Seven Stars for the Seven Angels

Fall Fungus

—Photo by Taylor Graham

IN HIS IMAGE
—Stephanie R. Ehlers, Davis

In His image
we were created
from the dust that
covers the earth
His voice,
as soft as a whisper
but as loud and thunder
the sound of love
radiates from every pore
like the roar of many waters
His hair,
white as wool
as white as snow
the purest white
like rays of light
darting in all directions
His eyes,
a flame of fire
piercing and penetrating
the nature of His wisdom
His feet,
a burnished bronze
refined in a furnace
pillars of fire
glowing red hot
His hand,
holding seven stars
for the seven angels
a token of His favor
and powerful protection
His mouth,
a two-edged sword
penetrating deep into the soul
His face,
like the sun shining
on a bright summer day
He is the first
and the last
the living one

whom we will
see on the last day

_____________________

SUICIDE
—Stephanie R. Ehlers

Here as I sit and write this poem
Thinking of all I love and all that I hate
I think of all the times
I used to laugh and cry
Thoughts of suicide thinking it's my fate
Nothing can stop me
Will they care when I'm gone
I should be out hanging with all my friends
I was trapped in a box but now I'm free
Nothing can stop me now

It wasn't my intention for you to suffer
My pain was deep within my heart and troubled head
Comfort comes only with time
I try to repair my life
Despair and confusion left my mind unsure
Help me get through the stares
I am going to feel today, the wondering why
Help me get through the tears I'm going to shed
Help me get through today

______________________

WHITE RIDER
—Stephanie R. Ehlers

First came the rider on a white horse, across the
expanse of sky between heaven and earth, holding
a rod of iron in his hands, a thing of fury and
wrath—and all were judged.  Where is your name?

Fencebreaker Creek

—Photo by Taylor Graham

OBIT 

—Taylor Graham

Miss Hunt is dead, age 92.
Her horses mourn the day.
As shadows walk the barn, they chew
their flake of oaten hay.
Where has she gone, on what new ride?
The waters in the creek subside.
Where has she gone
where has she gone
as buzzards fly their tilty glide?

Miss Hunt is dead. Age 92
is not so bad. And yet
her favorite mount, a roan named Blue,
will nudge the gate and fret.
He'll sniff the wind for weather-news,
a forecast from the falcon mews.
He'll sniff the wind
he'll sniff the wind
for storm that everything renews.

Miss Hunt is dead, age 92,
and will not come again
to post down the long avenue
and canter through the glen.
Now who will quote from Kenilworth
and whistle, tightening up the girth?
Now who will quote
now who will quote
Miss Hattie Hunt has gone to earth?

_____________________

SCHOOLYARD TANKAS
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

All the classrooms shut
for Sunday, children playing
truant with their minds
unlocked. What new alphabets
in the voice of clouds and rain?

And what stranger came
in a black frilled cape by night?
Not animal nor plant, this
life-form like a child’s design
singing to the ears of trees.

My dog leads me blind
through corridors of building,
through playground and fog.
How does she know the answer
without formula or sign?

Beyond the high fence,
cedars let their incense rise
to the wind, their muse.
What name for imaginings
born without a cloak of words?

____________________

Suzannah found a bottle cap
half-crushed
a perfect fissure line
down the middle.
It reminded her
of those good days
her step-parent had
every harvest moon
the treasure now retrieved
makes Jake feel better too
not the dross
he was very often
told he was
repeatedly
except each seventh day
come snow, sleet
or hell.


—Michael Cluff, Corona, CA

______________________

TRASH INTO TREASURE
—Michael Cluff
 
Freddie became a micro-millionaire
after he sold his tie collection
from the late seventies to
early eighties
while Melinda traded barettes
for bars of silver insured by
Swiss bank watchers.
Vincent took his
self-hand inkings
from fourth grade
and now lives
like his rent payments are supplied
by Fort Knox.
Best of all
is Alexis
attributer to many museums
because of her collective
profits pilfered from
chicken and ham bones
found on Three Mile Island
or San Clemente
she and Richard
or was it Tricia
can't remember exactly

____________________

Today's LittleNip:

POETRY'S BIRTH
—Olga Blu Browne, Sacramento

Listen and say nothing as if it
were poetry.

Where memories echo and shadows
dance to the rhythm of the winds.

And morning birds sing softly in the
night hour.

There is where poetry is born.

___________________

—Medusa, with thanks to today's contributors, including newcomer Stephanie Ehlers, who comes to us via D.R. Wagner's class at UC Davis. Welcome to the Kitchen, Stephanie!

—Photo by Cynthia Linville, Sacramento

Be sure to check out Medusa's Facebook page

for Cynthia's new photo album, Coasting California!

Be One WITH the World...

IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER
—Jane Blue, Sacramento
 
The humble gingkoes as in some crucible turn gold.
A calla lily furls toward heaven, the mandarins are ripe.

Let us go into this Solstice with wood stacked, wine pressed,
the nearly obsolete fields surrounding the city fallow. A few

lights against the bleak midwinter, some song. But please—
no glare. This is what you shall do, says Whitman:

Love the earth and the sun and the animals, despise riches,
give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy.

Gingkoes reflect in the windows of a bus, an avenue, a tunnel,
bringing me suddenly here, now. …re-examine all you have been told

at school or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul
and your very flesh shall be a great poem.

It’s December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception,
which is not about Jesus or virginity, it’s about being born without sin.

Yesterday buffeting wind and steady, gloomy rain. Today
liquidambars flare against an azure sky; they resist stripping.

I believe everyone is conceived without sin. The Feast
of Everybody. Red cyclamen jostle in a window box. Low-arced

sun stamps a radiant corolla behind the limbs of a bare ash tree.
Be one with the world, not one against the world, I say.

The gingkoes’ leaves fall in one piece to the ground, enameling
and effacing the lawns beneath them.


(Quotes from Leaves of Grass, the 1855 edition, Penguin Classics 150th Anniversary Edition.)

____________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Jane Blue for her wonderful December 8 poem, which we took the liberty of posting on December 9, since it seems like more of a Sunday poem. "Let us go into this Solstice with wood stacked, wine pressed..."

Wearing Amber and Small Bells

A SLEET OF ARROWS

Stars are my sisters.
I travel over the lifting sea.
I wear small bells in my clothing
That I may approach the morning
Anointing it with this ringing.
I wear amber in my clothing
That I may approach the morning
As one who has come from the onyx halls of night.

And the morning becomes turquoise
And full of rubies, for it is pleased to move
This way and allows me to draw close
To her, to hear her marvelous song
Played on harps fashioned by the wind
And are freely given to this theater of the morning.

I am opal and I am the color of the perfect lake.
I move toward the morning with the stories
It enjoys, hearing of the purple gardens of night,
The green lights of the gates that open the doors
Before morning, while the night still enjoys the
Plays of the light on the rivers of its realms
And rejoices to their winding and unwinding
Across the plains full of fable and legend.

These things come through the sweet
That is dreaming and a comfort of peace
Everywhere.  But this is only dreaming.  It is like a
Child speaking while red armies gather
On the shore, determined to create a red landscape,
Create a terrible death of visions such as these.

A sleet of arrows courses toward us even
As we gather to hear these tales of marvels.
We shield our eyes against the bursting
Shells and close our ears to the screams of
The dying.  They will come.  They do not care
For anything this beautiful.  We hear the beating
Of our hearts before this rage, draw closer to one
Another and pray my sisters the stars will not look
Away from us. That they will somehow know the beating
Our hearts make here is still welcomed in the highest halls.

_________________________

IN THE FIELD

“An infinity of dust,” he says gesturing
With his entire arm, flinging it toward
An unseen horizon. “It is here that
The alphabet finds its magic garb.”

Where we least expect it to be, it will come,
Time to name again, to reach back
Into a mythic realm and extract
What heretofore seemed a useless sound.

It perched on the edge of forgetting
Armed with blue and vermillion lanterns,
With little hope of opening anything,
Least of all a mind.  No formula.

The sky was most accepting.  It has no
Memory, a place of shades and vanished
Sounds, the voices of the clouds and rain.

It is here that sounds lengthen into words.
No one recognizes it.  It could be
A part of evening, part of a long vista.

But it draws a sharp-bladed knife
And begins to cut all dreaming to pieces,
Into something as mysterious as death.

_____________________

THE WHITENESS OF THE WAVES

The cedars agree with the North
Wind.  They nod their heads together,
Rehearse their congress of consent.

A cry as consent.  Whatever the muse
Brings will be the door.  There may
Be the whitest of transgressions
But the sand will color them
And the imaginings of what
Remains invisible will rise
Before us and find themselves
Suddenly named.  That which
Is not to happen, happens.

Long fingers unroll and grasp
Sin as if it had never been seen
Before.  Now we stand away
From the window.  All of this,
The great ocean, the whiteness
Of the waves.

PIER

Go down to the shore.
They were walking off
The end of the pier, splashing
Into the water as if nothing
Was wrong, sinking, not
Making a sound, like dummies.

We had no idea what was going
On.  I suppose everything returns
To the sea.  But this, this was

A spawn, a mass movement.  They
Had been discussing music,
Job opportunities, ways to
Remember their bodies,
Exercise, yoga, meditation.
The whole enchilada,  never
Saw anything like it before.

Then almost from out of nowhere,
A voice covered these people, a
Cloak worn many times before,
By many others.  “Fashion and taste.”
It said and said it again.  “These things
Are things you cannot know about.
These things are things that nobody
Wins.”  Not new information at all.

The stars showed us Andromeda.
The the rising of Venus and a display
With Mars and Jupiter one above
The other.  We found ourselves
Looking up, walking off the end
Of the pier silently, en masse.
Everything seemed new once again.

__________________

A PLACE FOR THE MOON

This path leads along the shore-
Line for about a mile then ducks
Beneath some wind-shaped pines
Into a cove where the moon may
Always be seen as it assembles
Its lines and hoists itself
To the night sky.

Years ago many people would gather
Here to watch these preparations,
But now this place is mostly forgotten.
Those who came here have mostly died
Or have gotten themselves far, far away, no longer
Thinking of this place.

I came here with gifts for the moon,
But it will not receive me and prepares

Its rigging, mixes its huge variety of lights
And sits down for a few minutes
Before it is time to lift above the tree line.

I watch it practice becoming huge then
Diminishing to the much smaller size
It uses to reign as lord over the night.

It flips through its phases, tucking itself
In here and there, using the shadows
To its greatest advantage to remain
As beautiful as possible.  It is
An amazing display and takes place
In that regal silence the moon demands.

After awhile, I am joined by a few
Others who know of this place.
They come for inspiration and to restart
A sense of wonder lost to themselves
In their commerce with the world.

For centuries this place has been
Such.  I have seen the winds here,
Flocks of owls and creatures who
Build the night.  Last to arrive
Are the dreamers in their gauzy
Garments, truly stardust and breathing,
Smoothly and deeply.

The moon begins its ascent.
The night settles into itself perfectly.

____________________

UNKNOWN SEAS

During the day so little
Has happened that here,
At the end of it, I find myself
Full of space where anything might
Occur.  I can feel a keel

Pressing into these late moments.
Time to go.  There is no way
To know what may happen.  Only
Stars.  Hanging overhead, allowing
Sailing as never before.  I may
Speak to the glaze of mountains
Beyond all knowing or just tie my
Shoe, thinking it one great task,
Bound by will to capture
A landscape, the surface
Of the moment.  Looking for
Landfall.  When will I see

You again?  Why bother with
Lost songs that wander that way,
Knowing there is only a brief flashing.

Then, if one is lucky,
An exhalation of afterglow
Before the need to find
New ports and places
Rising from these seas again
Claims me.  I detain myself

A moment longer just
To say, “I love you and will
Miss you.  Think of you always.
Carry all your messages like
Gold within me, a sun
On unknown seas, 

Who to tell?”

______________________

Today's LittleNip:

DAYS WITHOUT SHOES

Blindness may be a virtue, a signal
Made with the snap of the fingers that
Shoots a hole in the dawn thinking it is
A kind of gift from the moon,
The breeze that follows the bullet,
Completely surprised at its mission
When we can no longer hear our own voice.

_____________________

—Medusa, with thanks to D.R. Wagner for today's poems, pix, and LittleNip.  D.R. will be releasing his new book from Cold River Press, 97 Poems, at a reading with J.T. Odochartaigh to be hosted by Phillip Larrea at the Sacramento Poetry Center next Saturday (12/15), 4-6pm. You can also pre-order D.R.'s new book at www.coldriverpress.org/HTML/97 poems.htm

 

Jellyfish in a Vast Ocean

Birds on a Wire, Camino

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

TALE OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL
—B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

Posted on the sky
a body of culled shapes
drifts as long sighs
you read a folk tale
along the tall grass
from sepia heights
of words, mien, imagination
to excite the world.

Here a poet by sea voices
rests long sleeves
on the dunes
entangled in shadows
with Grimm's glasses
on leafy eyes
watching circled birds
overhead with omens
following every myth
and tale logged in nature.

____________________

UBER MEDUSA
—B.Z. Niditch

We're jellyfish
Medusa
in a vast ocean coast
west to east
dangerous water flows
through November
showers,
we're on deck
slow dancing
for sky writers
wanting to paint us
all different 
over rippling rushes
of undercurrent colors
on subterranean space
near time zones
of your lure and lore.

____________________

THIS KID BROTHER
—B.Z. Niditch

This kid brother
of a friend
I saw on a park bench
by Boston Common
in the Sixties
mooching
and mooching off
his girlfriend
which I did not dig
but had indignation
because the woman
deserved better
and liked to hear me
play sax
as the couple became
flower children
and moved out
to Frisco
and I became
in a sense a Beat
and received a letter
from the woman
who sang folk songs
in a club with Joan Baez
saying she had to leave
the guy
who once beat her up
for drugs
and I sent her money
to return
because I worked hard
to earn money
for music lessons
after school
in an ice cream factory
with rubber boots
under my feet
full of water,
the guy had to go
to Nam
and was missing in action
she shortly married
a musician in my band
and last week end
invited me to play
in a gig
when memory
was no fault in my life
and she told the audience
in song and parable
about me.

 Placerville Window
—Photo by Katy Brown

SOME SUNSHINE
—B.Z. Niditch

Some sunshine
when November leaves you
alone at the edge
of the blue lake
by the Savoy jazz club
where you nibble
on memories
of playing sax
when the sound system
rarely worked
and arpeggio notes
return near the swallows
when half of your life
was letting managers
choose what
they want to hear
and you playing along
so you can eat
and have another gig
in the Latin Quarter
when so tired
without the energy
though being twenty
when breath burning
for a new reed
of reddish lips
caused me to blush
from the shore daisies
I brought my first love
during rehearsal.

___________________

VOYAGE DAY, NOV. 11, 2012
—B.Z. Niditch

Shadows flee
our box kite
in the shape
of a monarch butterfly
taking off from the sand
up from Singing Beach
touching the dazzled
wet sky
new life enters me
by the seaweed rocks
in the piratical breeze
as a heavy wind flies
near my sail boat
which clings to me
under the human-shaped
black sun
drawing on the anchors,
losing my appearance
briefly
underneath wavering tides
for a quick swim
concealing my form
as in a mirror
thrashing on sulfur water
on this voyage day
of increasing waves
beating against my body
as I watch six swans
in the slippery lure
pass by us
as the late sunset
covers our reflections

___________________

SATURDAY FISHING
—B.Z. Niditch

Near the shore
of the Atlantic
a poet reels in an eel
on his fishing rod
and he wouldn't leave me
until a big Sicilian man
eager for a Sunday meal
helped me remove
the body of an eel
stuffing the creature
in a straw basket
when time hangs out
on a cold November day
with the cold breath
of harsh waves
nearly washed over me
and the bearded man
invited the poet to dinner.

__________________

Today's LittleNip:

A dazzling poem opens our eyes to sharing deep insight.

—B.Z. Niditch

__________________

—Medusa

—Photo by Katy Brown

Fortunes Still Unfolding

—Photo by Caschwa

I dyed my hair today
to cover brown with gray
ever since those cuts in pay
I need that senior discount

had to hock my crown
and rhinestone royal gown
I cried when stepping down
from king to just a viscount

I enjoyed the ride of course
atop the graceful force
of the world's best breed of horse
it's sad to have to dismount

—Caschwa, Sacramento

____________________

LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF SKELETAL REMAINS
—Caschwa

Teenage girls and boys
relinquish toddler toys
in favor of skull and crossbones

advancing the agenda of pirates
and garment industry profits
are the skull and crossbones

"We are your worst fear
threatening all you hold dear"
silently shouts the skull and crossbones

fine art faces and statuary, too
missing eyes of brown and blue
now skull and crossbones

worse than any great depression
unable to ever change expression
eternal skull and crossbones

they can't give a farmer seed
or comfort those most sorely in need
lousy skull and crossbones

"Till death do us part"
has gotten a head start
with gifts of skull and crossbones

when aliens land their UFO
huge brains won't let them ever know
why all the skull and crossbones?

—Photo by Caschwa

Displaced
too stunned to feel
or to cry for help

one grain of sand
in the celestial hourglass
blind to time

—Caschwa

—Photo by Caschwa

Take away preconceptions
and behold the sleepy
face of someone who
wasn't there before

resting softly on a hard pillow
looking quite content
to bathe you in mystery

—Caschwa

—Photo by Caschwa

On the back of a playing card
is fixed the image of a child
who has not yet blossomed

her fortune still unfolding
driven by unknown forces
drawing poker stares from all

this is more than a game

—Caschwa

______________________

Today's LittleNip:

WHAT SAY
—Michael Cluff, Corona, CA

When I lift
this pen
or fingers
to this paper
or this keyboard
it will astound, shock, surprise, flabbergast
bollocks me.

It hasn't been done
yet.
 

_____________________ 

—Medusa, with thanks to Michael Cluff for the LittleNip, and to Carl Bernard Schwartz (Caschwa), who has been doing some ekphrastic writing (each poem is inspired by the photo that it appears beneath), for the poems and pix!

Try to park in the shade
—Caschwa

Whimsy-Flags and Sombreuils

Fencebreaker Creek

—Photo by Taylor Graham

STORM-BOOTS

—Taylor Graham, Placerville

Oh, the reluctance of rain,
May to November,
as if it lived such an expanse of miles
from here, it would never arrive
in time. And now
it comes in sheets down the cobbled
alley, sending shoppers
scurrying; and on the outskirts,
gouging gullies into bare-slope knolls;
slaloming down
in the rain and ever more
rain, splashing into our little creek,
clogging the culverts
with what used to be treasures;
trash overflowing
so rainfully joyous the road.

____________________

ANIMALS OF TRANSFORMATION

—Taylor Graham 

The vole in the owl's talons becomes
winged, and in that flight—
the tearing apart of sky, in its lighting
again—the vole becomes owlet.

The owl, in turn, turns underground.
Instructed by the mouths
of maggots, grubs, and worms,
the owl learns these blind secrets.

Our human words crawl along
the surface, imagining transformation
into pure idea,
a species that might last forever,

even as we prepare
the study-skins for museum;
the mummies for crypt and temple;
as we bury the dead.

But did you notice a chromatic
change, an accidental;
the nuance of her eyes, dying?
An owl-ray

plummeted silent
through rainclouds, morning sun-
beam bearing her away. Wind in her
body. Wings.

___________________

A FLOOR UNSCRUBBED
—Taylor Graham

Is this life just its sum
of chores? Oh, how they hum
their should's and must's. They're a drag
on morning. If she thinks
about it, the sun sinks
under housework. She'll use her rag
to wipe the window bright
so she can gather light
and fly it like a whimsy-flag.

___________________

TRASH TALK
—Taylor Graham

Two-hour drive to the airbase.
Grab my pack and dog,
lock the car, head for that big bird
touching down on the runway.
But first, find a strip of grass.
“Hurry up!” I tell my dog.
She knows that means business.
She squats to pee. “Toot suite,”
I add, language hardly
mattering as long as words-talk
makes sense to dog. I might
as well say “yakety-yak, take out
the trash,” she'd know
what I mean. Our taxi's waiting—

that C-130 on the tarmac.
My dog's greatest
pleasure: we're on a search!

—Photo by Taylor Graham

MY SOMBREUIL
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

Flower I’ve seen in my own silent garden,
my slip from a Sombreuil rose, petals white
and fingertip-soft as white chocolate, but otherwise
holding soft gold notes, high-climbing and ardent.

Yet you linger somewhere between near and apart.
Do you know your own blush? Are you trying to hide
like a compromised thing in dark green and bright red?
Your shade of soft white should color my heart.

For there is a blush too, not outer but inner,
like snowdrift within you yet keen as that fire
an Irishman once called the kiss of desire:
the cream-tinted rose’s deep delicate center.

These colors, the white of sun-filtering petals,
the dark green leaf-shadow you hide behind,
all that bright red edged like a sundown wind,
that blush mingled with gold, as when flame blends two metals:

Yours are the colors I want for my banner.
Oh, under these stripes I could ride out to battle,
proclaim your name high in the heat of the turmoil.
My secret, I clasp you harder and deeper than honor.   

_____________________

THE EGOTIST

—Maddie Emery, Davis

I once met a man who had swelled up so much that he became an obstacle in everyone’s path, as encumbering as a blood clot, puffed up more than a clogged pore, his swollen cranium an impediment on all around him, like an infected scab, a congested sinus, a stale chunk of meatloaf caught in your throat, sock lint and toe jam wedged in your nail bed, solidified oatmeal and coffee grinds plugging the garbage disposal, he, a saturated heap of garbage in a river which stagnated and polluted the flow of life and language, the human equivalent of constipation, a lump of earwax, and yet still so proud and in love with himself, in love with a man who was nothing more than the calcified soap and hairballs you find clogging the shower drain.

A parasite of creativity, he slurps up praise wherever he can find it, however he can get it, digging through the gutters, licking it off the bottom of people’s boots, and sometimes even purging himself, regurgitating his past feasts so he can lap them up and try to remember the taste. Fat and thick as he may be, he will always be hungry so long as he tries to fill a vessel substantiated only by hot air and stale bile. Stick a pin in his fat head, and I think he will ooze puss, which comes from deep within him and leaks from that raw and swollen wound in his heart, ripped and infected further with his every empty meal and calls itself “helplessness,” though he, ever the non-listener, silences this fear with his cries of bravado and grandeur, louder and louder, to drown it out. I feel sorry for him. He puffs himself up so proudly that his swollen appearance that so obtusely obstructs my mind’s eye is often the obstacle I beat my head against, but this is a wall that can be torn down. Shout as he may, loud as he can, he will be forever overpowered by a whisper that betrays him, and says softly, “I am so, so small, I may never stand eye to eye with my fellow man.”

_____________________

SNOW
—Charles Mariano, Sacramento

Took this morning off to drive to Auburn for my son’s latest court date.  I feel like that movie Groundhog Day, where Bill Murray keeps reliving the same scene over and over.  On the bright side, I always smuggle a pen and pad inside to scribble notes.  The cast of characters in front of the judge and in the stands, never dull. 

A few years ago, a different judge, different room, he swore up and down, this time things were good, the terrible, troubling wounds, healed.  Even wrote…the last courtroom, in my notepad, with a sense of relief.   

Auburn is up in the hills about forty miles from here.  Nice drive.  As usually happens, because our last name is in the M’s, went all the way to 10:30 and still a no-show, so the judge took a break.  I stepped outside and found the parking lot covered in snow.  Thick, heavenly flakes floated down.  I opened my mouth and made a natural snowcone.  Maybe that’s a good sign. 

2 years, 4 months…a white Christmas

_____________________

Thanks to today's contributors, old friends and new, including newcomer Maddie Emery, who D.R. Wagner sends us from his students at UCD.

Speaking of students, normally I don't write reviews if I can help it, but over this rainy weekend I came across a used copy of Love that Dog by Sharon Creech, and it's such a charmer that I thought I'd pass the word along if you haven't heard about it. Creech calls this book a novel, but it's actually a little book of sequential poems supposedly written by a young boy—coerced in the beginning, actually, by his teacher—that show his evolution into a poet as he works through the death of his beloved dog. Along the way, he makes some pithy observations, such as:

…Maybe the wheelbarrow poet
was just
making a picture
with words
and
someone else—
like maybe his teacher—
typed it up
and then people thought
it was a poem
because
it looked like one
typed up like that.

And maybe
that's the same thing
that happened with
Mr. Robert Frost.
Maybe he was just
making pictures with words
about the snowy woods
and the pasture—
and his teacher
typed them up
and they looked like poems
so people thought
they were poems…

As the book progresses, the boy takes on a hero (Mr. Walter Dean Myers) and develops the self-respect and the courage to write about his dog, developing his voice along the way. Creech doesn't call this a children's book, but I suppose it could be, especially as a teaching tool. See www.sharoncreech.com/books/love-that-dog for more about the book and about Creech's other work as a novelist and teacher.

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Today's LittleNip:

 It's storm season again in Sacramento
   I guess it could be worse if there were snow
   but the wind does uproot trees
   with the soil watered down from the flooding
   the streets' gutters get plugged with leaves and debris
   and when the streets become shallow bodies of water
   you might want to wear "waders" even if you don't fish

   —Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

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—Medusa, with our condolences to Katy Brown for the loss of her beloved dog, Emily

—Photo by Taylor Graham

Only Joy

WE CATCH THE BALL OF LIGHT       

We catch the ball of light
under the twelve stars
of some mysterious sky-symbol

and throw it to each other with
such skill that it shines in the air
leaving after-streaks of motion.

Blue was never this kind,
not even the soft blue of twilight,
not even the cool blue of dawn.

Auras of silver surround us,
guide us over the wet sands
by this phosphorescent ocean.

Whispers muffle around us—
those presences again.
Our hands are the

deliberate hands of dancers;
our bodies follow, and we
cannot be silent about our joy.

The hours have more measure
than the moments.
We know a moment of pure religion.

We are bodiless…   Sexless…
Mindless even…
in this simplicity of movement,

this participation
in the surreality of thought…
this fanciful abandon…   This play.


(first pub. in Interim)

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MIND-STRUGGLE   

Tonight, in the tweak of time, life enters
like a thief, taking what I am. Never mind

the hours waiting for my dreams,
the sweet hours of morning with their

energies
and schemes.

I am not willing,
though I doze, and nod, and waken

at moments—lost—and not of counting, 
which is odd. I have a clock and calendar,

I have plans, small as they are,
not like tireless sands of sleep,

mindlessly drifting—over and over,
through the same container that I am.

I free the night,
I free the weightlessness.

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THE BOAT OF LIGHT

Lovers, lie back
in that filtered boat of light
that swirls about you.

Dip your fingers in the darkness
as into the supporting depth of water
under the drifting boat.

Rock to the floating rhythm.
Let the ripples of light move around you
      like curiosity,
let the dark blend you together.

Be the melting.
Be the curiosity.
Be the imaginary boat on the imaginary
     water.

Light is everywhere and is not imaginary.
Darkness supports the light
and is its substance.

You are in the boat of air upon the emotion 
     of water.
You are in a lake of happiness,
these first moments will last you forever.

THIS SAMPLE JOY

As thin as Oriental paper—or a white rose—anything sheer—not melting—not even for loss.

As far away as memory—not to be hurt—like an albino wing that must not be touched, no matter how soft the intention.

Don’t we know how damage happens!

Any mirror will do, as long as we can see what we want—

like now—the kiss you send me—the surprise of it—your shining mouth, sensation of glass.

                                             
(first pub. in Tule Review, 2001)

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THE NATURE OF BEING
Only if the moving waters calm down—Rumi

out of thought-range
eyes closed against interruption

holiest of moments,
self in deep repose

a soft sway—a listen to
far away words of music

who knows what they say
music of mind

swirl of stillness
all forces surrendered

the patient dove releases itself
from your darkness

your small world resumes
original scale

only the feeling of  joy,
only joy.

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Our thanks to Joyce Odam for today's poems and pics, riffing on our Seed of the Week, Tiny Moments of Great Joy.

Richard Hansen the Other sent me a poem entitled "Trash and Treasure", which we'll post along with a feature of him next week. (Yes, there used to be two Richard Hansens in Sacramento, although I suspect you may have heard that Richard Hansen of The Book Collector fame has very recently moved to San Diego. See his Facebook page for more info about that.)

Anyway, let's steal our new Seed of the Week from Richard the Other and write about Trash and Treasure, which reminds me of Christmas, actually—the gifts we buy, the food we eat, the exchanges we share with others… What will your holiday season be like? Too much trash, not enough treasure? What kinds of things are you seeing around you? And is it too late to change them? Send your poems on this SOW to kathykieth@hotmail.com No deadline on SOWs—and no deadline on changing trash to treasure, every day of the year.

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Today's LittleNip:

MOMENTS ~

flurry of snowflakes
    flutter of motioning leaves
         single drops of rain-light

all of these . . .


—Joyce Odam

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—Medusa