Otherwise there’s nothing left. The frog leaps
from the moon into space. Into my head.
The old dwarf helps me erect a scaffold
on a beach at dawn. When all’s gone and said
the body releases what it wants, or
what it can’t hold. The body releases.
The street light blazes. I’m sick of winter.
The long walk home is so feverish that
a brand new language leaps from my head to
the ground. The dwarf smiles, won’t lift a finger.
He’s been where we were not to go and must
go where we’re not to go. The frog leaps from
the ground to the moon, but the dwarf keeps me
company – he knows about the dark and
sudden burning of a sun and how to
have nothing and leave nothing behind. Frog
leaps into space, into my head, onto
the ground. In grace, already committed
to outer night, shame lost, friends lost. In moon-
light the dwarf, joined by others, half human,
helps me erect a scaffold on the beach.
It’s dawn, the winter air silver. Every
livid interrupted beauty’s easy
to see, yet not to name. My chest hurts. It’s
nothing but the start of a cold day, one
hand on the tame head of a piebald beast.
Utter
Blown an alternator and in tow to Duncan,
past lake and green forests, only a few light clouds
in so-blue sky, a family of four puzzled
by calamity. I called the tow truck. This is
my dad’s camper. My son’s the son of someone else.
The hottest day of the year we cross the highway
from Canadian Tire and my dog hangs his tongue
all the way to Burger King where the kid’s meal includes
a tiny naked girl whose uniform appears
only when she’s plunged in ice water. Outside the
library I wait under a tree with Géza
while Lorraine takes Ash inside to find sloops, cannons,
siege machines, and shut my eyes and see down into
the column of my body where water rises –
two three four five six seven – safe looking down, dry
yet, at the swirl in the bole, the cave door below
to let the flood should time announce a change, or light,
don’t forget light, though here is dark as dark can be,
summer dark, dark as death, and no sky so far and
no other flourishes, just we who know only
earth and the blackness of earth, tang in our nostrils,
as we wait to see if the water will rise and
drown us or leak away and leave us high and dry,
trapped in our skin and limbs with new problems such as
how to get out, how get down, how get through, and what
to do next. Better watch the eye of the vortex,
fancy word for spin, not get dizzy, and perhaps
then we’ll sleep and wake to new events, like Mama
bringing our breakfast or a sunrise to beat all –
eight nine ten. And I do wake to mother and son,
cranky and bored, the library a bust, the dog
hungry, dragonflies everywhere.
This Perfect
round gold rock in the gut. The smallest spider stops
on its way across the table, red not gold, and
gone when I look again having taken my eyes
off it for the few moments it takes to pencil
a note the doing of which will fix us both in
time to be recovered later by others should
the spider scrawl be copied into a form sweet
and sturdy enough to warrant publication
such publication dependent on a reader
recognizing or being surprised by spider
who has long since quit the table and possibly
abandoned the world altogether and left no
further evidence of existence behind and
another reader to agree though perhaps not
finding the symbol quite as fresh or telling as
the first reader but fair enough okay okay
so long story short the Arachnid Trilogy
sees the light of many printings and the movie
arouses brief interest the sequel bombs and
all that’s left is “Who killed the spider?” and kids who
marshal on pillows red spider action figures
who vanish with the light as soon as we begin
to teach the phenomenal mechanical world
which is our business and has nothing to do with
round gold rock in the gut, herald of something small.
Hit Brightness with Brightness
What does my heart know of yours?
If you plan an ambush check the exits.
In a tight spot be polite. Remember
your hidden knife. Keep your distance.
Go to sleep three hours after sunset
and be up an hour before dawn.
Practice until you can shoot a head
of wheat out a bottle in the wind.
The beginning of a fight’s a farewell:
if you win you lose. And if you lose?
Keep to the middle of the road. Pay
attention to shadows and sunlight.
When you take a prisoner always
stay behind him. Never show fear.
Ask the sword saint to cut pain.
What does your heart know of mine?
Georgia Strait
The boatman says he sees
my life is better now.
I walk home up the hill,
one two three four five crack,
sleep through the day, return
as sun dips low – one sail
white on the water – roll
through Active Pass and slow
slow to Vancouver, slow
through dusk to night that brings
a lean girl to the bus
to arch her long pale neck.
Inked stones. A red sports
car plunges into Blenz
at Broadway and Granville.
Small cappuccino, five
pebbles. Old words call new
words, not copies. Rain on
my leather back. Children
will be born. Far away
I was born, you were born.
One two three four five crack.
Sorcerer
At last I lie down
on my back in the narrow
wooden boat, paddle
the underground river – ink
handprints visible
over the claw marks of cave
bears who once had dens
in these Pyrenees foothills
east of Lourdes – and drift
past a factory chimney,
mother and father
arguing in the shadows,
to a dry stone floor,
sanctuary wall, where rears
the nightmare long hidden
above a herd of bison,
a race of reindeer,
snowy owls out of scale.
Lately, when shaving,
I have noted cervid ears,
the bumps of new horns,
the same staring eyes. Flowers
curl at his feet, sharp
thorns stencil his white forehead.
The Axe of Change
Facilis descensus Averno,
what Sybil said to Aeneas
I say to you, O my pretty
telluric commandos!
I’m swimming on September air,
before the Uzi, before the M-16,
standing in the upstairs
bedroom reading a poem.
Effervescent. A blue floor.
Webby sil
ls. I exercise stability,
long for sunlight, longed
for but ungrasped. You
incomprehensible culture.
Beware the axe of change.
You are too many too fast
to see what’s in your way.
Return is tough, the stairs
have caved in, only
the mad would attempt the
attic’s shaft of moonlight.
Ancestors
Her refugee family, small
dark men and bosomy women,
invites me aboard their pickup
among the crates and kitchenware
and we gutbucket through the crowds
of carts and barrows to escape.
Not new, this moment, dash of pepper,
hot like her eyes, black sausage,
bread, black bangs jagged across her
white forehead. This time, these killings.
Murder is part of a larger
map I once saw in a shop, yet
she’s a chocolate, a surprise
cake, black cat, night.
“I have always been here,” she says,
“famous revolutionary
girl waiting for you.” We hold hands
in back of the truck. Her finger
is bleeding. “You are mine,” she says.
Planes drown the next words.
Her eyes flash sky, last sun. Mama
and Grandpapa exchange a glance.
Her dad battles the road, the wheel.
Invention of Flight
Surrey farmland passes the windows,
the original garden slated
for new housing, while commuters nod
in September sunshine and highway
knows it will end at the sea. Hawk sleeps
on a fence post, web salvers glisten
in the stubble, the golf course swallows
the stone-built farm, and I’ve just woken,
heart high in the gut the way we ride
this bus through it all. Because it yields.
At Ladner Exchange women run dogs
on the old trap circuit. Indian
summer is full of blessings, honest
blessings a hair’s-breadth from here. Did I
note the source? A man in a red shirt
is racing toward golden trees, so
I open my pack, unfold blue-lined
foolscap, not sure why this view of fields,
these lines, over and over, while waves
crack pebbles south side of the causeway
and a spooked blue heron plays jaw harp:
When the well is deep the rope is long.
A fierce day at the mountain retreat.
One thing finishes; one thing begins.
Energy under unseen beauty.
Lightness calls up lightness. Frail bucket,
empty; vital fish beyond the earth.
The Stars
for Lorraine
Rain clatters on the roof as we sleep-talk,
phones tucked under each bed, March in both rooms,
the month before April, windows open
to ghostly air. We marry with the new
moon, long known, how we cross the stone beach, climb
the cliff to eagles and raven and chill
wind with pocket pebbles to bury, sticks
to burn, silver rings to bind us, and I
let in your fox brown eyes and see what works
in you that works in me, and know what kills
you killed me too, till the candles stir with
breath as sweet as spring and we perch face to
face on the cliff edge, blue sail on my right,
your left, small boat light in the surf, nothing
less to carry our bodies already
smoke to the sky, ash to the sea, loved ones
west and east, our kingdoms in peril, tribes
burned out of stone forts. It is useless to
choose a direction: current must find us.
At last we swim away from each other
to make the storm less jealous; old stars freeze
the water, earthquakes calve an island, and
another me adores another you
inland.
VI
Chorale
street lamps light nothing
till one blazes his shadow
on the frozen ground
nothing inside him
but that girl’s silk skin & home
he has abandoned
a perfect moment
his breath clouding a pear branch
red buds under ice
animals gather
in the clearing we made sun
warms them till they sleep
your mother’s poodle
staggers in circles he’s old
& will not live long
your mother says sleep
is hard to come by she left
the house in a dream
the day her husband’s
heart quit it felt like uphill
she croons don’t run rings
baby don’t run rings
the gas fire hisses beneath
your father’s blue geese
we walk the path round
the lake echo the old dog
our lives rough wild things
the monk brings warm clothes
plucks seven straws from a broom
give these to the child
I make a taper
while my son sings explosions
for the winter fire
in heaven we track
satellites circling the world
birds with no season
at dawn deer gather
around us in the clearing
to graze the ashes
black shoes at the door
the ceremony gets hot
I open one eye
woken by a voice
outside my door the rasp
of coarse sandpaper
stern men hunch over
benches in twilight finishing
things I once began
red shining dust hangs
hotter than eucalyptus
in the roof shadow
the wood cedar from
the smell of it we do think
we meet who we want
to meet when it’s time
& always at night near dawn
in spring before birds
my forty-seventh
birthday Dad breaks into song
…the dark sacred night
I run my bike out
at dawn stumble on timbers
the well-house gave up
my dog & I rush
the salt fog & the mountain
for one glimpse of sea
a spire of white smoke
from the clearing where the monk
is building a shrine
Géza (5/2/1994 – 12/18/2005)
Every living thing will die, but I was
not ready, though you told me with
your eyes and body on that last long walk
through the dark when you realized the distance,
Vancouver to Steveston, and stood still, full
of invisible words, and spoke, then put
your head down, trotted by my side over
the bridge, past cars and cars till December sun
rose and lit blueberry fields for us
in Richmond, alders yellow in the distance
above a red twig sea. I loved you
then as I loved the world, for you
were in the world and I was by your side,
and all else was to come or in the past.
The emperor of the South Sea was called Shu (Brief), the emperor of the North Sea was called Hu (Sudden), and the emperor of the central region was called Huntun (Chaos). Shu and Hu from time to time came together for a meeting in the territory of Huntun, and Huntun treated them very
generously. Shu and Hu discussed how they could repay his kindness. “All men,” they said, “have seven openings so they can see, hear, eat, and breathe. But Huntun alone doesn’t have any. Let’s try boring him some!” Every day they bored another hole, and on the seventh day, Huntun died.
The Last House Page 5
