Thou Carvest

—Anonymous Photos

—Poems by Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA

IN THE ETHER

For born losers or forlorn boozers, either
genetic traits or lifelearned quirks can shut
self in a cocoon of effervescent ether.
So clouded I am in fumes from my own gut,
that misery, that lizard-freezing chill
can crevice me down deep in a rocksplit rut.
There, blood, water, or both, spring in one rill
from deep-down lymph nodes (dragonfly-nymph lodes?).
Enough to resign me to my life with swill.
These nether lodes are inspiration, goads,
great falls of bile that tumble into burns
or bumble into turns—flash flood explodes
through swerves. Through spume, dissolving guile discerns
a sky like calm lake, peppered with white scars. 

BAX MINOR

Difficult at times to discern which one
of these two brothers was the wiser elder.
Clifford, young brother to Arnold, valued Donne,
Marlowe, Shakespeare, and proved quite a melder

of all these influences with love for cricket.
Ah, Baxes, bowling and batting endlessly
on spring and summer days! Long sticky, wicked
indolences of young love and free

experiments in art at Ivy Bank,
all green green stretches under chestnut trees
and beeches. And it’s you we’ve largely to thank,
Clifford, for the respect and love and ease

with which two siblings led unrivalrous
lives of philosophy, of poetry;
knew music, world religions, chivalrous
survivals of odd rites and masonries:

You called yourself Bax Minor, meaning that,
of course, composer Arnold was Bax Major.
But you wore more than one distinguished hat:
dramatist, poet, memoirist, and, at leisure,

you, chiefly, squared that assembly, Four Just Men:
Arnold, yes, Maitland Radford, and yourself,
Carl Jung’s assistant Godwin Baynes; and when
dinner was to be served, that subtlest elf,

your butler Smiles, laid silver and tablecloth.
Samuel Johnson wouldn’t have been ashamed
to enter into such nights of talk. A moth
might have felt proud to risk a singed, inflamed

life’s exit on such night-tides lit by candle.
You also published your brother’s, and numerous others’,
poems, tales, articles, braved some small scandal
promoting J.T. Looney’s theory of Shakespeare

as the Earl of Oxford. Ultimately you passed,
sheer elegance in cape and walking stick,
all triumphs and failures, gravely ill at last.
However many transitions, circle and clique,

however many visions, states of belief,
resignedly you processed that eerie grief,
outliving a brother who shared with you one heart.
Enviable brotherhood. Lives metamorphosed, art.

EPILOGUE AND PLAUDITS

I was very delighted that the Symphony was so much
appreciated and somewhat taken aback at its strangely
uproarious reception…
    —Arnold Bax, letter of March 21, 1930 to Clifford Bax

Third Symphony: a near-appalling (to you) success;
yet absolute quietude, serenity
in your mystical Epilogue, not one excess
committed in all this chant of ecstasy;
not once the barbaric bid for the crowd’s applause.
You knew, and said, that despite rhapsodic slow
elements in the elemental first
movement—otherwise demonic flow,
galvanic threatenings in its marchlike bursts—
everything written here obeys classic form,
everything dances to Mozart’s, Beethoven’s laws,
regardless what force or duration of the storm.
Was it from your marmoreal structure, or
the crushing impact, once only, on the anvil
that all these approving moans must come? Outpour:
today, you’d be mosh-pit-shouldered at their will,
the will of the mob whose credo is kiss-or-kill.  

ACCUSATION AND RIPOSTE

I know what kind of accusation stands
against my writing: it “smells of the lamp.”
I write “from books, not life,” as bands and bands
claim, wagoning circles around my literal swamp.
Don’t they beg the question, “Where to look for life?”
assuming that life’s nowhere to seek in pages.
I’d have them know—try cutting through their shrill fife—
Shakespeare wrote first his plays for future ages.

Then, slowly, by stealth, our lives began to behave
as the Bard said they did; fools, harlots, kings,
knaves wriggled out of rank; they could unslave
themselves from rigid, consciousness-less things,
inherited toils. Old books, by the way, say lamps
burn oil, take flame, cure mildew, dry the damps. 

DEBUTANTE

Soon, Shakespeare, we’ll soon see your coming out
in your true name. Your debut, if you want.
Right now, I feel like any debutante:
this backless gown, will it make me look stout?
At other times, I pine like John of Gaunt,
dying with peevish words for Richard. Doubt
crazes me, on the breakthrough verge. I shout
inaudibly at others. Can I flaunt

for once what’s flowed in secrecy through me?
You managed a secret life in verse, inverse
of every behavior Court spies must rehearse.
But you, vast ages past your death, are free.
Like ruthless kings of yours, I’ll reap my harvest,
quick as we say to a jack with knives, “Thou carvest.”   

_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

My writing process, such as it is, consists of a lot of noodling, procrastinating, dawdling, and avoiding.

—Amy Bloom

_____________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Tom Goff for shining the lamp of today’s fine poetry!

 —Anonymous 

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

Hard Labor

—Poems and Photos by Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA

HARD LABOR

He drove off—dredge and sluice box,
shovel, bucket, and pan—as the first snow-
flakes furred his windshield.
He kept on driving up-mountain as the river
kept on scouring, revising the canyon.
Storm brings out the gold, he says.
Found a promising spot, set up camp,
sluice in the water. Couldn’t work more than
a couple of hours, account of the snow.
Hypothermia weather. Back to his camp
to warm. Searched out another spot. Snowing
as he hiked his gear down-ravine.
“Managed to get a hole to bedrock but
it was just too cold.” Is he crazy, digging
for what time and river haven’t carried away?
What settles heavy in his pan, what
pocket or hand can hold. Delving
for what might be gravel,
might be gold.

IMPROVISING HOPE

You asked for a poem about Hope.
I was sitting at my typewriter
in the gallery, under the gaze of a hawk—
a Redtail—photographed
on its circling spiraling soaring-on-updrafts
hunt for a meal.
The photographer far below, hoping
for a perfect shot.
Hope is the thing with feathers;
wings playing currents of air; keen-eyed
for prey.
The man with his zoom lens.
I at my typewriter, fingers searching
the keys. Hope keeps all
its senses poised, focused, open.

ON THE OTHER HAND

On wide wings, feather-fingered
hands extended to sail the updrafts,
turkey vulture’s a dark parachute
uncommitted to earth.
Not guilty, just hungry.
Once on land, a miserly stench
we turn away from;
secretive, filthy with foul.
But for now, just watch him
soaring free, fresh air.

RESILIENCE
    Institute of Forest Genetics

We drive past the cottonwood enclave
waving fluent greetings all vibrant
deciduous against dark flank of pines.

Old photos show the buildings and barren
sloping fields without a tree—
now an arboretum of plant survival.

A sign tells us genetic diversity
is vital for adapting to climate change.
Resilience is everything.

It’s hard work, saving a species
for some future we couldn’t imagine till
it peers in a window, rattles the door.

Be tentative and flexible,
open to any chance, flight of seed-
wings, improvisation.

Here in one of the cabins, artist-
in-residence shows her mixable palette
to kids from the alternative school.

The gene pool’s a treasure-house
of pollen from not-so-far away, related
but not too close; stronger so.

Inside this gate, a school for learning
what we thought we knew,
the world changing faster than we do. 

FIELD SONG

Make no mistake, the place has a language,
a Golden Shovel on Philip Levine’s “Coming Close”

This weed-eaten field, sun-brittled. Bees make
sounds of gleaning over stubble that shows no
sign of life. One might wonder if it’s a mistake
on their part. There must be a plan here, the
reason for rote hard work seeming futile. Place
has its tasks, repetitious beyond words; has
its demands like breathing. How to explain a
song that keeps repeating outside your language?

SO MUCH I DON’T UNDERSTAND

My dog is following his quarry—a friend
who walked this way, along the arboretum path.
A matter of trust, believing my dog.
There’s a sign explaining how seeds from pines
across the canyon became these tall-spired
Ponderosas. What labor of collecting, planting,
nurturing; how many years from seedling
to towering tree.
My dog veers a bit off-trail.
Maybe a late-August breeze blew scent
that way, as pollen is carried by wind.
The pines sway slightly, cathedral dancing
slow-motion rooted as my dog pulls me along.

____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

ZAPPAI FOR HOLIDAY

all those cars hurry
up the highway or else down,
going somewhere else

a convoy of trucks
hauls bright-colored pieces of
thrill rides, carousel

punctured basketball


you salvaged from a trash bin—


dog has a new game

______________________

Thanks to Taylor Graham for these fine poems and pix! She writes that today’s photos are from “the Institute of Forest Genetics where we sometimes train our dogs, most recently this past Wednesday.” Training, of course, means keeping up their dogs’ noses for Search-and-Rescue.

For more about the zappai poetry form, see www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/zappai-poetic-form/.

Several opportunities for poetry readings in our area today: in addition to Poetry Unplugged at Luna’s Cafe in Sacramento (8pm), Poetic Justice II will feature Terry Moore and others at Laughs Unlimited in Old Sac., 8:30pm. Plus, Poetry in Davis will present J.K. Fowler and MK Chavez (plus open mic), also 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.

—Medusa

 —Anonymous Photo
Celebrate poetry!

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

Deeply, Madly, Eternally

—Anonymous Photos

DEEPLY, MADLY, ETERNALLY

handcuffs, a soft fabric tie
light on or off, eyes open or closed
masked like a monster, sure to excite
pink, white, red, black lace
limbs and faces like roses
each image embraced

relax, refresh, rejuvenate
even old, ugly, alone
women, men
seek solace in seclusion
create pleasure in the mind
just a game, not real
give themselves needed release
breathe more deeply, sleep
wake feeling stronger

yet if one were to lift
the corners of their fantasy worlds
expose empty chests, hearts cut out
see souls lost in reverie
remembering a beloved face
a kiss shared, decades ago
sorrow and loss buried, never healed

SEPARATION

cold drops begin to fall
wetting my hair, sandaled feet
gray sky that promised this all day
delivers, as night approaches
though work remains

square my shoulders, trudge down the path
heft baskets of folded clothes, bring them back
disproportionately grateful for
yellow lamplight, dry floor
walls, rug, warmth, food

resume my careful, solitary life
hope to somehow understand
or that you will change your mind

for one night, we touched
your lips burned into me
released my love—
but then, you pulled away

vulnerable

so sensitive
soft, lucent, coral, moist
countless nerve endings

long for your lips
your fingers moist, slow
your tongue

you are he, I she—we are one
your half, I complete
fit exactly, undeniably

yet we resist, run
knowing the other
but still unfolding our love 

SECRET

I am the one who loves you
more than anyone
shhh--keep it to my self
let it feed me
when work dries up
when I am too tired, worried, sad
to fight on

body withers, dries
easy to step out of time
out of body and hold you
remind you
I love you
more than anyone
forever

Today's LittleNip:

Work like you need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching.

—Satchel Paige

________________________

—Medusa, with many thanks to Ann Wehrman for helping us celebrate Valentine's in September with today’s love poetry in the Kitchen!

Celebrate the poetry of love!

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.

Hope for a Happy Ending

A Memory

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

THE OLD DRUNK LOVERS WALK TO THE STORE

Each day the old drunk lovers walk to the little store,
crossing the dry field together, stopping and talking,
facing each other while they speak. (Such quarrelsome
words.) They stop and speak, then walk a little ways,
then stop and speak, each day, about this hour. They
hold hands for balance, then push each other away.
They stop by the parking-log to talk awhile and by the
corner of the fence and talk awhile. It takes so long for
them to cross the field. It takes all summer.

                                                                    
(first pub. in Pearl, 1997)

____________________

THE DREAMING GIRL
After Sasho’s Journey, 1990 by Wonsook Kim Linton

Where does the brown bear lead? They are
in a cave. The walls of the cave are missing.

Night is showing through
with its sky and hidden moon—

its green rain and the lost distance.
She carries a handful of red flowers . . .

                         ~

They are on an ice floe in a desert night.
The land is shrinking around them.

The bear is pulling her through the melting.
The ice is the color of sand.

The sea is a deepening mirror.
A white bird rides on her shoulder . . .

                         ~

They are in a crude tapestry. Part of it
is missing. The ravels slowly work

around them—mending the fraying world.
Still, they seem resolute

in their calmness—the bear and the girl
going somewhere dreamily together . . .

 Display

THE TOILETTE

what is precious here in this tray
of things :
her rings,
the tray itself,
the old array of bracelets and pins . . .
her face in the mirror,
imprinted by
the same old memory of herself,
the way it appears
and disappears,
like a glance,
the crumpled tissue for daubing
at makeup and tears
as if they burned— 
how scented here :
the spilled powder
her favorite colognes—
the thick waft of hairspray
aimed at her hair,
and floating down like virga,
as she leaves the room
to itself in pampered waiting
for when next she enters for repair

 Detail

GETTING THE POINT

I think one had to be there. The joke was private, the refer-
ence obscure; it didn’t quite come off—as gossip, or as
anecdote of relevance to gain a chuckle at—no—one really
had to be there in the original experience. The story had a
lag to it, required an explanation, or revision to accommodate
its newer audience. It might as well have been Greek—or
dialect, with foreign terms interspersed throughout. The in-
nuendo didn’t work.

Well, we laughed anyway because the others did. And others
seemed to get the point, though we did not; and who wants
to look foolish in sophisticated gatherings of charming talk-
swap that one is not quite up on. The joke? It doesn’t bear
retelling—and anyway, you get the point, don’t you?

________________

THE PATIO TREE

The
small
patient tree
grows
up
through
the narrow openness
of the lattice work
wending its way
up
and
through—
its
trunk
growing
sturdy—
its leaves
taking in the light and
fluttering in old happiness. 

 About Blue

THE LOST MOTHER,

found by the lost child who forever
needs love, craved by the mind.

Love fails, even though loved, but
needs separation—how lives are spent,

directed by circumstance, the answer
questioned, insufficient to the loss.

Maps drown where you travel—
drown and are unreadable.

So you stay where you are,
become regional.

The lost mother is still lost
in her childless life.

but something reaches between
like a howl in wind

through
corners of an empty house.

 Levels

WARM FOR YOU

I return to bed
steal your warmth
it is my warmth now

you fold out of bed
shine in the dark like a cold candle
all night you walk down the hall

I watch you
and wait for you to come back
I will keep your place


(first pub. in Galley Sail Review, 1988)

 Something Remembered
 

SANGUINITY

Let’s hope for a happy ending
this time,
that long list of wanting,
things to work out,
come true,
all wishes
that are good wishes—healings.

Let us no longer lose what we need,
no matter how expensive
or out of stock,
when all we need
are things
that feed, clothe, and shelter—
enough not too much—even love.

____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

HOORAY FOR EVERYTHING
—Joyce Odam

The water in the toilet is barely blue.
The light bulb in the bedroom burns out
and we’ve only had it twenty years.
The paper did not come.
No mail today either.
Yes, it’s Sunday
and the silence is too long.
Soon it will all be true,
everything that was sworn to and denied.
Hangovers do not cure drunkenness.
Why did you not hold me this morning?
We share our house with the spiders.

____________________

A big thank-you to Joyce Odam for today’s fine poetry and pix, to Katy Brown for the photo of trees below, and hooray for everything!

In honor of the City of Trees art showing and reception at Sac. Poetry Center this weekend, our new Seed of the Week will be City of Trees. Poems don’t need to be about Sacramento—Paris qualifies, for example, as well as many other towns and cities I can think of. Send your poems, photos & artwork about this (or any other) subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com. No deadline on SOWs, though, and for a peek at our past ones, click on “Calliope’s Closet”, the link at the top of this column, for plenty of others to choose from.

Poetry Off-the-Shelves poetry read-around will meet in El Dorado Hills tonight, 5-7pm, at the library on Silva Valley Pkwy. 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
 

Treetops 

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis, CA
Celebrate the trees—and the poetry they bring us!

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.

Dreams Captured in Steel

Summer Hills

—Photos by Katy Brown, Davis, CA

DRY SPELL
—Caschwa, Sacramento, CA
 
Water receded
whales were beached
tempers flared
contracts were breeched

the morning paper
stiffened with starch
was tossed onto the porch
beside potted plants parched

it got so dry that even
the finest of parchment
turned to kindle, becoming
a torch of evil intent

an army of flames
began their ruinous march
shooting blazing hot needles
from burning branches of larch

volunteers afoot
fanned out wide in their search
for signs of any life
‘neath fallen embers of birch

have we failed to avert the
known threat of global warming,
or is this just a rude reminder
that Hellfire is always swarming?

___________________

WORDS HOLDING SECRETS
—Caschwa

I had a question
Googled it, found the answer
which is fading fast

*** ***

It’s not that I don’t
remember what you said, I
wasn’t listening

*** ***

They asked me if I
was ever in a coma,
I guess I blanked out

*** ***

If you are going
to carry a flame, do not
forget the candle

*** ***

Buzzed, I put towels
in the dehydrator and
fruit in the dryer

*** ***

Bitten by just the
fear of a rattlesnake’s bite,
I stay my distance

*** ***

Mar a Lago calls
all matters of state can wait
bring me some good cake

 Portrait

ANOTHER ROUND
—Caschwa

Aren’t those medieval
war colors we salute to
celebrate freedom?

*** ***

Just ate some food that
brings about keen drowsiness
please, you take the wheel

*** ***
Basking sweetly in
a hammock of poetry
nothing touching earth,

save a little batch
of snickering excuses,
posed as cultured verse

*** ***
Who said each poem
needs a separate title?
Well, let them add one

I’m singularly
uninformed about most things,
that’s all I will say

___________________

EXTRA HAIKUS
—Caschwa

THE DONALD

A bull elephant
more power than anyone
no self discipline

*** ***

JAMES LEE

Poet Laureate
On September eleven
We welcome his words

*** ***

RACHEL

MSNBC
sitting at your tea table
explaining the news

*** ***

HUH?

Cannot remember
the event of being born
just the date, I think

*** ***

GOSH!

Every single
second helping puts inches
where they’re not helping

*** ***

TIP

A share of stock in
Paradise beats a pair of
socks at any price

 Pillar

MUSCLE CARS
—Joseph Nolan, Stockton, CA

Older dreams
Captured in steel
Running on rubber
Rolling on wheels.

Purring mufflers hum


The sounds of what may come

Rolling out at any speed!
Driven by the shade


Of sundown


On a steering wheel. 

 Water Tower

TARIFF SEASON: START HOLIDAY
ENGINES NOW
—Rhony Bhopla, Sacramento, CA

President Tariff Bulldozer disguises his personal bigoted
agenda under the veil of protecting Intellectual Property.

IP, America’s creation of mind, intellect, is being stolen—
that is a fact. Chaos: Trump tariffs engulf China goods.

With a grimace and the confidence of an ego-pleaser,
the President is fueled by money, sex, and power. 

A target swirls on America’s Heartland, soy bean farmers
will lose, even when kissed with presidential promise of money.

Soya is the number one export to China, U.S. farmers
wait to see how far Trump goes, as he evokes farcical
claims: WTO can be bought by security fears.

Surrounded by his Yes-men he makes vulnerable
a giant loophole in the World Trade Organization
and attacks the longevity of the Trade Act of 1974.

Start the holiday engines now, hoarding of warehouse
goods is today’s sign that America, you are about to lose.

 Mysterious Formation

DAY AFTER DAY THE UV INDEX REACHES NINE
—Michael H. Brownstein, Chicago, IL
 
I came up the stairs
so tired my eyes
saw crooked, double
vision/glowing
cataracts—and I looked
for the door
where a door once had been
but now no door,
no doorway,
no indentation in brick
and stone, mortar
and glass.
I looked
and could not find
a way out. 

 B Brick

DUSK FALLS OVER THE RUINS NEARBY
—Michael H. Brownstein
 
everyone a cloud
old hat and tomato paste

tomorrow I’ll eat two oranges,
two pears, whatever my teeth desire

but now a time for rest
the evening sky a thickening turquoise

bright lit clouds bunching to the west
the air a hollow bowl of beans

____________________

Today’s LittleNip:
 
CALENDAR IDEA
—Caschwa

If that cluster of squares on
one calendar page foments
confusion and doubt,
add a blank sheet to
record senior moments
then treat yourself to a stout.

____________________

Our thanks for the labor of today’s fine poets, and for Photographer Katy Brown's angles and shapes! Kitchen Newcomer Joseph Nolan from Stockton is an active member of the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Association and Sacramento Poetry Center. He has been published in Sacramento Voices, 2017, and will be again in 2018, and also in Poetry Now and Brevities, Joyce Odam’s mini-mag. Don’t be a stranger, Joseph!

Join the poets at Sacramento Poetry Center tonight to hear Todd Boyd and Kai Sable (plus open mic) at a special time of 6-8pm. It’s the Second Annual Labor Day reading, so bring your poem or 5-min. prose piece about work or labor, and wear your Rosie R t-shirt, union shirt, cap, or pin. That's at Sac. Poetry Center, 25th & R Sts., Sac., 6-8pm.

Poetry Off-the-Shelves meets on Tuesday at the El Dorado Hills Library, 5-7pm. Then, on Thursday, Poetic Justice II presents Terry Moore and others at Laughs Unlimited in Old Sac., 8:30-10pm. Also on Thursday, Poetry Unplugged at Luna’s Cafe features readers and open mic, 8pm. And Poetry in Davis presents Cyrus Armajani with MK Chavez plus open mic at the John Natsoulas Gallery, also 8pm.

Drop in at Sac. Poetry Center Gallery on Saturday, 5-8pm, for their Second Sat. Art Reception for the City of Trees Invitational, featuring artwork from local artists to benefit Sac. Tree Foundation. 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

 Labor Day, 2018
—Photo by Katy Brown
Celebrate the poetry of dreams captured!

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. 

Stuff Your Pension!

Cane Toad

—Anonymous Photo

TOADS
—Phillip Larkin (1922-1985)

Why should I let the toad work
  Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
  And drive the brute off?

Six days of the week it soils
  With its sickening poison—
Just for paying a few bills!
  That's out of proportion.

Lots of folk live on their wits:
  Lecturers, lispers,
Losels, loblolly-men, louts—
  They don't end as paupers;

Lots of folk live up lanes
  With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-
  they seem to like it.

Their nippers have got bare feet,
  Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets—and yet
  No one actually starves.

Ah, were I courageous enough
  To shout Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
  That dreams are made on:

For something sufficiently toad-like
  Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
  And cold as snow,

And will never allow me to blarney
  My way of getting
The fame and the girl and the money
  All at one sitting.

I don't say, one bodies the other
  One's spiritual truth;
But I do say it's hard to lose either,
  When you have both.

_____________________________

—Medusa

Scooping Up Hope

Davis Farmers Market

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

You rise up from a seed.

First you push through the soil of your lineage,

Fertilized with love and faith and hope.

And then the sapling of your youth breaks into the air,

Into the light.

Leaf by leaf you spread through this life,

Roots down and branches up,

Sun and rain,

The sap in your veins.

You are shade and strength,

The wood of years,

The tree that lives on and on,

Dropping your own seed for the next generation.

 Davis, Armadillo Music

I would drink to you, if I drank.

If I enjoyed parties at all I might even have one,

But really I don't. Miserable happy chatter,

No one even thinking about death,

How can people enjoy themselves

If they're not miserable? To be happy

Without being depressed? What's the use

In that? If only I drank, I would drink to you...

Oh, hell; probably not.

 Davis Food Co-op

Shall we sweep the forest clean?

Shall we walk across the ocean?

We shall.

For years we've counted the bodies

Of the dead from our wars, so many bodies.

We've listened to the leaders tell us

That now it will be alright,

That now the end is in sight.

It isn't.

Lower the flag, it's dirty.

Light a candle and leave it

In the window for the souls

Of the damned to see their way home.

Shall we sweep the forest clean?

Shall we walk across the ocean?

Yes, we shall. And it is a one-way trip. 

 Davis City Hall

I’m actually not bad at math at all,

But I never was all that interested in equations.

And I like knowing how and why things exist,

But I'm certainly not a physicist.

Driving in my car across a moving planet,

I watch the sun through the windshield,

Which is itself moving through the universe.

And those cows I drive past, standing and eating?

They’re moving, too, through space and time.

They just don't know it, or care.

Me, the cows, a car, the universe, the sun,

Existence, equations, math—exactly how much

Do you expect from a poem anyway?

 Davis, The Avid Reader

Long days, spent on our knees.

Bent over,

We scooped up hope by the handful,

And held it up to the wind.

And let it go.

Below us, prayer,

Or something like prayer,

Conversations with something greater.

Beds on wheels rolled past,

Pulled by mules,

Carrying the newly dead.

Time is a shield, a blanket,

A heavy over-shirt,

A common well shared by all.

On we worked,

Scooping and lifting.

Day past into evening,

And then on into night.

Owls made their pleasant sounds,

And one by one the stars opened up

And blessed us with light.

____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

That I might always keep my heart, my eyes, and my mind open.
That compassion might begin with me and grow outward,
Spreading like ripples on a pond from a pebble I tossed in.

—James Lee Jobe

____________________

Many thanks to James Lee Jobe for this morning’s fine poetry and photos!  And a note that today is the last day to drop off art submissions (at noon) at Sac. Poetry Center Gallery for the up-coming City of Trees Art Invitational. 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 the light that is poetry!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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