My message from the Oracle. It made me think of two collages (based on a painting by Ilya Repin) I did for one of Jane’s long-ago prompts, but when I went searching I could only find one of them.
can you bring stars
to awaken my ghosts
into the eye of morning?
I am longing for magic sails
to open me out from myself
like a window of liquid time
so I can remember how the ocean
became unbroken—a healing breath
reborn—surrounded by salty air
It was almost black,
the river serpentine—
everything looked like it was
coated in silver, much bigger
than he imagined, as if
the surface was somehow
a river of birds. The moon
was right there, and every
part of it, calling.
It’s an ancestral memory,
a sound he remembers
from before he hears it.
How dark the water was,
prehistoric, too loud,
flung forward
as the wave broke.
The sky slips from peach
to garnet to blood.
Who can say?
Life is long out here.
Laura at dVerse asked us to alternate lines from one page in each of two books and construct a patchwork poem. My sources were:
“The Echo Maker” by Richard Powers, page 422
“Duplex” by Kathryn Davis, page 152
The Oracle’s message today called for the birdlings.
between night
and the hour that fills
the spirit
with wingsong,
be as if joined together–
skydancing the light
I had a long and complicated dream about Sue Vincent last night. I’m still trying to disentangle and figure it out. But the Oracle always knows what’s on my mind. After I visited Her, I looked for some art I had done for one of Sue’s prompts to accompany it. I knew immediately this was the one to use.
above
the rain do dreams
swim on light? is that how
moon music recalls the language
of sea shadows
singing?
the blue of
darkness is
a blank canvas
from translucent music
comes
the shadow
of hope
moonbird rising
toward
the center of deep
light
observe the owl,
illuminated with shivering shadows
cast between branches
by the moon—
is it a sign,
an initiation?
or simply a reflection
of the enormous mystery
of a journey
whose path can never be
foretold?
When I saw Jane’s Random Word Generator list this week, the first word that jumped out at me was owl, which of course reminded me of my moon and owl painting that seems to go so well with so many poems. I was thinking about it when David published the W3 prompt for this week, which invited us to respond to Denise DeVries’ poem “Generation Gap” using a computer aid, such as a Random Word Generator.
In Denise’s poem, she and her granddaughter look up in wonder at the night sky.
The words I used from Jane’s list were: observe, owl, illume (illuminated), shivering, cast, sign, initiate (initiation), reflect (reflection), enormous, foretell (foretold).
Denise wonders if using a Random Word Generator would be cheating. But words are just words, no matter the source–why would it be cheating to take any word from anywhere as inspiration for a poem? It’s the poet who must make them sing.
A current of remembering simmers beneath the surface, on the edges, seeking awareness. Everything I do is stitched with its color. But I see only its reflection, outlined on the other side of the mirror. My core, my being, is threaded, waiting, but my mind is lost.
Holes fill my reasoning. My synapses are confused, the connections severed. As the navigable landscape grows ever smaller, all my maps lose their meaning. Transformations multiply, and life becomes unrecognizable.
The world now exudes a silent numbness, a freezing intensified by the coldness of wintered minds. We refuse to enter into a relationship with what is real lest we become reshaped by its mystery, its extremes, into awakening, opening. We cling to our tiny virtual selves, unable to see beyond its confines.
Where is history located? I search the fraying patterns for a place to begin mending.
The phrase from W.S. Merwin provided by Lisa for this week’s dVerse prosery, Everything I do is stitched with its color, fit well into the earthweal prompt, where Brendan asked us to respond to an interview with poet Jorie Graham about how her writing has come to be intertwined with environmental concerns. He also provided a poem from Merwin as inspiration.
This house has
time–
it wanted mountains,
morning songs, shadows,
happy screams.
We are all sailing
another grey sky,
clinging to tattered
margins. Move, expand–
you can hear the universe–
Sing. Ask the wind
if the moon cried
when the universe was young.
Laura at dVerse asked us to take the first lines of the first poems we published each month in 2022 and make a new poem. Three of mine were haibuns, so I used the first line of the haiku part. I’ve also included art from some of those posts. If it sounds Oracle-like, several of the poems were from that source. She always bleeds into the rest of my writing as well.
I decided to do something a little different with Jane’s Random Word List this week–I cut out all the words and combined them with a few from my own collage box oracle on a painted postcard, as I like to do (but haven’t done often enough lately). The image was inspired by Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday prompt, the photo by her friend, Terri Webster Schrandt, below.
gentle
vagabond friend–
the countryside extends
great distances—opens
time to welcome
you home
The dogs were here first.
You think you own them, but no–
they lead, you follow.
Other dogs, other
people, entangled within
a rocky landscape.
It’s always winter.
You must work hard, struggle
to get anywhere.
Where is it? You no
longer even think you know–
the pull of the leash.
You’re cold and you need to feel–
breath shortens—leaves misty trail.
Ingrid at dVerse asked us to write a poem inspired by a dream, and Sarah’s W3 prompt asked for a poem of 14 lines or less about dreams.
I remembered these sketches I did of a dog–I think it was from a photo Nina sent me of one of her dogs, but I’m not totally certain–and found them in an old sketchbook from the early 1980s. The collage is from one of Jane’s prompts I did in 2016.
I often dream of dogs–I’ve lived with them, but never owned one. Clearly they have a secure place in my mind.
“Away, come away:
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.”
–W.B. Yeats
I circled around with the Oracle this morning, rearranging the words, paring them down, but ending up with the same message I began with. When looking for images, I thought right away of the birdlings, and these collages I did for one of Jane’s Yeats prompts way back in 2017 seemed to fit perfectly, along with the quote from Yeats.
I’m trying very hard to ignore how our government is selling its soul for the trappings of power. How long until we listen to the universe, and remember who we should be?
to belong to blue
open sky music
into wingspirit
full of soundlight
listen together
with the universe
as every voice
remembers its song
and soars
K. 