What Matters?

The sky, star-studded, above an open field,
silhouette of trees against the great wheel
of the galaxy rotating above
as the planet revolves
beneath my earthbound soles.

To the expanse above,
I, like a flea lost in the pelt of a vole,
inconsequential in the face of such hugeness,
conclude that the universe
does not care.

What arrogance makes our species
think we are special,
or even significant,
in a grand scheme of things?
We are not.

What could possibly matter
when the universe laughs
in our upturned infinitesimal faces?
Nothing matters, for
it doesn’t know we are here.

How, then, shall I live my four-score and ten
revolutions around the sun,
knowing, as I do, that this revelation
does not register as the blink of an eye
to the overwhelming cosmos?

This is what matters:
the hug of a child,
the kiss of a lover,
the raspy tongue of a pet.
These matter. Love matters.
Without love, nothing matters.

Rain Heavy on the Windows

Rain, heavy on the windows,
weighs down new leaves,
bends heads of dandelions,
runs in rivulets through young grass,
distorts your reflected face
and obscures the yard beyond.

The very air is weighted
with moisture.
No sky. No blue.
Only grey and wet.

The cat sits on the sofa back
staring out the glass.
The dog, leash in mouth,
gazes at the gloom.
You, in dressing gown, coffee in hand,
pull the knitted throw to your chin.

There will be no walkies today,
no taking the air.
There will be only cocooning
until the rain is past. 

The Rock Breathes

The rock breathes:
black basalt, sparkling granite,
the dark grey of newly-cloven slate;
it breathes, it lives,
it is the earth.
I would know its secrets,
to be absorbed into the schist,
my molecules sliding through its,
until our very atoms vibrate at a frequency
and we know not where it begins
and I end.
We are the rock.
We feel the veins of quartz,
brilliant in the morning sun,
rivulets of gold leaking through our cracks,
the steady drip of calcium-rich seep water
growing teeth in our hollow secret places.
If I were the rock,
I would breathe in one century,
out the next,
and I would live
forever.

The Sand Sifter, 1st take

A handful of sand

in the hand of the sifter:

ocean kissed,

edges smoothed by years of tumbling,

washed by salt water

until the single grains

have lost individuality.

It is up to the discerning eye

and deft hand of the sand sifter

to separate and categorize,

to assess and weigh;

each granule examined,

measured, magnified,

compared to a chart for colour,

composition determined.

The sand sifter deposits the white quartz

apart from the stain of red granite,

sandstone is tested on the Mohs scale,

black obsidian is in its own pile.

There is a mound of mica

reflecting hot beach sun 

from its flat surfaces,

and bits of ancient shells 

form a heap of mottled pinks and whites.

The sand sifter takes his time.

Ocean waves were not in a hurry

to create these minuscule beads of the sea,

nor is he quick to catalogue.

He is never sloppy due to haste.

He never fears running out;

there will always be more sand.

The sound of waves and surf on the beach

heralds a new delivery.

He can do this forever and probably will:

after all, someone has to.

The Wind: A Sound Poem

The wind,

rushing through tree tops,

sneaking around corners

and slipping through open windows;

its passage marked by 

the rustle of leaves,

the creak of shingles

and the window's Aeolian moan.

Stand still and listen.

Feel the wind move past you—

not a creature of free will

nor a disembodied spirit—

just the displacement of air,

atmospheric pressure change:

not real, not romantic, not gothic—

just a thing.

There is no god blowing Psyche to her winged lover,

no bag of winds filling Odysseus' sails;

the howling storm is not made up of lost souls

nor the gentlest of breezes the reminder of a child's kiss.

Tree tops sway,

grain fields wave:

air, the ocean in which we swim,

passes over all of us,

caresses and buffets

and carries its own sounds across the still night.

It is air that brings us the golden trumpet,

the violin's vibration,

the bluster of the politician's speech.

High pressure, low pressure,

air moving from one place to another,

always on the move, always some place to go.

What's that sound?
Hush. It's just the wind.

Rubbernecking on a spring afternoon

Windows wide open;
spring air flowing through
cannot disperse the odours
of rust and must clinging to
the propane canister
securely strapped into the back seat
for refilling.

Traffic stops, unmoving, impatient.
A siren approaches and cars,
already going nowhere,
scramble onto the verge to make way
for the ambulance
on its mission of mercy.

At last it is my turn,
a left turn, then a right,
west under a brilliant afternoon blue.
Firefighters direct traffic
one lane at a time
while emergency medical technicians
secure a man, prone, on the sidewalk.
I rubberneck as I pass
and a fireman smiles, waving me on.

Bumper to bumper we crawl to the light,
straddle the train tracks and hope
there’s no train. I grab a pen and a scrap
to scribble these thoughts
on the flat surface of the horn,
then look up to see a vapour trail exiting a cloud,
straight and insistent as an arrow shaft
without the fletching.

Cursing

Her cursing is the songline of canaries–
beak open, head thrown back–
warning predators away from eggs
or downy chicks hidden beneath a yellow wing.
The sweet warbling is a spill of notes
on the evening air
aimed at the departing sun,
the stalking cat,
the blackbird with its beady eye and sharp bill
waiting for the moment when the cursing stops
and it moves in for the kill.

But this is no bird, though bird like,
wispy white hair like feathery down
fluffed out from the skull-shaped head,
blue hollows for temples,
a beaked nose over the clacking jaw.
Her bones are not hollow,
yet seem delicately so, as though the wrong pressure
would cause them to snap and splinter
and no wings sprout from those angular shoulders,
but arms covered by the nightgown’s white sleeves
hiding purple bruises of blood
that pools unbidden beneath the surface
of her parchment skin.

She curses at the nurses
who pump her full of pills;
at the physiotherapists
who exercise her swollen joints;
at the waiters
who bring her food she cannot chew.
She curses at God for not letting her die,
and she curses me because she can.

And all the while Death,
like a crested blackbird,
waits for the cursing to cease,
the jaws to relax, eyelids to close,
the breathing to slow
so he can move in for the kill
and stop the song forever.

Draco of the Stars

Who art thou, worm,
nipping at Herakles’ heels
as thou slitherest past the wary claws
of his milk-mother bears?

Didst thou guard the golden orbs
where they hung from Hera’s boughs
against those pilfering sisters,
Atlas’ legacy?

A gift of Gaea, golden apples for a golden day
—Hera and Zeus, incestuously joined—
so pleased the bride that she sowed the seeds
in her own garden by Atlas’ slope.

But that giant’s spawn, wanton girls all,
slipped across the lawn to steal the fruit,
sun-yellow juice dripping from their laughing mouths,
and raised the goddess’ ire.

Where did Hera find thee, that she placed thee on guard
on that Hesperidean soil?
Wert thou plucked from thy native land,
forced from the comfort of thine own underground home?

Or did she conjure thee out of ivory and fire
with precious gems in thy ruby orbits,
copper and gold for thine impervious scales,
invulnerable to all but Herakles’ well-aimed blow?

Wert thou slumbering as the hero,
draped in the Nemean’s mane,
crept alongside thy sinewy length
and plunged his blade between the stars that are thine eyes?

Didst thou thrash as thou wert slain,
jaws spread wide, venom dripping from impotent fangs,
wild eyes seeking thy murderer
even as the light left them?


Or art thou a different worm, not the victim of Herakles’ labour
but of his half-sister Athena?
Gods fighting gods, uncles against nephews,
storming the ramparts of Olympus itself;

’Twas the banished first-born with their hundred hands,
giants and cyclops from Tartarus released
who joined the fray to overcome their brothers,
revenge on Chronos posthumously complete.

In the peak of battle, didst thou sleep unperturbed,
belly full, basking in the golden light of noon,
when thou wert scooped up by Titan hands
and cast at the warrior goddess?

She snatched thy dry coppery coils
and hurled thee skyward so thou lodged
in the vault of the heavens, trapped
between a great and small bear.

Mayhap thou art none of these
but the father himself, caught in pursuit
of those milking maids who nursed the hero
thou art forced to chase.

’Twas thy desire to suckle
from those dripping teats
milk meant for thy bastard son
whilst hidden from jealous Juno.

Changed to bears and in the firmament fixed,
thou didst creep upon them in thy true form,
the seducing serpent, the phallic python,
intent upon slaking thy lust.

Who art thou, Draco of the stars?
Thine origins are multifold, and thou
forever caught in the wheel of the sky
in pursuit of a heel thou canst not bite.

How to ease a broken heart

I lean against a mountain facing east,
cool rock at my back,
morning sun in my eyes,
and sink into the schist,
feel myself enveloped in layer
after layer of ancient ocean floor,
until I am part of the mountain itself
and can feel no more.

Mt. Rundle-Canadian Rockies Painting by Lanny Grant

Absence

The pain of partition is no less,
though less often.
A whole day may pass before the memory
of the absent one
rises to surface suddenly, invoked by
a change in scenery,
an overheard conversation, a shell laid
on the dresser,
and it overwhelms with its intensity,
takes away the breath,
the keen longing produces
a contraction
which would draw the beloved
into one’s own body.
These spasms are farther spaced,
building energy
until the next one squeezes the viscera
with its acute yearning.

Crush

She cannot breathe.
She sits beside her crush;
her unspoken longing:
the secret knowledge of dreams,
of busy hands masturbating
where thwarted desire dwells--
enwreaths her like a boa,
not of flirtatious feathers,
but a reptilian hunger
that inexorably constricts
with each exhalation
in its close embrace
until she is overwhelmed
by its steady crush.

Weeding

I squat before I kneel, 

finally collapsing to a cross-legged sit,

my hands busy as dandelions and grass

and false clover come out by their roots, 

some more easily than others. 

The pile of unwanted plants grows beside me 

and the clean, black dirt is exposed, 

waiting for new seeds hanging from soft, 

white, floating umbrellas 

to find their way to fertile soil.

Nature abhors a vacuum.

I stop and push a strand of hair off my brow, 

feel the sweat trickle between my breasts 

and hear the buzz of insects 

as they survey my sumptuous flesh 

in search of a tasty meal. 

There is now a smudge where my muddied hand

brushed my forehead, 

fingernails encrusted with embedded dirt 

that will take repeated scrubbings

to come clean. 

I look at the heap of weeds, 

at the spaces between

hydrangeas and bleeding heart

and wonder who is the victor here,

to whom go the spoils.

The Webcam

You gazed upon your lover today,
seeing the remembered face,
the smile, the white teeth
and lips, those lips you
long to kiss, to touch, the eyes
full of love, looking longingly
at you through a looking glass
of unattainability.

Autumn Letter to a Dear Friend

October 14, 2008


My dear Simone:

It is autumn and the fall colours
remind me of you.
I walk through tunnels of foliage,
limbs overhead, fallen leaves underfoot,
and bask in the luminous golds,
glowing coppers and ruby reds.
The world is ablaze with their glory
and I rejoice in its beauty,
taking photographs with my mind’s eye
that I would send you,
if I only could,
so that you might see them, too,
as I do.

I inhale the scents of the season:
decaying leaves and pine needles,
earth and wood and mould.
I long to send you my impressions,
to have you see and smell them,
to hear the honking of geese
as they pass overhead in their ragged vees,
and feel the rush of their wings
as they fly past.

There are so many things I want to show you.
Today on my walk into town past the cemetery
I stopped to marvel at the maples,
how they were ignited by the sunlight
and seemed to burn with neither heat nor flame,
but an inner luminescence;
and I thought of you.

Coming home, I gathered leaves:
mostly yellow, some tinged with orange and red,
one edged in green with a golden heart.
I placed them between pages of my diary
so that later I might mail them to you,
arranged under glass in a picture frame,
or as surprises,
interleaved among the leaves of another book.

This weekend past I drove for hours
from east to west and back,
and every crimson sumac and golden oak
that lined the long highway
was etched in my memory
so I could tell you about it.
The photographs I took
do not do reality justice.
It is the pictures stored behind my eyes
that I wish you to see;
each is tinged with love,
and suffused with longing.

For it is not just the fall colours
I want to show you,
but the tints of my own soul:
the reds and golds and coppers
that peel away from my heart
and flutter to the ground
only to become brittle
and crumble to dust;
the love I long to lavish
and the words I may not say.

I will not mention this to you,
but quietly accept the inevitable,
as do the leaves that burn defiantly
in the face of winter.

Your loving friend,

Edouard

Dirt

The dark loam pours out of the box
onto clumps of dirt packed close
by winter’s chill and weight of snow
and ash from the wood stove:
rich, life-giving soil from
vegetable parings and apple cores,
eggshells and grapefruit rinds,
coffee grounds and tea bags;
nothing is wasted.
Scrapings from dinner plates,
tips of beans and celery leaves,
corn cobs and avocado shells
all thrown in together
to rot, metamorphosing
in that polyvinyl cocoon
into the black earth
that cradles the new year’s crop.
Parsley stems and tomato cores return
to the soil that grew them;
tough stalks of basil nourish
next summer’s pesto;
and all this flows onto my spade
and I spread it and bury it
and crumble the clods of clay-packed dirt
which, after years of mingling
with spring’s spoils from winter’s waste,
is still hard and rebellious
under my shovel and rake.
A clang of metal on limestone and
shale brought up by winter heaving;
these will not decompose.
They will not become soil
in my lifetime.

Guinea Pig

Guinea pigs are the animals of choice
for elementary-school classroom pets;
they live extremely boring lives
and are amazingly content to do so.
Provided with enough food,
They will eat till they burst.
Their cages smell, no matter
how often they are cleaned.

My best friend had a guinea pig.
It was black as coal
and when it died
it was cold as coal.
My girlfriend’s mother asked me,
me, an innocent bystander
unimplicated in the rodent’s demise,
to dispose of the remains.

Why couldn’t she do it?
I still don’t know.
Even my girlfriend was uninformed
of the fate of this pet.
Perhaps it slept, lying as it did
on its side in its cage,
unmoving, unmoved;
and I wrapped it in newspaper like a fish from the market
and deposited it without ceremony in the can
holding next week’s garbage pickup.

I still harbour resentment
at this manipulation of my youthful devotion,
at my friend’s mother’s betrayal,
at the disposal of this lifeless corpse
belonging to something she once loved.

You have only to wait.

You have only to wait, they will find you;
like tendrils of fog they will infiltrate the cracks,
will seep under closed doors,
they will spread outward across the floor,
lapping at chair legs, licking at baseboards.

They are the good intentions,
the broken promises,
the words spoken in anger,
residue from ill intent.

They carry with them the hatchet unburied,
the sharp-edged grudge,
the dull anger of denial,
the horns of hate.

You cannot outrun them
for they stick to you like burrs,
clinging to your clothing,
staining your lily-white hands,
darkening your innocent brow.

They are the karma that grows,
the debt unpaid,
the sorries unsaid,
the guilt of neglect.

They plague you with what ifs,
should haves,
might have beens.
They replay scenes you’d rather forget
and you burn with shame
and with sorrow and with guilt.

These are the sins unconfessed;
no priest can absolve these iniquities,
no number of Hail Marys will wash
the blood from your hands.

You have only to wait.
Memories forgotten will surface
like the weathered bones of dinosaurs,
grotesque and monstrous,
in the eroding rock strata of your defences.
Every bone exposed, every hurt feeling,
every harsh word is there.

They do not remain buried in the past,
hidden behind the screen of humour,
of good deeds,
of an exemplary life.

Someday all the ill once afflicted on others
will return to haunt you,
to creep in through your bedroom walls
and crawl under the covers,
caressing you with horny hands,
tweaking you and tugging at the blankets
until you can stand it no longer,
until you cry out in your sleep,
“I confess! It was I! I did those horrible things!”

For when that day arrives,
the day they find you and foul you
with their fiendish residue,
that day you will learn,
perhaps too late,
that love was all that was necessary,
forgiveness freedom unfettered,
tolerance a virtue above all.

You can wallow in the despair of past decisions
or you can open the door,
the window,
and your heart.
For life is short and love
is everything.

The Fantasy and the Reality

In my mind
our bodies entwine
like sinewy adders
and creeping vines
our souls unite
our breath is one
we move together
like a snow-white swan
gliding on the lake
under silver moon-glow
one swan above
its reflection below.

***

We are not one
and never shall be
for though I love you
and you love me
we cannot entwine
but are kept apart
by other claims
on our aching hearts
and though we may live
on either side of a wall
our love is friendship
and that is all.

***

How can we live
knowing our fate
the love we’ll never
consummate
neither to embrace
nor kiss tenderly
or join like the swan
on a moonlit sea
feeling the ache
of love unfulfilled
a fantasy only
tinged with guilt.

Ode to a Deer Skull

This bone is scoured clean,
the sutures where one plate meets another
are undulating lines,
matching up like the erose edges
of jigsaw puzzle pieces,
meandering like streams flowing
across flat landscapes,
undermining and cutting the soil
to leave switchbacks and ess-curves.
There are no oxbows,
these are not rivers.

The sockets where the eyes once dwelt
are like gaping mouths of subterranean tunnels
sloping inward. The eyes are gone,
the windows shattered, the soul fled.
The antlers are double-tined prongs
curving towards each other.
I imagine in life arcs of thought
leapt from one to the other
like sparks of energy generated
by a Tesla-inspired machine.
But now they are merely bone,
dead, lifeless bone,
a leftover reminder of rutting
and sex and a bid for power
and dominance.

* * *

Who were you, deer, whose skull
now sits atop this pedestal?
Did you run free through the woods,
nibble daintily at the windfall apples
in the farmer’s orchard?
Did you frolic in the moonlight?
Did you have a mate?
Were you racing to meet her
when the truck slammed into you,
ending your brief life,
extinguishing the light in those liquid eyes,
breaking the enclosure where dwelt your soul
so that it continued on its way
across the road and into the field beyond
while you were left behind
in a pool of blood and matted fur?

Dream Haikus

I.
A foetus in the womb
Dreams about sucking its thumb
While it floats in space.

II.
Whimpering, whining,
Running after dream squirrels,
An old dog slumbers.

III.
I dreamt last night that
You and I became lovers.
It was just a dream.