early evening prayer at le grou lake

we were two souls who found each other and knew one another immediately
bloodlessly. peddler of wonder, you knew the secrets of the sky flying
kites impossibly, putting magic into my hands. that was a blue day,
a bright day, glaring bright northern ontario sky meeting the curtain of firs
and harshly humming with cicadas and heat. where is the line where the water

becomes the sky? the two have become the same, i swim, drowning in
clouds. i sail the kite through the sea of the sky.

place yourself in the world. on the map, we are in the sage
green band of boreal forest that stretches around the continent
beyond. perched in the forest amidst the great lakes with
their shipwrecks and storms all grey green blue, island
home of spirits and older things than your proper noun god.

it was a gold day when you became seriously ill. maternal grandmother’s voice
drones on
and drifts
out
the car window.
she is a housefly and I let her words drift away on the wind.

it is a summer of horses
finally, smelling the acrid smell of barns, juniper, rattlesnakes, feeling the world through
the senses of a horse who saw three hundred and sixty degrees around her head
who saw the fields who saw the brush who saw the bee drinking the nectar of the flower
who saw the rustle of the toads in the dry grass.

she tells me you are dying and i spend a summer as a horse, as a bee, drinking in the great gold day
all wildflower calm and repetitive. horses are a prayer

the first fish. le grou lake. we are in the vast swath of sagey green where the
earth thrusts rudely through the soil, heaving her bony shoulder through
the expanse of straggly coniferous trees tenuously growing in the harsh
cold short days. sideways winds and days of snow, we knew.
but this was summer, days northern long cast
with cathedral light of bright gold columns
filtering sacred through the boughs of spruce and fir and casting their illusion
twofold upon us where they reflected on the stillness of the lake.

how to cast a line across the water in a graceful, lean arch
across the surface of the still lake the waterbugs and flies annoyed,
dispersing scattered while i reel back the empty line again and again
and again. how to pray without words. how to wait for an answer. how to be still.
how the lake is an answer, how whatever god you believe in is here

quicksilver on the line and the prayer of the fish who dances
close to mortality, thrashing violently in the air, drowning
in it and the answer of the snapped line he falls back
into the deep green gray iridescently alive

the one that got away. the fish first

summer of horses, last time i saw you and couldn’t look. horses blindspot.
what do i know of death? animals beneath the apple tree tenderly
laid to rest in shoeboxes. once the dogs brought home the tail of a cat
who had gone missing, probably victim to the combine or baler.
summer of horses i am twelve still find religious equine dust smell
dense bodied sentience largeness and simplicity
to walk among them quiet and still and feel them quiet around me. l
listen to the chew of hay and horse noises earthy and
dust mote gold dancing in the light.

horses are a prayer, not an answer,
sending their celebration up with every action of their being.

where is the line where the sky meets the heavens? where is the line where the water becomes the sky?

i love the unknown voices of the trees and the
random wonderful world. sometimes i will perform a ritual resembling
the early evening prayer at le grou lake, stilling my body and trying to slip easily into
the stillness but coming through gasping and
struggling instead.

Hilly Grove

Hoar frost on the maples this morning

sky to the east peach, promising

missing sunshine. The hill where

my grandfathers lie is still cool

blue. How does this earth carry my weight?

My bones are heavy with home.

Monday

Stay in the same place for long enough

and you will come to know the comings & goings of the people;

who purchases a coffee where

the night shift waitress with her shoes slung in a plastic bag

the preferred & established route of the neighborhood cat who

has taken note,

too, of your Monday meanderings

in this old & Italian part of town.

Worship

he left god in the mountains and learned to worship
on his knees
before the bodies of women
their hands clasped in prayer
whispering songs of exultation.

oh god, jesus;
how men came to create their gods and demons
too is evident
in the empty nights that follow

black coffee (julia)

the french city is groaning and heaving off winter
around us. sitting in the february sunshine and drinking black
coffee and talking about happiness. neither one of us really believes
in it. its been advertised to us as a destination we will arrive
at if we’d just performed all the rituals, with the right intention
in the right order.

things that didn’t fix the problem
the degree, the relationship, the friends, the urban life
the rural life, the travel, the tattoo, the letting go of the knowing
of the unknowable void. the sun

penetrates me to my core on your back porch, the bitter
black coffee is strong and hot. here’s a place of it,
happiness- a few moments of quiet conversation
montreal casting off her robe of snow, defiant
and raw and messy.

curious, i probe inwardly
”what do you want?” i ask my
fickle heart. there’s no answer but the
drip drip drip of ice melting on
the spiral staircase.

Rivers in two languages

she lies restless for a time before

turning, knowing my own sleeplessness

to ask what the English word for fleuve is.

my second language fumbles for words buying

groceries and coffee, gives up and tries English

but I know this one

‘River’.

‘Ok, but a really big river, comme la fleuve Saint Laurent.’

she’s become tidal, the full moon pulling her

like a kite out the window and into the night.

I know a thousand English words for small rivers,

creeks, streams. a crick.

how many fundamental misunderstandings

between our languages with words

you know the feel of in your bones

and that taste like home, fleuve

salty on your lips

while crick runs narrow and mossy

muddy in my mouth.

oceans

we meet for the first time
in unmade sheets when half
asleep you tell me you dream
you are a seabird, flying
through the night

I am the deep green ocean
in the moment of awakening, waves
cresting, white tern riding
in my wind and wake reaching
down to skim the seafoam

buoyed across the pillow and buoyant
you dream you are a seabird
and I am the deep green ocean
poised
in the moment before thought.

the sun in the city

We forgot the shadows of trees;

traded them for square falling
ominous towers
so close together that
although the sun moves in the sky
we are constantly in the shade.
Apartments with windows in one lonesome wall.
We hope for East.
Bright copper new light,
three dimensional.
What a simple thing to forget
you wanted,

Right there, over-head-
The sun.

overflow

shoehorning this big life the mountains
the cheap motel rooms brimming with gold
toothed gypsy friends accordions
and dancing naked in the
exact middle



of nowhere the sky roaring loud
and blue

into this small space
small city, little
life. I am bursting at the seams, overflowing
as if I have consumed too much and this hometown’s
an old pair of jeans.

strangers (3)

silent sweep the lights of our reflections
on the bruised blue river, morning
river, stranger river cut
by doppler sorrow and iron fear
stranger in my sheets, neighbor
river- oh, your body
is my country. expatriated i speak
the language with my thumb pressed
into your palm when the white noise
night noise is too crowded
with urban business. confess!
wordless, i kneel at the altar again, tourist
of holy temples and leave my gifts of bone and blood.

i wanna wear your thighs like-earmuffs

i loved you when we watched buster keaton films all
night and played the keyboard, like old film-house organists.

we walked by each other in front of the bar
and did a funny little dance- walked toward each other like
chickens, bending and strutting our legs. And then, laughing, we kept
strolling toward our own doors.

once, we woke up with no
memory of where we had been, but our glasses were missing and
the kitchen window was broken in.

i thought the cockroaches skulked, you thought they skittered
when we sat quietly in the night-time living room with
excalibur glowing- rapidly turning on the overhead lamp
to catch them red handed, skittering (yes)
back into the shadows.

urban constellations

one star, three late night
windows of high-rise insomniacs
called Babe Ruth. Seen from the hill
behind the baseball field off Edinburgh Road.

urban orange glow of light pollution
spilling, perma-sunset backdrop of
gentrification, humming along the
black horizon where it is never dark

farm nights so dark you lost
your own body melting
into the room, ill-defined
edges. i am everything i perceive.
catalog the materials of our sky
and name them. flaming space junk ejected
into the void, transformers blown blue eerie, loud
cities on the horizon replace

dark swamp nights my mother whispers
’cassiopeia,’ and teaches me the stars while
the crickets sing something melancholy
to carry with me.

after the city storm and chaos candles
lighting dim chambers, stacked
i draw andromeda in the sky
and orion is tattooed on your wrist.

Starkey Hill

I raced the rising
star and world to Starkey Hill this morning
to catch the changing of the guard

when all creatures, dark and sly
residents of foreign hours give
way to lighter things of wing and song

woodpeckers adjourn with hardwood gavels
and all return to tree and earth
dens and caverns leaving

just us darkest things behind.

Bee witch

when I am an old woman

I will live in a brave little

house by the river and

let the yard go to sumac and

wild daisies.

speak, drowsy bees in

my garden of all you have seen

Beyond the River where my legs

cannot take me, old and painful.

Celebrity

A trio of drab birds follows a white pigeon

saint , martyr, pretty thing

pigeon celebrity by genetic accident.

What is the difference between a white pigeon and a dove? Biblical

appearances aside.

Kerouac

on the road has nothing on us

i think, ascending

into perilous air, summer

family sleeping through

Saskatchewan

and waking to the dawn in a new province.

nobody says a word when they see mountains

for the first time

(there can only be one first time)

i am awfully sorry

i've forgotten how to be

in a place without needing to leave.

i have an appointment to leave another

destination very soon.

Tigers

Tiger lilies
roam the recessed dooryard
of the church
cigarette driftwood
littering sandy fronts
of urban jungles occupied
by feral children who
can not speak our language.

Kensington

Will we be the old and invisible living

in a young neighborhood?

Or will we move to where even the air feels stodgy?

Will we all agree silently

that the first grey hair signals

our exodus, the rasta painter on the skateboard

will open an RRSP and we

will dream of this house that smelled like our youth.

Baptinista (1)

No glass rain will mark the hour of our passing

unknowable cartography of shores changed by rising

oceans-

all the whales have beached themselves in protest.

Our children play with small plastic versions of orcas and dinosaurs.

mother what killed the dinosaurs?

An asteroid, my child, the earth turned hotter

than the sun and within

three hours they were gone.

mother what killed all the creatures in the sea?

O, we did, my child.

We did. We choked

the oceans and robbed and mined

and killed and slaughtered and left behind

a trail of picture book

animals. You will dream at night

of being on a boat- in the bright

smug of day a fluke punctures

the surface, a primordial

creature breaches and falls back into the sea.

Lick the salt tears from your lip, child- that is what the ocean

tastes of.

Sundays in Toronto

We sought the beating heart of the primal city prying

behind doors, nondescript on Bathurst Street

down Beaches alleyways and unassuming

Danforth patios velvet

places blurry and indistinct

that presented cardstock menus

that read like poetry thoughtfully

and sparsely populated by words we did not know

but came to love, learning a new language and rolling

around their taste in our mouths

fine wine sippers of words.