TECHIE POEM
This morning, our picture window
(the one facing 048 degrees ENE)
is a 72 inch flat screen HD TV
(measured diagonally)
Screen saver is set at falling leaves
(gold tones in random repeat)
Winter must be coming, I will reset
(to fireplace log)
FUN WITH FRACTALS
Every snowflake is a turtle
see the four feet head and tail
No two turtles are alike alike
One cannot multiply
things from different sets
My love is not diminished
THE SILENCE OF SLEIGHS
My earliest memories do not have a sound track
The steppes of Canada are the steppes of Russia
Zhivago watching Lara leave . . . without her song
The horse’s hooves
compressing snow to greater silence
the runners sinking softly into silence
skimming surface of silence
stretching out the notes of silence
The bells on the horse . . . . . . . . . were there bells?
COLD
Forty below in Centigrade
is forty below in Fahrenheit
Suffering is often involved
In Canada they make jokes
In Russia they make poems
At these temperatures
the blood from a Russian poet
freezes on the way to the ground
They break off the icicle
and hari-kari it into the next stanza
THE BLIZZARD OF WHATEVER YEAR THAT WAS
The windshield was a movie screen
with no picture playing
The plug-in spotlight
for freeze-framing rabbits
now at the end of a freezing arm
tracks the edge of a gravel road
Two, maybe three, miles an hour
one hour, maybe two, maybe three
Rabbits in the back of the pickup
stiffly reminding of what happens if you stop
TWO FOR BREAKFAST AT THE CHATEAU LAKE LOUISE
The sun strikes early on Mount Victoria
waking diamonds in the old monarch’s crown
washing softly down her ermine covered shoulders
While surrounding peaks
in playful disrespect
throw hand puppets of bears and wolves
across her lower skirts
*************
Lake Louise
windy morning
shadows of clouds
avalanche down the glacier
VIEW TO THE EAST
Reading haiku
in the limb veined dawn
I do not long for spring
BIRCHES DISROBED
Birches disrobed
Weep in their nakedness
Pray for the snow
HOMESTEADER’S GRAVE
Homesteader’s grave
soft blanket of November snow
white on Gray’s Elegy
BREATHING IN WINTER
In Saskatchewan in winter
your breath is certainly plain to see
And while I don’t actually believe the story
that you can warm it in a frying pan
and hear all the words again
I can’t help thinking how nice it would be
if I could just inhale really, really hard
And get back that awful dumb thing
I said to you this morning