January
Is On The Wane
January
is on the wane leaving behind early dark
and
champagne hopes for the genus Rosa.
Garden
roses want pruning now, solicitous cultivation.
Layer
shorter under taller, drape on trellises
and
over pergolas, the promise of color and scent,
climbers
retelling their stories in a ballet up stone walls,
an
heirloom lace of tea roses, a voluptuous panorama
rhymed
with shrubs and rock roses in poetic repetition.
Feminine
pulchritude: their majesties in royal reds
or
sometimes subdued in pink or purple gentility,
a
cadmium-yellow civil sensibility, their haute couture.
Is
it the thorny rose we love or the way it mirrors us
in
our own beauty and barbarism, our flow into decrepitude?
They
remind of our mortality with blooms, ebbs, and bows
to
destiny. A noble life, by fate transformed in season.
Divinely
fulsome, that genus Rosa, sun-lighted, reflexed.
And
January? January is ever on the wane.
Wabi
Sabi
if
only i knew
what
the artist knows
about
the great perfection
in
imperfection
i
would sip grace slowly
at
the ragged edges of the creek
kiss
the pitted
face
of the moon
befriend
the sea
though
it can be a danger
embrace
the thunder of a waterfall
as
if its strains were a symphony
prostrate
myself atop the rank dregs on the forest floor,
worshiping
them as compost for fertile seeds
and
the breeding ground for a million small lives
if
i knew what the artist knows,
then
i wouldn’t be afraid to die,
to
leave everyone
i
would be sure that some part of me
would
remain present
and
that one day you would join me
as
the wind howling on its journey
or
the bright moment of a flowering desert
if
i knew what the artist knows,
i
would respond soul and body
to
the echo of the Ineffable in rough earthy things
i
would not fear decay or work left undone
i
would travel like the river through its rugged, irregular channels
comfortable
with this life; imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete
inspired by Leonard
Koren, Wabi Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers
Old
Woman, Sea
she’s
as playful as spray
and
as prayerful spume
in
peace
and
in turmoil
drumming
the shore
persistent
in her
giving
and taking
free
of any filters
as
wild and dangerous
as
any old woman
who
says what she thinks
My
Ears Are Deaf,
My
Eyes Hear A Song
mountains
rise round, Mother’s ever pregnant belly
and
the aspens dance with paper-barked madrone
screeching
their yellows and reds, brindle and feral
like
the snaked hairs of Medusa, they are a warning
looming
over me as I lay miles away on a mesa,
the
bones of my ancestors, the heart of my child,
the
pelts of the brown minks my father sewed,
the
vultures circle, mesmerized by my demise
I
feed on the pinion and ride mountain lions
down
slopes, into valleys, a wanderer, lost and lost
looking
eastward, seeking John Chapman
he
has something to say, or maybe it’s westward
John
Muir, my ears are deaf, my eyes hear a song
emerging
from brown bear, a surfeit of salmon,
burning
sage, clearing America, the wild beasts
are
defanged and declawed and I am hawk-eyed
The
Republic Of Innocence
J.
no
mendacity in the natural world, just an
untamed
grace in the meditative industry of ants,
in
the peaceable company of small creatures
going
about the business of food finding
and
mating and homemaking in the loam of
this
province, the republic of innocence
here
is the satisfying beauty of sunrise, of
jacaranda
as she paints joy on a blue dawn;
robin
with russet-hued breast hunts for worms,
her
instinctive motherhood proud of babies
in
the
spar and scrap of nest life; it is in this,
the
guileless cosmos, that gentle breezes
dance
with us on muddy travels down
rocky
paths through meadow and brush;
as
the flaxen sun shifts from rise to fall,
we
pulse with love and fear, soon
we
know, clouds will gray with the dark
the
golden moon will show craggy depths
sooty
with doubt and danger, humanity
projecting
its own shadows; still, a certain
trust
in nature’s homilies, content in this
province
where we’re left to be ourselves, left
to
write our wildness on the mirror of time
Jamie
Dedes
Jamie Dedes: She is a writer, poet, and
former columnist. She runs The Poet by Day jamiededes.com, an information hub
for poets and writers and she is the Managing Editor of The BeZine, published
by The Bardo Group/Beguines, a virtual arts collective she founded. Her work is
featured in a variety of outlets including Levure litterautre, Ramingo's Porch,
Vita Brevis Literature, Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar NoneGroup,
Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not A Silent Poet,Meta /Phor(e) /Play, and
California Woman.