rising through
layers of
dream / light / shadow
mattress body blanket
groping for
the fragments strewn
by night across the landscape
of my bed pulling
thread by thread
knitting
myself
together
as
day
breaks
~~~
Un-fragment
2
Category Archives: Poem
Sadness, I instruct you
For my dear friend
And now, sadness,
I instruct you
to be still.
Let these bones rest. Marrow
pale and depleted by memory
and forgiveness,
they are weary and cannot stand your shaking.
Let the exhausted heart
encased in this bombarded cage beneath my skin
jarred by your gnashing and clamouring
float in the buoyancy of you forgetting
for a moment
to squeeze it dry.
Do not bewilder
me with your wailing.
Now I tell you:
Let me be.
~~~
Five Reasons to Love the Long Nights of Winter
This poem is one I wrote maybe a decade ago, but it still expresses something important to me about the beauty, peace, and comfort of this time of year.
After a bright afternoon’s quickening light
To be cradled by dusk,
Its slowly sit-down darkening
To contemplate the softening outline of the old cat
Curled warm on your grey-trousered lap
To watch the women and men with briefcases and backpacks
Walk from the bus toward darkened houses
To see a glow appear here or there and know
The tired homecomings have begun
To unravel the mysteries of your heart
That can only be glimpsed when the busy sun
Pulls up its thick shadows
And the arms of the evening encompass all
____________________
Ark
All night the wind filled with snow howls against our walls.
What happens to the animals,
or people still outside
I do not know.
Small ship on a vast ocean our house sails alone through the gale.
Carries us fretting to the borders of morning,
the furnace and the radio
land ahoy.
~~~
With its secret dances
Come in, with your body
and its whispered dreams
I will not breathe a word
come in, bring its needling anguish,
its yokes and shackles, the chains
and burdens that make it stumble
its tears that stream without permission
bring in your body
with its fine, secret dances in meadows
and under full moons
the songs it sings while diving
for pearls and the bursting
of its lungs as sun pours in heavenly shafts
deep as the bottom of your thought
bring its tattered edges and frayed cords
lie it down and we will mend
what we can and tuck in the rest
smoothing the weave of its priceless fabric
you shall not leave undone
bring in your body
~~~
One by one,
One by one,
winter lifts its long fingers from the deep freeze
where they have grown, collecting crystals
month by month
with its diamond file
sharpens them precisely then slips out to
test an edge on the skin of our necks
and back it goes
sitting in the shimmering dark
wearing the glimmer of a smile
as it hones and shapes, and the wind
comes calling
~~~
Small offerings
The night’s small offerings to the road
are easy to lift: wrapped in a leaf
or carried on a bier of two stout twigs
an empty drink cup in the ditch will do
if a scoop is needed
Their still, often neat bodies
of feathers and beaks
of claws and fur
tiny red stick legs and translucent wings
or simple uncoiled lengths
finally agree
to settle
deep into the long grass
and wait for the seasons.
But some
if I come too late
cannot be pried from the asphalt
black as a clean slate
they are too small
the load that felled them
too exact:
these, after a few soft words, I leave
their diminishing flesh and precise skeletons
recording history
~~~
My sleep is like
pearls
on a worn string
slipping down the line from one
hour to the next
of jewelled slumber but in between
a frayed cord of anxious waking,
hot turning, grasping for a lifeline that
my sweaty touch disintegrates, dreams
clattering to the floor
and here I am again, awake
~~~
The fabric of the world
in the hammock
in the shade
in the clearing
in the woods
with me
a small mosquito, two birds nearby
a shushing wind
the bleats of sheep
car on the road
woodpecker knocking:
rooster crows
30 feet above my head
four maples meet and swing their greens
in a blue sky the sun shines through,
a dappled pattern on my knees
the buzz of bees
the smell of hay
in the hammock
in the shade
the fabric of the world
envelops us
in the clearing
in the woods
~~~
Rounds
last night I ignored
the full moon
did not dance
as she sang
in rounds, stayed under
the lamp watching flickering
figures move in blue
light, watching black
words dance on a white
page but
this morning when I woke she
was still there, hanging
among the tallest branches
waiting
to say goodbye
~~~
