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6:41 AM ~ poem
In this early morning, break-of-a-new day light
In this cooling, new-day air
I could live
forever.
(c) poem and photo credit – Jessan Dunn Otis|Writer – August 30, 2016
6:41 AM ~ poem
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Tag Archives: poem
Swimming Under Water – poem
Swimming Under Water – poem
Walking away from home the macadam is still warm
black and sticky and the air air is
feeling the line of day and night as another mystery
To the end of the concrete walk
across cooled grass and over the warm stone to
the smell is sweet rotting fish and seaweed that is home, too
I leave my clothes on and swim south to the sea-thing
away from shore under water hearing my air rise
to be the ocean holding me all over in phosphorous, as eyeballs
ache, blurring the stones and the crabs scutter away.
(c)1983, 1989, 2015 – Jessan Dunn (DeCredico) Otis – 1989 American Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Great Lakes Poetry Press, Chicago, Chuck Kramer, Ed. & Publisher, p. 88.
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Falling Into Your Eyes – for CKW – poem
Falling Into Your Eyes
for CKW
Two black birds fly together
as if the shadow and the object
were coming to the same place
A tongue wags from the stump
as if the song of presence
that lament brings speaks
after so much silence
A white star flashes on a dark blue
directly over the heart
and you say
who will come to us
who will give us solace.
(c) 1981, 2015 ~ Jessan Dunn (DeCredico) Otis
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çok güzel – poem
ç 
o k g ü z e l – poem
for Sarik, Lale, and Leyla – with Love
Your ash and smoke have
filled my skin
The silent music enlarges
my lungs
Celebrate and whisper on
each hand and eye that
loved me
Further than the green lights
from the opposite side
I love your home because
I know that you are there
From where I always stood
in the cool cathedral of the night
I could, at last, see further
than myself
Even stones spoke in an
eloquent tongue as soft
as flesh as liquid as constant,
washing water over turquoise tiles
and my mouth and hands and
feet were washed away
Leaving is another stone
that is dissolved in sleep
Mountains and snow are the
memory of separation in a
dream of leaving and coming back,
again.
(c) 1988, 2015 ~ Jessan Dunn (DeCredico) Otis
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“The first step is, simply, everything.” — via Twitter & ROAD TO PEACE FILM – poem
There are no adequate words to express my gratitude upon seeing this, unexpectedly, on Twitter this morning.
Simply to say “Thank you.”, to Road To Peace Film and to Leon Stuparich, for the asking; and, of course, to HH Dalai Lama. _/|\_
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“The first step is, simply, everything.” ~ jdo – dedication & poem
Today is Sunday, October 4, 2015; and, I celebrate three (3) birthdays.
My mother – Helen Smith Dunn – who loved me (and continues to do so) more than I knew. Until we meet again…
My sister-in-law – Rita Verardo.
A young one, SweetBoy, gone too soon – Turul Kaan Cilam.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“The first step is, simply, everything.” ~ jdo
To His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama
Your raised eyebrow and shy, quizzical half smile Who
could have known where your boychild would walk and
how far
Circles within circles
High in those isolated, beautiful, brutal mountains
Prayer flags
Meditation
One sought and found
Turning away, finally, from politics to passion, the road
to peace is begun with one step
Turn and turning in a widening gyre, come close in the spiral, into
the center of our truer heart
“It’s as easy to laugh as it is to dance,” she said; as shared laughter
rose up, as if prayers rippling through air as flags, flapping and tethered,
as if we could touch it simultaneously
“Throw sparks. Create fires.” she said
You said, “Patience and compassion.”
Dream peace
Learn to recreate it within This is my wish, too
This moment, this moment,
this moment, only this moment.
Jessan Dunn Otis – (c) 2012 – written at the request of Leon Stuparich, Director, ROAD TO PEACE, with thanks
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DISSOLVE – poem
As when you touch yourself for the first
time inside and out
Or when you have left without saying goodbye
for the last time and you do not know it yet
Like walking into a dark room where everything
is known and you are excited that
something alive and beautiful will brush
your face
Or I am the long tree whose branches
move gently wild from the wind
and leave marks on your face
that you will remember when you dream
and you will go back to stare for days
until your eyes ache
Like arms that nobody who has ever loved you
has had before or has held you more strong
than you will ever be held again
And you will weep because you know that
that is true.
(c) Jessan Dunn (DeCredico) Otis – 1985/1987 – CQ, California State Poetry Quarterly, Spring-Summer 1987, Volume 14, Number 1, p.11.
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IF WE… For ARO – poem
IF WE…
Big Red Heart
– For ARO
If we were not able to touch, as we do If it
was not possible to share in the ways that
only you and I have made with each other
would we still love in the ways we do now?
If we had no apparent means of enjoying all our senses have encouraged us to explore
would we, still, love each other, as we do?
If we, unexpectedly, found ourselves, inexplicably, dumb-made, incapable to
communicate
the shades and variations and variables of how we love each other would we continue,
as we have, to grow in it?
My reply is, simply, this Your laughter is my rain, it nourishes me Your tears, my tears
Your joy, my joy beyond my breath.
(c) 12/3/04 Jessan Dunn Otis
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Happy Anniversary SweetMan ~
Love ( all ways),
~ Jessan
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“3 x 3” – poem
Before All Our Lives Began To Change – poem
BEFORE ALL OUR LIVES BEGAN TO CHANGE
Before all our lives began to change
time was stretched between holidays like
carnavale lights and summer lasted forever
every year until Labor Day mysteriously
arrived again to change living to another circle
It seemed we played all the time — hair cuts on
darby horses and watermelon seed fights, building
castles of sand and jelly fish oozing against the
jetties, discovering the nest holes of horseshoe
crabs below the high tide line, and snow forts drifted
three stories every January and February, sledding
hellions down Cooperstown Road, the cold and snowflakes
cutting younger cheeks, with the excruciating pleasure
to do it, again Playing “I have a little umbrella,”
dragging the chair covers across the sand like dragon tails
or lizards or princesses Shrieking to begin hide-and-seek,
crouched under the crocheted orange and blue and brown
comforter — dying to be found and hoping that we would
never be discovered, because that discovery always
ended in a serious session of being tickled until we
could not breathe
But, then, living changed us into other circles,
other places, other people.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Dedicated ~ In Love and Memory to: Barbara Dunn Blossom, Genevieve Dunn, Helen Smith Dunn, Mahlon H. Dunn, Jr., Tacy Dunn SanAntonio
(c) 1997 Jessan Dunn (DeCredico) Otis ~ RHODE ISLAND WOMEN SPEAK: An Anthology of Authors and Artists, The Rhode Island Committee, The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), Ed. Rosemary W. Prisco, p.19.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
White Butterflies
Jessan Dunn Otis|Writer 