Amputated Moon

Lilac leaves rosy

and purple in

fading light

Cold bends each back

curled until lip

touches lip

The sky overcast with shadowed gray
Hushed as dusk approaches
Surf reflects the constancies
of sky and sand and me

The pelicans form long silky lines
Surfing the sheer of waves
Their dark grace contrasting with
the pewter foam and sea

Winking the jade-green serpentine
Into the lift and trough
As keen-eyed pelicans fish
the late September beach

Pamela Olson, 9/04

Adrienne Rich came here a few months ago courtesy of the Bankhead Visiting Writer’s Foundation and the University of Alabama. She spoke her lines of poetry to a packed theater in the middle of this mid-sized southern city. Even though the event was free to the public, I found it difficult to believe that there were that many people here who would devote an evening to hear a poet.

The performance was somewhat marred with sound problems that were mostly worked out after a couple of poems. She sat on stage and read a variety of her works, emphasizing the newer poems. Unfortunately, she did not read, “Diving into the Wreck”, the first poem that introduced me (and many others) to her. I am choosing to share parts of that poem here; the entire poem can be found at Poets.org.

Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich
(excerpts)

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.
. . .

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.
. . . .

Adrienne Rich’s poem has always had the ability to transport me into the blue and black water with her. Her lines allow me to know that it would be okay to enter this space awkward and untutored. The rhythm of the poem is sometimes fluid like the environment she describes and sometimes broken, perhaps to reflect the difficulty and loneliness of the descent to the wreck.

The words written and spoken by Ms. Rich continue to have the ability to transport the reader/hearer into the difficult place, where breathing does not come easily and the tools that are carried may not be the ones most needed.

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

I came across a video on YouTube by U2bianSynic that uses music, video images, and Adrienne Rich reciting this poem. I hope you enjoy it.

Dusk slips into the room

                the guitarist gently

                plucks the strings

Silver light fills spaces

                between breath and silence

                with soft notes

Until all disappears

                except player, guitar

                and the music

Pamela Olson, 11/04

I ask you to remain a witness

to my ordinary unhappiness.

Witness the cup of cold coffee on my desk,

the time to drink it gone.

Witness my child’s disappointment,

it feels like mine.

Witness the forgotten apology

after the fight.

Witness the deaths of my dogs,

one young and one old.

Witness the loss of friends,

some have moved and some I left behind.

I ask you to remain a witness

to my ordinary unhappiness.

Pamela Olson, 3/05

You said it snowed today

the sky glittered

with tiny flakes

Here— it is spring again

my weeping cherries

want to bloom

Pamela Olson, 12/07

Along the westward horizon

the ambered light

drips along earth’s curve

like honey driven

from the hive

by a multitude of bees

golden nourishment

for a barren sky

Pamela Olson, 1/07

The alder leaves

only haunt the tree

mere ghosts now

in this late summer

Torn and tattered

beyond green

they move toward fall’s

littered landscape

Bite by bite the season

consumes each leaf

until it slides

from sky to earth

Only branches

tipped with cones remain

and the lichen-mottled trunk

waits for rebirth

Pamela Olson, 9/05

Trinity of black-bodied surfers,

father, son, and holy ghost,

gather themselves along the wave line.

Their boards– sometimes underfoot,

sometimes underhanded,

solid supports in shifting space;

immersed in baptismal water,

bodies buoyed by black

neoprine along surface swells

catch the break and ride ashore.

Pam Olson, 02/05

Sunrise over the coast range;

trees like lit taper candles.

Golden light waxing

down basalt cliffs,

Melting over the wave crests,

down the dark troughs,

mixing light and water

into a gossamer mist;

As if thousands of spiderlings

suddenly threw their

parachutes up and out

on the morning breeze.

 

Pamela Olson, 1/05