"Each day and each night"

2010

Each night in each dream,
each day God speaks to me,
Each day I open a door
through which comes
sunlight & greet the presence
of the Holy Spirit—
Each night in darkness
I enter a world
parallel to this,
Each day and each night
my heart opens,
a door or window,
through which comes
starlight, moonlight, sunlight—
Each night I am visited by spirits,
by the ancients,
by ancestors;
Each day I walk
these streets, visiting
the homes of spirits,
the streets they know;
Each day and each night
we are a presence
in the dream world.

4 March 2000

Two Poems from The Compass

The Clothes of the Dead

I have worn the clothes of the dead

a second cousin's sweater,

already frayed when he died, I wore it

another dozen years;

my stepfather's scarves--

blue wool from Scotland,

white silk, and a yellow

Viella shirt. These were their

second skins I pulled on

inhabiting the shape of their

old clothes for years before

the clothes wore out;

days governed by clothes

unfolded and worn,

then thrown into a laundry hamper

or balled and kicked across

the floor. Now those clothes

are gone—eaten by moths,

torn into holes and rips

not even good as rags. I wore

my own clothes

like the clothes of the dead:

brown corduroy trousers, a sweater

shapeless and small even when new;

I pulled it over my head and assumed

the facial expressions of an old man--

these clothes aged me

into someone twice my age

sexless and afraid of life thinking

of retirement and paying off a mortgage;

the penalty of a marriage of lies

held together by threads,

thread-bare of love

a wardrobe

of secrets and despair.

Today I burned six shirts,

two sweaters and trousers:

I burn the past out of my

life, return to living

from dying, take what

I have been,

clothes that made me

someone I didn't want to be

or someone I was but never liked,

clothes that are days and months and years

of a life I gave up

to fear and despair.

Now those clothes are gone:

ashes of clothes

ashes of former selves

ashes of time and space

ashes of words and notebooks

ashes of thoughts

and flesh and blood

ashes of one who surrendered.

Two Tales

1. The Well

She wakened the sleeping giant,

now he struggled to escape

the bottom of a well

where once he lay curled and fetal,

half-submerged in mud.

He could see her above gesturing to him,

holding her forefinger and thumb

together in a circle, then

her hand opened revealing

a message only he could see

written on her palm. He climbed

the cold stone wall of the well,

back pressed against the opposite

wall; gradually he

mounted the well

stopping only to groan

and scratch words on the stones

with his finger nails.

She held out her hand;

oh, she had helped him

all along this journey. Now he

was climbing over the lip

of the well, afraid

of what he might find above.

He remembered the long

fall below him, the

seemingly bottomless well,

the circle of black water so far

below that should he fall

his bones and spirit

would be broken, he would

disappear into the nothingness

of the well's great darkness.

2. The Amphora 

Retrieved from sea-bottom,

caught in a fisherman's net,

two ancient amphoras

containing honey, still liquid

and golden after night's darkness.

Decorating one amphora are images

of men and women in positions of love:

fondling breasts, couplings

of various fashions, the man

between the woman's legs,

the woman eased on top

of the man, the man

from behind thrusting with

hands beside her hips or on

her buttocks. Still other

images of perfection on

the second amphora:

the bee-keeper at the hive,

the farmer in his field

standing in full sunlight

admiring the season's crops;

not far away

lovers transform themselves

into God and Goddess, lose

the illusion of separateness

and return us wholly

to ourselves awakened to love.

The Compass

Here's the poem referred to at CNNGO. 

 ________________________________________ 

The Compass 

On the four corners of the bed 

the body becomes a compass 

describing the direction of passion. 

Months of desire arrive at this destination, 

rocking on a single almost silent wave 

we are sheltered by darkness. 

The body is a compass needle; 

you turned me from east to west 

awoke a sleeping giant that moves 

between your mouth and breasts and legs; 

the room illuminated by static electricity 

thrown off by our bodies. 

How many decades did I sleep 

waiting only for you; 

I lust after you in all 

the directions of space. 

Meeting at the airport 

your foot touching my leg 

beneath the restaurant table, 

we secretly entered an empty 

banquet hall where the caterers 

chattered and poured drinks behind 

a wall partition then quickly leaving 

we found a deserted hallway of open 

office doors where we embraced. 

All the others in my life fell away, 

I was ready to abandon my old life 

for you, for the touch of your hand and mouth, 

the apple red and delicious cut in half that I eat. 

Tied to the four corners of love 

as to a bed which becomes a compass, 

I find you on your stomach, on your back, 

in the morning lying pressed against me. 

It is not possible to return to sleep now, 

it is not possible to forsake your touch 

and love, black lace, fingers, wetness, 

your mouth, words. The compass needle 

turns finding north switched to east 

and west to south, night becomes morning; 

nothing remains as it was. You pointed my life 

in a new direction, towards a corner of the world 

only dreamt of before. Outside the sun is red 

descending behind a row of trees, 

shadows fade into the other unexplored 

regions of night. 

 (Published in The Compass, Empyreal Press, Montreal, 1993)

I dreamed Artie Gold...

Window display at The Word Book Store remembering Artie Gold

I dreamed Artie Gold sat half-conscious in a hospital chair slumped forward surrounded by women wiping away saliva running down his chin. It was in this state he decided to end his life. The Chinese pottery Artie collected, the T’ang Dynasty, the Golden Age of Chinese culture and poetry; now the American Empire collapses, the look of the country changes because of the men we admire. Of Canada what can be said? A country of winter, a geography of wind in a northern land— the convergence of spirit and vision, what we’ve become, the poem completed.

Revised: 02 March 2021; 31 December 2021.

Douglas Lochhead's Upper Cape Poems

Here is the review of Douglas Lochhead's Upper Cape Poems that I wrote in 1990. The original article also included reviews of five other poets; they are Cathy Ford, R.A.D. Ford, Lee, Singleton, and Wayman.
_________________________________

Review by Stephen Morrissey
The Antigonish Review, no. 81-82
spring-summer 1990


While our society has become increasingly transient, some poets remind us of how important geography is to the individual's spiritual well-being. Douglas Lochhead's Upper Cape Poems celebrate the Tantramar marsh region between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia; they show how familiarity with a geographical region need not lead to boredom with that area, but possibly to a greater awareness of life's diversity and the individual's inner life. Lochhead's poems are simple, direct, and extremely concise; his language has a definite rhythm that is never dull. There is no inflated ego in this work; indeed, there is an attractive understatement of both theme and emotion. In one poem he writes:

For months
leading to years
I counted you
my love
not saying much
because quite frankly
I am not much
good at it.

Once I did
say something
the white wine
was part of it,
you said it was mutual.

Now your silence
from this distance
deafens my days
I find the only way
to forget is to douse
myself in the shower
and curse.

Oh yes,
I blast myself
more often than you.

Unlike many poets, Lochhead is capable of changing the rhythm of his language. He is not a one-dimensional poet with only one song in her repertoire. "Tantramar, again, again" ends with these lines that give a feeling of actually being at the marsh:

gone great wind gone down
now to stillness and full July grasses
where they stood scything
stifling the wood never left them
gone though gone and great it was.

These poems bear repeated readings; this is only one indication that his work demands our attention. In "The woods" Lochhead writes:

I walked into the woods
all nearby to be seen
from the kitchen window
wild raspberry canes
brought blood to my arms
the brook was deceptive
leaving my feet mud brown

where there were birds
they vanished in alarm
the birds I had named
given my time

and the woods filled
with a new silence
the maples shading red
as the blood on my arm

it was the going in
to the woods
the neat place
I had thought tamed

but it brought blood
and a new kind of life

Lochhead's poems demand an aesthetic response, not only an intellectual analysis of his themes and ideas. A few of the poems in this book are transparent, their absence would not have detracted from the overall effectiveness of Upper Cape Poems. Lochhead's poems are a psychic map of one man's journey through life, always paying strict attention to the detail of his place and time. In Lochhead's faithfulness to detail we discover the human poet behind his words, but we also make a second, equally important discovery: it is our own self grown more human as we see life and experience compassionately revealed in these poems.