Lord, Greet Us With Fiery Words...

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA and

Photos by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

THE TRASH COLLECTOR

No one ever suspected
the trash collector man
of anything
but the utmost character
who loved flowers
and perfume
more than his time
on earth's dry land,
as he puts lilac flowers
in the cans and bins
after his pick up
at all hours, never napping
from dawn to afternoon
always had win-win smile
or a joke or laughter
it was to himself at hand
that he was after
if he neglected his work,
yet some vocal youngsters
from the neighborhood
teased him as he drove by
in his truck named
on the awning "The Olympian'"
and called Zeus out
for his quirky vocal
back-slapping remarks
causing a morning rumpus
he was teased as
a strange foreigner
"the knee-jerk gardener"
yet all the bark
from tree limbs around
piles of bottles
found from the sea floor
radios and T.V.s
or any old car technologies
even books of knowledge
or five-starred catalogs
from local colleges
shards, swings
all the things
from our back yards
deemed superfluous
prison paper weights
or war paraphernalia
that no one wanted
any more
were carefully
driven away
and in its place
jonquils, crocus
newly risen hosed roses
and peacefully
scented dahlias.

_______________________

WAITING FOR

When the flower pot
rises anonymously
at our play
in Beckett's dawn
with Vladimir
as Estragon complied
to their pleading lines
from the trash trails
puffy and tumefied
in the sun
after planting what ails it
on each perishable spot
yet still smooth to reach
as Act One nails it
from a not-forgotten poet
and the scene
lubriciously moves
posthumously,
we were thinking
for hours of that crocus,
and jonquil
had ominously died
from its own shadow sill
without still water's
drinking power
yet a flower
quietly emerges
from a valve or pipe,
no testimony or money
any regrets or secrets
hidden in the can
from any type of cash
yet from yellow bowers
boughs and shelters
bouquets are restored
from the trash
helter-skelter
as gals and fellows cried
at the miraculous hand
of Pozzo
as we waited for Godot.

SEVEN THIEVES

Seven mountain thieves
not convicted for any crime
escaped before anyone
believes they did any time

They were orphaned
moored along the sea
hungry and thirsty
lured to a basin country

A poet tourist shared
with them his bread
a lawyer insists,
has their rights read

by a fountain lighthouse
they fed on olive salads
in love songs hills above
playing guitar ballads

Cowardly rumors pardon
the tallest tales of trees
with garden elegies
ate at their invented cheese

They dance for hours
never strapped for cash
had a stash of flowers,
it was said, by the trash

Longing for land
shipwrecked on the ocean
wherever they travel
always a commotion

Exiled from a colony
between the Devil's Isle
these clever gents and ladies
were never sent to Hades,

Yet there was a trial
of long suffering
on their forgiving faces
yet lent special graces

As a musical band of seven
with lyrical smiles as one
preparing for heaven
living under the sun.

_______________________

CAST PARTY

Expecting a sudden rain
on the sleepy deck
which does not happen,
oysters served
with champagne
in the sunshine
after the cast party,
the unrivaled wind on
our shoulder blades
a mixed bouquet
on the head table
by spent dark waters
a voice still echoes
from a trembling coast
over makeshift places
the now mirrored actors
offering autographs
climbing aboard
unveiling memories
and good laughs
snapped by the press
in a circle of lights
as hours of inward
excitement transform
our abandoned images
on the port of call
shivering in the breeze,
flowers still are herbal
after they rise
on the ship's bow
auspiciously nestled in
the shadow of ashes.

MARK STRAND'S DAY
(birthday, 4/11)

Never forgetting
Mark Strand 's third lecture
on comparative literature
at Columbia
from a live poetry read
in a surrealist expression
from his shoulder blade
to his voiced impression
piercing the stillness
of nature's narrative
mature clever words
of creative great splendor
he never lost his accent
from Prince Edward Island
and vividly speaks
in Canadian whispers
of sail and wind breakers
boats, the Bay,
hills, meadow
and our city's first snow
you are fond of Ernst,
Magritte
and Giorgio de Chirico,
we poets
respond to secrets
any signs of an April's lark,
round birds and sparrows
in Central Park.

_______________________

Today's LongerNip:

APRIL FOOLS US

T.S. Eliot we recall
in the famous Wasteland
that "April is the cruelest
month of all",
but she may yet fool us
in our solitude
running away
from dark attitudes
of winter rain and snow
beating down
from the mountain
we may soon drink
from the valley's fountain
when east winds finally
are dusted away
over the Cape sands
from the reeds and sea
offering us a spring nature
when clouds disappear
like funereal weeds on earth
in a long-shrouded land,
Lord, greet us
with fiery words
thinking of Hopkins,
Keats, Wordsworth
and a flower-like countryside
full of gentle birds
just for today
the Eliot I've taught
for years is put away
from my nostalgia
until marvelous May
fills our phantasmagoria.

__________________________

—Medusa, with thanks to today's contributors (from both sides of the country!) and a reminder that tomorrow is the deadline for the next issue of Rattlesnake Press's WTF, edited by frank andrick. For details, see rattlesnakepress.com/wtf.html

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads

POETRY
—Marianne Moore

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this   
                         fiddle.
   Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers
                         in
      it, after all, a place for the genuine.
              Hands that can grasp, eyes
              that can dilate, hair that can rise
                        if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they
                        are
     useful. When they become so derivative as to become
                        unintelligible,
     the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
              do not admire what
              we cannot understand: the bat
                        holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse talking a roll, a tireless wolf
                       under
     a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that
               feels a flea, the base-
     ball fan, the statistician—
           nor is it valid
               to discriminate against "business documents and

school-books;" all these phenomena are important. One must make
                      a distinction
    however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result
                      is not poetry,
    nor till the poets among us can be
         "literalists of
         the imagination"—above
               insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads in them, shall we
                      have
    it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
    the raw material of poetry in
         all its rawness and
         that which is on the other hand
               genuine, then you are interested in poetry.

____________________

—Medusa

What Does Eternity Forget?

Ladybug Canapés

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

GOLD AND SILVER

History lines up its legions of men.
In the caves and sepulchers, millions and
Millions of skulls have been abandoned
By the spirit.  The boats ground
Away in senseless battle and forgotten
Empires.  All the cities have left
This earth long ago.  There are a few
Stars on distant islands.

What constitutes a caress?
What does eternity forget?
The rain always continues somewhere,
Much as a dream chooses to function.

An amorphous light begins within
Our bones.  It is full of gold and
Silver, wonders all, as are these
Sunsets, these cool epics.

I reach out to touch your hair,
Your skin, your rings of desire.
I am surrounded by great tigers.

Wall, Locke

THE GRASSLANDS

When we went into the grasslands
The grass was so tall it was impossible
To find any camps at all.

"Night," said Ramon. "Wait until Night."
The camps became visible but were still
Difficult to approach.
By the time we arrived
All of them were gone

"Make palm prints in the sand
At every campsite," said Ramon.

That night we ate peccary that
Suddenly emerged from near where
We had established a center.
"We will see them tomorrow," he said.

Sure enough, they had surrounded our
Camp during the night.  We were very
Happy to see them.  They looked
Like a bunch of poets trying to outdo
Each other with a magnificence
Of language, dances, performances—
The heart above everything
Beating, beating, beating.

 

Doorway, Locke

A SKIN OF NO CONSEQUENCE

Midnight aches its way in.
My body doesn’t want to know
Anything more today.  Sorrow is inexhaustible,
Brings its own drums, walks around
With a huge abundance of time.

I have a hard time recognizing my brothers.
The labyrinth reshapes itself
Every ten steps.  I am an echo.
A skin of no consequence
Stretched over an alphabet
That wanders off into Milton
Or Dante or Borges or stomps
Into Patrick Grizzell and I can
Feel how precious everything really is.

I can see midnight sitting at a small
Table near the bar, sipping whiskey.
I am too slow to greet it.
It begins to disassemble itself
Like a violated country where
I have been forced into conversation.

 Kim's Yard
 

AN OUTGOING TIDE

The tide moves back
To speak to the ocean.

Oh but the sea has no mind.
There are too many details.
You are at every shore.
There are so few steps
Worth noting.  Everything
Is expected.  These tides
Are their own clocks.

Time is unconscious.  The tides
Have their own little baskets;
They forget there are fish
Swimming through them.

We will never know all
That is their opium.  There are
Too many waves,
Nothing is engraved upon the sand.

The best we can refine
Is that we are not yet dead.

 Wisteria, Locke

THE GIFT

The rain was small.
We almost didn’t notice it.
We were looking for the moon,
Maybe a star or two, but certainly
Not this kind of darkness.

When we realized we were
Actually inside the box, things
Became clear.  We were the gift.
Our eyes had been closed too
Tightly.  I ran my hands over
Your face and felt your eyes
As they opened.  There was a wind
On our faces.  One or two stars
Began to fool around with us.

I don’t know where the song
Came from, but by the time
We could hear it well,
We knew all the words.

 Patrick Grizzell (right) and Proxy Moon

playing at the Shine on Wed., April 9

—Photo by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

FOR PATRICK GRIZZELL

There is a beautiful song coming out of you tonight, Patrick.
The swirl of memory comes into our cells totally uninvited
And renews those chemical trails to our brains and our emotions.
We do recall the directions, but the buildings are gone, the people are gone.

The perfection of memory residing in a few neurons
That may at any moment be eaten by an errant protein,
And there we are, sitting, trying to get the old man to have a sip of water,
Hoping he will tell us more about it.

He can show us his old rifle,
What remained of the path through the woods
To the edge of the meadow, but there is no longer any lighting.
Birds fly from one end of his mind to another.
He watches them and is unable to recount
The steps that brought him to this place.

There seems to be no room left for time any longer.
It could be now, or that last minute, or something
Seen from a car window when he was in high school.

We can kiss his forehead.
We can listen to the tuneless singing.
We can speak to each other,
Pretending to tell the stories.
All of them.

________________________

Today's LittleNip(s):

TOOL BELT

I had gone into the room
To pick up my tool belt and leather jacket.

Everything in the place
Had her name on it.

             *

THE RAIN STORM
 
We're going to get drenched
In this storm, I said.

We had better take off
Our clothing.  But it was
Already much too late.

______________________

—Medusa, reminding you that D.R. Wagner will read today at the Shine Cafe, 1400 E St., Sac., 2-3pm.

Springtime

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

Seize the Lightning

 —Photo by Robert Lee Haycock, Antioch

A NATION WRAPPED IN STONE
—Roberta Hill Whiteman

              for Susan Iron Shell
 
When night shadows slipped across the plain, I saw a man
beside his horse, sleeping where neither man nor horse
had been.  I've prayed
to a star that lied. The spirits near the ceiling of your room,
did they leave on horseback, turning dew into threads
by moonlight?
In wild stretch of days, you didn't fear ashes or weeping.
We, left behind, can't warm sunlight.
Isaac, you left with the wind.

The chokecherry grows slower. I held your trembling wife,
and windows trembled in our north room. The creek gnaws
remaining snow. Our blood runs pale.
You taught us to be kind to one another. Now we wake, questioning
our dreams. Nighthawks in warm fog. A nation wrapped in stone.
What do nurses
know of hay, of scents that float broken between canyons,
of strength in a worn face? You wept love, not death.
Around your bed, owls stood.

The north wind hunts us with music, enough pain
to set fires in ancient hills. West winds growl
around Parmalee.
The tanned, uneven banks will hold more frost. Unlike dust
we cannot die from tears. You've settled
on a quiet prairie. Shrouded eyes
in thickets give a reason to contain
this heavy rind. We are left with grief, sinking boneward,
and time to watch rain soak the trees.

______________________

DEPOT IN RAPID CITY
—Roberta Hill Whiteman

When the last bus leaves, moths stream toward lights
like litter in wind. One by one, bulbs dim. The ticket man
locks up, talks of ancestors pale from dreaming.
In this corner, sleep is ugly, the moon vigilant.
Here, hatred taps along sidewalks. He dreams
of wild buses and the one percent he cannot see. You look
down corridors, where building edges whirr at the night,
to find an aged Indian gnawing glass.
Businessmen rub the medicine stones, and wear
crisp smiles that wrinkle in daylight. Muffled,
the heartbeat continues, abandoned stars haunt
the reservations. Clear as tracks,
are callings and cold signals on the wind.

_____________________

LINES FOR MARKING TIME
—Roberta Hill Whiteman

Women know how to wait here.
They smell dust on wind and know you haven't come.
I've grown lean walking along dirt roads,
under a glassy sun, whispering to steps.
Twenty years I've lived on ruin. When I escaped
they buried you. All that's left is a radio
with a golden band. It smells of heat,
old baseball games, a shimmering city inside.
The front door has stopped banging and the apple tree
holds an old tire strange children swing in.

This house with broken light has lost me
now when the sweet grass dries. Its scent lingers
in the living room among sewing and worn-out shoes.
In your silence, I grew visions for myself, and received
a name no one could live up to. Blood rises
on hot summer wind, rose petals trickle
past rough solemn wood. Hear the distant sobbing?
An Indian who's afraid of tears. She charms her eyes
to smiling, waits for the new blue star. Answers
never come late.

Look west long enough, the moon will grow
inside you. Coyote hears her song, he'll teach you now.
Mirrors follow trails of blood and lightning.
Mother needs the strength of one like you. Let blood
dry, but seize the lightning. Hold it like your mother
rocks the trees. In your fear, watch the road, breathe deeply.
Indians know how to wait.

_____________________

—Medusa

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock

Happiness Is...

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

I BELIEVE IT WAS A PAIR OF CASSIN'S FINCHES...

checking out the interior of the metal
awning outside my bedroom window
a few weeks ago.  My dog Barkley and I
were hoping they’d stay, but they moved
on.  Besides the stunning visual of their
raspberry heads and chests and rumps,
their birdsong fascinated us. This lead me
to wonder…

Do birds speak in iambs and trochees?  Do
they know the easy craft of onomatopoeia
with their chirps and caws and kee-kee-kees?
—the renga of five lines answered back by
the next avian poet, and the next, until
the whole neighborhood is one big rap
session?  We could take a lesson from these
boisterous bards who trill on, rather Gloria
Patria…  warbling simply for the sake of
free expression.


—Carol Louise Moon, Sacramento

(first pub. in Poetry Now, May 2012
under the pen name, "The Lunar Lyric")

_____________________

WRITING BENEATH THE SURFACE
—Carol Louise Moon

Intent on gleaning secrets I could see
my own reflection, instead of the
marine life in this tide pool, its surface
intoning, pulsating—insisting on its
own rhythm.  It insinuates my face
between its depth and my inquisitive
mind.  In this instant, I realize I must look
beyond surfaces, incessant distractions.
I plunge my face into the pool, invasive
in my efforts to discover its unique
interpretation, its immense treasure—
its soul.


(first pub. in Poetry Now, June 2012
under the pen name, "The Lunar Lyric")

______________________

LAST NIGHT
—Ann Privateer, Davis
 
last night I slept with a spider
all night long, we fought to see
who would control the bed

sheets and blankets slung off
then on to dangle precariously
we two trying to sleep

each in our own little web
strangers at first but later
no worse one from the other

both cursed to acquire rest
one with eyes open, the other
unable to mesh with eight legs.

  —Photo by Ann Privateer, Davis

PARADE
—Caschwa, Sacramento

The meek man stood
At the lectern hoping to
Assimilate the thunder
Of discovery, as if perched

High in a crow’s nest
About to shout his greater
Vision to an eager audience
Diva center stage

His shrill voice more explosive
Than a firecracker, like putting
A bullhorn to a ditch digger
It is now time to speak

He summons his courage
Readier than ready ever is
And reaches for his tongue
Which is hopelessly tied

_______________________

FLOWERS THAT FESTER
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove

Dude never had much time for me
In high school, but I had room
In college, and he’d stay at
My place.  Toilet paper and
Charm exhausted, he’d
Move on to another friend.

Nobody really liked him, most
Thought he was a narc.  And
Everybody thought he was
Somebody else’s friend.

Years later, Donnie, where
He’d stayed last,
Spread the papers out
On the bar: letters from
Bobby, from Chavez,
From McCarthy, from
McGovern,
Recommending him.
And at the bottom,
Soaking up beerspill
Was the acceptance to
Harvard Law.

We looked, shook
Our heads.  Bartender
Smiled, wadded it all and
Put it in the trash bin.
He knew, we all knew,
The guy
Was an asshole anyway.

______________________

Today's LittleNip:

There once was a dachshund, so long
He hadn't any notion
How long it took to notify
His tail of his emotion;
And so it happened, while his eyes
Were filled with woe and sadness,
His little tail went wagging on
Because of previous gladness.

—Anonymous

_____________________

—Medusa, with thanks to today's contributors, including Debbie Guerrette, who some of you may remember from her time in Sacramento poetry workshops before she moved back East. She sent us the LittleNip, saying "Happiness is a warm poem". 

Also: two more poetry events in our area today: Brian Blanchfield will be reading at UC Davis today from 4-6pm at Voorhies 126, A and 1st Sts., Davis. And ElectroPoetic Coffee will be featured tonight at Poetry Unplugged at Luna's Cafe, 1414 16th St., Sac., 8pm, hosted by Goeffrey Neill.

Mallards at Sierra Arden Church Food Bank Garden

—Photo by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

The Red Part of Night

Thermal

—Photo by Taylor Graham

PHASE OF THE MOON
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

He was riding the red part of night,
a dream that was too hot
for the moon. The moon didn’t
even show on the screen, it was broken
by too much red-energy. It hung
blue above the roof, hiding
from dreams. Was this dream—these
parts of dreams slipping in
and out of sleep—making a bomb,
or rockets? Too much hot
metaphor sneaking into his unconscious,
tilting the moon out of balance.
He woke and, yes, the first streaks
of sun knifed red through the curtains,
slicing the blue left over
from moon. The moon was gone;
sharpening its sliver-
blade, its secret smile. Tonight
it would be fuller; his dreams running
blue as horses star-shod
across the cold of a night pasture.

 
______________________

THE LAST PIECE OF LAND
—Taylor Graham
 
You’ll pass a lot of trashed flowers
to get here. The path meanders in skid-
trail mazes marked by surveyors’
stakes. In the midst of meadow, a man-
hole gives access to nether worlds.
Atop that hill, a cell-tower pine
reaches high for global messages.
That simple acorn cup rests beside
a mushroom (or is it toadstool?)
that’s fed on chronic diagnoses, made-
for-TV versions, and the testimony
of ex-wives. Don’t dare to pick
that daisy, it’s the last of its kind.

______________________

FLOWERS IN THE TRASH
—Taylor Graham

A bunch of cornflowers blue
as childhood—my dog ignores them,
keeps on searching among all
the spoiled, disposable refuse of a city.
Banana peels, cartons of spilled
milk. If she weren’t on duty,
she’d snatch up that half-eaten
bologna sandwich.
A headless doll. Red sweater
unraveled. So much leftover human
scent, but my dog knows
the one she’s looking for. Rosie,
six years old, last seen
playing in her own front yard.
If she’s in this heap of trash,
she didn’t come on a lark; some-
body dumped her.
I watch my dog stepping carefully
over discard. If I hope
hard enough, will we find Rosie
somewhere else,
maybe picking buttercups
on a green hill where a little girl
might wish to be?

_______________________

BEFORE THE SHADOWS SOFTENED
—Taylor Graham
 
No sound in the morning, nothing stirs.
But the young dog listens
as if to some peddler of visions—
wild turkeys set to soar over fences
if she so much as twitched
an eyelid; the worm that tunnels
through heart-of-oak; a lamb growing
inside its wool. She sits
motionless, every fiber racing.
Shadows are too soft for her,
she lives in the skin of an animal.
There is no switch for the spirit’s light.  

Loki

—Photo by Taylor Graham

AFFIRMATIVE STATEMENT PAPER
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

                      for Nora


I’m tutoring bright Jennifer of Nigeria.
Her paper? Weighing the good of affirmative statements
(she’s practiced complimenting a cherished friend).

Ah, yes, the love and sweetness when sincerely a
heart speaks out to a heart without abatement:
sound teaching, and, may we say it, the noblest end

or blend of act and thought? I want you to have
that good, and only hope that while you’re praised
for your warm enfolding arms and thoughtful guidance
(oh yes, you guide me in the directest ways

to goodness) that you treasure up and savor
those almost involuntary spurts of remembrance,
flashes of daffodil, dog, sequoia, and cormorant,
none of which image-clusters would have lived

or lodged in me but for you. The truest praising
is truth; and truthfully do we get annoyed
under fire each from the other when employed
on daily minutenesses. Such blows, thus grazing,

are thorn, someone says, to the larger truth of the rose,
how well the plant feels its own satiny petals, and knows
its whole rain-sun love-death cycle. I want to blaze
whatever you think is not, if near nothing shows

on your skin, in your almond eyes, at tip of nose
—and yet more than these features are you. We add the glaze
to the hummingbird cake or the upside-down cake, and sprays
of edible flowers: the cake was already sweet

and moist, almost crumbless, impeccably baked and neat.
And so this applies to you: I want that blushful phase
when, lustrous as you are, you bloom even brighter from praise.  

_______________________

FOR KRISTINA ON HORSEBACK
—Tom Goff

I love that you’re becoming an equestrienne:
oh yes, you belong to that most noble Roman order.
Mere jumping out of airplanes: by now, far too tame.
Oh show me, my own slow mind, a moving
quick picture of you, your dark-brown hair
let run free and liquid as honey in the air:
so do you flow in the gallop of a smooth and a soft
young horse whose flanks and mane glow
dark as your locks; whose eyes—and it must be a mare—
glisten almost licorice black, almost your own
innocent-loving gift of the twin dark pupils, but side-facing:
their merry equine snap giving off hints of your
own unquenchable Greek fire, your own bright eyefire
when aloft your devoted and fiery partner in the chase.
Your pale fresh-gazing audacious young face
passes daring and bare clean through the clear force field
of the white wind: your thoughts will fill sailcloth.
I envision you, young one, as you leap your sweet beast
and your own limbs windborne-as-dandelion-scatter
over rails and fenceposts: can it be never but never again
will you touch her hoofs in thunder down to the tender
and spring-moistened grasses, to the rain-softened ground,
but you’ll rise like a groundswell up from the sea and stay up there?
With reins in your lithe soft hands mare-mastering,
guiding her footfalls, with confident feet in the stirrups
you skim the grasstips. Riding and riding you surge
on skimming the slight wistful shoots and soughs of tall fescue:
I admire and salute you, my gallant one riding through Rescue.

_________________________

LULLABY LIBRARY
—Tom Goff

            Lay your sleeping head, my love,
            Human on my faithless arm.
                        —W.H. Auden

Look into your book, young woman.
Caress the whiteness with your eyes.
Fend off the odd intrusive human:
he might want sex or tell you lies.
Behind a parapet of paper
your face will soften when the air
of page turns, finer than any vapor,
kisses you gingerly, Alpine-rare.
Each lens in sympathy with adventure
downslants toward the trails of print.
Cradling your face, the bookspine fold
trains a choirgirl glow just painting you tender:
glasses lend you their hostile glint
yet don’t as yet tilt at this overbold
beholder of skin’s own aquatint.
Diviner of water or sex offender?
Oh, my honey, I soften too,
reading your ivory & rag-paper face,
holding you bibliophile in song
I want to devote yet not to you.
Lullabies can’t limn or limit her grace,
she the one sung to I always get wrong.

________________________

Today's LittleNip:

I write to make you suffer,

To dance life before you.

Now watch me bend at the waist.

Do you see how summer holds me?
I run from you. My heart gallops.

My blood saunters before your eyes.

I vow: let this poem

be the asp, diminutive,

but biting you.

—Anne-Marie Kegels 
(trans. from the French by Willis Barnstone)

________________________

—Medusa, with thanks to today's contributors! Taylor Graham and Tom Goff will be reading with Jennifer Pickering and Nora Staklis at Folsom Lake College on April 23.

Poetry Month has gotten off to a rather slow start in our area, but things are starting to pick up now, starting tonight and running through a very busy weekend. For all the haps, scroll down to the blue box (below the green box) at the right of this column. 

Companion

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock, Antioch

Pure Voice of Light

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento

QUIETUDE  

I would not wish for time again
to measure by with its old conditions,

all those stages—
memories that hurt and please,

loved ones as they were—and me,
as I was—many times over,

stage to stage—loose fragments—
scatterings into absolutes

and guessings . . . .
why would I want it all again,

unbound from
ribbons of thought?

This moment holds a half-heard siren,
going by—

bedside music—
pleasant,

and the cat— 
asleep in its own dreaming.

_______________________

THE SHINING RAIN

I know the trees are clean now.
I know the grass is pleased.

I know the cars are shining
underneath the dripping leaves.

I know the rushing gutters
think they are a river.

I know the rain, the rain, the rain
thinks it will rain forever.


(first pub. in Song of the San Joaquin,
2004)

_______________________

THROUGH A CURTAIN OF THOUGHT

She is silky beautiful—like a yellow waft
of imagination posed between pillars of light,

her yellow gown blending with the quiet air,
soft as some ghost of memory. She haunts

the startled eye of the late observer—come
to sundown with the terrible weight of heart

and mind, grown apart like love and non-
love—all somehow blended with the sheer

duplicity of want and surrender. Only the lost
redeem how this is so: the sudden emergence

of myth, no longer sought or wanted, but
exquisitely mourned for a passing moment.

HER SEWING
(After "The Artist’s Mother" by Georges Seurat)

What will she do with this dimming hour;
her attention is focused on her busy hands—

dusk at the window, overtaking the room,
her chair, the texture of the shadows;

dusk is filling up the wall behind her,
wrapping itself around her rigid shoulders.

Soon it will be too dark to see her hands. 
She should turn the light on—she should

start supper, but she is focused on her hands—
the way they hold her absolute attention. 

The thin light reaches her brow, travels her face
to her hands to which she gives such concentration.

______________________

ON DISPLAY
(After “Red Dress” by Manya Shapiro)

The dress is laid out
on a wire frame
in ‘fabric’ of
soft wire—
sheer
window-
screen, pinned
to body-suggestion.
Light keeps guard over
the mere thought of touch.
It must remain for the mind
only to wonder at its texture—
That the dress is red, suggests the
lifeblood of her symbolic existence,
what she would wear once, then put
aside as youth’s memory for old age.

______________________

TINCTURE

The wings of light
linger on the dark branch silhouette
to be seen in contrast.

                          *           

For lack of pigment, the white wings rest
on the edge of the
blue weed-flower—the color of the sky.

                          *           

At mid-day, the sheer wings
seek the roadway poppies to reflect against,
as if they yearn to be golden.

                          *            

The frayed wings learn to become gray
when twilight softens
their wounds with camouflage.

                          *

At night, the black wings
will touch at anything for substance—feeling
for their opposite dimension.

PURE VOICE OF LIGHT

pure voice of light
pure voice of love

voice of pure thought
as joyful as truth in eyes

as dawn after night
as blush after praise


(first pub. in Urban Voices That Matter, 1997)
 
________________________

TO SILENCE

Underneath the din I find it—
you stretched out by a quiet pool,

looking in—watching your reflection,
and mine—as I bend over you.

You smile at me in the water
and point to a school of small blue fish

dozing in the shadows by the bank,
and the perfect leaf that floats above them,

and the sheer white butterfly
flexing its undecided wings,

and we watch the leaf drift away
upon the faintest ripple

that breathes out from the shore—
and I lie down beside you,

my face next to yours
in the sky-deep water—

and the only sound is that of the grass,
brushing against itself in the soft green breezes.

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:

CALL TO MIND

Remnant only of the word I lost.
Let it return, new and unused,

like a curse not uttered,
like a prayer there was no word for,

like the gift of silence
meant for the art of listening. 

________________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Joyce Odam for her superb cheffery in the Kitchen today, including these photos of Sacramento's wonderful camellias! We've been extolling flowers lately; what can we say about those poor things when they end up in the trash? Were their lives truly finished, or did someone discard them before their time? Maybe the gift, or rather the giver, was unwelcome. Some flowers' petals turn brown just from touching. Is that why they are in the trash? What was the story here? Check out D.R. Wagner's photo in the green box at the right of this column for his photo of Flowers in the Trash and see what your muse comes up with for our Seed of the Week: Flowers in the Trash. Send the results on that (or any other subject!) to kathykieth@hotmail.com/. No deadline on SOWs, though.