in declension

Working backwards

8 am The pastor answers but takes me for a drunk needing charity
7 am The teddy bear I took from your bed falls without a sound
6 am Sheets tangle around my feet
5 am Pink tablets meant for nausea spin me in heavy arms of grey
4 am My eyelids cannot block the fluorescence of your cheek
3 am I slur your name again and again
2 am I don’t know how I made it from your cold body to my bed without waking
1 am So this is what you will look like when you die

family services

in the tangled wire fences
and broken bottle shrapnel
of the residential schools, the 60's scoops
where siblings were spun centrifugally
and then flung from Wales
to Australia

authentic Aboriginal children are now
rentable for a governmental fee
foster parents can bill monthly
for their white milk of lovingkindness

little brown babies
surrounded by benevolent
occupiers spooning canned mush
speaking only English please

thousands of Indigenous parents
turning down
the blankets on empty beds
every night:

Closing the camp

Brown ferns along the roadside, reddened leaves
of strawberry, bunchberry, raspberry, tipped with frost.
The light changes in October, this dull morning
lit only with the glow of aspen leaves
still clinging pointillistic to their branches
or scattered, windblown, caught in dark green conifers.
We're working down a list: floating dock
pulled onto shore, pails and shovels stowed,
beach chairs indoors. Cupboards emptied,
shelves wiped clean of crumbs, water lines
drained against freeze-up. Mist over the lake
comes and goes, comes and goes. The water's
dull aluminum. Tomorrow the last windows
will be washed, we'll pack our things
and go, waving goodbye, goodnight,
good winter. The flocks of slate-gray juncos
will disperse as each car passes, then return,
tipping their beaks to the ground, feeding up
before their southward flight.

Pie[r]ced

Maundy Thursday

si[e]zed by agony                    [t]error of [h]our                     

bit[ter] kiss of d[r]ead

his nail-scar[r]ed hands

blood so [c]lose           to the serv/ice

stay     

a / wake

cry to the Fa[r]ther                  in heave[n]

the spir-it is spilling

flesh weak                   as original s[k]in

above              

the (wait of) [o]lives

ten thousand              

angles of God

hold their brea[d]th

lovers dance

lovers dance

his lips traverse the expanse of her dancer’s back
mouth to skin; he attempts to remove rote from all actions

compulsive in his efforts to save her
his hands find all manner of unquiet in her body

in the mirror his reflection gazes out, seeks her blessing
divines salvation in the untying of her ponytail

outstretched     unfurling     she offers good medicine
he will no longer quibble about the open umbrella in the hall

she will not mention the dribble of treacle on the kitchen counter
his shifting suppleness, her shimmering     a sign

there will be no more holding back
they enter knowing wind would never mar  bone

twilight

twilight

thin fingers trace rivers on maps with dark edges
on the wall all mirrors painted black for scrying
in those mirrors she looks for him     the child that fell into the river
his body found    embalmed    now in a grave    just down the street

            but she wonders what of his soul?         

hoping for visitations, she readies herself every night        prays
as her fingers trace rivers on the maps in the room of her divining
once ready she gazes into the black mirrors by candlelight   
hoping to catch a glimpse of his reflection                                            

but he is never there

what she does not know     is that he is not in the dark           
he is in the field       by the river where he fell   
he runs there            every day          hoping to see her before he falls again

schooled

if killing the buffalo off were not enough
the children were next. taken away by force,
sometimes at gunpoint, forbidden to speak
the language of their home, hair shaved,
moccasins burned, sister separated
from brother, the children
were taught well the shame
of being brown. closeted,
strapped, starved, beaten

and worse.

ignored by day, unwelcomed
attention by night. half-naked
brown wooden Jesus on the cross
bearing the sins of all. their new
saviour having descended to the dead
for only three days

it was hard for the children
to reconcile that with the ten
or more months of the year
spent burning in perdition

all to take the Indian
out of the child, the child
out of the Indian:

of these two cultures
one was surely

savage

interrogation

today I want to go to the body
of water and interview each drop
because I read a paper once
explaining how water
has a memory. what is
your last recollection
of this person
I will ask, placing a photograph
in a corked bottle
casting it on thirsty waves
who will lick at my feet
conversationally, unapologetically
the sun reflecting
on everything I've said

Opening the camp

A chilly May this year, 

last late snow a wisp of a drift

in the bush, squelching grass

by the cabins. The streamlet

along the road purling lakeward,

filling its small channel, a faint

glassy tinkle under the louder

ripple of arriving voices. 

We rake debris off the beach,

tarnished leaves from the stream bed.

The men fell a worm-eaten tree,

haul it off to the brush pile.

The women wash windows, vacuum 

dust of bug-wings from the lights.

After supper a pair of grouse

emerge in the open, foraging.

We quiet our footsteps as they feed,

their voices liquid, intimate.

Working late on a May night in England

tonight I code In Parenthesis
a step closer to my viva, my defence:

green for the trees of Mametz
green for the broken wood
green for soldier saplings
the bower, the Acorn-Sprite
then pink for Dai's curse,

pink for the liturgy of the battalion,
pink for the Hours, pink
the Queen of the Woods
who feeds them white berries
on the twelfth day of the Somme.

the window in my office is open,
almost dusk, the trees are in flower,
robins, chaffinches are quiet,
but from the chapel I hear Angles
sing their heart-shaped notes
are rose petals.

Rule breakers

Cabbage Patch mouths held to the mic
of her first ghetto blaster,
squeaky voiced stories
clinging to tape.
Played back to applause.

Too bad the babysitter
could not keep secrets.  
No matter how the girl
hiding behind her
pleaded.

She assured the parents
the girl was good, that listening
was no trouble. Mistook
their nods for agreement.

Fact: finding sitters for silent children
is hard enough.

The rule: write your stories,
record your voice,
play it back with doors shut,
never ask another human being
to listen. 

The young woman stands behind the mic
reading poetry.
Her children at home
singing show tunes
for the respite worker.
Her parents in the front row.

Tuesday

the sun blithely rises: you know this
because you stayed up all night
grieving with your friends

and in the blueness of sky
my platitudes stretch thinner
than cirrus clouds

I know her thoughts and memories
will always race through time and space
because that's science. I know her

decomposing body will feed new life
because that's biology. maybe
what you don't know

is how to go on when the person
I would talk to if this happened,
is the person this happened to

and all I can think of is Neruda's
poem:

Death arrives
among all that sound like a shoe with no foot in it,
like a suit with no man in it,
comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no
finger in it,
comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no
throat.

her shoes floating empty to shore, her empty bathing suit,
her upturned kayak on a moonless night:
a never-ending swim to a shore she won't reach

we are all drowned
by what she swallowed
we have all capsized in the middle-depths of this cold and sudden lake

steady as rain

This is not fear

The time from when my uncle almost

tilted his glass to his mouth

until our 911 call,

the seconds when he almost

said the next

word – what his quivering

lip/paralyzed

hand were telling us.

The distance to the pool

bottom where my baby brother

landed perfectly

still, save

his blond curls waving.

The snap of wooden spoon

on skin. The smell

of damp carpet.

The electricity to fly

a message – snow-wing-

spiral-unrecognizable

body 

– across a line.