NARCISSUS’ NIGHTMARE
Now
every time
I look into the water
I see your
face
Monthly Archives: March 2007
HAIRING UP
HAIRING UP
A Canadian horse down in Texas
will still hair up every fall
Clams taken out of the ocean
still open and close with the tides
Even thinking to do
what you did as a kid
You can still flinch an inch
though the hand’s in the grave
ANGELS IN TEXAS
ANGELS IN TEXAS
If you can’t die
In a state of grace
you might just die
in the state of Texas
If you can’t
Be carried on high
by the white wings of angels
You may still
be lifted with loving care
borne up on the black wings of buzzards
LOST AT SEA
LOST AT SEA
Uncles, aunts, old friends and more
all sinking below the metaphor
on the way to that distant shore
The keel hauling of cancer
Walking Gehrig’s plank with ALS
Hanging from the yardarm
of emphysema’s choking rope
The lightning stroke of stroke
The sudden iceberg of heart attack
The slow arctic crush of hoary old age
Or slowly sailing, deeper and deeper
into Alzheimers’ fog bound banks
There are a thousand ways
to get back to the launching line
I’m not sure I’m ready yet
to speculate on mine
THE INNER CRITIC
THE INNER CRITIC
Poor little Keystone Cop
(although often not so funny)
Leaping from shoulder to shoulder
trying so hard to keep us safe
yelling or whispering in each ear
the old rules based on fear
Telling us what we should have done
and what we should never do
Enforcing rules learned long ago
that may no longer be true
The voice of your mother, still
nags when your room’s not neat
The voice of your father
still wants you up at dawn
Your teacher and your coach
Your country and your culture
Your parents and your younger selves
with messages to keep you safe
The cop only knows what he used to know
and still does what he was told to do
You don’t have to destroy him
or shove him out the door
Just put your arm around him
and tell him you’re no longer four
RED STICK WEDDING – BATON ROUGE
RED STICK WEDDING – BATON ROUGE
When you get married at the Alligator Bayou
in the middle of a Louisiana swamp
it is well to expect some magic
When you get married on the anniversary
of Granny Jean’s death in her 100th year
you can pretty much expect she’ll be here
The sky cracking open with lightening
just as the preacher starts preaching
and the thunder and rain and hail
rattlering off the big tin roof
all through poem and ceremony
might have happened anywhere
But when the wedding vows slow
that rain to a stop, so we can go out
on the flat bottomed boat at dusk
come around the corner and see
Two cypress stumps fifty paces apart
struck by the wedding party lightning
burning like twin candles and flickering
firefly sparks against the night
we know we’re not in Kansas
BREATHING IN WINTER
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
THE OLD WILDCATTER
THE OLD WILDCATTER
Sad as a West Texas duster
he sits on a cracked vinyl stool
Remains of youth and charm
slip through a dry-hole smile
Still drilling from habit
the wild lands of women
Still praying for gushers
HI HO HI HO
HI HO HI HO
Work
I sometimes think about it, but not too hard
Like, shouldn’t there be a different word
for doing what we love or hate, for money
Like how I got to drive big trucks at eighteen
that I dreamed about at eight
and they paid me
Like playing cowboy and riding the range
where the deer and the antelope play
and getting paid
Building buildings bigger than Lego
and getting paid
Maybe work is about being serious
but I seriously question that too
I mean, what can be more joyous and serious
than a child adding one last block to his tower
or me, as I write this poem, and look up
to see it is 1:25 in the morning
A MOBIUS TRIP
A MOBIUS TRIP
Always an emigrant, never an immigrant
one foot in each country for thirty years
more running from than running to
more neither nor than either or
Always abandoning in some way
family, friends and dependable plans
and any constancy demands
Half desperate, always in search
for new ones who will give enough
and not demand too much
I keep my Canadian in Canada
and am careful when I pack
I stow my Texas twang at the border
and pick it up on the way back
Flying from Calgary to Toronto, Eda asks
“How come you’ve started to talk in a drawl?”
Just as the captain comes on the blower to say
“In order to avoid a big storm on our left
we are now flying over North Dakota”
Staircase – Faculty of Architecture at Warsaw University of Technology, Poland
The Möbius strip, also called the twisted cylinder, is a one-sided nonorientable surface obtained by cutting a closed band into a single strip, giving one of the two ends thus produced a half twist, and then reattaching the two ends.