Oddments

In search of story

Category Archives: night


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January 30.21: Coping

Grandma’s kitchen clock

ticked crisply like a snare drum,

by day blended in the rhythm of work,

by night echoed

through the bedded house

while the rite of springs squeaked under me,

percussive, brassy,

objecting, it seemed,

to my child’s weight.

A bare light bulb

dangling on thick black cord

hovered

over the bed,

beyond my reach

even when I stood

jiggle-kneed

on the jello mattress.

Grandma reached up

and turned it off herself,

then slipper-padded out.

Her bedroom a whole dining room

and kitchen away,

sly-eyed shadows deepened

around me

in borrowed bed

where once my aunts were little girls.

In the sleep breath of her house,

Ivory soap.

Now, as COVID blurs days into nights,

and nights into days,

my clock ticks crisply like a snare drum.

 

 


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January 6.21: Coping

Comes now night’s black broom,

sweeping citric glow

over earth’s long arc

into some tomorrow.

Two planets meet the while

in astronomical collusion,

appearing in a oneness

of ballyhooed illusion.

It isn’t the conjunction but

the difference that’s grand

between what we can see

and what we understand.

 

Thanks and congratulations on capturing the Conjunction to S.W. Berg.

My apologies, dear reader:

the Conjunction faded in the transfer

to my blog. I hope you can see it!

Although this post is coincidence,

I cannot help noting this is Little Christmas.

The tradition of the star may not be universal

but human searching surely is.