The World's Gone Green

—Anonymous Photo

EVER GREEN EYES
—Carol Louise Moon, Sacramento

I love to call them evergreens
because they’re ever green.

The crimson sweater that you wear—
the redness of your orange hair—
contrast to make your green eyes seem
to light up, sparkle, glow and gleam.

I love to spend these days with you,
to see you through my eyes of blue.

_______________________

SQUEAKY GREEN TENNIS SHOES
—Carol Louise Moon

the wrapping around in amplitude,
soft caveability dental-flossed into place,
snug; stair-stepping synchrony:
satisfying

cradled in rubber as if flotation were
imminent; with ease upon bending
of particles, the meeting of hard surfaces
and portions of biosphere—which rock
and teeter the tennis

flexible foot armor, and more—
Kenpo ease of ankle joints
deflecting, rolling, but otherwise
Jarring movements

a quoish sound emitted when
passing through grassy plains:  
satisfying enough

but when pushed to urban concrete
or kitchen tiles with ear-wreaking racket
at alternating intervals:
enough to annoy.

__________________________

HAVING NO RECOURSE BUT TO PULL A PRANK
—Carol Louise Moon

So, I threw the curly-haired decoy dog
into the neighborhood street
right in front of the speeder and cried,
“My baby, my baby. What have you done
to my doggie?”

“And, I hope you have insurance…
which is beside the point.
You’ve hit my dog so hard he is no longer
human, and you are not human, speeding
through our quiet neighborhood
on a murder mission.  And now,
you’ve done it, you’ve murdered a
Miniature Maltese Mix Mutt.”

“Never mind viewing the gore. I’ll wrap
him quickly in this blood-spattered blanket,
whisk him away, and bury him neatly
under the myrtle before the sun goes down.
That’ll teach you not to speed out here
where the sign is clearly posted
15 mph—Please!”

_________________________

I HAD SOUGHT OUT THE COMPANY OF MIMES,

… having grown tired of the poets.
The mimes I had thought to be
a controlled bunch:

no blurting out poetry prompts
no telling me where to end my poem
no asking me to speak up
no suggesting submission guidelines
    with strict limitations.

I was right.
Mimes could say it all with just one
gesture, just one glance, one frown:

“What? You actually think
you’re a poet?”

—Carol Louise Moon

—Photo by Taylor Graham, Placerville

DEATH OF GREEN



—Taylor Graham

         Where will the lovely blue oaks & sweet beasts go?
                            —Tom Goff



Past the freeway grade, through hills March-


green, grasses bending to wind rich with distant


news—but soon to parch, this grass; the hill


leveled and ditched, paved. Houses buil

t

where once my dog head-high would cruise


the wind, would range ahead, out of sight, above


fog, searching for the lost. Now, how strange


to see earthmovers, survey stakes. The hill is lost



to condo homes. How progress fences, parcels,


takes the spirit’s freedom-scape to roam.


Our puppy in the other room


sings dirge for green in briefest bloom.

________________________

A DREAM?
—Taylor Graham
 
Look! Choppers flying in formation
over the desert floor, through sawtooth gaps
between black cinder cones. Even in this season,
just after dawn, the sun is lethal.
One chopper to our left at 10 o’clock, one
to our right at 2, more coming from the north,
staggered like birds in flight, a dance
with high-desert clouds. From each uniform-
drab chopper, a cable hooked to a beautiful fruit
gold as paradise; each chopper a bird of pray-
for-peace, rescue under sky of clouds and flocks,
the hazards of weather over bare desert
on a spinning globe, sun and wind
moving toward their imagined horizons.

________________________

ANOTHER MORNING

—Taylor Graham

Downpour of water from the tap. Dishwasher
hums counterpoint functionality to the fridge,
a song of lasting love till it runs out of
warranty—gone chill, or tepid (just listen to
celebrity-gossip on the morning news, stranger
than sea-creatures); song of love mottled
and familiar as window that won’t scrub clean
in spite of all the products on TV; curtains
faded—                    but look, beyond the pane
the world’s gone green and leafy, Blackbird’s
singing from a crown of oak, the Midas sun
touches every growing tip with gold; and spring
lambs practice their highest leaps, uncalculating
gambols with life.
 

Water
—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

AN ORACLE
—Claire J. Baker, Pinole

What an honor
when you open to me
as if I were an oracle
on an ancient road
to Athens or Rome—
your journey's pause
for a lighter load.

A listener, I remain
silent until a fountain
of shared secrets rises
and falls between us—
brackish water in our wells
replenished drop by drop
with freshest of waters.

________________________

NO PASSPORT NEEDED
—Claire J. Baker

Come, let us join
the multitudes
on the journey
toward peace.

We, the people,
motley, memorable,
poised, unprepared,
gay, and not so happy,
handicapped and holy,
varying
yet all the same—
getting out of
our own way.

No tether, weather
or war can hinder
our journey,
our passage.

Peaceably we go,
peacefully we stay.
 
_______________________

Today's LittleNip:

IN SEASON
—Claire J. Baker

Almond
blossoms:
snowflakes
as
flowers.

______________________

—Medusa, thanking today's contributors and noting that the latest issue of Canary, the Bay Area's environmental poetry journal, is now online at www.hippocketpress.org/canary

Green Dots
—Photo by Katy Brown

Reliable Finery

—Anonymous Photo

MORNING GLORIES
—Mary Oliver

Blue and dark-blue
       rose and deepest rose
            white and pink they

are everywhere in the diligent
      cornfield rising and swaying
            in their reliable

finery in the little
      fling of their bodies their
            gear and tackle

all caught up in the cornstalks.
      The reaper's story is the story
            of endless work of

work careful and heavy but the
      reaper cannot
            separate them out there they

are in the story of his life
       bright random useless
             year after year

taken with the serious tons
       weeds without value
             humorous beautiful weeds.

_____________________

—Medusa

 

Only Travelers

Motorcycles on Main Street

—Poems and Artwork by D.R. Wagner, Locke, CA

THE MOON SCREAMS ACROSS THE SKY,
SLIDING INTO THE EDGE OF THE LAKE

There are many way this poem can go.
There are always small fires
That seem to contain
The special secret of what
Makes a poem a poem.

There is the passing from room
To room as if searching for something
That one can touch and not
Blister the fingertips
With, an unknown phrase
That inspires a situation
Finally, not worth repeating.

There is our being on the road
Again together, not knowing
One another until it is quite
Late and we depart the bus to gaze
Upon a sunset behind a diner.  The night
Crowding in before we can really
Get a good look at it.

Or the space in front of the fireplace
Where the shadows have an important
Job to do, but are more interested
In a Pavane or an adagio that
Has nothing to do with our presence.

Sitting on yellow pillows telling stories
To one another with the agreement
That they will not be true but
Will seem so because of our
Wanting each other’s bodies so
Powerfully we cannot bear to
Mention it.

We climb into the car near the end
Of this and close the doors.
The city is below us, spread out
Like someone hit by a vehicle
That could not stop at all.

We rush to the lights, discussing
All the possibilities death presents
In trying to convince us that it
Is gentle and really doesn’t want
Much from us as it shows us maps
Made up of millions of lines.
"Pick one," death says, "any one."

We cannot see the lines very
Clearly in the dark
And swerve across the road,
Hoping we can negotiate the
Next turn without losing traction,
Or the beautiful glow we see
In each other's eyes.

 Tractors
 

RUNNING IN PLACE

Let us remember what we have seen.
The ghost of a tramp steamer
Wandering near Arcturus
With a black crew of drowned
Sailors, each with a story to tell.

The dim white light of the North.
The sun not rising until
Almost ten o’clock, then disappearing
Again just before three.
In the afternoon we stood
Watching the Godafoss of the river
Skjalfandafljot on the Diamond Ring Road,
Thinking the falling water contained
The souls of so many lost,
Because of the sound of the cataract.

A private dawn when time
Unraveled itself so deeply within
The heart that the heart itself
Was allowed to escape,
Only to be found broken,
Almost unrecognizable,
Still weeping over a kiss
Given so long ago that, for a moment,
One thought perhaps
It wasn’t our heart at all,
But some lost mirror,
Harbored in a sleep we had found,
Only to realize its skin
Was our own.

We crouched next to it, gazing
At it as one does great strangeness;
A labyrinth of reflection
That showed the paths of long migrations
In the meticulous lines
One sees in maps and in the indexes
Of treasured books.
We recognized our own compass,
The wind choked between
Mountains, a wolf howling
At the passing of the moon
Behind thick clouds.

All we can think of now
Is the open sea.
We strive to keep an order
To our wandering, to our
Hands meeting and holding together.
The islands.  The beautiful fruit, golden
In a long-ago paradise rife
With great birds, memorable days.

Finally we give up on the causes
Of all these things and return
To an imagined order,
Cobbled together from skies
Full of clouds and flocks
Of calling birds in a terrible
Hurry to reach an imagined horizon.

 Toys

FORGETTING MYSELF
            …for Alvaro Mutis

She came into the room
With the moon tucked
Under her arm.

Her fingertips were dusted
With that blue, yellow, gold
Rubbed from the moon.

“You can’t keep that,” I said.
“Ah, but I can,” she said.
“I will and I shall dance upon it.”

Stars shot from her mouth.
I clamped my hands over my ears
So as not to hear.
I could feel the tides
Calling as they moved through me.

I made a grab for the moon
Just as she was about to dance on it.

It wobbles across the room
And we are both chasing it
As it heads for an open window
With a serene imposing dignity
That ones sees occasionally
In the unvanquished; a certain
Uncommon re-ordering of reality.

For a moment, it looked to be
Made of marble.  It quickly
Mounted the sky, cheered on
By the voices of night.

I could see it illuminate
The spider web
She used to trap our precious moon.
“Now look what you’ve done!”
She says reaching into the night.

The seas rise in approval.
We are once again only travelers
In the service of great mystery,
Its amorphous light, its myth,
Its epic wonder.

 Action Figures

THE ORDER OF EVENTS

"What is that impossible mess
Down there below us?" he asked.

"It is the order of events that were
The articles of many lives.
The dead keep them here for us
In case anyone wants to use them
Again."

"But they are now dead.
Why would anyone want
To use them again?"

"There must have been a reason.
Are the waves of the ocean
Dead once they break, or do they become
Parts of other waves, used over and over?"

 Window

THE CHILD DYING
            …continued from last week.

Ramon took me to the room
Where the child had died.
There was a small fire still
Smoldering in the middle
Of the floor.

No, he hadn’t said anything,
But he had made some figures
With his hands that had caused
Ramon to weep.  His cheeks
Still looked damp in the dim light.

"Do we know who brought him here?"
I asked.  Ramon shook his head no.
“He was sitting in the room
Like a little Buddha.
He had obviously come a long way.
His clothing was no longer white.
He had come to see me,” Ramon said.

“He had your coat and
The hat you gave him
At the house of the prisoner.
He kept moving his hands like
Whenever you handle
The winds.  He knew he would
Still exist in your mind.

I tried to teach him but
There was a liquidity to him
That death brings when it wants
Its memories back, a dark
Border collecting gloom
That didn’t ever have a name.

When he left Naples
The child had said very little.
His voice was like a moving
Stain covering meaning with
A specially prepared cloth
That could be wrapped around
The head almost like a turban.

He talked of the noise time
Was making and said it he must
Go on ahead.  He would meet
Us when necessary.

We knew he wanted us to go
Down from the cliff top
To meet a small freighter
Painted a faded pink
And blue.  We knew which
One he was talking about.

We had been there three days ago
And the captain had gone
Up to the green station where
He was unloading a lot of weapons
We had never seen before.

'This will stop the wondering,'

He said upon seeing us.
'It is what you’ve been waiting for?'

We nodded and helped unload
The ship.  It took almost all day."

Christobal had seen the child
Arrive and went immediately
To Ramon to tell him.
He was very weak and near death
When Ramon met him.
He wanted us to open an aperture
So he could make some final
Calls before he had to
Completely discorporate.

Ramon took the fire and put
It in a box and removed it
From the room.
“Find him a wind,” he said.
“A true one that will run the Atlantic
And find the Southern Islands.”

I went to my room
And waited until I could
Find such an air.

It was fair above our homeland
Currently but the wind would arrive
Within an hour or so.

I put the box with the fire
In the accession circle.

“Come,” I told Ramon.
"We are not to watch this."

We went to have some fermented tea.
By the time we returned
The box had gone and the
Circle smelled of green pastures.
One could almost hear birds singing.

                    …to be continued.

______________________

Today's LittleNip:

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

—Socrates

______________________

—Medusa, with thanks to D.R. Wagner for this morning's delights in the Kitchen!

Palm in Flower

Clinging to What's Green

—Photo by Mark Haskett, Modesto

GREEN
—Nancy Haskett, Modesto

Everyone tells you that Ireland is green,
but still, it takes you by surprise,
this one color, so multi-hued
as far as you can see;
they don’t tell you it will
make you park your rental car
at the foot of a hill
somewhere near Mt. Leister,
climb up through short grass,
wildflowers, jagged rocks,
breathless as you stare
at emerald patchwork fields
stretching into haze at the foot
of distant mountains,
the fields bordered by trees of even darker green,
everything green,
just like they said it would be,
but now you see it for yourself,
now you know it’s a green
that can’t be described

a green that will make you cry.

 Buds, Maple

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis
 

GREEN FIRE
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

You are my Saint Patrick’s—no: my Ireland.
You stand for everything young and green and good
in life, which is to say, girls brought up in a wood
to love with a rage outstripping manners…firebrand.

But your soft flame is green, an Irish flag.
You ignite me, symphonic flair, all Dublin cymbals.
If you kiss me, creation’s all etched in symbols.
Then time stops, eyeing your skin, yet time’s no drag,

just tug and surge and urge ahead. You mingle
rich green eyefire into your native brown,
dark brown of eye. Such complement blooms, all purple,

inform on you: how down beneath your gown
you suffer. Oh your smile uplifts, but bruised—
the deceived & those who take hurt are both abused.

Don’t fight, inside your soul, your civil war.
Don’t split your fen-deep marshland heart with ire.
Even the tangled roots and dirt of you cling to what’s green.
Thrust forward that flag, your feral Irish fire,
shine out from within, my mystical sweet green star.

_____________________

MOY MELL
—Tom Goff

First day all year I’ve seen you: but won’t yell
—your back turned—yet that pixie-cut dark hair,
brown tending to black, pale poet absorbed with care.
Let’s dance, till my heart stops entirely, Bax’s Moy Mell.

It’s beautiful Saint Patrick’s. So, to hell
with anything unselfish or to share.
Girl born above poor Greek Sappho, today, my fair,
you’re Irish, oh mine entirely. My spell!

You torment me most days, transparent—gone.
You never bring pipevine flutter and flirt, my muse.
Such leaving the lonely old alone. Abuse

is absence in a goddess…I see your back!
You melt away in spurts of glee. No lack
today, though. It’s Saint Paddy’s. You’re so much my dawn.

You shine on the redbud and the bluebird. Face
of the white mist in the Derry morning, grace
of the corridor run, you smile, you light, with lips
alone, the cheeks of the rose, and the rosebud tips.  

 Underwater Blocks

—Photo by Katy Brown

BRIEF PREACHMENT ON THE COLOR GREEN
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove

It is the color of spring,
Of course,
And of cold Midwest creeks
Freed, for the moment,
Of their shells
Of ice, and of failed homebrew.

It is also the color that needs
Immediate skimming
From the top of the pool,
Of the moss that magically
Appears atop
Drying mud—brown
And dead by dusk.

And it is the color
Of envy, of jealousy.
And of hope.  It is
The color of the Man
Of the Forest, awakened
Now, to his season,
The color of the eternal
Return.  And it is the
Rightful color of the yo-yo.
 

—Photo by Kevin Jones
 

SAD SONG
—Caschwa, Sacramento
 
There was a sad song
In my heart so I scored it for
Clarinet, basset hound, and piano

The clarinetist I had in mind
Had a little problem
He was missing a couple fingers

So in order to achieve certain notes
He would have to cover the tone hole
With his nose

Needless to say that did not enhance
His otherwise correct embouchure
Not at all

The hound was perfect every time
He did not need to rehearse
We know and love that sound

By the best good fortune that
Those who oversee good fortunes
Could provide

We got a nice player piano
It was very, very reliable
And never complained

Someone mentioned taking the trio
On tour but we only got as far as
The back patio

And when the sprinklers came on
The basset hound raced over
To dance and play with them

The clarinetist pulled out a flask
From his hip pocket
And we lost him

The player piano kept on playing
Ran out of rolls

_____________________

Today's LittleNip:

For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.

—Martin Luther

_____________________

—Medusa, thanking today's fine contributors!

March Music

Indian Paintbrush and Swallowtail

—Photos by Stacie Sherman, Orangevale, CA

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

MARCH MUSIC

Shadows fall
near the mirror, coat
and once-soiled banner
held on a marathon run
in March
from another time,
wanting to play sax
as my notes dance
in a good mood
vibrating a curious scaling
from our chilled-out tones
to sway smooth jazz.

____________________

MARCH'S ABSURDITY

March is an absurdity
of an absent self
at last admitting to sunny skies
wishing for an eternal peace
here on my writing chair
venturing outside one's studio
after being alone
with the chaos of one's mind
choosing to play solitaire
or jazz encores with new passages
perhaps to read in French
a verse of Baudelaire,
or speaking long-distance
to an ailing Cynthia in Colorado
sitting on a park bench in Denver
who briefly collapsed
amid the packed powder
in the ski slopes of Vail
now better and full of hopes
telling me she received my letter
at Christmas time,
speaking of her adventures
with doubtful voyagers
between earth and sky
as we once sailed together
by Alpine Meadows
in a shadow of snow showers,
how she suddenly remembered
this poet's words
in a walled dining room
eating fresh oysters in Morro Bay
from a timeless California space
we speak of my shadowed existence
of a now-cabin-fevered scribe
during this new beginning
starting to hear bird voices sing
along the edge of the sea
viewing neon butterflies
their bright astonishing wings
collecting their own nomenclature
in the early spring
we are near the spiders' webbing
but none of us even in laughter
ever outsmarting clever nature,
as we attend to connect the past
to our wish for an enduring ease
after winter's bafflement
of restlessness and loss
from vast sleepless nights
of reverie in sleep
at last taking red russet leaves
from our deep river beds
camped along the Charles
or at Carlsbad lagoon
she giving me her recipe
of freshly rooted mushroom medicine
with an herbal and verbal tease
recalling we once listened to vespers
at St. John's seminary
and hear prayers for the dead
we suddenly awakened to new life
near Easter's cross on a field
in the hyacinth lawn
on a cool Cambridge afternoon
visiting the newborn or graves
and Revolutionary War cemetery
we speak of what cannot be said,
there is no sin in the beauty
within each one
which saves our memory
after every new moon.

 Panhandler

PLAYING HANDEL

Playing Handel
in my mind and head
playing you
for a month at a time
on one small corner
of the universe
in soundproof studios
on the ball infields
or by the ocean sands
under a beautiful foreign sun
washed bodies of water
with you swimming out,
your notes not lost in visiting
to honor those under Asian ashes
or in European concentration camps,
when you feel
like a thousand days
of long suffering,
we can always hear you.

______________________

A FRIEND FROM BUDAPEST

I played the Hungarian dances
for you over scrubby fields
on my bated breathless violin
our limpid eyes
trailing a Bosnian ship
off the quiet Adriatic coast
and you read to me lyrics
of the poet Endre Ady
who lived in Paris
to escape his fate,
a city which alone embarrasses
us to love
speaks to painters in trembling blue
along the Seine
Cynthia, we still remember
the cat that never left us that March
we called Leda
to remember the poet Ady
who wrote about her
that you oil-painted
with Leda on my lap
you used an almost-dried-up brush
and framed for me
is still in my kitchen garden
of my solid reverie
above the door
no matter what world
upon renewed memory
is born from these few words
we lived out our lives
apart by continents
of an ocean of visionary mirrors
with our high, full or low pictures
you created
or in anthologies I wrote for,
my portrait with all its wounds
still stands up
over the shadows of many years
on its usual chosen wall
centered in my moments of light
which remains as my identity
of an epiphany's brief chapter
over a sun-washed visual window
now unfrozen from icicles' snow.

______________________

VIOLIN SOLO

The bow's strange
story as it turns
on Bach
for inspiration
on the Hatch Shell
the wind glimmers
on the Boston Esplanade
under the Charles St. bridge
by lovers' bones
like the other night's
swaggering inchworms
on stretched-out hours
by once-iced sheets
blanketing our flakes of memory
under the hundred-year evergreen
where my childhood music stands.

 Wallflower

ON A NEW CHAIR

Someone is whispering to me
about the chaos
of intangible memory
our shadows hidden
by Marcel Proust's library
near a lemony canary in its cage
as seen in the sunshine
at the edge of a wine glass
left to me by Nana Mendes
my guitar standing in silence
near the serene reading room
waiting to be played
by a visiting exiled poet who
full of suspicion
murmurs at his own fate.

______________________

WHEN A NEW VOICE ARRIVES

The sun disquiets
our memory
as a surrealist poet
signs autographs
against the elm
after his urban read
then after a party
in his honor
plays his alto sax
from chapped blinded lips
addressing the eager crowd
on the riverbed zen peace garden
recounting my double life
as a poet and musician
asking only
that millstones be created
from language into bread
on a hungry street of fountains
for a surrogate future
making even a lily blush.

 Oak Millegrain

WHAT IS NATURE

Say to the clouds
give up your rain
to the scaffold
give up your poets
who want to live,
to the grassland
stay back for March
for soccer games
to the dunes
crush the sap of Maple
for your morning pancakes,
by the marshes
have a cup of Bourbon
from Paris
to remember me by
who will always
be back to the edges
of nature.

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:
       
OUTSIDER
       
Have you ever felt
like an outsider,
others making sure
that our world's nature
is not real
that we are not of it
like a spider on the vine
we cannot always choose
our path,
but like the poet
Plath,
go line by line.
   
_______________________

—Medusa, with thanks to today's fine contributors!

Gotta Go!

  

Lure of the Land, Call of the Sea

Joe Tetro

—Poems by Joe Tetro, Stockton, CA

AGRARIAN ROUNDS OF EXISTENCE

Gentle footsteps of sunshine
fall on the gray shingles
of the south-facing roof
of the old barn
where mice play hide and seek
in the oats bin,
and the tame old bull snake
grows fat on them.

In the cow barn,
thirteen cats gather
around their evening pan
of separated milk, as we
turn the three milk cows
back out to pasture
on rye grass.

At the hog trough, pigs
snort, grunt and jostle
their snouts into the swill
of sour milk and barley.

In the feed lot, steers
gorge on the ground corn
in their feed bunks and
put on a tasty three pounds
of fat a day, which
with any luck
will turn the buyers’ heads,
to triggers higher bids
and make it all pay.

By dark, we trudge
into the kitchen, wash up
and sit down to supper,
and wonder—while
half believing in,
and half doubting, the
Great American Dream—
whether or not our labor
will ever bring in enough
to buy back our lives
from the rural banks.

 Mustard Calls, Live Oak, CA

—Photo by Stacie Sherman, Orangevale, CA

MY FIRST LOVE

When songs turn to idyllic love,
I recall her who once stopped a
giant after he'd beat me
half to death. And
how she sometimes shivered
and moaned like rusty
old windmills in sudden
gusts of wind—gusts
that carried her off
to sanitariums—so very
far away from us. 

I remember her
scented scarves, her wool skirts,
her veiled vanity,
how she held my head on her lap
on the way to the village,
and knew all the things I liked
when I was just a small child.

Oh dusty roads,
better to sing of the mysteries
hidden in the
eyes of a cat than of
those that burned
in the blue eyes of a
small boy's first love!

Oh dusty roads leading me
to the final shedding
of my blood red leaves.

 King of the Mardi Gras

—Photo by Stacie Sherman

I PONDER

the leaning axis
of the earth as it
circles the sun,
the snow-blinded madness
of winter,
the shifting masks
of the gods,
the lack of serious
weeping in the streets,
the toys that grown men
scramble after and
fawn over in the
slaughterhouses of status,
the hearts of the children
already cut out
and bleeding
on the altars of profit’s
polished promises
for and endless sequence
of richer tomorrows.

______________________

FUMBLING    

I reach up
with stunned hands
fumbling
for the scribbled fashioning
of my face,
and there—
among the ruins—
I fumble
for the scraps
of a lost child
buried in the bedrooms
of my bones . . .
who cries out
in the empty darkness
for words
of approval
I've never spoken.
For such favors missed
I fumble . . . as if such
fumbling had a meaning
all its own.

(first pub. in Poetry 2000 by the Stockton Arts Commission)

Upper Folsom Lake

—Photo by Stacie Sherman

FROM HOME ROASTED COFFEE TO THE OPEN SEAS

Swishing sounds of circling hulls
dancing and snapping like dice,
the tick-tock-tapping
of the bone-dry clicking
and clacking
rises in pitch,
and the rich aroma
wafts its
subliminal magic
in the grottos
of my pelagic longing
for the open seas.

As I sip the finished brew,
my eyes trace
the pink edges of clouds
flushed with wine,
dancing the high ridge line
running seaward against the sky,
and on out
to the vast solitude
of the sea’s salt-scented wilderness
where neither sham nor pretense  


has ever drawn a breath.

_______________________

LURE OF THE LAND, CALL OF THE SEA

Should my life come to
little more than
idle reflections
of a dreamer who—
while running from
the worn-out boots soldiers
leave propped up
in the dust of the damned—once
had his heart stolen
by the sea, then I—
by the ashes of my remains—
shall return to her
even as I came from her—
ever aching with
newborn breath for roots,
for a place, for acceptance, but,
always hearing in my dreams
the crashing, melting
waves of the sea
dying on
the wild pagan coasts
of forever . . . each being
part of the sea . . . yet,
separate and detached
from her . . . and, oddly,
each wave seemingly
is an echoing
of my own destiny. 

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:

BAD FAITH

The blue butterfly
that sustained my soul
lies dead
      on its back
           within me.

But even the wild berry bushes
we pulled up
by their roots
      will survive
             the death
                that bad faith
                  has dealt me . . . for
     closing my eyes
      to the flowers
       that were feeding my soul.   

________________________

Our thanks to today's contributors! Joe Tetro, who returns to the Kitchen today after a protracted absence, was a contributor to Rattlesnake Review back in the 'oughts, and he was featured on Medusa's Kitchen on August 11, 2008. After a rural Nebraska childhood, the military, and getting a B.A. in German, Joe Tetro led a restless, travel-stained life, learned four languages and moved to Mexico at age 65, where he wrote poetry on scraps of lumber about "...herring-gutted village dogs abandoning the gravesides of dusty memories," and "...wine weeping into the lap of the ocean's ruffled skirts". He has published several books, including A New York Bestiary and Lost in America: Memoirs of a Maverick. Don't be a stranger, Joe!

Yesterday we mentioned that the new issue of convergence is out; see www.convergence-journal.com/spring15/. Since our new Seed of the Week is Green, I've taken the liberty of posting Christopher Moon's striking cover below. Speaking of green......!! (And thanks, Christopher!)

Spring 2015 convergence cover by

Christopher Kidlow Moon

Maybe Tonight, With Wings

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento

KEEPING UP WITH THE MUSE

I settle down again to words,
those offhand things

that come to mind and urge me
to respond and connect my thought

to their presence. And in such disorder.
How to capture? Which one first?

They have such beautiful shapes and
meanings. And they mean—

and they mean—everywhere at once.
And I try to hurry my hand

with its scribbling pen that goes
illegible, while my mind

stays clear. Oh this is it! This is it!
And I must capture it. And off they go,

while I gather—frantically gather—
before I lose what is scattered there.

DREAM GHAZAL

It was the last hour. She would enter it
before time disappeared.

She planned carefully. Programmed her thoughts
for the dreams. Anticipated.

Every night it was the same: The helpless
chaos of her mind, going haywire again.

Sometimes she dreamed of a vast body of water
where she drifted toward a cold blue shore.

Trains were the worst, standing empty, or always the
wrong ones, trains she didn’t want to get on, but had to.

She always looked for the exit of the dream
to escape in. Sometimes there was the falling.

Once a wide plateau, atop a sheer cliff; at its center
a tall file cabinet—only place to hide, which was a coffin.

It was a long time since the flying dreams, losing
altitude, all those wires. Maybe tonight, with wings.

THE TRUTH
           After "Still Life with Ginger Pot II" by Piet Mondrian

Lines break apart to explore the center, which is calm,
which is ‘thought’ in moment of clarity, where a round
thing defines—is defined—a union of answer and question.
The lines maintain their design of being—whatever they
are to meaning, which is not immediate—or meant,
which is only chaos of beginning and continuance. All is
relevance seen by blindness, forming the center truth, which
is and is not, what you thought—curved and perfect—
circular—on the ledge that supports it safely, will not let it
topple into the compositional chaos of lines around it, that
allows it the revelation that reveals and protects it.

________________________

OUR QUARREL CHAIRS

We sit in our quarrel chairs.
One of us is weeping;
one of us is wrapped in a
web of silence.

Everything shatters around us
though the room does not change.

Discordance hangs like insanity.
Chaos thrills to our contribution.

The chairs pull apart
by the force of our difference.

We are spinning in helplessness.
We are on our way to emptiness
which opens and closes
behind us.

DISATTACHMENT

Surreal force enters, finds Love,
begins its dissolving.

The altered one is turned to
pure abstracted light—

in love with shadow
but without words.

The absorption
is complete.

Now the force
crumbles, becomes chaos.

Damage slides between them.
They become two, forget each other.
                               

(first pub. in Noir Love, Rattlesnake LittleBook #2, 2009)

_____________________

THE DIMINISHMENT  

They leave the day behind, turning their backs on the
house, the slow river, the edges of their lives. They
lean into their going without regret or longing for
surprise. They are through with the old direction. They
head for the memory of home. But such a slow leaving
holds them in a drawn-out illusion of movement as if
they fade into a future that does not receive them. They
do not turn around, though the river becomes a stream,
barely murmuring over the stones. The light is losing its
effect upon the softening landscape. Life seems at rest here.
They have been departing for such a long time, yet have
barely moved from their beginning.

Today's LittleNip:

WITH A FLICK OF HIS MIND
(The Hubble Photos)

The building sky, so measureless and deep,
deeper than time—deeper than dark or light,
this sky so full of God in his vast sleep
—this abstract God, creating all that is,
even now, out of his churning mind,
the teeming energies that continue to wreak
their splendored violence, revising all that was
—the awesome void without a depth or height,
his chaos dreaming forth for time to find.

_______________________

Our thanks to Joyce Odam, today's Master Chef, for today's fare, and a few notes, besides:

•••More of Joyce's handiwork may be found in the latest issue of DADs DESK, Sacramento's only large print poetry journal, edited by Carol Louis Moon. Contact her at dadsdesk2@gmail.com for a copy or a subscription.

•••Also new on the "shelves" is another issue of the online journal, convergence; see www.convergence-journal.com/spring15

•••Trina Drotar has posted some photos of the newly-emerging Poet Laureate Park at the South Natomas Library; see Anja SacmetroArts on Facebook. This was Julia Connor's project when she was Poet Laureate, and was designed by Troy Corliss, with poems by Sacramento Poets Laureate Viola Weinberg and Dennis Schmitz, Jose Montoya, Julia Connor, Bob Stanley and Jeff Knorr.

•••Erin go bragh! Celebrate St. Patrick's Day with our new Seed of the Week: Green, whether it's nature, money, being a newbie, envy, or....? Send poems and pix about that or any other subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com/. No deadline on SOWs.

—Medusa