FEEDING THE SOUL AT VARGOS
(for Debbie)
The soul is fed in many ways
Walking
on a sunny Easter Sunday
in Vargos gardens with the one you love
Marveling as peacocks surround us
and salute that love
Meeting by chance
your surgeon ally in the cancer fight
Sitting by the window
breaking bread in gratitude for it all
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
THE TWINKLE
(Eulogy at Father’s funeral)
There is a thing about light
no matter where it starts it never stops
even if it takes a million years
to get from the twinkling stars to here
There was a twinkle in the eyes of this man
A twinkle of innocent mischief and inner joy
greeting every man and woman
every girl and boy
When you saw it you knew that he liked you
and never doubted that you’d like him too
AND HE WAS RIGHT
Because there is a thing about light
A million years from now
and no one knows how far
they will see it on some star
FATHER’S POEM
My father’s poems
did not come down to us on paper
He was eight years old when his mother died
his youngest brother not yet three
They say he adopted the care
of the sweet sad child
and told him a story each night
Night after night after night
New stories he made up each night
And he would gather him up in the story
and hold him there
until he slept
ROBERTA’S WEDDING
When I returned from anywhere by air
Roberta would run
full out across the crowded floor
take a gymnast’s leap ten feet away
and fly through the air into my arms
So pure a show it was of joy and love
so affirming of the goodness of all life
so full of youth’s unquestioned faith
she would be safely caught and held
that travelers all around
would stand in awe
Today she runs across a crowded floor
and leaps with equal joy
into the arms of another man with
equal trust she will be safely caught and held
And now I see what all those others saw
and I stand back in awe
A NEW WORD
We need a new word
A word for how you feel about someone
that you want to hang around with all of the time
I mean really want to be with every night and day
A word for that feeling that makes your heart sing
every time you see them
Causes a warm smile to rise every time you think of
them
Love doesn’t quite do it anymore
it has been battered and bruised and bled too often
A word for that feeling that where you meet them is
in a land of
acceptance, filled with air so light that fear cannot
breathe it
Friend won’t do, even though
friends are people you can count on, and who can count on
you,
And brother this and brother that, or sister this and
sister that are now used by people who have nothing
more in common than a perceived common enemy
No, we need a new word
Something as fresh and clean and bright and pure and
as innocent as a baby’s chortling laugh
Yes we need a new word and we need it bad
I sure hope we don’t find it
ODE TO NERUDA
You have gifted the world with your being
and your words the fruits of your being
You have seen the mother and the lover
in the sea tides rocking rhyme
In the flowers of her hair
in your politics of care
You remind us of the role of all poets
to open and meet the world naked
To perceive the world naked
to receive the world naked
To sing the world naked
naked as your hand
SUNDAY AFTERNOON
It was a Sunday afternoon about a year ago today
I couldn’t sit, I couldn’t stand I just knew I couldn’t stay
So I took off for Toronto fifteen hundred miles away
Two days of boring meetings,
couldn’t stand to have one more
didn’t know where I needed to be
but it wasn’t here I knew for sure
So I grabbed a train to Windsor
and Detroit which lies next door
Outside spring was springing and calling more and more
and I’d get to see some country that I’d never seen before
Oh, the sheep were soft upon the land
and there was magic in the day
as I sipped my rum and cola
and rhymed couplets all the way
Checked in on Wednesday, wondering what to do
maybe I could try to call a good old friend or two
There was a man I’d met in Banff
just three weeks before
a man of love and wisdom
that I’d like to see once more
And a lady of my poems
that I’d seen just twice before
thirty minutes in an airport
and two hours on the shore
He was busy in a meeting she answered on first try
she had booked off work without knowing why
And when I told her that I was in her town
she said “I’ve got a story and I’ll be right down”
It seems that her grand dad
who had raised her as a child
had died not long ago
and the grief had drove her wild
The family all were fighting for the pennies on his eyes
and there was no one there to hear her heartfelt cries
So she ran from that hospital not knowing what to do
and stood on the highest hill alone in a sky of blue
And loudly called my name
“Please come, please, I need you”
When I asked had she made this cry
and had I come real soon
“Oh it wasn’t very long ago
just Sunday afternoon”
SMALL TOWN – GRADE SEVEN
In a town of six or seven hundred
you get a cross section of the country
One classmate’s father’s suicide with shotgun
splattered walls
One boy my age, drowned
in an upturned truck in a muddy ditch
One with leukemia, white as the snow
One redhead, Leslie French, as beautiful and
mysterious as the language
One blonde, Shirley Long, to long for
She’s only interested in grade 9 boys
One bruised heart
Not yet hard enough to be broken
OUT OF THE NEST
(for Carolyn going away to college)
You have the soul of a bird
It’s so joyful, light and fair
and now it’s flying to a world
that the frightened people share
And I pray you safe
when they see you there
Drawing water from mirages
For the flowers
round your castles in the air