Poems

Lost

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Lost

My body’s house has many rooms and you, my love,
walk through them all. Your shadow dances on walls,
in mirrors, and your breath brushes my cheek

every time I open doors or windows. That silly cat
looks for you and hisses when I bring her kibble.
I move from room to room, but when I seek you,

you are no longer here. I knock, nothing opens.
Afraid, sometimes, to enter a room, I know
you are in there. I hear your footsteps on the stair.

Sometimes your voice seems to break the silence.
You whisper my name in the same old way.
How can it be true, my love, that you have gone,

that you have left me here alone? I count the hours,
the days, embracing dust motes. I find no solace
in salacious sunbeams and my occasional dreams.

Comment: Regular visitors to this blog will probably recognize this poem. It is a rewrite of an earlier one, also bearing the title Lost (click here for earlier post). I rewrote, or rather, reorganized the structure of the poem, added some words, and subtracted others. I did this earlier this summer while Clare was in Ottawa visiting our daughter and grand-daughter. And yes, I missed her. I always do when she in not present or I am away. Comments on either version will be welcome, particularly if you prefer one version over the other.

Purple

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Purple

I write poems
in green ink,
but I prefer
purple.

Bruised clouds
on an evening sky,
dark depths
of a rainbow glow,
Northern Lights
singing at the deep
end of their scale …

or just a desire
to be different …
slightly different ..

as if that one thing,
the color of my ink,
might tip the scales
and turn me
from mediocrity
to celebrity

with a wave
of a violet wand.

or the click
of a pair
of ink-stained
fingers.

Welsh Miners

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Miners

What has become of the caged
canary who lit up my life?
I hear the pit pines creaking.
Now nobody dares strike a match.

Birds descending in an iron cage,
our lungs blackened and scarred,
scared, we sing dark hymns
knowing we are doomed.

On hands and knees, we crawl
to the coal-black altars of our gods.
Blind from birth, pit ponies
trust us in their solitudes.

Don’t they know that when
the canary falls from its perch,
we’ll abandon them and claw
our way, anywhere, to safety?

Within the chalk tomb-tunnels
of my calcined skull,
a lone thought searches
an abandoned mine for a memory
it can no longer find.

Procrastination

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Procrastination
for my friend, Mr. Cake

It’s old age, I think:
I can manage
one thing a day,
depends on the weather,
then I forget,
then I remember,
but the weather isn’t right,
so I put it off again,
start a story,
write a poem,
the phone rings,
someone texts me,
there’s a knock on the door,
the crows in the garden
make me procrastinate,
(crass  Latin joke*),
then I remember
and feel sad,
and hair leaks from my head
like straw from a scarecrow,
and my teddy bear brain
turns to sawdust
when I scratch,
and what was I saying?
I guess I’ve forgotten,
I’ll sleep on it tonight,
and write again
tomorrow.

Note:
Crass Latin joke*
Cras is the Latin for tomorrow. Cras is also the sound, in Latin, that the crows make. Hence Pro-cras-tinate: to leave things for tomorrow, or to abandon them for tomorrow’s crows. The joke probably doesn’t belong in the poem, but darn, it’s my poem and I’m leaving it in there.

Comment:
This collection of thoughts started in a casual online exchange with my good friend, Mr. Cake. Sometimes words flow and it’s impossible to stop them. Sometimes, they hover like crows or croak at us from the tree tops where they sit ungraspable. My spellcheck tells me that’s not a word, but if it isn’t, it ought to be. Whatever: the world and its words are sometimes surreal and if you are interested in the surreal, then Mr. Cake’s blog is the place to be. Here’s the link. The site comes highly recommended. Click on it now and don’t procrastinate. Mr. Cake’s Blog.

Butterflies

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Butterflies

“Poetry gives permanence to the temporal forms of the self.”
Miguel de Unamuno.

That is what my writing is all about,
those temporal forms, fluttering and changing.
Butterflies, they live for a day or two,
perch and flourish, spread their wings,
excel for a moment, catch my attention,
then blown by a sudden gust of wind,
they tear their wings on a thorn
and perish in the blink of an eye.

Reborn in ditches, they cluster and gather,
congregate, black and yellow, on bees’ balm,
smother Cape Daisies and Black-eyed Susans.

Like shadows they shimmer, butterflies by day,
fireflies by night, terrestrial stars, lost, wandering,
floating in their forest firmament, hackmatack,
black oak, bird’s eye maple, silver birch, fir …

Impermanence surrounds us, dances beneath stars,
sings with robins, echoes the owl’s cry through woodlands,
poetry, the elemental soul, our words capturing nothing,
turning it into eternity, holding it for the briefest moment,
then letting it go. Island View, New Brunswick, Canada,
my home in the woods, my dialog with my place and time.

Dandelion Flowers

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Dandelion Flowers

My flowers fly bright flags as if trooping their colors
for Her Majesty, the Queen of England. They drink water
dosed with chemicals to keep them healthy and alive,
refusing to fade, flourishing in their vase on the table.

They withstand both sunshine and shade, neither wilting
nor fainting under the hot summer sun. In this house
there dwells no queen, just a domestic pussy cat
called Princess Squiffy who knows she may look at a Queen.

“Your Majesty,” say Cape Daisies as the pussy cat passes.
“Ma’am,” say Peonies and Pansies, bending knees, bobbing heads.
Outside my window, the garden fills up with onlookers,
still green Tomatoes, Clematis, and a tall Hollyhock.

A multitude of weeds crowds onto the lawn. Dandelions
standing splendiferous, waiting to take plebeian selfies,
for plebs, they are, vox populi, people’s voice, people’s choice.

Some ancient god must have loved them very much,
for they are ubiquitous, and totally indestructible.
That said, you must never trust them in your flower bed.

Book Burning

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Book Burning

A sharp-edged double sword,
this down-sizing,
this clearing out of odds and ends.

Library shelves emptying.
books disappearing, one by one.

So many memories
trapped between each page,
covers, dust-bound now,
dust to dust and books to ashes.

Sorrowful, not sweet, each parting,
multiple losses, characters
never to be met again,
except in dreams.

Heroes, thinkers, philosophers, poets,
their life work condemned to conflagration.

Alpha: such love at their beginnings.
Omega: such despair,
with Guy Fawkes celebrations
the means to their ends.

Word-fires:
the means of forging
those book worlds that surrounded us.

Bonfires:
the means to end them.

Steadfast, the book-fires,
flames fast devouring

all but an occasional volume
snatched, burnt fingers,
from the flames.

Fire Storm

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Fire Storm

Yesterday, it was difficult to breathe.
We inhaled dust and ashes as smoke
from forest fires scuttled towards us,
carried piggy-back on a strong west wind.

Today, the wind herds clouds into aerial castles,
pinnacles and pyramids piled upwards,
tall ships’ canvases painted dark, thundery,
raised by fierce wedges thrust beneath them,
lofting them into darkening skies.

Beyond a certain height, water becomes ice.
Particles group together. Hail stones form,
small at first, growing ever larger
until the very air can no longer bear
their weight. Golf ball big,  they tumble down
the sky’s steep ladder and fall to earth.

The dry drum roll of distant thunder rumbles.
A scissor-slash of light shreds black skies.
An executioner’s hay wain rolls towards us,
a runaway train destined to tear our lives
apart. It leaves us helpless, clamoring for safety,
our world torn apart, our earth sore wounded.

Death scythes away downing rich and poor alike.
Who now knows which way thrown dice will fall?
The dye’s sharp edge, once cast, cuts like a blade.
Hailstones clatter, battering us down.

 

Love at First Sight

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Love
… sometimes comes at first sight

A teenage apprentice with a little plastic badge
bearing her name asked me to reveal my birthdate.
This apparently confirmed that I knew who I was,
so she bound my arm with a thick rubber thong.

My veins swelled up, long thin leeches, slowly fattening.
She told me to make a fist and pouted as she probed
with slender fingers, feeling in vain for a fresh vein
from which to extract, then bottle the necessary blood.

I watched my body’s sap pumping out in tiny, sad spurts
driven by that tired flesh-and-blood machine known as
my heart. Drip by febrile drip my blood accumulated.
The young girl smiled with youth’s perfect lips and teeth.

My heart was a time-bomb ticking beneath her fingers.
I dreamed for an instant of walking upright and free,
a stranger in the paradise of a long-promised land.

Then she handed me my gifts: a throw-away plastic potty,
three disposable spatulas, and an air-dry sample card,
with written instructions, date stamped, bearing my name.

Loss

Books

Loss of …
… something just beyond my fingertips
that I can’t quite remember

By the time I remembered your name,
I had forgotten your face.
Then I couldn’t recall why
I wanted to talk to you.

I trace dark landmarks
on the back of scarred hands:
blood maps,
unremembered encounters,
dust covered photographs,
grey, grim, not belonging in any album.

At night I cruise among islands,
emerald green against sapphire seas.
Why did I never visit so many places?

Golden sand trickles through
night’s hour glass as stars, planets
dance in Platonic skies.

My memory fails.
I wake each morning
unaware of where I have been.
I track the sails of drifting ships,
white moths.

I think I have caught
them in overnight traps,
but they fly away each morning
in dawn’s forgiving light.

I give chase with pen and paper,
fine butterfly nets for wild thoughts
waiting to be caught,
then tamed.