by Wade Kearley
to tomcats and tie them in a bag
over your head and then wait
for your confession,
which I will record, in good faith,
painstakingly,
with my left hand.
—first frost
Evenings, before it arrives, the air smells of it—
a cool burning that promises hail and smouldering.
At this moment it is soft. Or the edge, at least, is blunted.
For a breath and then another it even feels as if it might turn
back.
But with the reluctant sunrise, as greys thaw into light,
and the constellations fade among the newly
bared branches of the maples,
I imagine how even the hurried rodents
tuck themselves among the grass and twine
and plastic that they knit into the roots,
and slip eagerly into torpor.
—starlings
who are the soldiers
marching along the top of the fence
their bones are hollow
—back to the land of the living
for Sergeant Thomas Ricketts
and in memory of Great Uncle Walter Kearley #552
Stinking mud,
and rats stealing rations, or worse, up and down the trench
while each bomb burst hammers us back.
We huddle, some crying for their mother, craving rest,
dead centre in a valley of shrapnel. We are cartographers
of fear, unnerved and hard-wired.
Bandaged flesh swells green after the wire
slashes limbs, the sharp edge of panic. We dine on mud,
mustard gas and horse flesh a la carte.
We die every day, crying for lovers or cursing the trench
mouth of politicians, or—if by luck we wrest
another day from fate—we pray to make it back
to the land of the living. I tried crawling back
once and bled my thighs on razor wire.
A dying soldier prayed for me to stay, to rest,
but two medics dragged me out of that muddle
past stark faces in the zigzagged trench
and stitched me up before I escaped on the cripple cart.
Two weeks ago we marched quick time behind that cart,
believing the Hun would soon show us their backs.
We’ve been turned inside out since then in these trenches.
This morning I saw the man next to me, as he read a wire
from home, erupt in a splatter of mud
and flesh, and the rest.
We crawled into his warm crater, wrestling
with broken anger and a hunger to kill, a manic art
that filled me with a dark light. I smudged a mask of mud
and, after a spray of bullets drove us back,
I charged, firing my Lewis from the hip. Wired
on fear, I captured the gunners’ nest above the trench.
There’s a future me they’ll call hero of the trenches.
But I’m the golem of that man, will never let him rest.
There is no prescription he can write to rewire
the memories that throw screaming bodies cartwheeling
into a no-man’s land where I dodged the blowback,
with only my tobacco to calm me in that labyrinth of mud.
News-reel trenches haunt me, but I try to rest as the cart carries
the “boy-hero” through the mud and my name speeds on the wire,
summons ships and newsmen, carries me back to fame and to deadlines.
—ore pony
We are not in the business of iron ore. Whatever
captive iron ore sources we have, we use it to
make steel.
Lakshmi Mittal
With a heart of two
fists together clenched,
the pony hauled uncounted
trollies through laboured
veins so deep beneath the bay
they took a decade to exhume.
Until one day she
slipped the halter,
galloped deeper,
past the sump pumps,
down the tunnels under
Conception Bay.
She ran in darkness,
crashing into ledges
searching caverns
for memories of blue.
Silent now, the pumps
rust as seawater rises,
ensuring her bloodline
ends in legend.
When this pony slept,
did she dream
of ovens melting iron?
Or did she dream of
a herd unshod and restless
under the steel light of the moon?
—kneeling on cranberries
It’s like love, you said. Even when you know
where to look, you never know
what you will find, until you get there.
You led me along treacherous cliffs
to the edge of a marsh that sloped steeply
to the rocks. We clung to shrubs
as their roots dripped into tidal pools choked
with decaying seaweed and plastic scrap.
Reckless between the sunlight and the damp
that darkened the knees of your jeans, we probed
for red berries, white beneath.
They fell into the moss at the slightest touch.
By mid-morning, tired from stooping
along the verge, we found an alcove of rocks,
lay quiet, the sky propped on wet knees.
Spray from the lunar surf left a hint
of salt on fingers stained by the picking.
The earth shuddered against my back.
The thin warmth of a fall sun massaged me.
But your kiss was flat and as cold as the season.
It was then the wind swung north
and drove us back towards our lives.
Raw berries rattled in the bucket.
A month later I discover it
behind the shed door, peel off the lid,
and find your breath fragrant in my mouth.
—after wrestling with gabriel
for Des Walsh
Stripped to the waist he turns his back to the crowd,
straps on his guitar. The bar room fills with gasps
as onlookers gape at the wing stubs
protruding from under his shoulder blades.
When he faces the crowd, the stage light
reveals a fresh scar over his left ear.
He strikes the strings, spits holy disdain
and, in the lyrics of his savagery, admits
the angels have forgotten the crippled ones
who huddle in the veins of the city
injecting the drugs that make sirens cry.
His song is a curse, and a lament for the collapse
of love. From chipped tables around the pallet
where he makes his stand, the audience
smokes and burps sour hops. They drag names
from their phones until their gossip merges
with his voice and no one hears anyone else.
As each patron tumbles past the stage and out
into the street, he salutes them with a slap
on the strings. How he raves! This clipped angel.
—the poem speaks back
I
You come prowling the keyboard,
a coyote savaging the edge of a clear-cut.
What do you want from me? To lose
the fears that growl in your throat?
Or just to hear me sigh your name?
I’m not your talons, but I can hunt you.
I’m not aflame, but I can burn you.
I am your vision before you envision it.
II
Don’t look for me in the fire that singes your sleeve
&nb
sp; but never touches you.
Don’t look for me in the smoke above snapping boughs
and curling bark.
Your anger at my absence is
your wounded self-pity.
It keeps me at bay, as you stumble
into the stark night.
—once when i was drowning
The bedroom window ajar on this warm October night,
the hem of the curtain ebbs and flows.
Rain carries me away. I trace your spine with rough fingers
that smell of the tide line.
The wind swerves over the sill, rain-drenched, softly molds
the blankets, washes soft curves,
lingers in the gaps and abruptly draws back, trails seaweed,
buoyant and slack,
leans into the next wave without striving for current,
for eddy, for retreat.
Early morning, the wind turns cold. So you slip out of bed,
wade slowly to the window.
You return and we embrace, as you whisper to me of a dream
entangled by the vivid sea.
I am a near-drowned sailor whose foot finds sand.
I kiss your wet hand.
—deciduous
A persistent cawing from the top of a pole returns me to the moment. I scan the sky for the osprey. But the crows, with their rookery in the nearby grove of spruce, harried it away.
Rusty chimes hanging under the larch were silent all summer, but clatter now as the wind swings north. Yellow needles rain down. One low branch heavy with cones chafes the fence railing, protests again and again.
I rest
on the garden bench and study
this wormy plot that I’ve replenished to plunder
year after year.
In the distance a dog cannot keep the season at bay. Leaves curl and sink into the unmown lawn. Vapors waft from the compost pile that soon must sleep. A blue fly on my muddy boot evaporates in a blink. Black against a blue-gray rock, a spider
crawls sluggishly into October.
The ornate tongues of frost-burned clematis
seem to say:
What good
is the purple I know when it comes so late?
On the few remaining tomato vines, draped over wire frames brown leaves falter in the wind. The sun is a wry smile on each shiny globe—green, yellow, orange. Clouds chase the sun southward. Above this ragged order, higher clouds smear gray on white on blue.
A crow
battles the wind and dives
into the black tangle of boughs.
—re: the last one in the sequence
found poem in email from Cynthia O’Toole
This last sonnet made me cry.
So happy that you finished.
I’m eager to hear about the process
and how you felt along the way.
I’m absolutely exhausted
from going around Nanjing,
although it was very interesting,
and I enjoyed the trip.
Woke at 7:30, my first morning
back to workmen drilling
into concrete in the next apartment.
Apparently, this will continue
until I leave.
Went to my classroom today
(only quiet place)
and slept all afternoon. Can still barely
keep my eyes open.
The heat and humidity are killing me.
November on Lawlor’s Brook
Rising from dreamtime, I descend creaking
Stairs to the couch, pull back a curtain aglow
With street light. The cuckoo three times repeating.
Most birds, except the junco and the crow,
Have left the path, the brook, the brown meadow
And the road, littered now with the scratch of leaves.
All my life words were my armour. I vowed to go
When bodhrans and war cries called to rally.
But duty cannot be stitched on my sleeves.
It is here, my heart—four walls that hum with warmth.
And these words, now, soft wings for second thoughts.
I feel them hug my shoulders, calming me.
In honeycombs hidden beneath the eaves,
Bees fade slowly into silence and ease.
—on the road to mount abu
for Katherine
Overhead a skein of large-winged geese
plummet from high clouds. They honk gently,
slide into their reflection on Lake Nakki.
As shadows cool, I inhale the orchid
evening and reminisce. Your hair tumbled
in grey curls around my face. We kissed.
You left me at the terminal clutching
my suitcase on the pavement. We never
really said goodbye. Now, on the other side
of the planet,
other side of a year, I search
your last gestures in memory, rewind
your last words for a sign. Was I asleep?
I realize the geese are all around me.
They lift white heads, turn dark eyes
towards me and flock to their feet. I freeze,
anxious not to disturb them, and breathe
a chant I learned in Udaipur:
Om mani padme hum. The geese
trill softly and push into the lake.
Moments later they are airborne. I am complete
and retrace my steps along the pathway back.
WADE KEARLEY is the author of seven other books, including the poetry collections Drawing on Water and Let Me Burn like This, and the travel books The People’s Road and The People’s Road Revisited, based on his 900-kilometer trek along Newfoundland’s abandoned rail line. He lives in St. John’s.
