Rainbow
I dreamed last night
that angels lofted me
skywards and wrapped me
in cotton-wool clouds.
The nearest rainbow
was a helter-skelter
that returned me to earth
where I landed in a pot
of golden sunlight.
Red, gold, and yellow
were my hands and face.
I stood rooted like
an autumn tree covered
in fall foliage with
no trace of winter’s woe.
“May this moment last
forever,” I murmured,
as the rainbow sparkled
and I rejoiced in
my many-colored coat.
Clare
She moves more slowly
up the slope,
pushing against the hill’s
shallow grain.
I knew so well her
swaying grace,
but now she shuffles
with the drag-
foot limp of the aged,
and aged she has,
like a good wine in
an oaken cask.
Her beauty still stays
in my memory,
lodges in my mind and
I see her as
she was, beautiful
in body, slim,
graceful, a joy to hold
and behold.
Her eyes still sparkle
and she bubbles
still with a champagne
joy that draws
me to her, and still she
enhances each
room she enters, filling
it with light.
Blind
Warmth in a color,
with heat visible to the touch
and shocking pink a shock
to seeking fingers,
not one that you and I,
gifted with sight,
would ever understand.
Blindfolded, they wheel me
round and round the garden
in my teddy bear reality.
Gravel scrunches beneath
the wheels and I am flooded
with the inability to see, to know,
to be sure of the shadows
that are no longer there.
The ones who push me
talk and tell but cannot show.
How could they hold a rainbow
before my eyes or let me hear
the northern lights crackle the sky,
their visible Niagara a curtain
of fairy lights dancing up and down?
And those glorious organ notes
quivering the body, angel voices rising,
falling, grasping at my eye-
lashes, peeling my eye-lids apart.
Song of songs and the singer
deaf to his own sublimity,
oh dealer of cards, fingerless
pianist, bold dancer prancing
on your amputated stumps.
Comment: Raw poem, written for Gwen Martin who opened my eyes to the fact that blind people can perceive color through their finger-tips.
Four Geese
Early this morning,
high above the car
in the sky’s giant highway,
four geese flew overhead
honking.
A welcome sign of spring,
they reminded me of summer sunshine
as they framed themselves
for a moment in the moon roof.
“Remember those happy days,”
they seemed to cry
as they carved their sky path
far above my head.
I remembered a moonless night
with the admiral out ahead
steering by the stars
and, seemingly sightless,
the great flock following.
That night
I pinpointed their calls
leaning back, looking up,
straining my neck,
and for a moment
there were no stars,
just a feathered blackness
shutting out the Big Dipper
as it hung in the sky
above the river St. John.
At Montmagny,
on the St. Lawrence River,
the great white geese
will soon be gathering.
White on their arrival
they will drift like snow
and accumulate on the land.
Alban angels,
harbingers of spring,
guardians of summer’s perfection.,
they too will blotting out the sky
and leaving me breathless,
overwhelmed
by my many memories.
Red Star
“Fly me to that red star,
the one outside the window.”
Teddy’s voice droned
its mosquito in my ear,
but made no sense.
“I’ll try,” Owl said.
I hadn’t noticed him there,
snuggled in beside me.
“That’s not a star,” I said.
“It’s a planet, Mars.
It’s in conjunction with Venus,
that other bright blob.”
Owl flapped his wings
and flew out of the window.
Up and up he went
until he faded out of sight.
“He’s gone,” said Teddy.
“He’ll never come back.”
But return he did and
“A star too far,” he said,
as he pulled up the blankets
and snuggled into bed.
“It’s not a star,” I said,
but my words were ignored
by the snores emerging from
two nodding, sleepy heads.
Brandy Cove
for my cousin
Frances
who lives in
Australia
I remember helping our nana
climb the steep slope
from the beach to the headland.
“It’s easy, nana,” I said. “Look!”
I leaped from tussock to tussock,
up the path, each patch of grass
a stepping stone leading me upwards.
She stood there, below me,
breathing hard, her left hand
held against her chest,
just beneath her heart.
“I’m catching my breath,”
she said, panting.
I ran up and down, then held out
my hand to help her.
It was so long ago.
Who now will hold out
her hand to help me
as I too age and grow
slow?
Bleak Mid-winter
from
All About Angels
The reverse side of a tapestry this fly-netting,
snow plugging its tiny squares,
clotting with whiteness the loopholes
where snippets of light sneak through.
Black and white this landscape,
its colorless contours a throwback
to earlier days when dark and light
and black and white held sway.
Snow piled on snow.
The bird-feeder buried and buried too
the lamps that can no longer shine
beneath their cloak of snow.
The front porch contemplates a sea of white,
wave after wave cresting whitecaps,
casting a snow coat over trees
with snow-filled nests standing
shoulder-deep in the drifts
while a slow wind whistles
and high and dry in the sky above
the sun is a pale, thin penny
drifting through ragged clouds
that threaten to bring more snow.
Snowy Day
for
Meg Sorick
who misses the snow
and offered to come and dig us out.
1. View from office window with IMac and pencils.
2. Bird feeders and the mountain ash from kitchen window.
2a Same scene, two hours later
2b Same scene, another hour later
3. Back porch, bird table, and picnic table from living room.
3b Same scene, two hours later
4. Cat’s eye view of snow from Princess Squiffy’s vantage point.
4a Same scene, two hours later
5. Princess Squiffy turns her back on the snow and seeks an alternate reality
6. We finished with 63 cms of snow (25 inches), plus drifting of course. Almost shoulder high in places. Other snowfalls in the province ranged from 70-80-90-100 cms. All in all, we were lucky. A wonderful neighbor came and helped us dig / plow ourselves out earlier this evening, and now we can get to the road and our driveway is snow free. Paul: thank you so very much.
