The Sum of Summers

Barb Wire

—Poems and Photos by Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA

GETTING THROUGH AUGUST

This afternoon, the sum of summers:
heat that stops the clock, the tick
of dry grass in no breeze. No breath.
A rusty coil of barbwire beside

heat that stops the clock, the tick
of snake whose rattle garnishes
a rusty coil of barbwire beside
sun-glare, a daze akin to blinding

of snake whose rattle garnishes
insect skirl webbing dry weeds to field.
Sun-glare, a daze akin to blinding—
blue bottle smashed to dazzle,

insect skirl webbing dry weeds to field
of dry grass. In no breeze, no breath—
blue bottle smashed to dazzle
this afternoon. The sum of summers.

 Silver Fish Clouds

MORNING GRACE
    for Tom Goff

Between first-light and sunrise,
the heavens are full of silver fish floating
in sky-schools, bright-bellied with night-scraps
of dark on their backs. They don’t bode
rain, just more hot weather.
My dogs crazy-race through cool half-light,
oblivious to cloud-fish as I carry jugs of water
to the garden. Soaker-hoses never
satisfy. I need to see silver
stream from my watering can, seeking roots.
Water is life, they say; it carries
its own light before sun-blessing. My dogs
dance as if to bite off bits of morning
from slowly lightening sky.
No rain dance, just the moment’s joy.

 Trail Through Brush

ASSAYING THE HILL

Like a magic peak ever in the background
of childhood photos, the hill draws me—rising
steep and golden above residential streets,
its surface articulated by ravages of weather,
and beneath, by fathomless human delving
for treasure. But I reach impasse.
A gated community, remote mechanisms
against entry. Never-ending combat between
Man’s ideas of progress and Nature’s
custom; between possession by Law and
a wanderer’s right to roam. Lowlands to high
places, dark to light. A long steep hike
up the backside of childhood’s magic mountain.

 Hooded Sun

CAN’T STAND FENCES

Up this hill above Senior Center, one misty
morning I found remains of a homeless camp,

zippered parka red as a carrot set aside,
forgotten like the structure of home.

Mist was lifting its white-out. A slight breeze
played dead manzanita like a broken lute.

Now the homeless are gone. I hear distant
pounding, someone mending a legal house.

I touch nothing, keep moving along a trail
through brush. Concluding my walk

on the fringes…. Abruptly I see silver stars.
Two officers marching my way. They’ll

want my name, my residence, my intentions.
Or I could slip into the brush….

 Pond Weed

AFTER ILLNESS

On Saturday night your friends go dancing
under circling colored lights. You
prefer to watch evening go dim then dark
for stars. When you’ve counted your
portion of bright-black sky,
you’ll sit by lamplight turning pages,
poetry of a praise to come—Sunday dawn
cool and free. Autumn. Will there be
freshwater seaweed blooming its delicate
white flowers on the pond?
Will wild geese still leave wakes
reaching for a farther shore?
But now it’s evening; kingfisher and heron
folded into sleep. Your Saturday night
is for healing, pure dreaming.

 Harness

HISTORY AFTER-HOURS

History sits in his ageless dark replaying
favorite pieces of the past. Anachronistic, yes.
Things set down haphazard out of their
time and place. A wagon train rolls along Main
Street, tourists in shorts and tank-tops
pausing to click smartphones. A Pony Express
rider urges his mount down-mountain
in moonless night, trusting his horse
to remember the trail—Washout! The old
route gone. Clogged concrete culvert
above transcontinental highway. Since the last
Pony run, decades of men have worked
the forest; now Man lets the mountain take
care of itself. A never settling, restless, turning
planet. What memory, what language
does the land speak? Earthquake, deluge,
drought. Now bark-beetles, dead
trees. Firestorm gone crazy at the urban
interface with wild. Torrents of wind. Then
flood, landslide. History watches
horse and rider tuned to each other, throwing
their hearts ahead of them, improvising
dark to a narrow, night-lighted path down.

 August

Today’s LittleNip:

UNDER THE OVERLOOK
—Taylor Graham

Three vultures cruise the geologic
tilt, dizzy views over canyon as
earth falls away under spiral wings.

Pines overgrow the logging spur
abandoned years ago, three rattle-
coils of choker chains rusting.

Looking up I trip on my shadow.

___________________

—Many thanks to Taylor Graham for her fine poems and photos today! Head over to Davis tonight, 8pm, to hear Cathy Arellano and Nancy Aidé González (plus open mic) at the John Natsoulas Gallery, 521 1st St., hosted by Dr. Andy Jones. Free. Or visit Poetry Unplugged at Luna’s Cafe in Sacramento, 1414 16th St., for featured readers and open mic, 8pm. 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. 

The Facebook page of Medusa’s Kitchen (www.facebook.com/Medusas-KitchenRattlesnake-Press-212180022137248) has a new photo album, this one thanks to Michelle Kunert and Cynthia Linville at the annual Chalk It Up Festival in Sacramento over Labor Day Weekend. Chalk It Up is a 501(c)3 non-profit established in 1991. Chalk It Up promotes and supports Youth Arts by offering small grants to individuals, groups, and arts organizations throughout the Sacramento region. For more about Chalk It Up, see chalkitup.org/about/annual-festival/.

Michelle notes that “Salvador Dali seemed to be a big theme this year… Must’ve had something to do with Dali’s body being disturbed (likely unjustly) from his grave in Spain; see  www.nytimes.com/2017/07/21/world/europe/salvador-dali-exhumed-paternity.html/.

Thanks again, Cynthia and Michelle!

—Medusa

 Creek Sign

—Photo by Taylor Graham
Celebrate Poetry—and the poetry that is fresh water!

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.

A Few Important Words

 John Ashbery, 1927-2017

—Poems by John Ashbery

—Anonymous Photos

AND UT PICTURA POESIS IS HER NAME

You can’t say it that way any more.  
Bothered about beauty you have to  
Come out into the open, into a clearing,
And rest. Certainly whatever funny happens to you
Is OK. To demand more than this would be strange
Of you, you who have so many lovers,  
People who look up to you and are willing  
To do things for you, but you think
It’s not right, that if they really knew you . . .
So much for self-analysis. Now,
About what to put in your poem-painting:  
Flowers are always nice, particularly delphinium.  
Names of boys you once knew and their sleds,  
Skyrockets are good—do they still exist?
There are a lot of other things of the same quality  
As those I’ve mentioned. Now one must
Find a few important words, and a lot of low-keyed,
Dull-sounding ones. She approached me
About buying her desk. Suddenly the street was  
Bananas and the clangor of Japanese instruments.  
Humdrum testaments were scattered around. His head
Locked into mine. We were a seesaw. Something  
Ought to be written about how this affects  
You when you write poetry:
The extreme austerity of an almost empty mind
Colliding with the lush, Rousseau-like foliage of its desire to communicate  
Something between breaths, if only for the sake  
Of others and their desire to understand you and desert you
For other centers of communication, so that understanding
May begin, and in doing so be undone.

ALMS FOR THE BEEKEEPER

He makes better errors that way.
Pass it around at breakfast:
the family and all, down there with a proximate sense of power,
lawyering up. Less log-heavy, your text-strategy
beat out other options, is languid.
Duets in the dust start up,
begin. Again.

He entered the firm at night.
The 26th is a Monday.

______________________

BOUNDARY ISSUES

Here in life, they would understand.  
How could it be otherwise? We had groped too,  
unwise, till the margin began to give way,  
at which point all was sullen, or lost, or both.  

Now it was time, and there was nothing for it.  

We had a good meal, I and my friend,  
slurping from the milk pail, grabbing at newer vegetables.  
Yet life was a desert. Come home, in good faith.  
You can still decide to. But it wanted warmth.  
Otherwise ruse and subtlety would become impossible  
in the few years or hours left to us. “Yes, but . . .”  
The iconic beggars shuffled off too. I told you,  
once a breach emerges it will become a chasm  
before anyone’s had a chance to waver. A dispute  
on the far side of town erupts into a war  
in no time at all, and ends as abruptly. The tendency to heal  
sweeps all before it, into the arroyo, the mine shaft,  
into whatever pocket you were contemplating. And the truly lost  
make up for it. It’s always us that has to pay.  

I have a suggestion to make: draw the sting out  
as probingly as you please. Plaster the windows over  
with wood pulp against the noon gloom proposing its enigmas,  
its elixirs. Banish truth-telling.
That’s the whole point, as I understand it.  
Each new investigation rebuilds the urgency,  
like a sand rampart. And further reflection undermines it,  
causing its eventual collapse. We could see all that  
from a distance, as on a curving abacus, in urgency mode  
from day one, but by then dispatches hardly mattered.  
It was camaraderie, or something like it, that did,  
poring over us like we were papyri, hoping to find one  
correct attitude sketched on the gaslit air, night’s friendly takeover.

ANTICIPATED STRANGER,

the bruise will stop by later.
For now, the pain pauses in its round,
notes the time of day, the patient’s temperature,
leaves a memo for the surrogate: What the hell
did you think you were doing? I mean . . .
Oh well, less said the better, they all say.
I’ll post this at the desk.

God will find the pattern and break it.

___________________

BY GUESS AND BY GOSH

O awaken with me
the inquiring goodbyes.
Ooh what a messy business
a tangle and a muddle
(and made it seem quite interesting).

He ticks them off:
leisure top,
a different ride home,
whispering, in a way,
whispered whiskers,
so many of the things you have to share.

But I was getting on,
and that’s what you don’t need.
I’m certainly sorry about scaring your king,
if indeed that’s what happened to him.
You get Peanuts and War and Peace,
some in rags, some in jags, some in
velvet gown. They want
the other side of the printing plant.

There were concerns.
Say hi to jock itch, leadership principles,
urinary incompetence.
Take that, perfect pitch.
And say a word for the president,
for the scholar magazines, papers, a streaming.
Then you are interested in poetry.

_______________________

Today’s LittleNip(s) by John Ashbery:

The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.

I don’t look on poetry as closed works. I feel they’re going on all the time in my head and I occasionally snip off a length.

There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.

I write with experiences in mind, but I don’t write about them, I write out of them.

_______________________

For more about the life and writing of John Ashbery, who passed away last Sunday at the age of 90, see:

•••www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-ashbery
•••www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/arts/john-ashbery-dead-prize-winning-poet.html?mcubz=1
•••www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/john-ashbery-changed-the-rules-of-american-poetry
•••www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3014/john-ashbery-the-art-of-poetry-no-33-john-ashbery

To hear him read, go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrvXX9QVAT8/.

—Medusa

 John Ashbery

Celebrate poetry—and the poets who write it!

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.

Where the Violence is Finished

Frazzled

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

ARGHHH

What ran past,
all sad and wan, sad and wan?

A man can attack a man
as fast as that—

as fast as a mad park-swan
that attacks all;

a man can stand and fall—
a mark past warn,

ask what and hand all
that wants all;

a man can backward fall,
as sad as a rag—

past all harm—as far as that,
as daft as a law that can’t,

and shan’t,
a black tag as a flag.

And that’s
that.

 Hen and Chicks

WORLD-FRAGMENT 

After “Two From Gallup” from 

Pieces Of A Song by Diane DiPrima

Wore the soft light of evening for awhile. Dressed
up in neon. Admired my arm at rest on a quiet table.
Went for the mirrors with my eyes. Broke my own
tradition.

Who is my sorrow now, sweet person?—one with
new lies. Don’t ask me to squander a moment. I am
too far. Don’t ask for my story or tell me yours.

I took the care out of caring and left it where it lay,
like a precious coin for somebody’s rainy day. And
I walked away—oh, new person—

I walked away, with the music still blaring and the
night too full of something I wanted to say, but the
neon world had begun to shiver, so I walked away.

_________________

A MAN SITS WHINING
After Stephen Crane
 
A man sits whining
on the side of the road.

He is tired of his life.
He loves, but cannot be loved.

He is tired of compromise,
the resistance to his words.

He shudders with hate.
All he wants is love.

 Oh My

SHADOWINGS
(Villanelle)

Night brings some old lamenting, far and thin.
We listen to a trilling mockingbird.                               
I can’t believe the state of mind I’m in.      

I cannot sort the silence from the din;                                 
I don’t know how the edges get so blurred.                    
Night comes with its lamenting—far and thin,

the moon so full I fancy that a pin                                           
could prick it till it bled—or some sharp sword.         
I do not like this state of mind I’m in.           

I thought we’d never question love again; 
I cannot seem to sever thought from word.                  
Night brings this old lamenting, far and thin:

what is, is never what it might have been.                     
There is no solace.  Nothing is assured.                                   
I cannot help the state of mind I’m in—       
            
that lovesick bird that only mocks us when                 
love will believe some rumor that it’s heard.
Night brings the old lamenting, far and thin.          
I cannot trust the state of mind I’m in.

 Hot Yellow

TIRED OF BATTLES

I will go where the violence
is finished
where utterances lie in paths
like stones
where no one cares or remembers
which words
were there first,
beginning wars.

Oh, Warrior,
I am tired of battles.
I am tired of finding new weapons
and using them.
I am tired of dodging
missile-words,
accusatory and unforgiving,
as if I were a reason used
to begin wars.

 Weed Flower

                     

LINES FOR AN OLD MEMORY
(Kraeft Sonnet)

All these lines—the sea too far away—
and still I write of summers that were mine
and watch for seagulls’ silver-textured climb
and on my face, still feel the ocean spray.
I used to hate that chill of winter gray
that wrapped itself around my restless years,
the ones I filled with childish tantrum tears,
the ones I feel still burn my face today.
I wanted summer back with summer’s play.
I still can feel the sharp, salt-heavy air
while walking to the far end of the pier.
Winter was a tedious delay.
For all those times I walked along its shore,
I want the sea to love me as before.

 Yesterdays

                                                   

WITH LONGING

And the heart beats with longing, even as
the blood flows. What does love know
of this—or hate—or any passion? 

It is all slow completion, even as it begins.
Take fear, which is delicious—
surface and depth—like a terrible wish.

Is it death we know,
cat and toy,
the prize on the end of a question?

And the blood goes round and round
the body’s universe,
bearing the life along like a tireless swimmer.

 Oh Sad Summer

THE HARVEST WE ARE TIRED OF

Mygod, you talk of Christmas
and the sun upon the land
shrivels the harvest we are tired of.

Buckets of pithy squash and soft tomatoes
stand useless for our energy.
The beans swell in themselves
and dry upon the pole.

This day we must consider what we lose
for we are sick with lethargy
and turn instead to talk of winter.

But rain-threat from the mountains
will not come
though thunder almost sounds
where we are looking.

The air is dusty.
Birds are shrill and restless as
the rumors that we feel.

We should be gleaning,
saving more of our investment
than we do.


(first pub. in One Dog, 1996)

_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

OBSESSIVE
—Joyce Odam

She wipes and cleans,
makes her world neat,
can’t stand anything  dirty.

She has such scrubbed
and shining hands; water
is handy, and white rags.

Everything she touches
sings with a
sleek and shining sound.

___________________

Many thanks to Joyce Odam for today’s fine poems and pix on last week’s Seed of the Week: Things I Can’t Stand, as we turn the corner away from Summer and into Fall. In fact, our new Seed of the Week is “After Labor Day”. Send your poems, photos and 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.

The formula for a Kraeft sonnet, should you be so bold, is abba abba cddc eee.  For more about Villanelles (should you be even bolder) can be found at www.shadowpoetry.com/resources/wip/villanelle.html/.

Poetry Off-the-Shelf, a poetry read-around, meets tonight in El Dorado Hills at the library, 5-7pm. And please note that the on-going Tuesday at Two poetry workshop, which meets in Placerville every Tuesday from 2-3pm, will move as of this week to the large crafts room at Placerville Senior Center, 937 Spring St, Placerville. 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

 John Ashbery, 1927-2017

For more about poet John Ashbery and his passing, go to 

www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/celebrated-challenging-poet-john-ashbery-dies-90-n798531/.

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 Labor of Poets

—Anonymous Photo

MY CHIHUAHUA KNOWS
—Caschwa, Sacramento, CA
 
She knows when I am sleeping
She knows when I’m awake
She smells the warm velvet cake

Chemical changes inside of me
That will eventually trigger
The keen sensation of hunger

Long before my own mind
Has become aware of the need
She is begging me to heed

Licking my sleepy face
Or climbing up my leg with force
Marching with her Tiki torch

It is time for the pack to
Invade the kitchen, make a meal
Share it together, enjoy the feel

STEW SKIN
—Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA
 
Oatmeal grows no skin
quite like the sheath I grow
when left alone to stand.
Not even my stove would know.
You stirred me like a soft hand
that, fever-warm, leaves snow
where it’s touched. Simmer drew sin
from boiling down below
to foam atop like beer.
What bubbled, spotted, mottled,
spread membrane over a fear
I wanted corked, not bottled.
Faults sank down in the ferment,
the mash, all toxic stain.
The boil this film restrains
a sterner heat surmounts.
The cooling, scarcely hard
skim layers itself in the pan,
pops jabbed by the lancing spoon
yet forms like scum or lard.  

DILATION DROPS
—Tom Goff

Eyes were built to dilate,
says humankind’s ambition.
Expand the gaze in size and rate
of speed, demands volition.

Eyes once dilated, though,
find strange blur and distortion
creep in and, where we go,
irises prohibition

swears ought not flaw white light.
We tread more wary, keen
to scan for foes. Raw fright
spun by reflective sheen

scares us from end to end.
We who expanded grand
as lords our eyes’ best bend,
find glare’s broad upthrust hand

rude as a stop sign there
bar every slice of air. 

 
WALSINGHAME*
            (Arnold Bax and Harriet Cohen, 1926)
—Tom Goff
 
My pilgrim girl came home
from holy Walsinghame.
Again she’s on the roam
to places without name.

            …What thinness shows in her?
            What music in her hands,
            hands delicate and sure.
            Where take her for a cure?…
 
Where will she go without
a guide to sway her straight?
Her path is stony; doubt,
drought, famine, burden’s weight,

            What happened to our love?
            No end, one long caress,
            all sweetness in one grove
            of soul and sex we’d rove…

these agents dog her tread:
I fear for her young years.
Would I could share her dread,
beside her, mud and tears,

            Her lungs are delicate,
            blood spots her handkerchief.
            All’s gloom that was elate;
            must we now bow to Fate?…

trudge to her pace, her hand
squeezing to a sweet crush
the fingers of my hand.
She left me in a rush,

            I like these doctors not,
            nor all of Switzerland.
            She’s idled, talent for nought;
            here’s Lethe-wharf and rot…

so scarcely come back home
from holy Walsinghame,
so swift once more to roam
to places with no name.


* Also a setting by Bax of a Sir Walter Raleigh poem for solo tenor, chorus, and orchestra.

___________________

Today’s LittleNip:

RUSSIAN POETRY
—Caschwa

Stroll down to the red column (in the white house at the far right) for info about this and other upcoming bald-faced lies in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

___________________

Our thanks to today’s poets for laboring on this Labor Day, 2017! A poet’s work is never done…

And poets will be reading tonight at Sac. Poetry Center, and they’ll be reading earlier than usual, from 6-8pm. Patricia L. Nichol and Jennifer O’Neill Pickering will present A Labor of Love for Labor Day; bring labor of love poems for open mic, and wear Rosie the Riveter or union shirts or hats, etc. Watermelon & hot dogs! and Todd Boyd will create a podcast.

Poetry Off-the-Shelf, a poetry read-around, meets on Tuesday in El Dorado Hills at the library, 5-7pm. And please note that the on-going Tuesday at Two poetry workshop, which meets in Placerville every Tuesday from 2-3pm, will move as of this week to the large crafts room at Placerville Senior Center, 937 Spring St, Placerville.

On Thursday, Poetry Unplugged meets at Luna’s Cafe, 8pm, featuring featured readers and open mic. 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

—Anonymous

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.

Those Dusty, Clattering Looms

—Anonymous Photo

SHIRT
—Robert Pinsky

The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
Or talking money or politics while one fitted
This armpiece with its overseam to the band

Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,
The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,
The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze

At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.
One hundred and forty-six died in the flames
On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes—

The witness in a building across the street
Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step
Up to the windowsill, then held her out

Away from the masonry wall and let her drop.
And then another. As if he were helping them up
To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.

A third before he dropped her put her arms  
Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held
Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once

He stepped to the sill himself, his jacket flared
And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,
Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers—

Like Hart Crane’s Bedlamite, “shrill shirt ballooning.”
Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly
Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked

Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme
Or a major chord. Prints, plaids, checks,
Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans

Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian,
To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed
By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,

Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers
To wear among the dusty clattering looms.
Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader,

The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the sorter
Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton
As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:

George Herbert, your descendant is a Black
Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma
And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit

And feel and its clean smell have satisfied
Both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality
Down to the buttons of simulated bone,

The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters
Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,
The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.

____________________

To hear “Shirt” read aloud, go to www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47696/shirt/. For more Labor Day poetry, see www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/101687/labor-day-poems?gclid=EAIaIQobChMInu2Z_fuG1gIVlI9-Ch34rgn8EAAYASAAEgKNi_D_BwE/.

—Medusa

Near the Center

D.R. Reading in Locke, September, 2016

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis, CA

—Poems by D.R. Wagner, Locke, CA

POETRY HIDING WITHIN ILLNESS

I cannot believe the poetry any longer.
This course of words after words having their
Breathy dance has fallen away from me and I
Can no longer find the secret rooms that once
Held me to their stars and kept me dreaming.
They have become deserts and the ruins of cities.

I pass them here in my tiny apartment and no
Longer see them or, if I do hear them, they do not reach
Me though the years.  I have forgotten how to read.
Or I have gone blind and find only husks of what
I imagined.  They slam against my chest as I try to call
Out.  But they do not come close.

I pull myself into bed without drawing the covers
Over my body.  The lights are out.  I pretend I am alive.

 Chair

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

NEAR THE CENTER

I threw my heart ahead
Of me into the night,
Hoping it would light the way.

The light was very narrow.
It is, however, inscrutable.

I wasn’t born to understand
How nothing leaves and how
We are never dismissed.

I have a special verb for you
But you must wear it on your lips.

The closer we come to the center
The more unapproachable the center
Becomes.

A talisman, a father, one
Of your own children might
Provide light.  Please hurry before
All that can be explained
Is destroyed.

 Feeding the Dragon

—Anonymous Illustration

PART OF THE GUARDIANS' HISTORY

Ramon could speak the language of dragons.
He had learned it many hundreds of years ago.
In the yellow well he had drifted though tunnels
And forests never seen on the face of the earth.
He could speak of the swarming and of the pointed
Tongues and leather wings.  He knew their foibles.

Things seldom went well for dragons.
They came off as too fierce
Or the wrong color
Or with alarmingly bad breath.

Most had boring jobs
Protecting treasures hidden by stories
To await the arrival of a hero of some ilk,
Whereupon they were often dispatched
And promptly forgotten.

They could fly.  That was always
The best part, and Ramon told
Me of this when I was quite young,
Before I traveled to any of the wells
Of Marlee.

They were, for centuries, the memory
The land kept closest to itself, for the trees
Had stopped speaking long before this so that
They might use the language of the winds.

The dragons could recall the wanderers
Of the lowlands and the high and dark places
That once belonged to kingdoms long without
A name to identify them.  They would hold council
And by the fire of their breath talk to those who could
Change the pupils of their eyes from horizontal to vertical
At will.  These creatures somehow shared our blood
And it was they who assigned us to the many tasks
We were committed to in protecting the people
Who lived in the lowlands below the cliffs of Marlee.

The colored wells on the cliff tops were a great
System linked by much magic that was never anxious
To help our troop know the full measure of our jobs.

Still, we were expected to learn the ways of the people,
The customs and traditions of the forest, and to come to know
The deepest of secrets held by the early ones.  The dragons
Were our guides.  It would be many years before I could
Learn a few words of this lore.  We would live for many centuries
In exchange for our service and would eventually only be found
In myths and legends.  We do not expect you to know us
As anything but lights in the deepest of forests.  Hear
The shrieks of the dragons.  Watch them as they gather us
Four times a year to teach what must never be forgotten.

Tonight I stand on the clifftops overlooking the ancient cities,
Watching the night fires flicker in the distances and bring us
The tools of dreaming.  Tonight I am able to speak to you
For a short time.  You will think these stories nothing more
Than fictions birthed in mists and far things.  They are not.
These are true things.  Come here to find our voices, lest
Everything become a madness barely understood by any.

 Hulu Gwa (Gourd)

EL DESEO

In the wet of the lands.
In the bridle of the night.
In the glow of the lamp.
In the sound of the water.
In the light of dreaming.
Breath clouding the glass.
Touch, a weapon of knowing.
Speech, the servant of feeling.
Time, losing its claim on love,
Reduced to rhythm only,
The wish, the desire, el deseo,
In the jungle, hidden from the street.
Handfuls of coals glowing
On the water, in the water,
A deep weather unloading
As a turtle does its eggs
Into the night.
Everywhere, bent to surround
It so it may have this form.

 If There Were A Cat...

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

THE ASIDES

She got in her car
And drove all the way to suicide.
It looked like a familiar landscape.
*
Don’t open your mouth.
We are still learning to breathe.
*
I live in an industrial
Fire.
*
Perhaps the cat.
If there were a cat.
*
I was devoted to curiosity.
I saw so much I stopped breathing.
A terrible mistake.  I had to go home.
*
Like Lenore, I kept bats and moths
In my hair, more as companions
Than any attempt to do harm.
*
There wasn’t any room for a heart.
She told me this was a prayer
For me because I was able to think
This way.
I wept.

__________________

Today’s LittleNip:

GARDEN
—D.R. Wagner

Focus shifts so easily.
This morning
I was looking at an iris, newly opened.
It seemed the most beautiful of things.
Now I look up to see you walking into
The garden.
It seems the most beautiful of things.

__________________

Our thanks to D.R. Wagner for today’s fine poems and pix, all of which appeared in Medusa’s Kitchen in 2016-17. D.R. suspects he may be able to return to the Kitchen next week; hopefully that is so. His photo of the gwa (gourd) is from Locke’s Demonstration Garden; for more about the Garden, see ediblesacramento.com/blog/1522-in-locke-the-past-is-growing/.

—Medusa

 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.
 

Let Us Consider

—Poems by Russell Edson, 1935-2014

—Anonymous Photos and Artwork

THE ADVENTURES OF A TURTLE

The turtle carries his house on his back. He is both the house and the person of that house.
    
        But actually, under the shell is a little room where the true turtle, wearing long underwear, sits at a little table. At one end of the room a series of levers sticks out of slots in the floor, like the controls of a steam shovel. It is with these that the turtle controls the legs of his house.
     
       Most of the time the turtle sits under the sloping ceiling of his turtle room reading catalogues at the little table where a candle burns. He leans on one elbow, and then the other. He crosses one leg, and then the other. Finally he yawns and buries his head in his arms and sleeps.
    
       If he feels a child picking up his house he quickly douses the candle and runs to the control levers and activates the legs of his house and tries to escape.
     
       If he cannot escape he retracts the legs and withdraws the so-called head and waits. He knows that children are careless, and that there will come a time when he will be free to move his house to some secluded place, where he will relight his candle, take out his catalogues and read until at last he yawns. Then he’ll bury his head in his arms and sleep....That is, until another child picks up his house....

METALS METALS

Out of the golden West, out of the leaden East, into the iron South, and to the silver North . . .  Oh metals metals everywhere, forks and knives, belt buckles and hooks . . . When you are beaten you sing. You do not give anyone a chance . . . 

 
      You come out of the earth and fly with men. You lodge in men. You hurt them terribly. You tear them. You do not care for anyone. 

  

     Oh metals metals, why are you always hanging about? Is it not enough that you hold men’s wrists? Is it not enough that we let you in our mouths? 

  

     Why is it you will not do anything for yourself? Why is it you always wait for men to show you what to be? 

  

     And men love you. Perhaps it is because you soften so often. 
 
     You did, it is true, pour into anything men asked you to. It has always proved you to be somewhat softer than you really are. 

  

     Oh metals metals, why are you always filling my house? 
  
     You are like family, you do not care for anyone.

What'll the Cockle Do?

THE DIFFICULTY WITH A TREE

A woman was fighting a tree. The tree had come to rage at the woman’s attack, breaking free from its earth it waddled at her with its great root feet. 
     
       Goddamn these sentiencies, roared the tree with birds shrieking in its branches. 
     
       Look out, you’ll fall on me, you bastard, screamed the woman as she hit at the tree. 
     
      The tree whisked and whisked with its leafy branches. 
       
      The woman kicked and bit screaming, kill me kill me or I’ll kill you! 

     

      Her husband seeing the commotion came running crying, what tree has lost patience? 
  
      The ax the ax, damnfool, the ax, she screamed. 
     
      Oh no, roared the tree dragging its long roots rhythmically limping like a sea lion towards her husband. 
        
      But oughtn’t we to talk about this? cried her husband. 
    
      But oughtn’t we to talk about this, mimicked his wife. 
    
      But what is this all about? he cried. 
     
      When you see me killing something you should reason that it will want to kill me back, she screamed. 

     

      But before her husband could decide what next action to perform the tree had killed both the wife and her husband. 
     
      Before the woman died she screamed, now do you see? 
     
      He said, what...? And then he died.

LET US CONSIDER

Let us consider the farmer who makes his straw hat his sweetheart; or the old woman who makes a floor lamp her son; 
or the young woman who has set herself the task of scraping 
her shadow off a wall.... 



    Let us consider the old woman who wore smoked cows’ 
tongues for shoes and walked a meadow gathering cow chips 
in her apron; or a mirror grown dark with age that was given 
to a blind man who spent his nights looking into it, which 
saddened his mother, that her son should be so lost in 
vanity....



    Let us consider the man who fried roses for his dinner, 
whose kitchen smelled like a burning rose garden; or the man 
who disguised himself as a moth and ate his overcoat, and for 
dessert served himself a chilled fedora....

 



THE UNFORGIVEN

After a series of indiscretions a man stumbled homeward, thinking, now that I am going down from my misbehavior I am to be forgiven, because how I acted was not the true self, which I am now returning to. And I am not to be blamed for the past, because I’m to be seen as one redeemed in the present... 
     
        But when he got to the threshold of his house his house said, go away, I am not at home. 

        Not at home? A house is always at home; where else can it be? said the man. 
    
        I am not at home to you, said his house. 

   

       And so the man stumbled away into another series of indiscretions...

Today’s LittleNip:

WITH SINCEREST REGRETS
—Russell Edson

              for Charles Simic

Like a monstrous snail, a toilet slides into a living room on a track of wet, demanding to be loved.
         
       It is impossible, and we tender our sincerest regrets. In the book of the heart there is no mention made of plumbing.
          
      And though we have spent our intimacy many times with you, you belong to an unfortunate reference, which we would rather not embrace ...
         
      The toilet slides away ...

_____________________

With sincerest (posthumous) thanks to Russell Edson, who always manages to shake up my brain when I get stuck in the prosaic. For more about Russell Edson, go to www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/russell-edson/.

The Good Earth Movement Coop in Placerville will present Barbara West tonight, 6:30pm, plus open mic. 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.

And please note that the on-going Tuesday at Two poetry workshop, which meets in Placerville every Tuesday from 2-3pm, will move as of this coming week to the large crafts room at Placerville Senior Center, 937 Spring St, Placerville. Free; all ages welcome.

—Medusa

 Yo! 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.