It is spring-
effervescent willow buds dream
greenly half imagined and the sudden
chaos of birds singing
in the morning only confirms
what I have already seen in the faces
of winter-wearied people who now smile
when they pass.
they smile with the brilliance of the sun
and I wait for the crocuses
and the skunks who rummage
drowsily in the alleys.
Prospect Ave
Saint George slays the dragon down the street
from where I sit astride the broadbacked beast
who sleeps with one eye open and surveys
all that lies beneath.
Holding private court I watch one hundred
thousand peasants live in lines of light between
the river and the sky called royal
ruled by whom they do not know for I
am Queen
only of rooftop expanses
blank and serene that only I can see
from a hill I thought I dreamed and walked until
it manifested
where the noise recedes to just the quiet hum of electric sleep
the city lies beneath.
An Old Woman Smiles at You in the Street
Perhaps an old woman with pink
hair smiled at you today
in the street
which was covered so deeply in snow
and unending winter that you could have used
skis or snowshoes or some other apparatus
of travel.
The day is so vivid-
I know the way the light hit
her milk translucent teeth and
turned them blue and feral in her mouth
when she threw back her head to laugh.
things to do for free when you are poor
1.
we can not afford the movies.
cockatoos are learning to talk
confined and ignorant and mildly vicious
“do not put fingers in cage”
do they dream of rainforests
or just industrial ontario stripmalls.
“hello, hello,” mom and i return for years
“hello, hello,” they eventually
return.
2.
i took it for granted that every journey
begins with a prayer
we are not religious.
sometimes we sit on the shoulder of the highway
with the hood thrown up and white smoke
Billowing.
3. we have a new car and the pet store
has gone out of business.
where are those cockatoos, now?
and what things do they speak of?
we are watching a movie
and thinking of birds in the concrete
jungle who can
speak.
Howard Johnson
here is when I knew it would all end up fine-
Three people are in this bed and
three more across the room all in the blue
light wash of late night infomercials.
A lottery ticket is stuck, alternately
to the bicep of my companion
or to my breast, sharp with promise.
And in the earliness, room still asleep
I tuck it under the bedside lamp and leave,
renewed.
jimmy jazz
this used to be the patio of a bar.
too young, i drank whiskey shots, warm beer.
it smelled like summer in the city, so garbage in the alley, inexplicably, pancakes, cigarette smoke.
ivy ate up the wall and it was close to claustrophobic crowded so
your sweaty skin would stick to your neighbors like a leather couch in the summer.
the reverberating three chord punk felt like the next mornings hangover.
here or there
As soon as I am here or there
I’d like to be gone again,
the warm blanket corner of my couch, with the good view
or the cafe down the road or the orchard.
None are immune
until only the place and time inbetween is desirable.
Four thousand kilometers from one place called home
I drive for four days straight to get there
wanting salt shaker clatter and turkey steam, red paper napkins
and the sugar bush shining in her fall red and orange
but a thousand kilometers out I weep in exhaustion
on the side of the road, the lead heaviness of my eyelids
unrepentant.
My passive copilot, the carsick hound
attends to his own problems and is indifferent.
Falling to my knees after crossing the swing bridge boundary line
I could lie on the ground, press my forehead against it
or my lips, feel its power
coming up through my feet and infiltrating my being
and already, I’m ready to turn and drive
back, the road an invitation
to a party I’d be hard pressed to miss.
A Common Motif
Every greeting must eventually
end in a farewell- this is the nature
of these things.
You rushed in like a train full
of passengers vivid with their memories
scrambling to disembark the noise
of you was terrifically quiet
the silent resounding of twenty four years
that echoed and jockeyed for sense.
Trains- once, half asleep, I recall
racing my blue cruiser as fast as
my hot and aching legs would pedal, gasping
at the fall air while a locomotive
raced parallel to me through the sleeping
streets of the ward.
At the river the train trestle goes on where
the road peters out, their convergence
having run its course and bleating a farewell
the train carries on, inexorably forward
while I lie, panting in the gravel
trying to recover my breath.
Coffee money
'sorry' my stupid mouth
blurts its not even
my voice its arrogant and
scared and the coins in my pocket
jingle, warm & merry there
in my denial.
Cry for the dogs left out
on the coldest nights
and walk by even as I say
“sorry, sorry”
I hate this city
sometimes
Grape
Some people may never know
what we have taken for granted;
The chill tightness of a tart grape that
bursts
as we close our eyes against
its flavor.
Gentrification
I've come looking for the living
in blank streets, casualties
to glass and metal and rigid corners,
holding, tight, cottages and hearths
with imperfect shutters and paint peeled doors.
Measure my steps where
my key no longer fits-
already, my passage is being erased
and where once only I looked
now there are many, though
quite blind.
To a train conductor outside Medicine Hat at four in the morning
Startled from your solitude you wave,
reflexive-
your great iron machine cries out a foriegn breath
carried since Halifax and the prairie grass
sways and dreams of being an ocean
in the moment of your passing.
More people, I am sure, have walked on the moon
have plumbed the depths of the sea and known shipwrecks ,
earth receding either way
than have known this peculiar vastness.
Deer interlope in town, browsing
medians and gas station boulevards
insouciantly
where still, there are no people,
just us hurtling into a punched purple sky and waving
now to coyotes pouncing in mice
amongst wheat stalks and swans
who beat their wings and sing
such an alien song.
Emery Road
Today, I drove down Emery Roaf
just for the hell of it.
I had nowhere to be
and the lake was
perfectly blue.
After Rainfall (2)
I live where two rivers converge
where the city radiates outward
in hinky zig-zag streets &
abrupt
Escher staircases &
church bells who toll the hour
a few minutes early.
All rain returns to the rivers
rushing turgid and noisy through storm drains
homecoming as sure as the geese
used to migrate south for the winter.
They have known the river water
as clouds in the sky, bursting
returned with it to the Eramosa.
They have struck dischordant wings, wintry thunder and I wonder
when they ceased flying south.
Walks after rainfall
Where the sidewalk deadended under
cedar boughs, stooped in surprise
rain weary & heavy with it
I baptized you.
It was spur of the moment.
I was surprised, too,
at the cascade when I shook
the needles sunk low enough to grab.
Trees
i’m still struggling with this one. it’s a wip courtesy of mary oliver and her love of nature and her dedication to living a life that inspired poetry.
I am not here for altruism
I am here for money which I toil
through brackish swamp and alder
thicket for in dime
sized increments.
But this land is in me like a sickness
and every seven feet I wish a seedling
luck as I kick it into the ground
and wonder.
Eighty years for you to grow
here in the land that the hard faced activists
who march waving their banners in concrete streets
tell us is dead and barren.
Eighty years. Maybe-
hopefully
humanity will have blown itself up and my rows of trees
will grow old and their progeny
will take back the earth and heal the scar
where I work.
Not for altruism, but
this land is in me like a sickness
and I hope.
One Hundred Thousand Seconds
Well they demanded one hundred thousand dollars from you although
you’d put in a hundred million seconds to satisfy demands
outside of yourself.
Let’s leave! Anywhere might be ours,
and the man who wasn’t a poet drew maps of the places he loved
while how wrote verse and his toes dangled over the suede
barstools, perfectly serviceable beneath our feet.
We drew escape plans that went unremembered in sobriety
while alone, we both though about leaving
and chose to stay until it was
intolerable.
Wild strawberry
I could almost have dreamt the berries so brief
is the bloom although they burst forth prolifically.
What I remember is the waiting
incongruous vines on the ground almost weedlike in dusty ditches
the smell of strawberries coming from apparently nowhere
wafted up from underfoot.
Good intentions fill my basket
the berries bypassing it again and again
right into my mouth.
Truck stops
Our Francophone waitress refills
our mugs with oilslick coffee
rainbow diaphanous like the diesel
fuel on asphalt outside beneath the
eighteen wheelers, idling.
You're not old till you're dead,
she says, sliding the debit machine
across Formica.
Peter
He was a peddler of wonder who gave me kites in summer
concertos and composers and the errant paddling of our
canoe bringing us to a bay where we draw up pike
and have earnest conversations about God.
In lamp light, mellow, we assemble
mystery jigsaw puzzles and he confides he has cut down
his sugar intake to one spoon.
They didn't say how big a spoon;
He winks through bifocals and coats his wheaties
with a soup spoon of brown sugar.