.JPG)
They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair.
Dinner is a casual affair.
Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood,
Tin flatware.
Two who are Mostly Good.
Two who have lived their day,
But keep on putting on their clothes
And putting things away.
And remembering . . .
Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,
As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that
is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths,
tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.
 |
| 16 November 2010 |
I was altered in the placenta
by the dead brother before me
who built a place in the womb
knowing I was coming:
he wrote words on the walls of flesh
painting a woman inside a woman
whispering a faint lullaby
that sings in my blind heart still
The others were lumberjacks
backwoods wrestlers and farmers
their women were meek and mild
nothing of them survives
but an image inside an image
of a cookstove and the kettle boiling
— how else explain myself to myself
where does the song come from?
Now on my wanderings:
at the Alhambra's lyric dazzle
where the Moors built stone poems
a wan white face peering out
— and the shadow in Plato's cave
remembers the small dead one
— at Samarkand in pale blue light
the words came slowly from him
— I recall the music of blood
on the Street of the Silversmiths
Sleep softly spirit of earth
as the days and nights join hands
when everything becomes one thing
wait softly brother
but do not expect it to happen
that great whoop announcing resurrection
expect only a small whisper
of birds nesting and green things growing
and a brief saying of them
and know where the words came from
 |
| Alden Nowlan |
Down from the purple mist of trees on the mountain,
lurching through forests of white spruce and cedar,
stumbling through tamarack swamps,
came the bull moose
to be stopped at last by a pole-fenced pasture.
Too tired to turn or, perhaps, aware
there was no place left to go, he stood with the cattle.
They, scenting the musk of death, seeing his great head
like the ritual mask of a blood god, moved to the other end
of the field, and waited.
The neighbours heard of it, and by afternoon
cars lined the road. The children teased him
with alder switches and he gazed at them
like an old, tolerant collie. The woman asked
if he could have escaped from a Fair.
The oldest man in the parish remembered seeing
a gelded moose yoked with an ox for plowing.
The young men snickered and tried to pour beer
down his throat, while their girl friends took their pictures.
And the bull moose let them stroke his tick-ravaged flanks,
let them pry open his jaws with bottles, let a giggling girl
plant a little purple cap
of thistles on his head.
When the wardens came, everyone agreed it was a shame
to shoot anything so shaggy and cuddlesome.
He looked like the kind of pet
women put to bed with their sons.
So they held their fire. But just as the sun dropped in the river
the bull moose gathered his strength
like a scaffolded king, straightened and lifted his horns
so that even the wardens backed away as they raised their rifles.
When he roared, people ran to their cars. All the young men
leaned on their automobile horns as he toppled.
Note: I heard Alden Nowlan read his poems when I was a student at Sir George Williams University, I admired and loved his poems then as I still do today. A few years later I read Louis Dudek's critique of this poem, it was wholly praising the poem. Alden Nowlan is one of our greatest poets.
This body of my mother, pierced by me,
In grim fulfilment of our destiny,
Now dry and quiet as her fallow womb
Is laid beside the shell of that bridegroom
My father, who with eyes towards the wall
Sleeps evenly; his dust stirs not at all,
No syllable of greeting curls his lips,
As to that shrunken side his leman slips.
Lo! these are two of unabated worth
Who in the shallow bridal bed of earth
Find youth's fecundity, and of their swift
Comminglement of bone and sinew, lift
— A lover's seasonable gift to blood
Made bitter by a parched widowhood —
This bloom of tansy from the fertile ground:
My sister, heralded by no moan, no sound.
.JPG) |
| 2016 |
Every step of the way we walk the line Your days are numbered, so are mine Time is piling’ up, we struggle and we scrape We’re all boxed in, nowhere to escape City’s just a jungle; more games to play Trapped in the heart of it, trying' to get away I was raised in the country, I been working’ in the town I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down Got nothing' for you, I had nothing' before Don’t even have anything for myself anymore Sky full of fire, pain pouring’ down Nothing you can sell me, I’ll see you around All my powers of expression and thoughts so sublime Could never do you justice in reason or rhyme Only one thing I did wrong Stayed in Mississippi a day too long [ Well, the devil’s in the alley, mule’s in the stall Say anything you wanna, I have heard it all I was thinking’ 'bout the things that Rosie said I was dreaming I was sleeping' in Rosie’s bed [Verse 6] Walking through the leaves, falling from the trees Feeling like a stranger nobody sees So many things that we never will undo I know you’re sorry, I’m sorry too Some people will offer you their hand and some won’t Last night I knew you, tonight I don’t I need something strong to distract my mind I’m gonna look at you ’til my eyes go blind
Well I got here following' the southern star I crossed that river just to be where you are Only one thing I did wrong Stayed in Mississippi a day too long Well my ship’s been split to splinters and it’s sinking' fast I’m drowning in the poison, got no future, got no past But my heart is not weary, it’s light and it’s free I’ve got nothing but affection for all those who’ve sailed with me Everybody moving if they ain’t already there Everybody got to move somewhere Stick with me baby, stick with me anyhow Things should start to get interesting' right about now My clothes are wet, tight on my skin Not as tight as the corner that I painted myself in I know that fortune is waiting’ to be kind So give me your hand and say you’ll be mine Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way Only one thing I did wrong Stayed in Mississippi a day too long
 |
| Montreal West train station, 1950s |
 |
| Archibald Lampman |
The glittering roofs are still with frost; each worn
Black chimney builds into the quiet sky
Its curling pile to crumble silently,
Far out to westward, on the edge of morn,
Glimmer faint rose against the pallid blue;
And yonder, those northern hills, the hue
Of amethyst, hang fleeces dull as horn,
And here behind me come the woodman's sleighs
With shouts and clamorous squeakings; might and main
Up the steep slope the horses stamp and strain,
Urged on by hoarse-tongued drivers--cheeks ablaze,
Iced beards and frozen eyelids--team by team,
With frost-fringed flanks, and nostrils jetting steam.
 |
| John Masefield, 1878-1967 |
 |
| In Ottawa |
I dwell in the wood that is dark and kind
But afar off tolls the main,
Afar, far off I hear the wind,
And the roving of the rain.
The shade is dark as a palmer's hood,
The air with balm is bland:
But I wish the trees that breathe in the wood
Were ashes in God's hand.
The pines are weary of holding nests,
Are aweary of casting shade;
Wearily smoulder the resin crests
In the pungent gloom of the glade.
Weary are all the birds of sleep,
The nests are weary of wings,
The whole wood yearns to the swaying deep,
The mother of restful things.
The wood is very old and still,
So still when the dead cones fall,
Near in the vale or away on the hill,
You can hear them one and all.
And their falling wearies me;
If mine were the will of God,–oh, then
The wood should tramp to the sounding sea,
Like a marching army of men!
But I dwell in the wood that is dark and kind,
Afar off tolls the main;
Afar, far off I hear the wind
And the roving of the rain.
.JPG) |
| 2013 |
The red fox lolled on the manicured green
of our back condo lawn like any domestic dog –
warm autumn afternoon, newly mown grass
tickling its nose, a fox-nap imminent,
but only if those loud villains looming above
in the shaggy blue spruce would spare their vitriol.
An unruly mob of crows, freshly summoned,
hurled dark invective at the unwanted visitor.
The black gang deemed this their territory,
now under egregious trespass from the sleek sneak,
the protesters alerting all within hearing of their
unmistakable umbrage with the bushy-tailed rogue.
As the clamor reached its acme, the fox rose,
languidly stretched its length, and strolled off
and away in apparent unconcern, from the dark
rancor, now lapsed into sudden, satisfied silence.
 |
| Tom Konyves, at his AM Productions in Vancouver, 1992 |
 |
| Tom Konyves and Stephen Morrissey, at a poetry reading in Vancouver, 1991 |
A couple of clothespins later
another creak
the cat looks up
in heat: a sunbather looks down
in between the leafy branches
where the sparrow turns and spies its mate.
And it's these sparrows
who repeat all our thoughts
in their infernal dialogues
their gossip not meant for us
watching rainbuckets mirror
the stately Versailles.
Published in Bite, volume 1, number 4;
Vancouver, 1988.
 |
| Hand/Grenade by Joan Thornton |
6 am
damp
in darkness
North Sea
slapping
on the rump
of
Europe
In
Montreal
not
so far
we cannot
feel
that strain
as
Real
riot-
ous im-
mediate
as
the States
whose sharp Spring
tremor
like
a
subterran-
ean
shiver
-- shifts
our centres
of
atten-
tion
NOW -far
out along
dark
borders
where
for miles
un-
easy
migrants
perch
the ragged
edges
of
a storm
Thornton, Joan. Hand Grenade. Ottawa, The Golden Dog Press, 1973
