SURVIVAL
There are wolves
everywhere and closer
Your parents are busy flailing
at the snarling snouts and dripping fangs
Busy wrapping their own
and each other’s bloody wounds
While you curl up, cold and lonely
in the bottom of the sleigh
thinking, I’ll die if someone
doesn’t pick me up and hold me soon
CHINESE RESTAURANT
Sorry John Donne
but some men may be islands
or castaways
in small prairie towns
fifty miles by bad road
from any other of their race
Tall walled booths along one side
twisted-wire chairs and tables too
my father and his friends had coffee
I think mine was cream soda
We may have eaten there
but I don’t remember
certainly at five or six
I would not have imagined
that we were as strange to him
as he was to us
All I ever knew
of the inner man
was the pungent foreignness
of the old two-holer out back
Fast forward six years or so
to small town of Mossbank
on the South side of the lake
A chubby twelve year old
sits in a low walled booth
with his best buddies
and another Chinese man
in another Chinese café
serves up vanilla cokes
(when vanilla still had alcohol)
and marks our tabs with Chinese signs
I asked him what my three mean
Big – Small – Happy
LONGING FOR FAMILY
I was an only child
the second of five
We were often in
the same house
sometimes attended
the same schools
churches too
and are searching
for each other still
WINTER NIGHT – PRAIRIE
Coyote joins me
howling at the moon
Much lonelier to appear
in a million city eyes unseen
RIPE BERRIES
Sometimes when I drink I think
that I could live inside like other people
It looks so warm and so safe
and I want so much to be there
But like a bird flying on ripe berries
I sober up against the pane
JUDY
Judy was a beauty
tall and blonde and shy
early this month she decided to die
The soft wise eyes, the curling lashes
all now ashes
We have been friends for twenty years
hugs and coffee when in town, cards when far away
And always the latest poetry
She said it was important, and it touched her
in places nothing and no one else could reach
Three years ago
I put my neck in a green eyed noose
I sent no cards, I did not call
I do not know if I could have saved her
though touch and poetry have been known to
I only know I hate what I did and didn’t do
I only know that she drowned out there alone
I only know it was a long time since I had thrown her a line
I’M BACK
I went away but I’m back
I’ve met the Queen
but I’m back
I’ve worked and grown till I dropped
and learned till my ear wax popped
I’m better and kinder and wiser
with an armful of gifts
and I’m back
Oh dear, isn’t anybody here
GARBO PASSES
She didn’t really want to be alone
she just didn’t want to be
with most of the people who wanted
to be with her
She
just didn’t have
anything more to give
to those who only wanted to take
She didn’t really want to be alone
The last thing she really wanted was
to be alone
THE WORDS
(played to the beat of a big sad drum)
The words / and a touch /
would have meant /
so much /
But it’s gone / and it’s gone
and you know / it’s gone
Yet sometimes, / in the night /
it still throbs /
Like a phantom / limb
SHEEP IN THE NIGHT
It was in the old Taos Hotel in New Mexico. I had just spent
the night there on my way back from the Light Institute in
Santa Fe, and picked up a book in their little reading room.
It contained this wonderful description.
A poet is something strange and apart, a favourite of the gods, who have bestowed on him an extreme sensitiveness and sensibility,
like open doors and windows, to subtle and delicate impressions that but bruise themselves against other men’s walls; these he captures ad coaxes to sing to him, and intoxicated by the beauty of their melodies builds for them a golden cage and feeds them on honey from the sweetest flowers in his garden: till they in their happiness become so musical, fancying themselves in heaven , that Jove confers immortality on them, and swinging in their golden cages they sing sweetly forever, lifting up the hearts of men in every clime and generation.
As I read in the lobby a lady sat down opposite me in a comfortable old sofa, about four feet away across a gently rugged coffee table.
I had heard the desk clerk greet her as she entered and ask her how the writing was going. We smiled at each other as she sat down. There was a warmth and a recognition in the smile and a knowing that we would each have liked to say something, but we didn’t.
I really would have liked to share the paragraph with her,
but I didn’t.
Later I passed her and a companion having lunch and we again shared the , “Hi, old friend I’ve know forever,” smiles, but didn’t speak
A couple of hours later I was sprinting across the street on the way back to the hotel when a car stopped to let me cross in front of it. It was her again. This time we both laughed and smiled and went our separate ways.
Maybe we were laughing at fate and it’s three good tries, and
our ability to ignore them all, or the lack of courage that had
allowed us to pass – like two sheeps in the night