Poems

Time

Time

Where is time going
when it overtakes me
in its speeding car
and leaves me lumbering
along life’s highway?

It’s after five to twelve
and the morning has flashed by.
The clock is about to strike,
and the afternoon draws near.
It too will vanish, a milestone,
millstone tied to day’s neck.

I remember the old days
when the big handed pointed to XI
and the small hand pointed to XII.

Now the clock is starting to strike.
I have left the last gas station way
behind me and my motor’s failing,
and my car is running out of gas.

Coming Together

Coming Together

A coming together of cultures,
these three statues,
placed equidistant,
forming an equilateral triangle,
all things being equal.

Three founding cultures:
English, French, Indigenous,
in alphabetical order.
They stand face to face to face,
a triangulation,
silhouetted in profile,
sharing positive and negative space.

At the center of their union,
at the still point where nothing moves,
a living, breathing space,
that takes away your breath.

When you breathe again,
you take in air
and light and sun and
hope renewed.

Faith runs tingling round your body,
hand in hand with joy and life
and love reborn.

Middens by Jarea

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Kingsbrae 25.4
25 June 2017

Middens by Jarea

Garbage dumps they are to us,
filled with childhood treasures,
shaped flints, arrowheads, spear
tips, scrapers for deer hide,
so many castaway items.

Garbage dumps to us, maybe,
but for the Passamaquoddy
who first settled this area
and lived on this shore,
these precious middens
are anything but dumps.

They are guide posts,
lighthouses in the moonlight,
signposts to point the way
for wayfarers and wanderers,
at high tide, low tide,
and especially when the mudflats
bathe beneath sun and moon
and the channels twist and turn,
serpentine labyrinths in their wanderings.

Garbage: we dig up what they have left,
expose past lives to scientific theories,
and destroy their navigational knowledge,
the science they left behind.

An Angel at Jarea

15 May 2002 Pre-Rimouski 141

Kingsbrae 25.3
25 June 2017

An Angel at Jarea

An angel moves through the room
in the silences between our chatter.
He fills the interstices of speech
with the wonder of feathers
enlightened by rainbows.

Tranquil his footsteps
as we sense his presence.
He places his hand on an arm,
his arm around our shoulders,
and now, commanding silence,
a finger on his lips.

We sit here
scared by our intimate inadequacies,
scarred by the fierceness of his immanence
as we sense the vacuum
of his soon-to-be absence.

Mist at Jarea

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Kingsbrae 25.2
25 June 2017

Mist at Jarea

Moving in with the tide,
drawing gauze curtains
over the islands,
climbing, so silent,
pebbles and rocks
to arrive at our windows
and block out the sun.

The mist’s grey face
presses against the panes.
Long lost friends,
come back to haunt us,
loom out of our past.

They bear memories
born beyond the mist,
living now in, and for, this mist.

They come stalking us and tap
with long, cold wisps of fingers
at locked windows and doors,
bolted so they can’t get in.

Jarea

PEI + bockle 2008 101

Kingsbrae 25.1
25 June 2017

Jarea

This is a glimpse of
how it might be.

Surrounded by paintings,
snapshots and memories,
all we have ever done
hanging on the walls
as if we were visiting
a gallery of our lives.

Impressions from our childhood
line up beside
expressions of our adolescence
and
abstracts extracted
from our more mature years.

Time,
we are running out of time,
and our here and now is
a quality of deafness leading us
into the next dimension.

We will see our whole life,
in that blink of an eye.
Then there will be farewells,
a sudden silence,
and we will be gone.

Trinity

Avila 2007a 039.jpg

Kingsbrae 22.4
22 June 2017

Trinity

A coming together of cultures,
these three statues, placed
equidistant, an equilateral
triangle, all things being
equal and none more equal
than others; three brothers;
mother, father, child; father,
son, and holy ghost: no women
there; perhaps three founding
cultures: English, French, and
Indigenous,  in alphabetical
order; and there they stand,
face to face to face,
a triangulation, in profile,
silhouetted, sharing positive
and negative space; and, at the dead
center of their union, at the spot
where all is still and nothing moves,
a living space, that takes away
your breath when you breathe
in air and light and sun and
a renewed hope; then faith runs
tingling round your body with
joy and life and love reborn.

Old Sow

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Kingsbrae 22.3
22 June 2017

Old Sow

The good luck ship
flies its Jolly Roger
and all is well with the world.

No pirates now
bury their treasure
on Oak Island,
nor skirt the Old Sow
as she sucks away
at the ocean depths..

Porpoise and whale
come to her feeding grounds,
milking the maelstrom
she churns up from her seas.

Warm is her welcome
to travelers brave
who test their courage
on her swirling waves.

Lupins

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Kingsbrae 22.2
22 June 2017

Lupins

To dwell here
is to build
cloud castles
or castles
in Spain.

High-ramparted,
the clouds,
sky-sheep
wind-driven
across a blue field.

Here,
no sound but the breeze
rippling the pond,
leaving soft footsteps
as its cat’s paw
bats at trailing branches.

Lupins,
in bank and ditch,
sway to the wind’s soft voice.
Toe-tapping, head tossing,
they play a jazz and blues concert
to a chorus of yellow bells.