The Poem

I once thought up a poem, he says,
surprising the young woman, his wife too,
by the look she gives him.
Or maybe she's used to these moments of his,
when he is feeling particularly generous
having rescued the girl from her smoky campfire,
invited her to liqueurs and hot coffee,
as the forest grows dim, the tidal river
filling up behind them with the night sea.
He's proud of this camp, the split logs,
the kitchen counter fashioned
from remnants found in the forest,
and the station wagon ready for bed,
down bags and lanterns and Agatha Christies
they would get through by the end of their vacation.
And he's glad for the booze he's brought,
to hold off the chill after driving so far
to find a spot like this, where he wants to say
something beautiful into the night,
like I once thought up a poem.
And now that he's said it, feels a little reckless,
wondering if he can remember that poem at all,
so long ago, driving all night towards home,
the highway an empty runway under the moon.
But it does come to him, the two women watching
as he leans into the fire, reciting,
June. The twenty-second. Nineteen forty-three.
June. The twenty-second. Nineteen forty-three.

His birthdate. Which may have been the first words
that popped into his head, or maybe, the poem itself,
which he somehow remembers as being more grand,
but it's late, he's had a bottle of wine,
and he can see his wife's a little ashamed.
The woman watches him, bemused,
as if she'd like to say something, but doesn't.
How could she into his big, soft face,
so openly theatrical, still hanging on a precious thing.
And now he says, shaking himself a little,
That was some poem.
So you can't tell if he's admitted defeat,
or really believes it, the day of his birth
sung along the highway as a sort of miracle
he didn't know he could speak.
Maybe even then he'd shaken his head,
with the wonder of it, his large hands
coming off the steering wheel
and cupping some unknown factor before him,
in the emptiness of that highway, the light
of that moon, when the whole night was his.

Books

I've heard one Victorian lady
arranged her bookshelves
with a grand propriety.
Careful to separate
the male and female authors.
Who knew what might happen
if blind old Milton
was left to stand too long
by the wit of Austen?
What illicit catastrophe,
mingling between the covers
in the black of night?
I love that woman, whoever
she was, chaste even with
the dry pages of her books,
believing they were capable
of anything when her back
was turned.

Like when we were kids,
even before we could read,
closing up our picture books,
our thumbs marking the page,
and then throwing them open again,
suddenly, expecting to find
something changed, the young princess
dancing and carrying on,
when she should have been beautiful
and sleeping, the prince ugly,
the monster
someone we recognized.

Anything could happen
inside that book
when you closed it.

Or when you opened it,
which is how we became friends.
Reading that line of Donne's:
"God shall create us all Doctors
in a minute."
Abandoning our study notes
on metaphysical poetry,
getting drunk on wine instead.
Deciding that was the best thing
we'd learned all year.

You told me about the summer
you worked in a second hand bookstore.
How you loved
the boxes of old novels.
How you took them out
one by one, holding
their wobbly spines,
shaking them gently,
waiting to see
what would fall to the ground.
Ancient flowers, small
crisps of leaves and once,
a seahorse, a gallant little man,
with a brittle chest
riding the wave of words.
You gave him to me,
saying he was the sort of thing
you'd thought I'd like,
still intact after all those years
of living inside a book.

And you also tell me about the calligraphy
of signatures inside a cover.
How men used initials
but women scrawled their whole names,
intimately, carefully.
The Bessies, Amelias, and Ediths.
Women not afraid to be left inside
when the cover closed,
and it got dark.

I'm learning
it's also where books open to.
Like my favourite book of poems.
Every time I take it in my hand,
it parts to a poem I love.
But finding the same book
on your shelf, it opens to
different pages, poems
I've never read before,
so that it opens into you,
showing me the places
you've been touched,
your hidden spots
I hadn't known until
the book showed me where.

THE RESURRECTION OF THE CLOWN

Once she died
she stopped changing
and became so clear

she could reemerge
-- her bright brittle spunkiness
her off-key songs

her delight in balloons
her dogged
practicing

of tap dance
how her body closes in
when she makes love

her limbs and thighs
and face
concentrating

on joy
These aspects of her
and more

week after week
appeared to
members of the Clown Society

who whispered
about the phenomenon
And former members of her audience

noticed an event
a motion
their memory pulled and twisted

until they could name
where they encountered

her

In this manner
she was reassembled
in other existences

part
by part

until she was reborn
with her own mind

altered by the lessons
death teaches

to the living

ANTHEM: UNDER THE HORNED MOON

Often the crescent moon
sails stiffly vertical

Other times it floats
almost on its back

This night
I am driving 1-84 west down Gorges

into the open arms
of a horizontal horn of light

During my years
beneath the moon's phases

I, anxious and exhilarated,
have steadily felt the road

coming toward me like a spoon
toward a baby

the asphalt pouring under the vehicle's
hood, front bumper

The highway's distances
feed me

As I cover ground,
I am simutaneously racing closer

and away
The motion perfect

perfectly lonely

like this moon

I HATE LOVE
by Di Brandt

It just hurts like hell and
where does it ever get you
watching the heart open
against wishing against
the old wound's wisdom
again again the prairies
folding your desire
like postage stamps licked
and sent the air full of
messages contrary to logic
contrary to the space that
exists between us that's
what you said you're too
far away and me not remembering
the geography the days of
the week not remembering
distances only the light
falling slanted and radiant
around you in the kitchen
your arms strong and tender
in spite of the words said
and not said in an afternoon
where does it ever get you

BENDS
Erin Moure

What the heart is is not enough.
That I can open it and
let you enter
an ocean so dense
you'll get the bends if you surface.
That you will be open to the love of every being:
I crave this,
it makes me possible, anarchic, calling
your attention,
your fingers on my ear or soft neck,
the light on each side of your face, altered
as you speak to me

Oh speak to me
I have a friend who says the heart's
a shovel, do you believe this?
My heart is a wild muscle, that's all,
open as the ocean
at the end of the railway,
a cross-country line pulled by four engines
Whatever it is I don't care, it is not enough
unless you see it
unless I can make you
embrace and breathe it, its light that knows you,
unless you cry out in it, and swim