These Songs Are But The Wings

Christmas Spirit

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

O ALL THAT IS TRUE
—D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

O all that is true and beautiful
In the story books of children
Are the lights that make her
Skin glow so that the Powers
And the Principalities come
To sing before the Throne of her smile.

And she sees everything. The rat
Gnawing its way into the soldier's
Body, the claw and eyes of a great
Bird depends on her lovely eyes
And this dirt is made to run
With blood again and again.

O I believe in life. The sun cresting
The morning with its new light.
O I believe in love and all who do
Not are the enemy of truth.

And still they will come and bend
Their heads to please you but you will
Have wonder holding your hand,
The perfect shape of everything.

______________________

THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE
—D.R. Wagner

Make no mistake, the darkness
Will come to the perfect world.
These songs are but the wings that carry
Us into those green and breezy hills.

The red deer move on the top
Of the hills. Their shadows are
Bright yellow and look like flame.

You won’t find anyone if you climb
Up past the house and the barn,
Where the cabbage has been planted.
It looks like a bouquet for giants,
But purple with leaves big as
An adagio lost on a plain
Or a field of ice. We, yes, we can
See you even there. See the sun
Is coming even at this hour to take
Itself from the tops of waves,
Huge sheets of light full from the
Leaves of trees. We wait by the camp
Fire, telling stories.

____________________

MESSAGES TO EARTH
—Taylor Graham

We sent our Curiosity to Mars. But waiting
is so difficult for humans. What could we ever
solve? death, or love, peace, or hunger, life?

Late at night, might a computer record blips
from space, to chart them like French
or German for tense, mood, and person?

I follow rabbit-trails of dream in my sleep.
But my hair reaches out wild in all
directions, antennae for receiving signals.

One who knows names of stars
gazes into the night sky focusing on
the brightest body, visible at solstice

this bleakest time of year when the soul
seems ice-crystal. Planet or star?
Are its pulses a Morse code we might

decipher, to learn a language beyond
our grammar, our tongues to pronounce,
our human translations?

______________________

BRIDGE TO THE HORIZON
—Taylor Graham

We set about to build a bridge to span
the gap. A graceful lattice under Mars
and Venus, above Old River. Our plan
envisioned a tall archway lit by stars,
a street from here to there. But how to start?
We argued about structure and design—
simple or cantilever—all the art
of beam and arch. Steel or wood? oak or pine?
The far horizon glowed by day and night—
what sort of bonfires in that unknown land?
were they of war or welcome, joy or fright?
We puzzled what we couldn't understand:
those signals to us from the other side.
We scrapped materials, let the mystery bide.

_____________________

GREEK AND ROMAN GODS
—Caschwa, Sacramento

Having grown up with tension
From the whirlwind of the Cold War
Inflation, assassination, addiction
Huge advances in technology

I can only wonder
From the outside looking in
What it might have been like
To have been raised in a culture

Where one would recognize
From daily casual talk
The implications of references
To the daughters of Zeus and Jupiter

Smart folk, those Greeks and Romans
Personifying all our inner drives
So people could talk about them
Openly in a public forum

Instead of leaving those questions
To a sequestered panel of 12 peers
And a few alternates
Who are limited by a silence order

All the while wondering if
Our highest courts and legislature
Will once again amend the Constitution
Giving the justice bus a new route

______________________

PERF3CTION
—Caschwa

At one time society had reached
An explanation of the world
That made perfect sense
And everyone could live with it

That became the basis
For common sense:
The world is flat and has edges
Of course, don’t doubt the word

A few royalty owned all the land
Held all the power
And there were fewer still
Who could read and write

So very handily they were
Always correct
Because there was no one else
Around to correct them

Fast forward to the space age
Where correction is king
From accident reconstruction
To overloaded prisons

To seek a second opinion
To spell check and grammar check
To recall elections
To auditing the books

To Pluto is not really a planet
Common sense is now
Orbiting the Earth
Somewhere over the edge

_____________________

Thanks to today's cooks in the Kitchen: D.R. Wagner, Taylor Graham, and Carl Schwartz (Caschwa). D.R. and T.G. will be reading with fellow Meduskateer Katy Brown at the Sacto. Poetry Center tonight, 25th & R Sts., Sacramento, 7:30pm. Be there!

_____________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

Tinsel is really snakes' mirrors.

—Stephen Wright

_____________________

—Medusa

Fred and Ginger

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

Persephone (Proserpine) Prepares to go Underground for Six Months This Thursday (12/22)

Proserpine

—Painting by Dante Gabriel Rosetti

LOVES AND TRANSGRESSIONS
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

I.

Young as a girl’s breath
breaking the gloom of the old
are you, sweet avatar of the waning days.

Sheltering here in the temple of mindful life,
you outfling your long hair, wind-deranged,
in front of your lovely face, outfling
and finger-comb it in one auburn burst:

all that soft chestnut nova between
two hands. From girl to immortal,
just like that. Then back to your disguise:
in one instant your beautiful
brown hair recoils, resuming its
mortal perfection.

Come to the one who guesses your
secret. Embrace me. Murmur the soft kiss
of your words, press your mouth to my mouth.
Love me with the thrust of your legs
and hips, the caress of your breasts.
Your love is the mist of the mountains,
bird music in the underbrush at dusk and dawn.

How easy the task of warming
an old man’s hands and shoulders,
legs, loins, and chest, for a girl who
nightly rekindles the flame of the stars.


II.

Long ago, I wrote you those first words
of sexual rapture, trying to distill
our pleasuring joy into syllables. And these
poems left you abashed. Right you are.
Lovemaking, for all that spirit love alive
in the blood, feels intensely private, no
one’s affair beyond the yielding contour
and skin music of the joined. But think: we
who kiss and interpenetrate

merely obey universal form,
wear our selves away with each
thrust and shudder and susurrus of skin.
We become faceless Khajuraho temple
carvings. Come, little nude, posture with me
in every lithe, nervy insertion or capture
of the Kama Sutra. Be my ecstatic
partner, or become two of you. (I have
enough, and more than enough, for you
both.) Your gasps and murmurs

divide like cells, rise hot and fuse with stars.
We are tracing the amazing outlines
of dancers, dervishes, newborns, ghosts,
and gods. Our climax
is the rose of dusk sowing the fields with blush,
yet retreats into dark like the poppies.
Little blooms, folding their petals
shut upon the drug
in their seed.


III. Spanish Song

I am a village elder.
I trust effort, and wisdom, a plan.
At dawn comes a black-haired maiden,
flings me one glance and I am no man.

Sunlit face and brown eyes unbowed
by a jar of water atop,
she softly calls to me Good morning!
straight across from the door of my shop.

In her patched and plain dress she comes glowing;
slender, tall as a river-born reed.
And the knell of the church bell in my heart
tolls a summons from old man Need.

My maid smiles at the drover, beekeeper,
knife-grinder, and all she may meet
sweeping lightly by, straight calves and ankles
on two dusty but pretty bare feet.

All I knew of myself turns to question:
where’s the effort, the wisdom, the plan?
In one dawn, one soft cry of good morning,
comes a maiden, and I am no man.


IV.

I sit close to him at my lessons:
sometimes we’re almost shoulder to shoulder.

What does he want of me? He talks
of sentences, intellectual things.
He’s kinda decent; he never puts

on the moves. But there we are,
just bending together over a book, a paper,
or way too close to a Gateway screen.
I think the glow will microwave us.

When he throws back his head
in a laugh, I can’t help seeing
the hairs in his nose. (I haven’t

checked his ears for hair just yet.)
Sometimes, his words float like balloons,
I actually see them. And I think I’ve spent

my whole life with earbuds on. And the sound
that pounds through wires from the thing
at my waist is draining me from me, fast.

When I get it and he says good job
I feel the earbuds pop out and my real ears
open. Just the other day, he says something
about my work, and I’m
dropped

in the black cold salt ocean
far out from our beach,
clothes stolen for all I know,

and there goes the last of my body heat
steaming up to midnight under
no moon.


V.

My bloom of dusk, you sow every field with blush:
what hope for me? My eyes trace you as long
as your soft shimmer can clasp its dazzle, cling
to the darkening sky-satin. But you relinquish
your hold, my rose, for petals cannot hold,
no more than palms can cup, the flaring glory.
And so you’re lost each night to a starry
lord, my Persephone of the moon-clad cold,
the void, that unbridged emptiness you’ve traveled
so countlessly many times, abandoning me.
Like Vincent Millay I ache to touch that sky,
your cloud-woman shape at my fingers’ ends: but, baffled
again!…I thank the gods of the sensual bed
you’ve caressed me, taken your rapture: only then fled.

____________________ 

—Medusa

New Beginnings

Photo by Janet L. Pantoja

WINDS OF CHANGE I

Winds of change breeze

through trees with ease,

sweep fall into winter

broom away dead, dying leaves

create crunchy carpets of color—

gold, yellow, amber, brown.

Pine-cone or berry décor,

evergreens remain, offer

verdant or ruby contrast

to inclement dark days,

drab winter skies,

stark white snow.

WINDS OF CHANGE II

Winds of change breeze

through skies with ease,

bluster through winter

tow storms behind them

that dump rain, snow—

reservoirs for summer refreshment.

WINDS OF CHANGE III

Winds of change breeze

through our lives with ease

sweep grief into hope

broom away the past—

create different scenarios,

new vistas—new beginnings.

—Janet L. Pantoja, Woodinville, WA

Photo by Janet L. Pantoja

GOLD
—Patricia L. Nichol, Sacramento

flowers of wild mustard on the hills
sun sustaining all this gold
beauty farther than the eye can see

       Do your eyes grow dim from all this joy
       from the gilt-edged wonder
       of the wild mustard flowers on the hills?

       Or do you seek the cost of dazzle,
       petals’ price, stems’ value,
       beauty dearer than the soul can know?

       Do you grieve that these fair plants shall fade,
       fiery days ravaging
       the bright mustard flowers on the hills?

but: whether sadness-struck or blissful,
you have encountered
beauty keener than the soul can grasp

you have entered the fierce corridor
of joy and loss entwined:
wild mustard flowers on the hills
and beauty farther than the soul can see

___________________

PREOCCUPATION
—Patricia L. Nichol

The paint is peeling from the gray wall.
She sees faces there in the flaking:
     Albert Einstein who, if she looks
     from a different angle, looks like
     an old woman;
     a young, exuberant man
     with bright eyes and
     a careless, laughing mouth;
     and, there, the side-turned head
     of a colossal dragon—
     or is it a gryphon—
     above vast, spread wings,
     ready for adventure.
She lies on the bed, studying the wall;
her life slips by.

_______________________

FALLING
—Patricia L. Nichol

I.
Falling
down
the
walls;
falling
down
onto
concrete.
Bloody
scraps
of
people
on
the
concrete.

II.
Falling
into
the
call
for
war.
Falling
into
madness.
Free
fall.

_____________________

ARCHWAY
—Patricia L. Nichol

Thus is the time that death wings its way
and casts over us its finality,
reminding us we’ll pass through its archway

to be enfolded by eternity.
But the tapestry encompassing all
contains much more than this finality.

In warp and weft threads infinite and small,
birth and life are intertwined with dying
through this tapestry encompassing all.

So after winter, always comes the spring
with joy and song dispersing far and near,
birth and life prevailing over dying,

buds opening up as ice disappears.
So blent with death’s dispiriting command
is joy and song dispersing far and near,

delaying death’s immutable demand.
So in that time when death wings its way,
blent throughout its dispiriting command
spring accompanies us through that archway.

______________________

THE CHILD
(after Lucille Clifton)
—Patricia L. Nichol

She mistook your burning pain for greatness,
the pain you masked with pride and arrogance.
She trusted in your strut of dominance.
She was your child and could not believe less.

You hid your inner anguish and distress,
spoke in words that often overstated
what other people did and what they said.
She was your child and could not believe less.

You hid your anguish with pretentiousness:
talked all the time about how you were smart,
railed that your job was burning up your heart.
She was your child and could not believe less.

She mistook your burning pain for greatness:
she was your child and could not believe less.

_____________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

_____________________

—Medusa

 Photo by Janet L. Pantoja

Just Keep Grittin'

EXPLAINING OURSELVES TO A MARTIAN
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

To be human is to die,
to keep that knowledge like black silk
on the brain's back wall, a darkly shimmering
uncertainty that will surely come
to pass. Death rises with us
as our blue planet spins to meet the Sun
each morning, inhaling the silver
lining of a cloud. Black silk. We breathe in
a little more of it each day, we spread it
like tears in the sun to dry. We are
salt. We sprinkle it on our breakfast eggs
and stir it into our stew. Take, eat,
this savory mutton was once our old ewe Daisy,
who has died. The potatoes from our
garden are dead, but already the vision
of their blind eyes lives underground.
All of these books of recipes and philosophy
and verse: how to live with death.

_____________________

SLOW MORNING AT THE CLINIC
—Taylor Graham

Click of heels on spotless floor.
Sick people sitting everywhere.
Tick of clock, breath-hitch, time
thick with worry, waiting air.

Den of doctor, diagnosis, pill,
men and women, nose and ear,
wen and cyst and failing parts.
When will we be out of here?

___________________

TALES OF THE HORIZON
—D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

So we must return to tell
The others what it is we
Have seen or heard or tasted.

We could just stay ‘there’ on
The bridges forever while the planets
Whirl and stars explode and the glory
That is our language flares and burns

Enough to light up any horizon.
“Maybe they will see it from
The other side and send us signals...”

It never happens. We unhook
Our bolts and pull the seven
League boots from our feet,
Reach for a beverage, try to sit
If only for a verse or two.

To say, to tell the tale, to pull
Stones and bright bits of glass
From our pockets, singing songs
We have heard about these places.

Then, we get up and gaze from the doorway
Upon the night outside the house
And the mystery floods in again
And it is as if we have not
Been anywhere at all. The best
We can do is tell what we’ve dreamt.

_______________________

TOO SMALL FOR BREATH
—D.R. Wagner

The cloth will hold us.
That which is hidden will know
The caress. We move our hands
Toward the flaming pylons.
We will wait in the light
Until we are born.

This breathing is a special mystery.
We understand the beautiful
As if it were a headline or something
Made captive and a spectacle.

They heave some rotted timbers
Toward the fire. We uncover the horror
Of the moment. The stars
Begin their thick howling.

I reach down and pull my clothing
Together around my body.
I can hear death laughing in the alley.
The young men weep and their souls
Flap up and down against what
We will call tomorrow.

My friend, quickly, come this way.
We must dance. NOW!

____________________

LOOK! IT IS NIGHT.
—D.R. Wagner

It has filled my body and peers
Out through my eyes, become moons.
I do not want to think how
This thing happened. Perhaps
This is a treasure. I swarm with
The stars, not believing the persistence
of the hard driving glow that seems
to sift into my very pores.

___________________

ANGELS OF BREAKFAST
—D.R. Wagner

sun went off found a quiet
place
where no one could
see her.
she covered her body
with chalk.
She had seven children.

one was blinded by the rain.
one was the lover of the wind.
one was she who danced with life.
one ate the world and everything
in it.
one became the morning.
one was the queen of
dreaming.
one was my
lover.

_____________________

HOME COOKING
—Michael Cluff, Highland, CA

Mom always made the best Swiss steak
and upside down pineapple cake
her okra blend was not so bad
and her chili would drive me mad.

After that it wasn't so great
a good chef was not her fate
yet she keep the family stable
with engaging talk around the table.

Every night we did so
imagination allowed to grow
the appetite for witty words
was like a visit to Lourdes.

_____________________

The Friday before finals
is always a pain
too much to get done
makes you insane.

Grading a priority
yet shopping to do
do equal mounts of both
and you'll get through.

Prep time is a joy
I would rather forego
Yet, I will push on as usual
being a pro.


—Michael Cluff

_____________________

THE SATURDAY BEFORE FINALS: English Essays
—Michael Cluff

Fourteen papers read
twenty-two to go
in this class alone
no lunch with Aunty Flo
no time to contact her
even on the phone.

Melina and Rhinna and Kevin and Shaun
are in for a shock
their papers so bad
content's a crock
of last-minute platitudes
making me go mad.

And the poems are waiting
just to be written
too much to attempt
I just keep grittin’
possibly tomorrow
I'll reach without contempt.

The moving I would like
to do today
will be postponed
to maybe this May
life would be better
if I had been cloned.

_____________________

Thanks to today's contributors! D.R. Wagner writes: The "Tales of the Horizon" is commenting on an introduction d.a. levy did for my '18th Dynasty Egyptian Automobile Turnon' I wrote back in the sixties. His introduction was very beautiful. I am thinking of republishing it on drsspoon. The 'dramatic' is by one of my students from an exercise we do in "Form & Color" called Word Play Typography.

D.R., Taylor Graham and Katy Brown will be reading at Sac. Poetry Center next Monday, 7:30pm. I was a wee bit disappointed to see that the advance publicity didn't include any mention of the fact that they are the Meduskateers—that they have come together on Medusa's Kitchen in an on-going "poetic conversation" that continues even today. Anyway, be sure to head down to 25th & R Sts. for their reading this coming Monday.

_____________________

Today's LittleNip: 

The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn't for any religious reasons. They couldn't find three wise men and a virgin.

—Jay Leno

____________________

—Medusa

 Photo by D.R. Wagner

Tickle, Tackle and Tango

Sunny

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

Me using a nutcracker on the last of the Fall season's walnuts:
Sunny suddenly goes crazy over flying-off bits of shell
He knocks and scatters the pieces around the patio floor
even though I was trying not to make a mess
The fifteen-year-old orange tabby rarely plays anymore
not even to wrestle with his now mostly blind brother Morris
But certain things do make him become like a kitten again
especially when he's got something he is not supposed to play with
which he then "hides" to claim it as his prize toy
and you've got to poke it out from under furniture with a yard stick

—Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

_____________________

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
—Patricia Hickerson, Davis

There was an old woman she was dancing
and dancing in a big ballroom with a boy
named Billy she’d dated in high school or
was it the old man Chuck who had recently
befriended her [both men were rather
slightly built] they were dancing and
dancing she said to him, ‘we’ve never
danced together before’ and then a young
girl came up to her and said ‘your black
slacks are pulled down in back we can see
your white underpants’ so the old woman
left her partner and left the ballroom and ran
upstairs to her room and saw the elastic had
broken on her slacks and she put on another
pair of black slacks and then, going back
down the stairs, saw she was wearing bright
red satin long-legged underpants and when
she got downstairs to the outdoors her
partner was nowhere in sight and she had to
go down another flight of steps on a cliff
side and when she got to the bottom, she
turned and looked and saw a gorilla was
coming down the stairs after her, following
her she was frightened and started running
along the path by the cliff but pretty soon
she heard the gorilla singing Night and day, 
you are the one, only you and you alone 
under the sun whether near to me or far it’s 
no matter, darling, where you are, I think of 
you, night and day….he had a beautiful
voice; the song made her sad and she turned
around and he was holding the gorilla head
in his arm; she smiled and he smiled—he
was a nice-looking older man—and she
thanked him.

(previously pub. in Punk Me)

_____________________

ALWAYS OPEN
—Caschwa, Sacramento

Right now my nose tingles
Fight off that sneeze
Might face a challenge
Quite hard to appease

Bringing me medicine won’t
Sing me to sleep
Ringing up charges that
Sting me so deep.

____________________

NEVER CLOSED
—Caschwa

Broil the chicken breasts
Foil wrap those taters
Loyal customers, according to
Hoyle, don’t have to be waiters

Grill me something spicy
Chill something quite hot
Fill the cornucopia
Till it’s too big for the pot.

_____________________

TAP DANCE
—Patricia Hickerson

I’ll dance till I die, said the little girl
as she tied the grosgrain ribbons
of her shiny patent leather tap shoes

I’m percussive, she said
I pound the floor a rhythmic beat
I tap the floor a special code
easy to remember a routine of steps
just don’t interrupt me during my 3 minutes
or I’ll lose the message

she danced and danced all over the stage
a time step
a soft shoe slur
finally,
a shuffle off to Buffalo
and she disappeared behind the curtains
to wild applause

after she made a curtain call
and was handed some flowers
they asked her what it all meant

it means whatever you want
like any music that comes from an instrument
it should make you happy
it’s always made me happy

______________________

TINGLE
—Patricia Hickerson

tickle, tackle and tango
tingle with tango
lift the heel
wrap the leg
drop back down
bend and sway
drumbeat angle
finagle your way
she lifts she stops
she drops and bends
she sways to music
and makes her way
he nods against her sleek black hair
he’s drawn to women who love to pair
they rhyme and tickle
they tackle their steps
these tango women
with steep black heels, long black hair

_____________________

YES, IL TROVATORE
—Patricia Hickerson

While I was dreaming about the dance I once did
with my teacher an older man in his 50s,
his name was Michael Bell
Mother thought he was Italian like the opera
real name Bello?
(people bothered about those things then)
the dance we did together
was to the music of Il Travatore by Verdi

I was 9, wearing a simple white dress
white socks and black patent leather tap shoes
we danced on stage before an audience of 300

the tempo changed frequently
the Anvil Chorus was part of the medley we danced to—
my father loved the Anvil Chorus

sometimes Mr. Bell lost his way
I had to show him
even onstage as we were performing
he would smile a little at his forgetfulness
and look to me for guidance
he had to hold so many different
dance routines in his head
how could he remember them all?
he had so many pupils to teach
I was the one he had chosen
to dance this intricate routine with

the dance was an exercise of intellect
I understood that
even then, even though
I didn’t know Il Trovatore meant the troubadour
I became a teller of stories, not a dancer

_____________________ 

Today's LittleNip(s):

dance
—Patricia Hickerson

we danced a little
we danced a lot
we danced all night
on a drunken yacht

we danced at sea
till up came dawn
we danced to bed
without a yawn

____________________

—Medusa

Today is all about nutcrackers and dance—appropriate for the season—plus Carl Schwartz's odes to seasonal colds and Home Cookin', our Seed of the Week. And be sure to head down to Poetry Unplugged at Luna's Cafe tonight, 8pm, to hear Pat Hickerson and Allegra Silberstein. That's AFTER you stop in at the Main Library at noon today to read poems about this season of lights. Details on the blue b-board at the right of this.

By the way, a certain bookseller has returned to Sacramento from Scotland—finally!—so stop in at The Book Collector to say hello and Happy Holidays to Richard Hansen, and to do some holiday shopping. Welcome back, Richard!

One of this year's Claras from

Sacramento Ballet's Nutcracker Suite

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

Whispers of Autumn's Shade

Black Rock Desert, Nevada

—Photo by Cynthia Linville, Sacramento

WELCOME SKY
—B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

Welcome sky
and earth
desiring to catch
an early sun
flying high
from night's veils
of oblivion,
dazzle us
between clouds
drifting
in a starry manner
for the dawn's edge
of day,
announce spring
to the pale child
sulky and sleepless
hushed
and alone
afraid of the cold
by the corner fire
with a red bandana
sewn for Christmas
staggering to sing
a French tune,
writing tales
of ghostly nightmares
in his notebook
by his feral cat
on the window sill
in front of the sun.

___________________

ABANDONMENT
—B.Z. Niditch

Wood wandering
like intruders
among restless leaves
and feral cats in heat
silence wounds
from immense darkness
by treetop circles
of thick Evergreen
clustered as wrestlers
together in rings,
yet floating
over high branches
loud performancles
from yellow bird voices
with unfamiliar sounds,
as wings expand
shadows will rustle
our Fall jackets
in earth-wise bush
wishing for water
in backward roads
absent from time
in untraced brambles
locating blueberries
matching the shine
of fiery sky color.

___________________

ACCOMPLICES
—B.Z. Niditch

A bird in mid-air
dances on a branch
of Evergreen,
at an hour
not knowing
when the soul
in a blue coat
holding up traffic
with the Slavic
accent,
says "After you,"
and holds you up
down the road
also saw the bird.

____________________

GREAT BLUE HILL
—B.Z. Niditch

In the middle
of a long platform
Autumn's shade
whispers inside us
from whitened sun
wrapping its dawn
on denuded trees
an absence of mist
in a horizontal mirror
clears landscapes
at first light
on great blue hills
where a poet climbs
upward of nowhere
but sky
on large silences
along shadows
of breeding oak
leaping over visions
and bird branches
in yellow distances
of solitude.

____________________

ALIBI
—B.Z. Niditch

Nature pardons
every memory
its forgotten miles
of snowy loss
as you trudge up
the great blue hillsides
trying to find that crevice
of your love poem,
it's spring now
time is in absentia
with a new watch on
bidding a farewell
to a curious letter
framed to the earth
into innocent oblivion.

____________________

IN THE BACKYARD
—B.Z. Niditch

Remarkable fast
from an empty
picnic table
except for an apple
in the image
of Cezanne
among a lexicon
of discarded words
to pass on
my nature's embrace,
slowly resting
on a grass coverlet
until a whirlwind
of words
blankets the day
full of sunshine
near the youngest branch
of disarmed oak
by green saplings
on russet ground
hearing hills
of songbird sopranos
moving in first light
with their own notes
and unseen itinerary
between sky and earth.

_____________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.

—George Carlin

_____________________

—Medusa

Black Rock Desert, Nevada

—Photo by Cynthia Linville

Singing With The Cagebirds

Leaves After Rain

—Photo by Joyce Odam

THE POET, COMING HOME
—Joyce Odam, Sacramento

How strange to come from places so far
on these horses of sleep
who bend their necks down
now that they are home.
And we must live here
on their farms
and be their owners.

What of our distances, we wonder,
and there are none.
We are the newly-arrived,
though our names are on the
gates that need painting
and sag from disrepair.

In the houses that
we do not want to enter
are endless things to do.
Weeds grow from the rugs
and there is dust on all the dishes.

But we are loyal to duty.
Like joyful trust
we fly into the mouths of cagebirds
who are hungry from singing
and we feed them our words
which is all we are.

____________________

HOUSE LOOKING AT ITSELF
—Joyce Odam

in the mirror is a door
through the door a room
on the far wall of the room
is a mirror . . .

in the mirror is a room
through the room a door
reflecting the door is
a mirror . . .


(first pub. in Orbis, 1973)

____________________

HOME
—Joyce Odam

Why do we get off
here?
I do not know this place
nor any of these people.
What kind of neighborhood
is this
with its houses
of no house-numbers
and its street-names
repeated at every corner.
I thought you knew
the way.
I have always followed what you knew.
But there is nothing here,
this old, ghost-town-of-a-place
you seem to remember.

You open a door
and go in
and after a moment
I follow, trusting you,
and find
a false-front house
with fields behind
and the famous tumbleweed
of movies
rolling past.
You should have
disappeared
to make this poem mysterious.
But you are standing there
with lonely welcome on your face,
your arms extended. 


(first pub. in Calliope, 1989)

_____________________

THIS HOUSE
(after Tragedy by Hobarth Nichols)
—Joyce Odam

What is this house where no one lives—
what of this sky, filled with such rain;

and this landscape—what of it?
How could one think to live here, all is ruin:

the broken-shadowed windows gape
and the old walls creak and strain;

the canyon drops away and the
unhampered weather continues to threaten.

But the view is wide, clear to the mountains;
the sky is deeper; the distance farther.

And this ruined house—its loneliness intact—
still buffets its old strength against the forces.

____________________

YOU BRING IT HOME IN YOUR HANDS
—Joyce Odam

There is an hour
known as love.

It flutters about in the heart
like a little lost bird.

You bring it home in your hands
and you buy it a cage.

You buy it seed
and a cuttlebone.

You give it a mirror
and a little swing.

And you hover
around it

and coax it to sing.
And you listen awhile,

and for a sweet while
love is not your prisoner.


(first pub. in Oregonian Verse, 1971)

_____________________

WELCOME HOME
—Joyce Odam

We are the quiet country to which you come;
we are as far as you will ever be.
Learn our terrain and seasons.
Learn our regionality.

We have landscapes made for calendars.
Cows live in pastoral harmony with
passing trains. All is scenic and
nostalgic here. There are no laws or jails.

The signs at the county line say Welcome.
But that is not entirely true…
even if you promise never to leave…
even if you say you were born here.

If you stay, you will become native to
our ways—earned by experience—learned by
history. You have already been counted into
the population figure posted at the county line.

____________________

Our thanks to Joyce Odam for today's fine fare! Speaking of which, let's whip up some home cookin' for our Seed of the Week: Home Cookin'. Got memories? Let your senses go wild this holiday season and tell us about all those smells and sounds and tastes and "sense memories", past and present. and send them to kathykieth@hotmail.com/. Put 'em into a Lento if you want—see the green board for details.

____________________  

Today's LittleNip: 

IN THE HOUSE ARE MANY SOULS
—Joyce Odam

In the house are many souls
floating between rooms
lamenting through windows
balancing the rumors of their lives
with many versions

we hear them on stormy nights
and on dead-still days
how they regenerate and reminisce
as sure and safe with us
as if we knew them


(first pub. in Chaminade Literary Review, 1989)

_____________________ 

—Medusa

Moss on Pavement

—Photo by Joyce Odam