The word "potpourri" means "container of things that can be poured out," usually a mixture of small things, such as a potpourri of flowers or a potpourri of mixed beans. I first used the label for my file of segmented parts of my own illustrations, such as skies or heads, which might be re-usable in other of my images. Afterward, I used it to mean my mixed bag of works for my blog. -Roberta



Friday, April 30, 2010

Dualism is a Never Ending Battle

By Roberta SchulbergGoro

In the semi-sunlight, I squinted at a black-striped stone I never before noticed,
rooted and still,
close to a clump of grasses near the bank,
as the slow, drifting, artificial canal gently rippled around it.

But it must have moved,
like a clock invisibly,
for soon I saw it was free of the grasses,
moving with the drift southward and into the center of the basin.
As it passed by me,
I saw the mustard-colored stone was a yellow-backed sea turtle,
the stripe a fresh-water baby alligator eight inches long, its tail into the water.

The snappy party, alien to this technological water, moved passively with the stream,
floating slowly toward the exposed ledge of dangling toes at the far end of the sculpted cove, and
toward the pumping machinery of the now scarce-used swimming pool
which had recently undergone a renovation,
its sunning deck now protected from a sun shower with
a thickly thatched, gabled roof of reeds placed, they said,
in honor of the new Hawaiian president.

Pandora's Box,

(The Electronic Poetry Magazine)
By Roberta SchulbergGoro

Unbound,
Sprung from the box,
Upward fluttering
Hazy penumbra hovering

In flight transforming to aureole,
Delineations at center sharpening,
Definition to edge widening.
Zooming view into revelations:
The segmented spaces of a stranger's thought.

A new one every lifting of the lid
As promised by the technology magician, the salesman saying,
"This one's not much. The box itself plain and unadorned.
"But you're not paying much;
You can buy it for a song."

I wanted it.
A pandora's box,
Skills an angry Zeus hid from the presumption of Prometheus,
Revealed only one-by-one
When Patriarchal anger relents to forgiveness of prematurely stolen fire:
Brainstorm,
Lustrous flairing enlightenment