Word Garden Word List--Last Seen Leaving

 Hello my little runaways! Oops, I guess it was me whose Word List was missing last week when I wasn't feeling up to doing it. Allergies kicked my happy behind all up and down the boulevard! Plus, I totally overdid the physical activity and exhausted myself. But now I'm back, like a bad penny! And a day early besides!

Speaking of being missing, this week's List is taken from Kelly Braffet's novel Last Seen Leaving. Yes, I just recently did a List taken from another of her novels, but I just finished this one, so we're doing an encore. Got a prob widdat? 😏

This one is about a young woman who has disappeared and her mother's efforts to find her. Randa hasn't been abducted, though. She's just done with everything and living in a summer beach town unbeknownst to anyone. As always with this author, there is a deft mix of spot-on human emotion and the shadows of things that lurk in nightmares. Read it and find out what happens!

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new original poem of our own. Then just link up, visit others, and then get in a car with a stranger. Wait, don't do that even though Randa, in the book, does. 😕 This prompt is active until next Sunday!

Your List:

appealing

beach

costumes

cows

cure

dubiously

evidence

eyes

goofy

kitten

Lucky Strike

millstone

paper

pilot

rose

sparks

sweet

trembling

underside

wanted

Ode to Jimbo

 

"Kitten," he said to me,

"you are the worst kind of witless cow,"

adding, of course, the rest of the usual blandishments. 

What he meant, translated from Jimbo-ese

and run through a blender filled with

fresh fruits and nectar, was

"You are the sweetest, most appealingly goofy lovebug

that anyone could ever meet, and I am delirious with joy

to know you are mine, my little millstone." 

This is how I ended up on the beach, albeit the one

grandly known as the Salton Sea. Like Jimbo,

it is salty and ruined. Like him, it needs me.

There are locals here, and they eye me dubiously

but warm up and offer encouragements like

"Who the fuck are you? Are you stupid? Get lost."

They've made me feel right at home, they are so like my Jimbo.

I pick up a dead fish and wonder if I could save it.

Just some Evian and Aveeno could work wonders.

My Jimbo lies over the ocean; my Jimbo lies over the (Salton) Sea.

No wait, he's right here, dropping the butt of a Lucky Strike

onto the gray, contaminated sand. "Come home," he says.

He looks like a lost puppy wearing a days-old shirt

and is eating something he probably shouldn't. 

I say, "Miss me, dontcha?" Jimbo squints. "Shut up."

(That's Jimbo-ese for "Yes, baby.")  

Aw shucks and shiny silver dollars, 

if that's not love, I don't know what is!

___________

for Word Garden Word List--Last Seen LeavingLast Seen Leaving

Big Sur

 

Back in bus-and-duffel days

turned out, less to than away,

half-high, with no plan,

I went up the coast.

San Luis Obisbo, Carmel, San Fran

and on up to Portland.

That's where we go now

--people my age--

but this was then

when I had no means, no ways,

and just my naivete.

Out in the water, somebody said

to watch for the whales.

They live in the dark underneath,

and like me, come up, then back down

without learning a thing or so it seemed.

On the bus some guy liked

Gordon Lightfoot

You've Been Talking In Your Sleep. 

He spoke my language like a native

better than the pidgin kid that was me.

He told me a blue whale's heart

weighs as much as a grand piano

and can be heard from two miles away.

Bye daddy, behind me down the coast--

thanks for kicking me out.

I wondered, as Seattle became B.C.,

what if it's all just big empty water,

and me lugging some big booming beater for nothing?

Or what if I'm all ears

but the watersong was never for me?

What then? 

And what now?

I look out these days not at California coast

but at Michigan lakes,

cold and deep, choppy or still.

I know only that I still don't know

and never will.

________

for What's Going On? -- Whales and Other Wonders.

Music: Bobby Womack California Dreamin'

Birds At Dawn

 

Dawn mists shroud the preening swan

forever in her bridal gown

down near the shore where footsteps end

then floating out to mourn again

This is the pond where my true love drowned

never seen and never found

by water lilies twined and kept

in green and silent alphabet.

Dawn obscures the calling crow

forever dressed in black who goes

along the branch that holds the knot

and every cherished thing he's got

This is the tree where my true love fell

as gracefully as Pachelbel

a dancer to adagio

as far as woven strands dare go.

Dawn comes dim and damp in hours

just light enough for owl's eyes

that see the hidden bower nest,

where silent birds don't sermonize.

This is the hour when my true love comes

in melancholy misted dawn

to call me on and call me down

demanding his sine qua non. 

_______

For the Mercy of Forgetting

 

If it were time for me to die

I would ring my rue with scarlet red

and wear it as a binding scarf

sewn from every word I said.

If it were time for me to sleep

like a stone the river runs above

I would count the clouds from underneath

an accountant in the house of love.

If it were time for me to speak

with roses growing from my teeth

I'd talk of roots and bark and limbs

and dress my skin in paraffins. 

If it were time for me to pay

Charon for my journey home

I'd fill my purse with copper coins

and jelly made from angel bones.

If it were time for me to die

I would ring my rue with climbing vines

and lay my head where heads can rest

with hyacinths and columbines.

__________

image: black barlow columbine

Word List --Sorry!

 

Hi gang. No word List today due to your Listy being under the weather. I will try to post it tomorrow. If not, it will be next week, but the List will be back!

Crow & Astrolabe

 

Crow, obscured by wing and leaf,

there we were

under the stars.

Who knew then that we would bond

over common language

and common loneliness. 

You came when you would, and not that often,

like others of your kind

I had known before.

I thought, if I can crack the seed your heart will open

starved as you were

starved as I was. 

Crow so black against indigo sky, I lacked

Rosetta Stone

or Tarot deck.

So, I wrote you poems upon an astrolabe

looking for heaven

Deus ex machina.

Crow with your song in ghost-ship semaphore,

you sang to me

beautifully

Yet crows are crows, and stars are reclusive.

Astrolabe and downdraft

broke both our hearts.

I have learned wariness of crows, and they the same

both poorer but safer

for such sad education.

Still, I have my astrolabe, an antique affectation

like the love I once had

for an obscure bird.

_________

Jennifer over at Poet Laundry--no doubt prodded to do so by a thousand devils--challenged me to write a poem about or including an astrolabe. This is that poem. I encourage you to go visit her there; she is a genuine peach of a poet. 

Music: Alana Davis Can't Find My Way Home