you hailing me with
'that's a familiar stroke'
and it should be --
you taught me
Ojibway style, the first time
we tripped together
years ago; and before I can see
your face I recognize your voice
light-traveller, voyageur, poet
you're off again
just back from Heathrow
and into the bush
Canada's Lake District outshining
England's by a country mile.
year after year
they grip the branches
gradually weathering from green to gray
still shut tight
unless released
by fire
raging
gently opening
the petals of the cones
for
a damp,
cool, wind
to pick out
the winged seeds and
scatter them across a desolated land
fall in the crevases and rise
next to fireweed
and ashes.
sky hovers
glows
recedes above me
rock
pressing my back
is all rock
and this is
the
centre
nothing else is
only sky
and rock
and I am the centre
while the sky swirls
and the rock
remains
and I turned my head.
The moment your feet touched
the rock, maybe even before,
you were all eyes
for movement, your defence,
and there we were, eye to eye,
you stretched your neck and froze
and I tried to do the same,
but you are better
who live by playing statues
standing like a stick on shore
bleached and
not blinking until
the swift and fatal spear strikes
and you swallow and clap your bill
then preen, congratulate yourself
and stalk away, haughty
and stiff.
Outside the wind raves in the pine tops
and leans against the foaming waves.
Yesterday was hot and humid;
and now the wind pours down from the north
driving sheets of mist and low-scudding clouds
and in between, glimpses of clear, ice-blue sky.
On Getting Back My Photographs
Those magnificent shots
snapped in a distant land
of thunderheads piling high
across the eye of the sun,
leaden clouds edged like gulls' wings
building, moving, throwing light
and rain in sweeps
across the driving water
misty shapes leaping on the waves
those magnificent shots
vertically framed and wide-angled
to take in the height, depth
wind and scent
of the approaching storm
snaps which capture the drama and power
the colour and contrast
turning to silver and dye
upside-down, reversed, and negative
through my lens' eye--
glorious potential hidden in the dark
cartridge
these magnificent shots
missed it entirely--
I must develop the image
in chemistry and synapse
of words and paper
in the camera obscura of my brain
lightning thundering in my eye.
when the light of noon flares
myths disolve and fade away.
the silence in the air
after the last bird has sung
a sunset song, or rise of branch,
twitch of leaf that follows
a bird's unclasping, tell me nothing
about the way you shake out
your hair and let it fall --
but afterwords, everything.
substitute soap
for your scent
like earth.
The icy water
invigorates
my flushed skin
and the autumnal
leaves, red and yellow,
circle my ankles
and bump my feet
before they sink
brown to the bottom.
Tomorrow the skin
of ice will grow
thick as stone.
Tomorrow you and I
will be gone
into the hills
leave only these
footprints
in the sand.
but the water took him gently,
tugging, filling the arms and legs
of his suit, slowing his flailing,
slowing his frantic hands at the ice-edge,
slowing his head, bloody, butting the glass-thin
ice searching for strength, slowing
the racing heart, slowing the flow of air
to the fainting lungs, as
slowly he gives in,
slowly drifts
downward,
like a feather of a gull,
and rests at the bottom,
finally.
oh land
where is your grain
oh rivers
where are your mists
oh people
where are your hearts
oh rain
where is your sweetness
oh trees
where are your songs
oh seas
where are your swimmers
oh people
look on your hands
oh people
look in your minds
oh people
look
Smoke rising
from a tortured land
and a people in pain.
[Note: although this poem was written in
about 1982, I rededicate it here in memory of all those who were lost and
all those who grieve for the destruction of the World Trade Center, 9-11-01.]
I lay the joists, the floor, raise walls,
then the roof. Sitting on the peak
hammering in the last row of shingles
too tired to enjoy the treetop view--
then walls, windows, the door clicking shut
just so, like a Rolls Royce.
I stand inside and say "I made this.
I can walk around in it. It will keep the rain
off my head." And now I sit with this thin book
of poems roofed over my head and grin.
.
Muscle and tissue planks lift off the mold
like a dragonfly slipping from its crysalis,
a skin grows, breathes
again. As it swims among brother
pike and bass, cedar and ash,
they nod to each other,
exchange greetings.
I tell you today of the osprey
that scared the duck in its dive,
how at the sound I twisted to see
a great hawk rise from the water
and balance, like a ballerina on one toe,
at the top of a slender spruce,
and dive, swoop, and perch again,
wide wings adjusting a tenuous
equilibrium to each bending tree tip
and you tell me of the day you fished
a secret bay,
three bass in the bottom of the boat
when the great bird hovered and dove
and stopped just over your head,
rose, hovered, and dove again,
the fearful attraction-repulsion,
a flurry of white feathers,
bandit-masked face, sharp black eyes,
and black hair, the silver fish,
outstretched claws--
everything stops,
hovering
in a wingbeat
until breath returns.
.
Through the window of your cabin,
facing north, storm clouds troop
across salmon, violet, northwind rages dark,
and out on the big part of the lake
beyond the channel, waves crash, breakers
pound the shoals, foam and roar the end of season.
That tall, white pine on the next island
marshalls lesser trees, cedar, fir, spruce
like a great eagle with wing outstretched--
buffeted, straining
to keep balance.
Inside, a dim light of wavering flame,
incense and smoke, drinks rise and fall,
food, a little talk.
Shall we break bread? Ice?
Now your boom-box remembers
in a hush, Benny Goodman.
His clarinet notes
vibrate in the wind. Pay tribute.
Remember the dead.
Our feet mark time to the rhythm
like a distant cannon,
and the cabin shakes.
You are that boy waiting
for the end, the marching,
September 1944, straining
through the crackle and static
tense in the air
for Goodman on the wireless
cramped under that roof in Amsterdam.
Now you smile.
.
I am a stone skipping in a pond
ripples spread
widen, widen
merge and blend
Wind and rain, mortar, stone and wood
speak with one voice, dancing
Return to earth, return to earth
feet must tread the forest-floor
lightly
bare all, bear all, stretch like roots
and lose not the bearing
Sunrise and sunset are the same
only the direction is different
The center will hold
--July, 2002
We follow the horse,
watch the cutterbar
slice the hay.
We run in the stubble.
He raises his tail
farts, drops something.
We laugh.
We follow the rake,
watch the tines
drop and lift.
Comb the long rows.
The horse knows
"gee," "haw."
And so do we, now,
Right, left.
We follow the wagon
and the men with forks
who lift, to the one on top.
We wait.
Are hoisted up. Ride over
hillsides, rocks.
The iron wheels crunch,
tip and bounce, to the barn.
Nearer the city
they have tractors
and trucks.
Life is nicer here.
In August.
ii
In the barn
an old machine
with wood sides, red.
Faded yellow letters.
The horses stamp
and breathe.
We climb to the top
of the haymow.
High above the wideplank floor
among the beams
and leap into the
air. Laughing.
We knew
or felt it rather
behind the pride of clearance
TOP SECRET
lurked the guilt of one who had served
saved
thousands of lives
freeze-dried blood plasma
(we showed off the bottles in school)
the gift
twisted now, contorted
at
Bethesda
to preserve the germs of anthrax --
(I knew and wordlessly
taunted him in a painting)
unknowing it grew
in secrecy's veil
in the interstices of words,
between the joints and bone
in the nerves
that shook the hand
as the glass tipped
in nerves that burned
in the gut
in long rambling talk on supperless evenings
(we staring at the floor
shifting weight from foot to foot)
but we only saw
through
the glass
darkly.
ii
We knew
and winced
at bruises
in the morning
and no one
dared speak
"canst thou not minister
to a mind
diseased"
silence of fear
and ignorance
"pluck from the mind a rooted sorrow"
the doctor there
in his cabinet there
below the sink
"and with some sweet oblivious antidote"
a golden vial
of clearest liquid
cordial
"cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous
stuff"
we knew
"which weighs upon the heart"
which weighed
upon
our hearts
in
troubled
silence.