Unseen

the deer at night, who left
varnished black turds beside
the cabin steps

the ruffed grouse, camouflaged
on mottled ground, amid gray spruce trunks,
drumming

the woodpecker, red-crested
driller, leaving cavities
that spill drops
of pungent sap

the loud marsh-dwellers, hid
in bent reeds, willows, grass—
mallards' ahp-ahp in the distance,
frog chorus call and answer
cree-cree across the wet expanse
and nearby, their shrilling palpable
in the fading light, and every one of them
invisible

Monday

but I just saw her on Friday
we were supposed to hang out tonight

it has rained steady all day
a quiet constant of life
a slow greening

are you sure? I'm going over

he slides his cell back
in his pocket and wanders over
shoulders slumped uncertain

it was ---, he says
----- drowned at the lake

and my response is the same dazing logic:
but we just saw her. She was alive
two days ago. And. She shaved your head.
Remember?

So he heads out the door, because
he has to go over to her place.
She can't not be there.
They have plans.

juggling juggling

hi fellow poets, I just thought I'd tell you where I am other than PhD-land… I'm lead on this major First World War commemorative project, The Long Goodbye: a conversation across a century.  I am inviting you to contribute if you wish.  Here is a link to The Long Goodbye and we're also on FB: https://www.facebook.com/thelonggoodbye?fref=nf

hope you don't mind my digression, but I thought you'd appreciate knowing and I hope you'll participate!

After Eights

in memory of my grandpa

Every Christmas, I sat
across the kitchen table,
as you peeled back my invisible
tape, unfolded my silver wrapping,
pulled open the tiny file box,
their dark sheets of music
crinkling, and slid a single wafer
into your palm.
Your wide lips smacked,
your eyes meeting mine,
as liquid mint
and Old Spice
mingled on your chin.   
Your deathbed confession:
you never liked
them.

skyblind

constant and shining
i never knew you
from the sun

and then i lost
the moon while
counting the stars

millefiore 8

roses of May
fuchsia peonies
the tender scent

Nested in elms

for J

You asked what a squirrel smells like.

Her belly is the scent of cedar
fences, her tail of moldy oak leaves,   
her throat of fermented apple,
her ear, a first-edition Lewis Carroll
left in the rain.

She smells nothing
like your morning tea, your spoon
twirling honey, the rising bread  
of your next poem.

She contains no whiff
of your newborn’s scalp –
all butter churn and snow, or
your little boy’s fleecy bedtime
kisses.

But when she tucks away
the treasures that glitter along
Home Street, there is something
of your grown man
carrying his suitcase
down the front porch
in her.

may long

what is it about digging deep
into the soil and clay we came from

planting annuals that will bloom hard
a summer and leave their tired root corpse

behind. today it was the red sallies
my grandfather made me promise I'd keep

along the driveway, my grandmother's
favourite, he said. they were never

hers, they were his snorted my aunt
once. they can laugh about it

in heaven, I guess. we are still planted
loosely here, slow-blooming our short

seasons before we are planted, dug deep
into the soil and clay we came from

Dragon mother

Her daughters are the scales 
shimmering across her heart
like lockets.

Her sons are phantom limbs
that wave in her dreams.

Down the street, a nail gun
claps.

Down the river, Leviathan
sing her name.

SUPER FRESH ASIAN MARKET

the aisles are full
of super fresh asians
pulling their produce
in super fly carts
ten kinds of pocky
four kinds of fish sauce
biscuits I've never seen
chicken that's not
and domo origato
is Japanese not Chinese
it's the wrong kind of
Asian for the Super Fresh Market

Through a glass

No one came to take our order. At least we have wine, I said. She poured some for each of us, saying nothing. I looked around and behind us to catch a waiter glancing our way. At other tables, people ate salad, then veal, then petit-fours. Then they left, singly and by twos. The lights dimmed. She didn't seem to mind. She looked out the window, at me, out the window again. The candle sputtered and smoked. Do you think, I said, and stopped. She rolled the stem of her wine glass between her fingers. The place was quiet as a closed book, quiet as liquid pouring into a cup, quiet as rain when you're not even sure it's raining. Her face was like a windowpane with a dark sky outside. She looked at me through the Merlot and said: You know, this is what God is like. A good wine, the kind you dance around with adjectives but never quite describe. It was the only thing she said all evening. Her face rippled in the candle smoke. She put down the glass and looked at me. Waited. Just waited.


[bit of a switch here, style-wise, but I have a cluster of prose poems in my MS and this might be a "friend" for one of them]

Call to worship

The first violin punctures

my abdomen, tom toms pound

my breast. I wish

a chrysalis. Silk, come

cushion every throbbing bone

but my temple.

The electric

guitars scream

commands to bow and kneel

and climb an altar

pouring blood. Beside 

my heavy arms,

closed-eyed

strangers in rapt

attention to the urgent voice

that clings to my skin,

longs to peel me.

The jazz singer’s dobedodas

float to the aromatic loft,

her blue lines scrolling above 

my to-dos leave 

my body intact.

Invite my cords

to fly along.

(Joanne, I promised you a poem once about how music makes me feel. Here it is!)

millefiore 8

into the land it takes
great courage, great courage
for you to love, again

rain's sister

life stopped like a clock.
there was a silence even in the noise,
the vinyl-covered despair of waiting rooms
and empty-toothpaste-tube interviews

everything was earthquake
every box was coffin
quicksand handshakes touched her:
nothing pulled her out

the sky fell, the earth sank
a tidal wave drowned itself
a fire was consumed by fire
stars starred stars

all the lights went out
all the words left
air was without breath
and somewhere a tree fell: everybody heard it

Drawing lessons

The way my dad taught me

to draw houses:

two sloping lines down

became the sides of a roof,

a triangle on the end - a gable.

A single

door. One window on each side

as if all things were equal.

We drew out

page on page

of bungalows; no room

in our imagination

for second stories, no attic

for our forgotten mirrors, 

our invisible hats.

From him, I learned

that things in the distance

grow small. Some sides

will always remain

invisible.

The way my dad taught me

to draw people:

a series of interlocking

ovals; erase

the lines

inside.