January 2009

The last trace of truth
died today
on Parliament Hill
without a bulletin
on the CP wire.
Some guard found the corpse
behind the Centre Block
and threw it into
the Ottawa River where
it wouldn’t
embarrass the MPs
en route to Question Period.
No one knows what it was
but it was all they were
talking about it
tonight in Hull
which is about as close
as truth got to Ottawa
in its last days.

© 7 November 1974

Like a general
marshalling troops
the short Italian lady
draws her brood around her
scooping them like ducklings
       into the crosswalk
at Church and Wellesley.
Eyes darting, purse waving
she exorts them forward
with wild mascara eyes
waving, barking
       staccato
       commands
that do not fade until
all are safe on the other side
and they vanish
like movie credits
around the corner
by the drug store.

© 6 August 1972

there is no formula
for joy
one day it might be
the arc of a gull
or the wash of a whitecap
the next
the laugh of a lover or
the grip of an old man’s hand.

© 24 April 1970

They lurk that way on the edge of dusk their piston feet pummeling dreams of Bourbon Street until the euphoric chords of mardi gras no longer giftwrap lovers or hold voodoo dolls at bay and yet the sun must still be somewhere running soft fingers down tanned backs and swaying through magnolia trees in a song not fraught with paper elephants or soldiers deserting or lost young tenement women running to the bathroom to vomit up their loneliness at four in the morning the clock the clock ticking life sentences from the mantle and a saxophone mourning kings and jacks flattened in the chaos and why do paper elephants always arrive uninvited and leave bodies behind in rumpled sheets heartstrings snapping like toothpicks until there is only the silence of winter sun on a crashed plane and nothing holding tight to nothing until one small sound rises at last in the vaccuum and a door opens in a small cafe and two hands touch and something flits in the pastel dawn and dancers rise from wooden chairs and flow wordlessly into the morning as paper elephants starve in lights too bright to feed upon.

© 28 March 1975

The big saw slashed
             headlong
into frozen spruce logs
all morning
at my father’s mill
          powerful
          defiant
cursing the cold
feeding the fires
in the boiler shed
until the whistle
blew at noon and
the men retreated
with thermoses
and lunch pails,
eating quickly
smoking
hand-made cigarettes,
and then filed back
again. I remember
steam hissing in
through the pale afternoon
noises colliding
sawdust, bark and slabs
         chains labouring
as though whipped
around pulleys,
pushing hard planks
       out clanking chutes
to shivering workmen.

© 1 February 1975

the sun sets
the way it does
over any batch of
bad buildings
mired in smog
but there is the feel
even the first time
of something
    quivering
caged with energy
Manhattan maybe
calling across the clatter
or a home run
       rising still
from the ghost of
Ebbets Field,
Dylan maybe
crouching on the E train
or a cop with a gun
pointed into danger
it’s there, something with
      long fingers
a hero in trouble
a soul passing
as day dies in Brooklyn.

© 17 January 1976

waiting now
       and wishing vaguely
I feel this room inch in
images like wings flick past
a hand
   a scarf
      a wave somewhere
one split second of
spring in a field
               and tell me
can you know as well as I
that something careful is
     about to break
and who knows what it means?
an hour
     a mile
             lost kiss/forever
if only I could fence tomorrow in
and if only wishes counted
I’m afraid of forgetting
the minutes beside you
and the way of your eyes
     at the window
something careful is about to break
and it quivers like a thread
                       I want to
tie the hands of the clock together
and wait until the waiting settles.

© 26 April 1976

When I was nine
   or maybe ten
I killed a sparrow
            suddenly
one April afternoon,
amazed myself by
knocking it out of the air
with a rock 
by the Otterbrook Road.
I can still see the way
it jolted sideways
and fell to the grass
and I can still feel the
       final tiny heartbeats
that shook me when
I held it in my hand.

© 16 September 1971

In the second wind
grey armies march
with less precision
through the hometown
and are not so easy to hate.
Seasons ask more questions
and conclusions limp with
wounds from the front;
there are fewer victories
and fewer voices
in the second wind
and I have learned that
I will never be able to
juggle all the parts
without help from many.
In the second wind
there are holes in my shoes
and I do not mock
lightning bolts.
Enemies haunt
less by might than by
asking directions;
some have become
neigbours and I am torn
by what to say
to their children.
In the second wind
I am a stranger
within my own ribs
and I no longer trust
bright ribbons or
promises frozen
by portrait painters.
Dimensions are endless
and calculations get
blown to dust by
notions of anything
constant, which is why
memories deceive and
scrapbooks etch
dangerous shadows
across the morning.
In the second wind
I attack soldiers
not platoons, and I am
more careful of what I kill
and the ghosts I plant inside.
There is less beauty
in the second wind,
and less ugliness,
and I am smaller
that I thought
I would have to be.

© 28 June 1976

He has massive hands
so large that they
threaten to swallow
     his coffee cup
and his bulk jams out
against his navy uniform.
He is force personified
until he turns his head
the eyes
a flit too wary,
not quite in touch
with his body,
unsure enough that
I’d bet on the way out
I could tip his hat
    into his toast
and get away with it.

© 11 July 1973