On the Turn toward Winter
How silent
and ordinary
the drifting turn
slant of sleet sunny gold
up the old cemetery road
stooping out under
hooded slicker
eye-glasses speckled and fogged
rose-water light
leaves tinged rust-dark
blood-crimson
clumps of blackening dahlias
browning common-yard
the old black canals
slipping along
(slightest stir
as once our fingers
through coarse wisps
of our fair and sunny hair)
now these grave-stones
the stepping-stones
time’s ellipsis spine
through dim November
bent over
nose down near-sighted
myself fallen flat
under the heel of things
____
again tangled deep among
roots and bare branches
of memory mortality
thorn nests in every bush
I wish I was a mole in the ground
torn old orchard
shrivelled plums
pear and cherry boughs
slap-slap-slapping
against the low south wall
long-view maze
cold poles and wires
crossroad dykes and ditches
I wish I was a mole in the ground
deep cough rapping out
syncopating
the unison
the one slowed heart-beat
of the late and
long departed
(I think of
our countless careless times
gearing past
with the heartbeats
of hummingbirds
some among these here
then with us
were all ears and elbows
piled inside time’s
noisy old Toyota)
I’m alone now
pressed against the
blind sky’s vast windshield
slow-motion
shattering
I wish I was a mole in the ground
___
the summer cries
the autumn whispers
not quieted
the grievous angels
never wrestled down
just rustling on through
love and living’s
hard mystery
all the holy aerials
only pulling in white-noise
and static on the car radio
fragments froehlich froehlich
immer froehlich
C-SOS soul station
the sacred ancient
aching oldies
still somewhere playing
heart breaking
____
and out of this and these
our elementary
arrangements
leaf by leaf
white golden one-by-one
downstream on murky waters
our winter constructs
our carbon signatures
ghostly imprints on
love’s blessed
brief green poem
space-time ratio
hello goodbye
goodbye
goodbye
some signed off clear
some never did
never will
____
as far above
signals
out of sight
and hearing
over us and these
the poor in spirit
everywhere
and the holy silent
gliding motorcade
ever lengthening
on the turn toward winter
I threw myself back
face up
to the cold country fog
lonely
and half ready
to roll with it
passing through
the endless drifts
all the white leaves of sorrow
and delight
would not
could not finally
for aching love of this
squeeze grip to the wheel
howling heavenward
the old jubilation blues
Bonfire on a Hilltop
lines for a singer
An easy walk below snowline,
above mists of a South Interior river valley.
We were whistling—campfire songs.
Were almost merry.
Times such as those, soul can feel that warmth
serves only to accelerate its longing.
Green mountain lap, blue ridges, river’s reach
can not call it home. Can not reel it in.
Not answer, with anything but another rise, another bend,
another fading echo of some other song resounding…
______
Should I take that walk into the woods, the rains,
that twilight walk which mortal breath and time demand,
will you find me? How have we wandered?
Tweet-tweet. Twitter. Tweet. How have I lost you?
______
When Kooteney bluebirds blur
across strands of memory, against stands
of white-bark birches,
in that moment, between April daylight and dusk,
you are forever striding alongside, whistling, with me.
But in our common book of days now,
just pages the rogue wind’s ripped from place.
(Your illustrated face—fire’s golden pattern playing
with every scrawled word of love and loss rain's written.)
Still I praise you. Through the night,
from repertoire of simple joys. And for your genius,
thank you for your little dry box of matches.
“When the world was in building…”
from Songs from the Lofts (A Cycle)
Quaint old skeleton-
key lost, found, and lost again
perhaps no matter, he’d mused,
remembering the hometown houses of the simple holy
how folks used but a few slight variants of key-bits
off-the-rack at the local
and that with hardly a wiggle or a grunt,
if any be so inclined to trespass
(as if folks locked up or held
any earthly treasure anyhow)
well, you were in. Via the standard key-hole.
While not exactly welcome, more or less expected.
But could just as well have stayed put.
Not one colourful thing
worth peeping in on here, he’d observed.
Just so much grey matter and another lonely soul
in off-white underwear
(no, not to worry child
just some thing or some one misplaced)
_________
So now, a life-time later, trunk upon trunk
—jimmied in his own black attic brain
the archaic grey vocabularies dragged out
—his own standard
thoughts and slurred sentences
like the old Sunday suit, like the coffin maker’s cover-alls,
like a church-choir gown in tatters,
scraps in a jewel box, strings of black mould,
a pile of out-dated lenses, and dull buns of hair,
love and memory chewed over
in a great silent heap
(grave yard sale! cries the soul—the eternal renter.)
Found cheaper rent, and went.
_________
These are my remains
I am a skull battered
with a toy drumstick and an old ape’s broken chin,
I am rung and battered, like a bell, from inside.
As if an impetuous child
is drumming the dead thing to come alive!
the long dark ledge of words and images
toppling, and all the looming shakey-legged spectres
So at first from flat on all fours,
then, from perspective somewhat upright
and forever dashing swollen lobes against
crawl-space floorboards
and attic rafters,
space and time’s cloud of dust, storm of stars,
still unfixed unsettled…
Dim bulb, but a soul has its sight
bottle bottom
blood shot visions,
dark-stained panes where breezes never blew
beautifully smashed through,
(small attic window)
and something running wild
in these shrouded rooms and spaces, these walls,
like a bracing cold draft
like good news riding out on the skinny backs
of the creepers and the leapers,
hanging on the tails of the field-mice
and the steeple birds on the wing from black eaves
illumined pages turning burning
long beautiful braids of thought undone,
loose-ended like the flame, re-braiding,
strong, supple things. Like hope. Like prayer.
In a tangle of madrigals
I hang here by these ropes
barely half a heart no head for heights
ascending/decending
the scaffolding, ghostly whistling
through my teeth, please Lord, to raise
sky-high—the glorious roof,
and only this prayer to wait out the endless storm
with a drunken hymn and dim forecasts of truth.
Making the Rounds
At the Rodin exhibition
twinned timeless hours in a thoughtful round
You go on circling (in play of patina and shadow)
the circuits—the laps of the gallery may blur into slow-motion
hallucinatory ride on this apocalyptic groaning bronze-black carousel.
Loaded down with full complement
of postmodern shades—citizens of any of your cities
here wearing Vancouver’s rough elbows, shoulders, knees, necks and noses
nudging, craning in, leaning back, circling
for the greater dimensional view
Harried young mothers, squalling stinking babes in arms.
Neat giggling touring class, foreign-language exchange,
furious notation. Elderly couple—the shuffling old fellow in clogs
with arthritic limp and cane, his fiery-eyed lover with stumps for legs
in gleaming wheelchair. New Agers—hung with beads
and the moon and stars, reeking of patchouli tar. Any of them
neither worthy nor unworthy—potential sitters in our Master’s studio.
Riders on this Rodin-go-round.
Even loud Michelangelesque businesswomen, one leaned with
elbow on sculpture’s base, her flesh-pink purse sagging on Adam’s black toes,
oblivious, them talking real estate
About the third go round may be
these two reappear, not somewhere muted behind the gates of Hell
but morphing in ardent postures of the kiss.
Even as the moms with infants all seem to reassemble, disembodied
collections of sculpted hands, ghostly-white
fragments—grasping or contemplative.
The troupe of young students, in the circle of hours, grown old
ennobled in stance and visage—wearing
the bronze-black masks of surrender, now the citizens of Calais.
The paraplegic woman on wheels, imposing
as the colossal Balzac giants. And her beautiful old gent, with limp,
with gap-tooth grin, pale morning sky eyes, inverted, tragically falling, falling
falling from the top lintel of Hell…
And I was them all
In centrifugal hold. The spin and the blur. Rough dark patination, lustre,
meta-chemistry of fired blues, greens, red ochres.
Naked, standing planted with fists thrust down, defying circumstance,
full anger about to burst, yet leaning balanced in the perfect swing and
sway, towering tall, towering in spirit, full presence with love’s countenance,
craggy, discordant, booming out from the heavy cloak of space, time
and matter
You go on circling
laps may freeze into this timeless focus, a life’s perfect round.
Maybe in such a full-stride moment—about the seventh circle
in our turbulent awkward beauty—we were moulded for our dazzling casts.
And heavier and lighter now, walk on.