OH TO NERUDA
Oh Pablo you rise up
from a land, long as a woman’s back
And you have loved your land
as you would love a woman
as you have loved women as you loved
your land
Every rock and shoal of their coastlines
every mood of their tides
You have caressed them
with your mind and your heart
and your hands
And have received the treasures
that must
always rise up
from their endless depths
to meet such a touch
EAGLE ON THE MOON
When the Eagle lands on the moon
the Indian will come back
into his power
When the mother is in pain
the children who never forgot
will remind
They will have the medicine
to heal her wounds
They will sit with her while
strength returns
And the children who forgot
will remember
and bring flowers
SEPTEMBER 1986
I’d love to share my southern friends
the northern lights tonight
as they shimmer and they flow
in a dance of pure delight
A thousand miles of motion
at a hundred miles a minute
with every color of the rainbow
shading in and out within it
A rainbow just above my head
but a rainbow now set free
where greens, and blues, and pinks
can each take a solo spree
Then melt into the whole again
and softly fading fly
to white light and to rest
against a moonlit sky
While I in love’s sweet afterglow
wish all my loves this love could know
ALBERTA AIR
(a song still waiting for the music)
Alberta air, Alberta air
You’ve gotta breathe
that good Alberta air
It rolls in over the mountains
it rolls out over the plains
it smells of age old glaciers
and brand new gentle rains
It’ll cleanse your heart of worries
and wash your soul of pains
for there’s a world of love and kindness there
feel it blowing through your hair
Alberta air, Alberta air
REQUIEM
“There is nothing sad about an empty shell.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupery The Little Prince
My
poetry
is the shell
I leave you now.
It’s spiralled substance
all I’ve known of life and love.
See how it winds, and ever opens
stained with all the colors of my growth
and every gift and every touch of all of you and more
Hold it to your ear
you may hear the ocean
FOR THE POETRY
The ups and downs of loving you
may grind me up before we’re through
And my friends see a victim, namely me
but then again it just might be
that I’m only in it
for the poetry
ROPE BURNS
I want to be able to bring home to you
Not only what I caught today
but the rope burns from
the ones that got away
Not only the buckles for the ones
that I stayed on for the eight
but the taste of the dirt
and other stuff I ate
Not only the meat from that old bear
but all the claw marks he left there
That you’re the one I want to kiss them well
also shows the love that I can’t tell
TEACHER
(In defense of schoolboy crushes)
She was my teacher in grade four
I fell in love for evermore
Not a love I could express
though with schoolwork might impress
And so I spent my nights and days
in search of learning and of praise
A flower opening to the light
in aching anguish and delight
Then she went and moved away
It seemed life ended on that day
Through looking back on that great year
not dimmed by time but made more clear
I see that ancient youthful yearning
remains as love of love and learning