Canadian
Hornby Island
for Billy Little, who shared loved spots
and fond friends
Here on the headland by Downe's Point
we case dreams to rise
synchronous with eagles and gulls,
all make-believe, egocentric,
near to fanatical,
else aim true to roam deep
with Leviathan in the ocean's mind,
free from perplexities and profundities
such as bind the scheduled self
Here is the arbutus grove
whose trunks and branches tighten
like nerves, twisted witnesses,
victims of shapely winds
which blow in always unseen,
sweet from the south
or coming cold from the north,
from every direction
the prevailing force of nature
Wish I could emulate the arbutus
slough off my thin skin as easily
as these natives trees their bark
from abrasion, disdain or design,
unveiling the bare beauty
of strong, hard wood beneath
Over on Fossil Bay
the rot of herring roe
strewn amongst broken clam shells, dead crabs
on dirty grey sand, exposed bedrock,
thickened the morning air,
but gave no cause for bereavement:
these millions of botched birthings!
And none also for the Salish,
no open lamentation for a race
almost obliterated without trace
from their native habitat
save a few totems, some evidences of middens,
a score of petroglyphs of their guardian spirits
carved a thousand years ago
on smooth flat rock by the shore,
of killer whales, Leviathans again,
to guide their hunts,
the destiny of their tribe.
Having retraced them
gently with finger tips,
they now guide mine.
Exile in a Cold Land
In a winter air when bare trees
inlay calligraphics in the sky,
snow flutters perhaps
from a grey distance,
and trailed by his own voice,
a lone man walks,
afraid of being smothered,
immured in a white universe.
Night by night he threatens
to jettison the stars,
evict them in tumbles
as snow from a frozen sky,
else dreams the thin-sheeted ice
cracks beneath his feet,
fragile as a brief handshake.
Surprised
Apex, high anchor
of an April sky mishandled
so to splash the night, sans moonlight
upon us freely to the lees -
well never see, listing
in frog pause, steep Chablis
of Narcissus sleeping nearly
how our wonder is undone, unravels
aimlessly
how we've lost
you, locating Leo.
Or one said, "Ride
the dipper. It's nothing,"
and then above the racket
of the ratchets clacking
under our ascending car, peak
of that propelling climb
"You're gonna die."
But didn't.
But done before we knew it. And hard
on the heels of mesh and meld
weld personal
a cooling song
of all things wants apres
delirium
her rudimentary handle on
the far light, its libation.
Us in Everything
What to make of light
is issue
against the nay-
-sayers, turners-away
but for them at length
who swim too in its puzzlement
raising their glasses
into its assurances, modest vocabulary
of qualities in and around and upon
definities of objects and ethers, clarities
of isolation
but of itself
what is it, despite our successes
aslant here in the tulips, there
in the white flash blindness
commencing and concluding the opened
atom's invitation? Some simple telling
image drowns
in any human eye for it, a smile's
infusion, eddies of pollen
on the windshield
signals the singular singing again
of the invisible making us see and seen.
