the other side of the hill
or that improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all.
Only the curious
have, if they live, a tale
worth telling at all.

Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible,
are changeable, marry too many wives,
desert their children, chill all dinner tables
with tales of their nine lives.
Well, they are lucky. Let them be
nine-lived and contradictory,
curious enough to change, prepared to pay
the cat price, which is to die
and die again and again,
each time with no less pain.
A cat minority of one
is all that can be counted on
to tell the truth. And what cats have to tell
on each return from hell
is this: that dying is what the living do,
that dying is what the loving do,
and that dead dogs are those who do not know
that dying is what, to live, each has to do.

__________________

—Medusa, reminding you that Bob Stanley will read the work of Mike Owens today in Placerville at Love Birds Coffee and Tea Co., 1390 Broadway, 1-3pm.

For more about Alastair Reid, go to www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/alastair-reid/.

Still in the Game

James Lee Confesses All

—Poems and Photos by James Lee Jobe, Davis, CA

How frail is this life?
It is easy to hide the truth
in the deeps of a closed room.
Ribbons of steel, blood like gold;
how can we fit these
in the hollows of the soul?

Go ahead and stand alone.
Are you frail? Then allow yourself
to fail. When tomorrow comes,
if it comes, start again.
And if, perhaps, tomorrow does not come,
start again anyway.

__________________

The smell of fallen leaves and earth.
The wild and lovely colors of autumn.
The cycle of the world around the sun,
getting farther away,
later to return closer again.
A brilliant plan?
Perhaps,
but if not,
it is a marvelous coincidence.
Do you ever wonder
how much of life is coincidence
and how much is fate?
A circle of seasons.
A cycle of change.
Leaves fall,
then return.
The bear sleeps for a while,
then awakens.
The ground and air cools,
then is cold,
then warms,
and finally gets hot.
Again and again through the years,
through epochs of change.
And we are among the blessed.
We share the blessing. 

(for Doreen Deutsch Spungin)

 Full Moon, North Central Texas

Across North Central Texas, people call them blue northers.
Bitter winter winds blow down all the way from Canada,
racing over the prairie like Mario Andretti is behind the wheel,
dropping the temperature ridiculously far below freezing.

"Cold enough for you?"
"Yup. If this is for me, it can quit anytime."

Life slows down, businesses and schools close,
and God help you if it rains just before the norther hits;
the world will be covered in a sheet of ice.
Power lines and tree limbs snap, the roads are a danger,
and many water pipes give up the ghost and burst.
The wind speaks with a ghostly voice,
"woooo," and you had better get the livestock in the barn.
Salt the porches and walkways, put chains on the tires,
get out the old checkerboard and the playing cards,
and settle in to wait it out, like waiting out a siege.

People in other places tend to think of Texas as hot,
and a lot of the time that's true enough.
You can see a seventy-degree Christmas or New Year.
But the next day a norther strides in and slaps your face,
and everything changes for a few hard days.
I have seen my father put on his wife's pantyhose
under his long-underwear, and two pairs of pants on top.
The cold bites hard on people who are used to heat.

The smart ones are prepared, late in the fall they stock up.
Rock salt goes in the shed, the fruit is canned,
a pig and a yearling calf go into the deep freezer.
A cord or two of wood is cut, tire chains are checked,
repaired if needed, and put in the back of the truck.
The chainsaw blade is sharpened and oiled, too,
for the limbs that will fall, probably right in the way.
Then, when the norther comes like an unliked relative,
which is a fair comparison, they can smile about it.
If the power goes out, they can cook on the old wood stove,
they light the kerosene lanterns and play checkers.
There is hay in the barn and the fences are strong.

"Cold enough for you?"
"Yup. If this is for me, it can quit anytime."

The family is close, and if the cold night is long, so what?
In three days, maybe four, the sun will melt the ice,
and the world will recover, and heal with the warmth.
Time after time, winter after winter, the world always recovers.
And the life we know once again goes on. 

Laundry

This is another day of blue sky and delight.
Are those the voices of my now adult children
Laughing on the sweet autumn breeze?
Is that my wife's tender smile
Above me in the soft, white clouds?
Love is a feather, floating to us from Heaven.
God is the gleam in my granddaughter's eye.
If it all ended to day, what will I have missed?
Nothing.
This is another day of blue sky and delight.

_________________

Soon I will plunge myself into the cold winter rain.
I love the truth that comes from shivering.
Autumn can be so beautiful and deceptive, walking
Through leaves, seduced by color and cool breezes.

Soon I will plunge myself into the cold winter rain.
I am a small thing on a small planet, in a universe
That is endless and always expanding outward.
I love to turn my face to the sky, to the rain.

Soon I will plunge myself into the cold winter rain.
Let the deluge begin. Wash the streets and houses clean.
Let winter come, and be long and cold, wet and dark.
This is the beginning of winter in my own life. 

 Sacramento River, Tower Bridge

My legs are becoming a poker hand that can't win.
My knees lack cartilage, my feet have arthritis,
but at least everything is still down there, below me,
like a pair of threes. I have to bluff to win.
I am not complaining.
Recently I was on the bus in Sacramento,
where all the buses have ramps for wheelchairs.
A fellow rolled on whose legs were shrunken and tiny,
and I could see the excitement in his face,
pleased to be out in the world like anyone else.
And I wondered about his life; how does he shower?
Use the toilet? Does he have someone to hold him,
to love him? Is he always this cheerful,
or does it all get to him sometimes?
Late at night. Alone and suffering.
Life deals from the bottom of the deck,
quite a lot. Life cheats, and wins the pot.
And life can also play fair and still win.
When we win, we need to savor it.
Laugh out loud and buy a round for the house.
Yes, walking is getting harder all the time.
Walking the six uphill blocks from the train station
to my daughter's apartment can set me back a day
in recovery time. But I am walking, not rolling.
I walk into my shower. I walk over to my wife
and take her in my arms.
I'm still in this poker game. 

 Cache Creek, Northern California

 

The city is deserted,
Mother.
Don't lose yourself in the empty streets.
The street signs are all down,
and your feet are bloody and sore.
The electricity has been turned off,
the traffic lights no longer work.
Where have I been?
Asleep.
Not in trouble,
not chastised by some condemning god,
but asleep.
It is time for you to stop running after me.
You didn't need to search for me at all.
I rested the whole night through.
Your worries do not inspire fear in me,
and even if they did,
there is little comfort in a smothering love.
Walk back the way you came,
and I will do the same.
Life is fire,
earth,
air,
and water.
Family is blood.
Fear and danger could never break the bond between us.
And I was never afraid anyway.


(for Nena, my mother, 1927-2013)

_________________

Today’s LittleNip:

May I be spared the illusion that even one second belongs to me.
I own nothing.
There is only that which I do, and that which I don't do.
The rest is an illusion.

—James Lee Jobe 

_________________

Thank you to James Lee Jobe today for some fine Saturday musings as we head into the weekend!

This coming Tuesday, 6pm, the non-profit literacy program, 916 Ink, presents Stones in the Road, a reading by Luther Burbank students celebrating the release of their Stones in the Road anthology. Capitol Stage, 2215 J St., Sac. For more about 916 Ink, go to www.916ink.org; for last Saturday’s Sac. Bee article, see www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article204773374.html/.

—Medusa, wishing you a Happy St. Patrick's Day!

 —Anonymous Photo

Celebrate Poetry!

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa. 

In The Beginnings

Mona by Lady K

—Poems and Visuals by Smith, Cleveland, OH

IN THE BEGINNINGS

The Void rose in the unrisen
and after creating black and grey
and fog and slow and fuzzy
and endless
and sad
said
"Let there be coffee"
and life began

 Night Mood

HEISENBERG’S UNCERTAINTY

Start and stop
is most of what we got

I mean
there's direction or speed
want and need
hole in bleed
you know
the knot in not

Which leaves the cat dead
or alive
and we here
or there
(but only if someone's looking)

Best guess less is more more or less
and all illusion anyway
weighted dice from the bones of the dead

 Skull Light

BOOKING THE DEAD

Early 1950's mom gave birth
to child three
a continuous squawl
who cried 9 months and died.
Next morning before school
I looked in on him
saw a live baby unknown dead.
When I got home and was told
I tried to re-see with new eyes
but it was after fact
dead baby gone
no goodbye.

33 years later 30-year-old child four
blows his brains out over
too much speed and alcohol
woman trouble
and having to carry his work partner
our failing father
whose polio-shriveled leg is crumbling
from 50 years of brick, block, and stone.
Pappy's call wakes me.
"Vince shot himself."
"He's okay isn't he?"
"No."

Two years on Pappy died
wasted from missing his suicide son.
I flew out before he went
to see a 1/3 smaller once proud man
carried to the toilet
wiped when done.
He was good, kind, patient.
I loved him but left home at 17
so didn't know him.
Mom called two weeks later
with he's dead don't come out
nothing to be done.

Moved her in with me
for final 16 years of her life.
When she went
she was home holding my hand
slipping in and out of consciousness
stopping breath
restarting
again and again for hours.

One unseen disappeared dead baby,
two long distance phone calls,
and one holding hand
slow taking her through passage...

Take door 4 every time.

 Dream Rose

FAME & FORTUNE

Walked the sand,
water washed my steps away.

Went on hightop dirt,
wind erased my strode.

Climb to mountain top,
rock won’t take my print.

 Nipplemoon

DYSTOPIA

I'm zero, not one
off, not on
I live in dis topia
I live in dat topia
hoping for a topiary
or a top hat
to top this
top that
while you go round the block
reverse your path
forget the underground
cuz you're above that
stick right foot in
speak with forked tongue
and whatever you do
dumb down the young
because they're seeing truth
you don't want known
your money tricks
hating skin not your own
and barefoot women
are starting to wear shoes
staying out of the bedroom
with empty wombs
so I gotta find a way
to live happy in sad
gotta go good
as the rich run bad
mean little pricks
with hands roaming wrong
hiding accounting tricks
far too long
time for the tar
and feathers too
pitchforks and torches
under full moon
ride em on rails
to the edge of town
tie em to ant hills
and never look back
better the gene pool
by removing the scum
for the core of conservative
is con damn dumb

 America 666

NRA

Bullet in chamber
finger on trigger
child in ground

 Plot to Get Whitey

WE ALL FALL DOWN

The slo-mos go slothful, slow,
the greeders grind in endless gruel,
the stealers stack their stolen deck,
the bullies bruise below.

Heading down the professional line
it's Entropy by a stretch.

I put my foot in the sock,
the sock in the shoe,
the shoe on the ground,
and take a step...
to where?
Or why?

It's one hasty constructed lie
from me for you,
from you to them,
for them from them.

Do you read my lie and believe?
Should I return the favor?
Or at least pretend?

It's worse than Plato's cave.
We are our shadows
on walls not there
in light unlit.

I ache from wake,
work for woke,
rather roll joints than rock,
and Tantalus can keep his sour grapes.

Every day I seek a seed
to bleed into a koan,
direct roam to unbuild day,
and look for the me I don't see
in the mirror.

Sacred lies keep lives alive
for the sucker minute born.

 Style and Structure

THE NEW DROOL BLUES

I got the blues
Baby needs new shoes
Old shoe won’t do
Tired of this fool
Gonna find new drool

She's looking to see
What’s left of me
Saw she made her mark
I’m cold and dark
Baby spanks new spark

Oh I been to school
And I paid some dues
I know who fool
Whose who using who
Baby seeks new tool

Part and partial pain
Part hurting again
Part hurting as end
Never making amend
Never saying her sin

And she'll never stop
Doing her dirty bop
Till sagging flesh drops
Or someone calls the cops
Messes up her ops

Nothing I can do
Too too her fool
Apply my own eye wool
I’m be gone butt drool
Dead dried toad tool

She's moving too fast
Her next piece of ass
Her house made of glass
And her empty past
I'm yesterday's grass

I'm old going slow
No goosing my glow
Ain't got enough dough
Ain't cool guy to know
She needs be I go

She’s seeking new beats
New trickings to treat
New sauces to heat
New meat to repeat
Old dick to delete

So I got me these blues
Baby needs new shoes
Old shoe won’t do
She’s tired of this fool
Gonna find her new drool


For a music/mix/recording/sound collage by Peter Ball, word&voice by Smith, go to www.reverbnation.com/mutantsmith/song/16103843-new-drool-cool/.

 Serial Sunrise

Today’s LittleNip:

Winter's discontent
assassinates summer
seeds spring
   
—Smith

_______________________

Our thanks to Smith today (Steven B. Smith) for some lively Friday poems and pix, and to wife “Lady K” for her contribution, too! Serendipitously, Smith mentions curiosity and cats, our Seed of the Week.

Tonight, Sac. Poetry Center presents Angela James, Charles H. Halsted and special guess Mary Zeppa at the “Random Friday Series”, 25th & R Sts., Sacramento, 6pm. Then at 7:30pm, Linda Schiller and Beth Suter (plus open mic) will read at The Other Voice in Davis, Unitarian Universalist Church. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa

 Other Door

Celebrate Poetry!

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa.