by Wade Kearley
into twilight, her mantle dotted by glowing pins
as she flees the focus of my attention,
retreats into the crush of blackness
where she is the only source of light.
Her skin red, then pink, then grey, until
I switch the floodlights on. Then her mantle
bloats, and she propels herself so rapidly
she vanishes. Distance is her camouflage
as she skirts back to join the countless, swarming
upward. These shape-shifters choreograph a hunger
beyond my imagination, a dance of desires
that I may behold but can never possess.
—il audace
(a swimming-pool video)
In my search online for swimming pools,
I discovered a crucifixion on Vimeo.
Under the water she kicks in rough circles
while bubbles trail from one nostril. A rope
of hair uncoils over her shoulder as she ascends
into the eye of her reflection. A breath
and she returns, flying, falling backwards
into the camera. The muscles of her long back,
buttocks, thighs, fill my field of vision.
Suspended in her element she scissors
legs that could crush me, splays toes
along her calf, then crosses her knees. She hovers,
arms outstretched, her spinning torso
unwinds into a simple kick. Another breath
and then straight down. Her silhouette glides
forever beyond my imagining.
She sinks calmly to the bottom of the pool,
pulls knees to her chin, then dolphins upward,
into her mirror image at pool edge and vanishes
—until I hit Replay and
feel her inside me once again.
—winter island
for Michael Winter, who tipped me off
On the west side of this
Northwest Atlantic island—
part African,
part Appalachian,
part earth’s mantle,
shoved to the surface
before there were glaciers—
on the west side of this island
is a long lake, Wli’Qospem
or Grand Lake to the settlers.
To satellites it is an exclamation
one hundred kilometers,
north to south, dammed, wired.
And in that lake at the southern end
is an island, the eighteenth largest
lake island in the world.
Glover’s Island we call it now.
And on Glover’s Island lie many ponds,
all unnamed except the few like
Kettle, Quartz, and Tomahawk,
named by prospectors
who, even now, drill cores for gold.
On that island
in the North Atlantic in
Grand Lake, on
Glover Island in one of those nameless ponds, is
a nameless island
the size of two ice rinks,
spruce clinging to the south end,
Labrador tea to the north.
And on that nameless island is
a seasonal gully that fills with
ice melt and early rain.
And in that gulley on
that unnamed island in
that nameless pond on
Glover’s Island in
Grand Lake on
the west side of that island rises
a sod of peat in which is rooted
an alder bush.
It is the smallest wildland
ever found, this alder
clinging to a sod island in
a gulley on an island
in a pond on an island
in a lake on that Afrilachian island
in the cold Northwest Atlantic.
—every calipitter in the whole galaxy
A serious bit of nonsense for Annika and every other kid who
ever re-invented a word.
Could god create a word so long and so heavy
There was no way she could hoist all the letters?
Would there be enough room in the whole galaxy?
Imagine a tree with so many leaves
They grew all too fast for the world’s calipitters.
Could she not create so leafy a tree?
Imagine the silk cocoon they might weave,
So vast it could hide the Milky Way in its net,
The biggest room in the whole galaxy.
What if each day was a day to be free?
Would beaches be packed if we never vacate?
Does god have a word for so lengthy a day?
Imagine a big whale that bungs up the sea.
When it slaps its tail, would we all get wet?
Would nothing be dry in the whole galaxy?
Whenever I sing the song that I sing it tastes salty.
The taste is so strong that I can’t forget
God yet might create a word that’s soooo lengthy
It would sop up every letter in the whole g a l a x y
August on Lawlor’s Brook
In my larch-shade hammock, an infant clutched
Under my arm, I dreamt we swam up river
Into a concrete cavern where fins touched.
Schooling with brown trout we shared a fever
For headwaters beyond the culvert’s reach.
There, like Shanawdithit and her mother,
Last of their kind, we yielded on a sandy beach
To forces from which we would not recover.
Slowly, for the last time, we turned our backs
On the marshes and birch groves and beseeched
Merciless strangers to let us go back
To our watery hiding places. Flushed,
I woke to sunburned cheeks and the hammock
Above me and the baby gone forever.
—postcard from the holiday inn
Last night a bus load of them landed late, laughing, doors slamming. I drag my hand across the blanket, tiny static sparks. My first night in a real bed after days on the trail. The memory of unseen birds singing lingers at night like a half-remembered tune. Through the patio door warm night air drifts in with a trace of diesel. The roar of a truck on the bypass becomes rain on the flysheet. Tires on a wet street below my window become the wind through the forest. The distant thud of rock and roll becomes my heartbeat. I see the silhouette of treetops and the sky behind. The caw of street kids becomes the dawn call of a crow: Go! Go! Go! My calves ache.
—living in the night sky
I hear the zephyr mutter to the stars,
The old man’s come back to sleep for an hour
In his hammock, lolling under the larch.
Why come so often? What is in his heart
To lie still for so long under the boughs?
I hear the zephyr mumble to the stars.
In stars, the ancients read destiny’s art,
But omens are just meteor showers
To him as he lounges under the larch.
Perhaps the lovers are drifting apart
So he retreats to this private bower?
I hear the zephyr murmur to the stars.
I think it’s simply, “we are who we are,
Until we aren’t.” He’s not dodging arrows—
To lounge in the hammock under the larch—
He’s looking to finish what he started.
The old man’s come back to sleep for an hour,
I hear the west wind murmur to the stars,
From my hammock waking beneath the larch.
—argument with my heart
At my feet a jellyfish
amid the
mid-summer ribbons of kelp.
No pulse, no thought, no bones,
as the swish of the tide
scours its grave.
I chide two children who would scoop it up,
who would hold the milky galaxy in a plastic lid,
and carry it dripping to the picnic table,
tugging blue flies into orbit.
The stinging tentacles ripple in the backwash
as the dome of the evening slides down.
With a discarded plastic shovel, I prod this alien
into the retreating tide, until it shifts, then lifts
and then begins to float away.
I am stranded by the thought:
What need has it to follow
my plan? The ocean is its heart,
the moon its thoughts. And for bones?
For bones, it has this gravel strand.
September on Lawlor’s Brook
The wind-loving kestrel hovers then drops
And quickly flaps its pointed wings, lifts
A captured frog into a birch, alights,
Pins with talons until the kicking stops.
Krill, krill, it calls its mate and unwraps
Sinew from bone in this month of plenty
With chicks long flown and, even in this heat,
Prepares for the cold days when birdsong stops.
I know it is coming, and I must be prepared.
In the midst of plenty I reach for you
And come back empty, my talons laid bare.
I ask myself, “What more could I say or do?”
You can’t dig deep for feelings that aren’t there.
Love’s sharp beak shreds me. I must start anew.
—splitting wood
Birch, wild cherry, maple, spruce and balsam fir lie in a jumbled heap. Wood I scrounged in the aftermath log by log from backyards, abandoned meadows, anywhere the hurricane felled it. I chainsawed each one into luggable lengths, dumped it here.
The nights are getting colder now. I need a fire to drive away regret for summer’s passing. I’ve reached the end of my procrastination, but with axe in hand I hesitate. I no longer swing the blade in expectation that the wood will split as I intend. Now wary of the grain, I carefully prep each junk before I strike.
First on the block, the cherry. One hand balances the junk on end, the other touches metal to the sweet spot. Axe slowly up, and down with both hands hard on the handle. The wood grabs and holds the blade. I raise the axe again. Again. And again, until the junk yields into slats clinging by thick fibers I cannot pry apart.
There’s a shot of sun across the lot. You’re smiling through the kitchen window, and I wonder when I last opened up to you after thirty years. What would I say? Never something to debate, to agree or agree to disagree. We sleep in the same bed.
Next, two pale planes of maple leap away from the blade. A second one splits, and a third. Then the axe jams in a long spruce junk. Once. Twice. I drive the crack deeper, wider. Did we merge that way before our betrayals? Did the cordage hold? Even as we were riven? On the back deck you shield your eyes and raise an imaginary cup to your lips. The birch will wait.
—the divorce of aurora borealis
At dawn a herd of caribou stampedes
across the tattooed slope of your left thigh
as you kick me from under the woolen blanket.
You yawn and gather the folds.
With your arm newly etched in fire,
you banish me. You remind me how
last night I failed you when I refused
to dance beneath your North Star.
Alone, you began with arms overhead,
summoned spirits from the constellations.
They spread like oil on water,
aflame with their voyage to the afterlife.
I stood staring skyward, mouth agape.
This morning is too early to forget,
too late for regret. I unzip the tent flap,
stick my head outside, breathe vapors
into the early light. The air is electric
and I scurry from under canvas
as you roll to one knee.
Your cough shakes the ground.
The propane hisses and the kettle
sputters with Labrador tea,
brewed to bargain for forgiveness.
But for you, the rivers of Hudson’s Bay
would not slake your thirst. You stumble
in stockinged feet across the lichen and rubble,
heading northward.
Your capote crackles with static.
—from under our blanket
Under our disaster blanket, your arm with the tattooed number lies heavy across my chest. Canvas shivers in the northeast breeze, new snow clogs the ditches, hunger nicks my bones. Under the illusion that freedom is a right, we married, built our house in hope. Tonight, the bane of hope helicopters overhead. Our whispers are distorted under the arc of a searchlight. We are cast away, cold with nothing in our cup except a meagre sip of desperation.
I dreamed a child cocooned in the darkest corner of this hovel singing us home, helping us forgive and heal. Can we dream her into being?
When I pull you trembling close I can feel how far I am adrift from who I want to be for you. Light glints through a slit, and I barely recognize your eyelids swollen, lips split, but your breathing is familiar, long and slow. Your legs soften under my thigh, and I kiss your salt-lick shoulder. Before I can surrender once more you breathe promise into my life.
—the words of the moon
After Ai Ch’ing’s “The Words of the Sun”
If I blunt the fall of night, will you let me see her bruised face? Let me bathe her with light as she lies in your arms among the eelgrass? You escaped the life you expected, drifted too quickly into the river of desire, then lost yourself and the life you wanted, as the dark rapids stole everything to which you clung.
Startled by the pain, the first drop of blood, you called to me and I brought you rebirth in the flood, a narrow cradle, the river’s gift.
Water strokes the bank where you pull the raft ashore. A fragrant smoke drags through spruce. The sun returns with its infinite patience. Love betrays its promises, but I will renew them. I know how a lie can cut deep. And I know how rebirth can heal.
—tea & bread rising
I
Sugar and yeast, water and flour. Salt
spilled on the counter. After a night
of baking, the stove
purrs quiet with birch embers.
I linger in the dawn and break the first crust,
drain the pot. There is time
before I must leave. I lift the sash and whistle
for the finch in the gooseberry bush.
II
I watch the light
descend Nord Hill
one last time,
feel my hand quake. Surf
torn by the headland.
Your memory retreats
with the darkness
on this morning
of reckoning.
I fumble into gaiters.
III
Sugar and yeast, water and flour. Salt spilled
in the cooling kitchen. The loaves soften
under their sheen of butter.
I shove one last junk into the stove,
wash a crust down with the dregs,
then slap my cup and saucer against the hearth.
In the porch, the first rays ignite steamed glass.
My coat wrapped tight around me,
I go out to greet the undertow.
—full moon over wreck cove
This hard rock in its woolish coat of brown and green
shelters houses along the lane, odd buttons sewn into the
slate.
I crouch among the thick alders, halfway up the hill and,
protected from the north winds,
watch broken surf as it scrambles over itself
I button my swileskin and wonder,
Am I unravelling too?
Why do I deserve this dream?
October on Lawlor’s Brook
Brushing my teeth in the darkened bathroom,
I glimpse through the upstairs window a silhouette
That stealthily scales the fence—my love exhumed.
Face to cool glass, I watch it limp moonlit
Towards the house and disappear beneath
The eave until twisted hands grab hold,
Drag its skeleton up onto the porch,
Eyes pleading as it shivers in the cold.
Morning fills my bed with light and I’m free.
The remains of last night’s dying storm
Fill the swollen brook with raging memories
That roil against the footbridge, dirt-brown foam.
In the garden, broken limbs, leaves scattered wet.
What will it take for you, for me, to forget?
—crucifying corey
What were you thinking when you kicked in my
basement door? When you rifled my medicine cabinet? What
were you thinking when I came home too soon and you
leapt out my bedroom window! Corey? Did you
think I’d make a victim impact statement and forget I
ever saw you? That I’d hide my jewellery in a bucket
behind the furnace, nail all the windows secure
forever and ever and ever amen?
That I’d tell all my daughters to bar all the doors
whenever they took a shower?
I’ll bet you never expected
the cops to tell me your name, your address,
send me your mugshot, then
wash their hands of you.
And you damn well never expected
me at your father’s door with a stud-finder,
four-inch nails and a pneumatic hammer.
You never expected to be
splayed on the floor under your mother’s cross,
You little motherfucker!
Tell me, how are your hands by the way—
Would you like a little vinegar on that?
I’m gonna feed your steroids
