Wagon Train

Thursday, 14th May Slept in the trenches last night and today marched to Lepine's Crossing, where we encamped for the night.

Lepine's Crossing is quieter.
Dried grasses from last summer
hiss in the wind, the canvas snaps overhead.

Middleton's zareba
was our bed last night.
Trenches reinforced by wagons
and meal bags, near the silent battlefield. I woke
to a horrific scream
floating down the river - was told
it must be a cornered rabbit.

***
Poundmaker
We heard the news: the Métis defeated.
The same guns and cannons firing on us
at Cut Knife Hill had routed the men of
Batoche. My men were restless, and game
still scarce when a wagon train
appeared from nowhere. It was clearly
a gift from Creator, the strong-spirited said.

My job as their leader - prevent bloodshed.

I stepped in and guaranteed the 21 men
safety. As our bands went through the food:
I saw one prisoner's knife taken
and gave him my own from my pouch, in lieu
of what he'd lost.

Yes, supplies for our people - but we'd soon
pay the cost.

I’ll be out late



There’s a spider in the bathroom
under an overturned glass

I hope your day was OK
That your phone didn’t ring,
that your lunch was delicious
and that you had a small bright window
in your afternoon to watch birds
whirling like kids on a midway

I’ve taken the car and some cash
you left on the dining room table

There’s nothing in the fridge
except beer and mustard
and a jar of slimy capers –
did you know those little buggers expire?

The weeds need mowing
and you’ll see my socks
stuck to the kitchen floor

And if you fall asleep before I get home,
watch for my kisses in your dreams

(eight)

In the sun by the window
It hangs on a string made
With dental floss - it's all
He had when he decided
To keep the memory of her

The orange and yellow rose
Collects dust near his bed,
Littering broken bits of petal
On the table where she once
Placed her earrings before
Falling into sleep by his side

Another will come and lay
By his side and ask him why
He keeps the dusty old rose.
He will pretend not to hear her.

ritalin, a love story

2.

How do they do it, the mothers?
Behind Oak trees in the park

exchanging remedies, the phone numbers
of loose doctors.

The whirr of hands that pilfer, soar
and dive through medicine cabinets, purses.

Oh the buzz of joy, hunched
over two spots. A twisted smile

beneath heaps
of laundry, dishes. I was going to quite but.

You grab at children who press themselves
like pancakes against the floors of minivans,

soccer fields, the joints of stairs. This
is your career. The washing machine

taunts you with its industriousness.
It can manage four children,

why can't you? Even your husband
says things like don't let the day defeat you!

So you swish, gulp
the body's dream of grace.

Spring-Heeled Jack

knew how to make an escape,
his booted leap from fence to cobblestone
flying through time—the less he is seen

the more legend he becomes. Bogeyman by dark,
super-hero by day—celebrated as an urban
fable, like today’s weather, clear

blue sky against red bricks of the building
across the street. It looks dependable, streaked
with thin clouds that shoulder

above us like a sheer cotton shirt draped
on the back of the man reaching out
for a lover that keeps walking away.

Underneath that pace, the earth remains
steady, dirt settled in concrete and heat.
Leaves are awakening, bodies from a long sleep,

stems stretching from fresh buds. Mid-day arches
like the back of an old woman
bending in her garden pulling quack grass

and dandelions from chives that have spread
along the fence under the crab apple tree.
She will stop every now and then,

put a hand on her crooked hip, smooth
grey hair from her brow, shade her eyes
with the palm of her right hand, peering

at the office across the street where
a younger woman plants her mind with work’s seeds—
emails, phone calls, sheets of white paper

bleached and trimmed into perfect squares,
like the room her imagination jumps from
when she gazes out the window.

Valentines Day On Wisteria Lane

Handcuffs hanging
in the stainless steel Bosch 800
a machine just quiet enough
to receive your dirty secrets

Blood blooming
through hidden bandages
petals so striking on a white dress shirt
you find it hard to believe the seed was a bullet

Children stealing
from the old woman down the street
her condemnation thick as poison
hey sometimes it kills to love your neighbour

A model lying
on a discount four post bed
because sex sells so well
you wonder why it can't save your marriage

And whatever love is it is not
easy nor is it comfortable in the suburbs
where curtains politely veil the borders of desire
and love is a dark and brooding stranger.

Missing dinner


We’ve sat thousands of times
opposite one another at the dinner table –
sock-feet softly squabbling over hardwood turf,
arm-wrestling over washing up,
relishing every bite

But tonight, I’ll pick at bland chicken
in a beige banquet room
and you’ll microwave pasta
between periods of the hockey game,
eat it from a bowl on your lap

And I know this is just one small meal,
that we’ll have years more to savour
But a day doesn’t count unless
I’ve chewed and swallowed it with you

Poem for Lunch

Lunch at 11:00, on a weekend, is brunch, is large,
is fat and sweet, is me in a tight dress.
At 11:00 on a weekday, lunch is a hungry lunch,
is an unsatisfactory-breakfast or I-was-awakened-on-rooster-time
lunch, is a by-2:00-I’ll-probably-need-a-chocolate-bar lunch.
At noon, lunch is a prescriptive lunch, because
that’s when they wrote it on the schedule.
At 1:00 it’s a ladies who lunch.
By 2:00 it’s a fainting lunch, but by 3:00
I probably did it on purpose, a delayed lunch
to make the work accomplished sweeter,
the afterlunch shorter.
Soup is a lunch for winter.
Salad is not much of a lunch.
Tim Hortons makes terrible lunches but
they are cheap and I think I have three dollars in my desk.
Light cream cheese is for wusses.
11:20. Goodlunch.

(seven)

behind a pretty face she hides
behind her smile there lies
a grief too big to say.
her camouflage in place
she leaves
for:
................................work
................................coffee shop
................................Safeway
................................Dr. Silvers
................................date
.
returning to her blue walls, exhausted
she strips her smile along with her makeup
then lets out a sigh as she plunges into
the cozy blue armchair
that will cradle her gently
while she wishes the world away.

Aftermath

Wednesday May 13th Marched the remainder of the way to Batoche today to join Middleton's command, arriving early afternoon. Field still bears all the marks of battle with some dead half-breeds and Indians. Middleton's men had been fighting practically night and day four days, and when it was over most of them went to sleep and nothing had been done towards clearing the field or burying the dead, which duty devolved on us in large measure on our arrival. We find that the charge which won the day was made, or rather led by...our two Midland companies already here.

Companies A, B, C, and D:
assigned arbitrarily. Two
stayed behind, two went ahead. Seven
wounded, none left dead.

How narrowly I missed the glory,
and am left with cleanup. Grisly, gory:
bodies left broken on a wintered field
the fallen are the Reaper's yield. We leave
the half-breeds to their land and kin
let the earth they fought for take them back in.
***
Moise Ouellette
Mon pére, Jose, he had 93 years, him.
One of the last to leave the rifle pits:
those government militia, no mercy to un vieil homme.

He is dead, we living have scattered, fled.
So many sparrows from a burning bush. Last night
I run into Riel
il dit que sept familles,
already, they are captured. He and Dumont
escaped the battlefield. "already seven
families taken" this is what he said.
Fear, disbelief. For our children, dread.

We gathered at Lafontaine's; most
grim-faced kitchen party, our best
fiddler dead in the field, memories
of better times were on the floor before us. Silence
hummed in our gun-deafened
ears. As we left I said
"The women will freeze, get them back
to their homes" not yet knowing
all our farms were burnt
to the ground.

This morning I got my 12 gauge
(still a few bullets left, and everyone
hungry.) Looking for a deer I saw instead
Francois Fiddler, red-rivered eyes,
a crow-husky voice - calling
for his scattered family.

Shaken beyond a hunt, I returned
empty-handed
to my own wife. Needing
to know she was still
safe; if families were being lost, seized,
separated
was it not best I turn myself in
as hostage?

She cries for me to flee, my
father-in-law Isidore Dumont
says the same. With less shoulder-shaking
and drier eyes. But we have done this
too many times. Red River, Batoche,
where do we go next?

I'm bone-soul-weary. I want an end.
Isidore's wagon rides me the faster
to Middleton, dozing abed
in his tent.

They ask me to take a letter
to Riel.
I ask to see my father, where he lay
on his back. I do not weep
until I see they've taken
his shoes. His body askew, his spirit asleep.

Now I've laid him to rest.
The dreams of our nation enclosed
in the empty hands folded
in prayer on his breast.

the moment it happened

----okay, this is REALLY rough and I know that verb tense and point of view are screwed up, among other things----



the moment it happened, I was allowed to purchase
mutual funds on-line at midnight, the moment it happened

is not clear, it’s a cloudy night
no moon, nothing
barely discernible via internal streetlamps
a moment blurring across foggy

synapses, a symptom of its happening
jello underarms and bra strap fat
tiny kicks in the head all night, a bed
crowded and full of dried milk crumbs
an old tired dog at the foot
just wants to sleep, please

the moment the soapy buildup under your ring caused an allergic reaction
the moment unguents became important to stave off brittle faces and then
ridiculous again because you don’t even have time
to poop, let alone primp

the moment you are too old to enter a nightclub
quickly turns into foot surgery

but you wouldn’t want to dance with them anyway—
it’s better on one foot,
hopping with the baby
hopping on hot sand
all the way to the shade

Everyone's Daughter Is A Virgin

Everyone's daughter is a virgin
for at least five seasons or
as long as we can love her fully
clothed. But no one, no
one can persist without a gasp
of nudity, least of all your neighbour that
faceless intruder who will open
a door you had once thought
to have closed:

her chicken legs protruding
from thin, tulip-coloured
blankets, her two lips making space,
newly-beveled, sweet
and lubricated latches
emitting vowels of love. Together
all the frenzied atoms
in the whole damn building chanting
in, in. With your able fingers you
quickly pressed those gaping knees, one
against the other till they
bruised, fastened all those
little latches shut.

But your neighbour thought
to enter, left her
breath-less
as-phyx-ia-ted on the lawn
beside the tulips, palms
upturned and open, neck
salient, swollen. she couldn't
wait? Now blank and comatose - a
profound state. If not
the suburbs then where
where can a girl keep herself
closed?

As a result
of assault, one may obtain
a heightened fear of neighbours, don't
let them in, in, in.

At night
your second husband finds you
desperate and unanswered, thumbing
pages of her journal,
searching for an entry, potential
points of access, a faulty
handle, broken window, some
poetic explanation, a description
of the body - how or why
it opens, floods with colour
when it's wounded.

Sweet tooth


It was never a fear of the dark
that kept me awake all those nights
tucked in with a plush honour guard,
nightgown sparking like fireflies
caught in flannel sheets

It was appetite, my sweet baby teeth,
the prospect of being sprung from bed
for a slice of toast and jam

I prodded my mind with stories
pinched from books or lame TV sitcoms
and wrote myself into the script
Repeated each scene until it ran smooth,
my brain humming, eyes unblinking

I waited for my mom’s long, slim silhouette
against the glowing cream of the hall light,
for her pronouncement that it was very late,
that the only possible cure for my sleeplessness
was hot crisp bread smeared thick with strawberry

A ten o’clock permit for the kitchen rare
as a dollar on the sidewalk,
mythical as a third cookie for dessert
But the trying was routine
as brushing teeth, looking under the bed

And even now when I lie in listless limbo,
regretting all those hours of sleep I snubbed,
I still crave that wholewheat grail

Dining Room: Echo

My lone breath, inhale
rustled cloth in turning to the window
spoon in the bowl drips into soup
scuff of soles in movement
a box of sounds in emptiness
repeating same into themselves

I tell myself there is still time to change

One

Standing
at the hotel window,
I stare out over an empty parking lot. Trampled
snow embraced by shadows. Watch trees sit
in unattainable silence. Somewhere
in the distance a street grader groans
and beeps in the dark. Cars
hum its chorus.
Tires on the ice crunch
a crescendo.

You lie in bed behind
me
The distance between us huge,
gaping. My mind in this moment
sharp—a strand
of glass ready to cut but lacking
a victim. Dreaming,
you later tell me, of the colour and drudgery
of urban life—muted
bricks laced by fire
escapes.

Wanted
to tell you for months
I love you. Sometimes
those words break through
my lips but are uttered under
my breath so you can’t hear.
Do you feel the same?

I crawl back into bed. You, mind
in dreams, know I’m there,
pull me close, though I drift away
to that time we spent last year
stretched out by the pool,
hand in hand, staring up
at the sky, framed
by palm trees. I knew then,
we were one. This distant memory
sings me back to sleep.

Thirty-day pass: 3. Repetition

passing through stands of poplar,

shadow stripes lightdarklightdark

surprise of the train's lurch as I walk

down the aisle to the john

conductor strides through the coach

calling François! François!

boys across the aisle tease

little sister cries

father scolds

paperback pages flip

flip

What We Missed

Tuesday, 12th May Started early this morning and after marching to Mackintosh's, a distance of about 20 miles, we bivouacked for the night; and just at dark a scout rode in with news that our men that afternoon had charged Batoche and taken it, scattering the rebs. in all directions. The news was good indeed, but we felt we ought to have been there.

Almost two months
since I left home.
Paperwork botches and
lack of arms, equipment.
Train to Port Hope, then
to Kingston for our first
ragged parade. Snowstorm
in Fort Henry, training indoors:
then railing westward on steel tracks, broken
by marches. I'll never forget
sleeping in three feet of snow
when the tracks ended at Dalton,
or the 23 mile march across the ice
of Lake Superior: seven hours in a blinding
blizzard, over soft snow. Frigid sleigh rides,
moonlight marches in 30 below, the luxury
of a Pullman Sleeper. The hell
of prairie exposure; sleepy
steamer ride north on the river.

All this to guard supplies and hay,
and miss the final battle by half a day.
***
What We Saw
when we came out of the caves
blinded by sun and sudden silence:
our village over-run by soldiers.

Near the rifle pits, Damase Carrier, his leg
at right angle to his body, rope around his neck, still tied
to the tail of a horse grazing on a bush. He'd been dragged
around the field - they thought he was
Riel.

Calixte and Elzear:
Mme. Tourond kneeling
beside their broken bodies. Smoothing
their hair, bending soundless
to the ground.

Our grey-haired Elders who should have died
in their sleep, stretched before us bloodied
on the field.
Michel Trottier and Isidore Boyer.

Jose Vandal - 75 years old - both arms
broken when he came forth from the rifle
pit. His shirt bloomed roses from a bayonet.

One of the soldiers gave a salthard biscuit to my toddler.
One of the soldiers raped my dark-haired doe-eyed daughter.

Those who could
grabbed their children, turned to the banks and fled.
Those of us with nothing left
began to tend the dead.

Progressive Dinner

Rose sweet scent of bowl-sized peonies
in all shades of pink, magenta and wine
overflow the kitchen,
pitchers full of blooms
fill the table abundantly.
There is no room
for food.

Flowers will feed my senses
alert for a meal, eating instead
what has been cooked in the May rain,
finished by thunder, seasoned liberally
with alternating lighting and sunshine.

It is the feast of peonies,
another course
in the progression of perennials
bursting the lid off spring,
nourishment after a hard winter –

so hard I forgot the flowers,
so hard I forgot plantings over many years,
so hard the first crocus brought tears

as I faced a progression of memories,
the loss of one who reminded me
not to forget the nasturtiums.
They arrive jeweled with peppered petals,
I will eat their brilliance, find the fragile

taste of going forward once again.
The peonies will be gone
and the garden will still hold
memories and promise.

ritalin, a love story

1.

how do they do it, the mothers?
needles soar and dive, the whir of hands,

fingers buzz with joy. while you can only dream
of movement, drift, hunch and squint

bones plodding in the dark. somewhere
there's a mother who enjoys this, lies

beneath heaps of laundry, dirty dishes
mending with some twisted smile. recall

your career once more industrious
than your washing machine. recall

how your husbands hand's could cup
and grab. now you wear

his old shirts, invisible breasts
pressed like pancakes by the weight

of squirming children. your body,
this defeated thing the day drags

behind. you think: just one gulp,
the swish of liquid, two

spots
of grace.

Improper


Your name is teddy-bear huggable, goofball loveable,
bobbing buoyant on a page, jaunty in the mouth
I love to see it in your precise printing,
or arial bold in my inbox

But when I watch you lean through viscous din,
your lips brushing a bewildered ear,
I curse your mother, her cruel creativity

Two simple syllables, common everyday English,
bring panic to an unfamiliar tongue
So many nervous attempts swallowed
by small apologetic coughs
And spelling it doesn’t help

I’ve adapted your shrugged explanation: hippie parents
and try to remember how it has made you
singular, patient, unwilling to apologize
for anything beyond your control

Ceiling: Rain Storm

It rains on the roof: shingles, tar paper,
particle board, rafter. Bulbs of water,
brief at the slat: swell, gloss,
drop the second time since
cloud-like, unbecoming, they climbed
on hot elevating air to be made visible
in marriage to dust: to drift in threads, wisps,
bulbous happy pilings
from one point in time, to the next.
The front is always coming: press, temper,
rove the undulations of landscape:
form of droplet out of nimbus form.
It rains from the roof: gravity,
points of separation to ease through.
Drinkers: wood floor, damp air, surface dust.

Too much?

The succubus sucked
the sugar cane, what else
do succubi do
but suck? Sucked succulent
sugar juice. Stole
into the room unseen and sucked
the cane and faced the ceiling,
shrieking bloody sugary glee.
Sugar cube between the teeth for tea,
Russian-style slurping.
Delightful.
She swept up
and away, sweet and full,
sweet and wrinkled, laughing
at the flaccid sugar cane behind her.

Marching Orders

(The journal doesn't have entries every day, so I've been splitting this one up.)

Monday 11th May ...and tonight, Captain Bonnycastle in command of our two Companies received orders from the General to move forward at once and join the main body.

Family - I write one last letter
after my gear is packed.

At first light
we march towards the battle
we've listened to
three days, steady.

This is why I came.
I'm more than ready.

***

Shooting Stones and Nails

At Tourond's Coulee, we left
when it seemed time.
Too cold, wet, hungry

Started missing shots,
if bullets ran low: we'd go.
But we are dug in at Batoche

Twice they've tried to circle us around
Our families are nearby, hiding underground.
Now if we run out, we run away.

Riel's
miracle of Batoche:
if we live to see another day.
* * *
A mother
The hungry darkness,
close smell of earth.
Wounded join us: we
rarely use our candles
but for their care.

And the children after three days
all eyes become accustomed:
day and night the same color,
symphony of dirt-muffled guns
their lullaby.

Of the fearsome Gatling Gun,
the victim is but one.
Besides the priest's leg,
Jose's little son.
He was inside the house when it began.

Today Middleton's men
came as far as the cemetary: so close.
Then they turned back. I hope the ghosts
of our small village whispered in their ear.
Gave them more than our dying men and emptying guns to fear.

(five)

their love is cautious, is conditional
that belongs to saints
hiding behind religion
............they shield their tainted hearts
............and say They know God, because.

the girl is condemned for sins not hers
marked in the name of a merciless god
who loves them...................but not her

apple wine//Bree

Dearest, the night you proposed we sipped
apple wine on the narrow bridge

outside the college dorm. We thought our bodies
unstoppable, whooshing into the future,

our legs bare and dangling above the perfect chill
of April's bathwater. Do you remember?

Your arm around my bare shoulders like the curve
of a perfectly formed letter,

our impossible brilliance culminating
in that moment, that choosing

to be and to stay
happy. I think even the fish

were envious. My love, this morning
I folded, helped you upend

the suitcase in the hallway closet -
two weeks of shirts, a suit and tie. Tonight

I am alone and the house purrs
with cleanliness, but there remains one thing

in need of tidying. Tonight, love,
even the silverware went to bed

with a satisfying clink, but sleep is a stranger
I fail to encounter. I am the one

imperfect object in our spotless museum
and for once I want

to be touched. I miss the fibers
and the friction of your body, the look

you give before turning out the light.
Darling, when you come home we'll pick

apples from the tree in our backyard.
Oh let this be a pin prick, nothing more.

Quiet


So often there’s just the click and whoosh
of electric heat, small taps at a keyboard
and I catch myself frowning at the interruption
of your hardwood footstep-creak overhead

You say our house is too quiet,
in a way that makes it sound like my fault,
and I remind you I grew up in a home
still as a museum: clocks ticked, pages turned,
all sound absorbed by thick wall-to-wall
and antique furniture
No one sang along to the radio
or called room to room
We saved laughter for company

Your homes were filled with boys
and their rough-housing, Beatles records and bickering
And raised voices didn’t signal a fight –
hot tears and a car charging down the driveway –
just competition for a single mom’s attention

But now you’ve grown used to my kind of silence
I see you startle when the phone rings,
when a fork clatters on the counter
The heavy metal pound from the band next door
tenses your shoulders high as mine
And when Gary across the street
revs and revs and revs that rusted truck –
gas pedal to pavement and still he stalls it –
you also clench your teeth

There are times when quiet spooks me too,
just the two of us to fill all these rooms,
and I rearrange the pots and pans,
think of something to talk about

Poem for The Canada Council

I wish to apply for a grant to write some poems.
My theme is “poetry.” My approach is to have line breaks,
most of the time. Sometimes not. I don’t know. We’ll see.
I will be sure to write poems that are diverse and inclusive.
They will be on diverse topics.
They will include a wide variety of words.
Some examples of words I would like to use:
arrogant, crustacean, Peruvian, refrain;
offside, ivory, rubato, Rastafarian.
Sugar cane, succubus. Widow’s peak, sousaphone.
Monastery, rivalry, vivisection, coop.

You get the idea, Mr. Council.
I am particularly fond of the letter “v,”
a letter certainly deserving of more exposure in the publishing field.
I am including in my budget travel research funds to visit the best libraries in the world,
and call upon Seamus Heaney for tea,
and generally live life to the fullest.
“Life” is my secondary theme.
My tertiary theme is “thought.”
Please hurry Mr. Council.
I am having a fleeting moment of inspiration
right
now



-----
SO BUSY lately I haven't had time to read all the posts, and I missed posting on Sunday! Weekends might be a lost cause for me. Will try to catch up on reading tonight.

Ode to an overhead projector as Canada Goose

Goose-necked,
you hum & sigh, proselytize
but you know your limits

You will only go
so far
share so much.

You are tethered to your altar,
hungry, but you primly
only take what

you need. You are heavy
with brittle light. The word.
But you are also quite fond

of the letter. The law.
Broody, you have your minders
who name and number you,

who heft and carry you.
Your eye blinks slowly
but you are all alert glare

even as you let more
and more of your acolytes
in on the secret.

From an Epicurean Daughter

Because I harbour no desire for restraint, I went
downstairs to the fridge with a soup spoon this morning,
craving a soft sweet scoop of the almond cream
left over from last night’s chocolate torte before my sensible
helping of cereal, but the shelf was vacant,
the bowl turned upside down in the kitchen sink. I'm sure
that you, who savours sweets but favours
moderation, who refrains from licking crumbs
from your fingers, even at Mother's Day dinner
with the boys (who didn't), rinsed
the lingering fragrant peaks from the ceramic,
and will remind us all tonight that the cake tastes just fine
plain, will ask if I've made my dentist appointment.

But because we all grow tired of restraint, even you
(even yesterday, in the neighbour's yard—
your single guilty cigarette) I hope
that when you were the first one stirring
this morning, you crept down the stairs, stood
in the refrigerator’s yellow halo and polished
off the whole damn bowl
(to our upstairs alarm clocks ringing)
with your fingers.

letter to a young lover//Gabrielle

Imagine yourself limp, head thick
as a can of paint, bones

silent, still. When desire leaves
your body, hangs above you

like a ghost - will this want temper
your soul? Darling, I keep

your photograph, the petals
of one flawless rose curling

like a nerve under your touch.
But I refuse to undo

another button of your youth,
I will not undress

again these layers
of innocence. There will be time

to bury the traces of my skin,
the memory of my smell in the morning.

We all have to live
with our own loneliness

so please,
don't bother calling.

On inheriting my grandmother’s amber necklace

You are a fistful of half-sucked
jawbreakers, every one tried
by teeth
& expelled, the tongue lolling
sour at bad news.

You are a card of homely buttons
that never made it out of the sewing kit, balled up
& swallowed whole. You are the torn
shirt, the gaping threads after
the passion has cooled & someone
has to do the goddamn mending.

(You are the row of buttons on the floor.
You are rendered fat. Bits
of bone.)

You are a row of cloudy specimen jars
each with its bloody lump of cells
excized & floating. The body aches without question.
The body limps & bleeds. And we could have strung
a necklace with those gory
blasted beads
instead.

* * *

I'm sorry I've been absent so far from May Day. But I'm doing the School of Writing at CMU and I had several sun-lit stretches today in which to write. And so I began writing...

Checking into Chateau Laurier, 1:30 a.m.

Skulking criminals with a crime to find, we step

tentative across the threshold of a century.

The words do not thrill—“railway hotel,”

the spectre of a wooden platform and dusty sheets—

and thrill is not the word for this ceiling

where our guilty expressions search

for a deity to forgive us, for something.

Something classical drifts around.

Light and cheerful in a way that portends

rivers of blood gushing down the halls.

Empty, marble, echo.

Stop the suitcase squeak. Hush, wait,

for the murderous pin to drop.

Dear Trapper,

Why were you only a sidekick?

You had leading man chops – top notch chest-cutter,
robust frame under your yellow housecoat
and that goofy, toothy grin, that ragged tangle of curls
Toss a football around the dusty compound
and your bicep-pulse would draw nurses from the showers
Your bittersweet brown eyes deeper, darker against the bleach of scrubs,
must have caused a thousand dropped instruments

Always in Hawkeye’s shadow even though you were as tall,
as quick and exact with tongue or scalpel
Relegated to vice-president, runner-up, right hand man
or was it just that you weren’t so thirsty for attention,
didn’t need a spotlight to see your own worth?

I always appreciated your quiet, reliable grit,
the backbone it takes to be second banana

Yours truly.

So I forgive you
for the wheel-barrel full of gin
you drank, that balmy August night
behind the shed when you thought
no one was looking, you fingered
my blouse buttons and slopped
a wet kiss on my mouth.
Do you always drink that much
to muster courage?
I'm sure being a boozy lech
doesn't help. My point is,
I have no hard feelings
about your drunken shenanigans.
Sure you moved on, finding
a more pliable girl.
Only natural. I expect men
not to try too hard.
Why should they?
There are plenty of easy
laz-about Susans. Why work for it
if you don't have to?
See, the thing is - I liked you.
I was willing to go there, but not
like that. You, slurring words,
about to up-chuck your corn-dog
and Dorritos. But that is neither here
nor there, so many years ago,
I barely remember the details.
I just want you to know
I understand your reasons
for passing me by
to ruminate in richer pastures.
Why milk the cow,
when milk is so white and workaday?
Better to have it slaughtered.
De-skinned, eviscerated, then split
into primal cuts. Grill up
some choice prime rib steaks
with garlic to taste, and of course,
heavily oiled with extra virgin olive.
See, I get you.

Flickers

Of that single bed we shared in Taos,
a miracle we didn’t fall out. Waking at dawn
to flickers drilling poles, announcing their intentions
to all. We left the blinds up at night
to watch dawn streak across the field. The scarlet-
mustachioed male jerking his tail and giving chase.
The first kisses and what else before breakfast,
before you’d head home to compose. The half-notes
the keys made as I two-finger typed, stared out
at the flicker’s rollercoaster flight—
all the early doubts forgotten now.
As I nestle into your arm’s crook each night,
it's those woodpeckers I hear
inside your chest, drumming.

Second Day

Monday 11th May ....From couriers who pass occasionally we learn that our forces are attacking the rebel position at Batoche, but until now with little success.

I chafe to go to war.
Still at the edge - we've come so far.
Those marches through ice and snow
Sledge rides in 35 below
The soldier who jumped off the train
(50 miles from Matawa - evidently insane)
was the only who fled this fight.
The rest prepared: victory or a burial site.

Waiting, imagining, is the worst.

Few soldiers die unrehearsed.
* * *
In Our Defense
Yesterday we rained bullets on the Northcote.
A diversion, while Ferryman Alex Fisher
and Pascal Montour awaited the signal.

(The army had reinforced the sides of the steamer
with choice articles like Gabriel's pool table.)

We knocked the mast and smokestacks loose
By flexing the Batoche ferry cable.

It drifted away like a wing-shot duck.
That was yesterday's good luck.

We shot at their camp through the night.
Every ten minutes, a warning to sleep light.

Today Middleton shells the town.
Still we are dug in, they gain no ground.

Thirty-day pass: 2. Two days and a night

A lake!

Are those tamaracks?

Click.

Lake, trees, bog, trees, lake.

Trees. Water giving back sky's blue.

Trees give way to bog, trees again,

a clear lake.

Many lakes later we sleep, bodies rocking

in rhythm with the train.

Morning: red pine, jack pine, white pine.

Church spire, mist, tree-covered hills.

Grey, wind-stippled lake.

Sleep and wake. The camera

lies in your lap.

Trees. Different ones:

aspen, oak. And a lake,

a really big one.

We doze, wake. Sway

down the aisle. Not much left

in the snack bar. Not much

to do.

Forest dwindles.

We hardly notice,

you curled into yourself,

me with legs draped over armrests.

We can hardly lift our heads.

The Last Summer

Since infancy this house has held me
to the earth, a squat square
bell jar full of books and solid
furniture. My small feet have worn
grooves in the pavement
to the park, the school,
the bus stop, but have always returned
here, my tethered veins pulled
by my mother's cooking and concern.
Always these same elms on the boulevard
watch my failures on the same
themes: nerve and nurture, loving
what doesn't stay, summer,
autumn, but scatters
like dry leaves in their windy tumble
toward November, staying
too long myself, the house growing
unruly with the detritus of remaining
sedentary: the fur of dust on high shelves,
a whole drawer devoted to the mates
of missing socks and mittens,
a desk bloated with paper. But
I am coming loose
from this map of the familiar,
the regular, and I will
yank my feet from this prairie
yard's muddy soil, sell my books
for a plane ticket, and erase
myself like the memory of green
under the first snow,
all my words lifted
from this house,
these streets
and taking
flight.

your face, a flag

Your face in my sleep like a flag
marking the place I stopped,

turned, and smiled at you for the last time.
Hey, I meant it, one hand

on my ripening belly the other waving
the kind of wave you expect to see

again and again and again
until it crashes into you, a symphony of sighs,

your body laid down, breathless
beneath the weight of my goodbye. I meant it

I'm not
coming back. But I wake

every night to the sound of another man
talking in his sleep and it terrifies me. You know

he says my name sometimes,
he calls for me, calls me out

of the forest we used to call home. O,
your arms, those branches

from which I could see
the world - green, green, green.

It's different here
in the suburbs - no trees, only

hydro posts that stand like memorials
marking the death of human sight, their lines

stretch out like God's fingers; I swear
I can feel His fist tighten, His pulse

around my neck. Tonight I carry stones
to bed. I like to feel their rough surface mar

my manicured hands. They slide from my fingers
like water, like a name or a face I could never remember,

each one a reminder, a road back to you.
At night I am barefoot, I know

the meaning of explosions, how to sink
into the earth like death. I wake early

to the sound of home appliances.
As always, by morning

I'm lost.

Frank,

It wasn’t the North Koreans, the stingy supply clerks at HQ,
some leather-assed general miles from the front
You were the enemy – our enemy

In the war within the war, combat in the Swamp and Mess,
you fell for all the goofy ambushes, lost every battle of wits
but were saved by all those army boots you licked

You were a doctor for the money, the golf club prestige
but wouldn’t recognize your own lily liver on an X-ray

It’s taken years of loathing you to finally understand
the purpose you served: we need to hate

You made it easy, guilt-free, with your yes-man salutes,
your snivelling quibbles and your starchy manner
We laughed at your weekly comeuppance but imagined
a schoolyard bully, a fawning colleague, a prissy sister

I’ve tried not to see the human in you, not to admit what irritates most
are the traits I share: twitchy anxiety, cry baby tendencies,
tongue tied too tight to respond to any smart remark
And the way I must come off: fussy and humourless

But the difference is, Ferret-face, you deserved it

From.

Tracks

Reading the fresh stamps of pig tracks
in mud, the loops, diagonals, here
a mother and her calf, I wonder
can I trace my own path, straight
at times, then turning back, footfalls that led
to swamp, or suddenly stop
at the base of a tree trunk—
lifted by wings or jaws.

Can I spot the places I bedded down,
trees girdled in lean winter months
all the indigestibles: bones and fur coughed up,
tally the tactics of stealth, flight
that brought me safely here, heels
sinking their signatures into soft mud.

In the riverbanks

For three days we have been able to hear the guns at Batoche, about forty miles below us. The sound seems to follow the river banks. ...Our forces are attacking...at Batoche.

The river carries ghostly
reports from rifles. Nerves
are frayed: ears strain
to see if it draws closer.

At night, we sleep but light.
The shooting thins but
does not cease. Sentries
watch, with no release
in sight.

We are useful as one-winged butterflies.
I doze at night, unloaded gun across my thighs.
***
Dans les grottes

The gunfire is muffled
by the dirt.
We only see the men
when they've been hurt.

Batoche is where we make
our last stand.
Rifle pits, caves and graves:
we're held
by our land.

(four)

tulips dot McMillan
where yesterday raindrops
found only dirt and dry shoots
.............how did you keep your secret
.............till the very moment you burst open
.............yellow, orange, and red?
so doubtful was i of you
that i skulked into strangers’ gardens
for a feel of your velvet coats.