In this fixed game I love you.



A parlance we took to the islands,

a sun collapsing,

peering over mountain and

down to crystal surf,

the bright smile of a dream…



Sitting on this balcony

a storm swears itself and leaves no testimony,

nothing can save us

but our own fragile choosing.



So cross forever far the coming breech,

another day wakes and breaks its promised take…



And gain this heart with eyes flung open.

It will love you

long after…

And for every last trespass



discovered.

Tenderly they wait
on the concrete sidelines,
these sunset lit trees
sullen and faceless
they wait
for us to slough away
and for the rush of bodies
and locomotives
to quell down in mercy

they will reclaim
the lost space
springing out from
landscape reservations
as earth's peculiar
egoist tenants fade
finally into hoary remission

they wait
they wait
and will usher us along
and out as pallbearers
through a closing time
murmuring patiently
at our spent fortune and folly:
'close the door quietly behind you,
you hominid *******, your lease is nigh'

this is it here,
creaking moments at near dawn
and outside the world is quiet
except for murmurs
in my sleepy crown

everything be still
now and a life reflects
within me
warm under the covers
the past resolute
and a stranger to future
the script unfolds from
curtain to consciousness

the fleeced hour
is upon us, a shuddering
forth of what we knew,
this knowledge hewn
into the face of day
an appetite forlorn
and mourning for nothing
new

the question lingers
and stings like rock salt
did we manuever well?
and will our lives
find a safe harbor
without so much
giddy atonement
cos such things dwell
within and breathe

and so you are the tantamount,
more than monument
or park, something
inchoate and imbibed
a spell derived
from angelic alchemy
a destination meditatively
arrived
when feet desire the sea

and so there's
no country too distant
no photograph forgotten
and lost
there is only the truth here
sleeping between the leaves
and caught pages
for an age getting old
to ash back into baby skin
there is only the wait here
and the ache there
and there is finally born
you and me

i'm yours today
inchoate, in veins
and glory be
and how
our tantamount
pleasures can give,
subside, sleep listlessly
and worry
none

you've got no reason to be
but yer here, aren't you?
a soul on the beach
ducking in and out of holes
maybe, into shells,
another being with
the softness inside
and the fishermen are
readying themselves for night

around the pool we now site
it's nearly 2 am, a Ryder moon
yonder high,  you tell
me of travels in Africa,
and everything is quiet now
just alcohol, bleeping frogs,
and the dark sand touched
by murmuring gulf, a silence
borne out of whittled conversation

and so a spider hugs a wall nearby
as we recollect the noon before
catching a red fish out by the reef
and the sun and swells seemed forever
patient and knowing
and the horizon hewn between us

follow death of days
pebble strewn, you always knew
the circumference of doubt
and images forgotten
if i could recollect you
i would, steadily, so,
and make venture
unto welcoming shore

as you are

the smell of freshly cut grass
is the smell of promise
in this afternoon sun, recollecting
a past time, a younger time,
always won,
but seeming lost now,
being older,
the smell of freshly cut grass,
nature's summer cologne,
something manufactured,
my own...
the whine of the lawn mower
the breeze wafting around
the smell of grass
continually known.

I recollect my first impression of death:

In an old 70s beige GM car, an overcast day

in a Winnipeg parking lot,

I was four, five or six maybe,

it seemed nebulous and strange, yet

an oncoming unseen hurdle to be feared, reckoned with

at a later date, when age itself seemed abstract -

making me feel even smaller in the back seat.



Second time on a bus ride to school,

a dew heavy Kingston morning, the traffic slowed

to molasses and the driver asked a passerby

why the commotion – a dead woman in the bush.

I glimpsed her arm, a solemn shade of brown,

reaching out into the air, making fun of the day

and embellishing mine with playtime dread.



My bus drove on to its familiar route

and I settled back down

and I thought this breaking day was her final loss…

The sun overflowing and happy,

turning everything real and unreal

and perilous without reason.

In the still river of my heart

and the avenues of Past,

enlivened memories shall sleep no longer…



Welcome now the strongest tides

and cage every hesitation…

The dowser within picks up the rod

to lay a final gambit –

the source has all but disappeared.



And though this spring is well tried

it remains fresh to my hopes,

the fountain sits in me to collect many a depth

and hold such tremulous years to light.



So let the future be kind and bring forth

all manner of rich archives…



And share this common antidote

in our tender copious fate.

We are just outside the forest,

a hunting party at night,

landscape laden by moonlight,

two quiet Indians behind us watching

our tracks, and behind them

a tall ominous conifer.

The other group is farther

ahead aways, bearing

down on something, the spark

and clap of rifle fire

sounds off through the trees,

my retinas light up like tiny

bonfires. We run towards

the commotion but the firing

ceases and we become

lost among the pines, and

I still have no idea what we

are after, a mythic creature maybe.



In the morning we set off,

we are in the valley now and

have a journey back home to the high

steppes, far from this strange canton…

We are making good pace, the countryside skids

by, the vineries like receding carpets

grow tinier, the lake now farther below…

To the town we ascend in

a gondola, looking down we see

wandering geese, mired mossy fields, and

higher up the last dregs of a once proud

glacier beckoning us on. You say you

love the lake shore best, the chance to

swim and sun bathe, not this

sequestered inland shire where

nothing really seems to happen

but us and the sky laid out above.

Restful, calm,

enjoy the eve now

like a good friend,

low lit lamp

anchoring wood floor

and makeshift newspaper mats...



Blue cheese, cherry jam,

clam dip, bread, goat cheese

and many crumbs thereafter

follow knife's path -

she cuts for me delicately

and lovingly

while the autumn ale goes down...



A peaceful repose this,

with a TV fireplace

speaking in images

for an absent hearth;

letting the channel rest

as banquet abides –

a farmer's work is finally done.

Last night came a dream of hoarfrost

or rather the name itself and the image it conjures -

something biting, cold, and natural in its bare comfort,

existing as a cipher for seasons.


The night before I stumbled through an old Tudor village

and I searched for you under dawn's coming slake,

peering into stables, over the bales, I could

not find you, perhaps you skipped town

taking the eastbound carriage, and I followed

feverishly into an awakening…


It was now late in the morning

and work had taken you far away from here,

and I stood out of bed into a shrinking world…

Subtle observations
upon this country weekend:

Black starry wood headboard,
the curlicues of nebulae and
galaxies, I wake up weeping,
some sad dream,
grimaced face the deck
of an old schooner, mast
creaks and tears leak, and
head sounding an ocean's fixins'.

Later on the drive
the road map splayed,
there is a bug, ant like,
some kind of critter
skittering over
the routes, symbols
legends and
betwixt greens.

It's moving while I'm
moving, but the
six legger scouts
another surface altogether
while I sit aside on mine,
perhaps, hopefully, sowing
a vaster serpentine ledger.

where sadness grows
the grey hemlock knows
some old glory
on the mantelpiece,
a charm, some wire sculpture
with dust and no alarms
just prairie wood gone assuaged
under.

these people I knew and
I do not know, the far gone
conclusion hung in clothes
and shut in closets -
they are old technology now
in attics powered down
waiting for fleas, markets
and continual retirement
until.

allotting some notion
and recollection
and photos are
cementing in, hired hands
for memory, that shaky
precarious thing,
life in organs
eyes taking it easy,
the dashing days
we shared, simply so,
the space
in motion born,
spectators and parades
on the highest view -
come to happiness now,
soon,
under fate and loom.

A silence emanates from the surrounding
walls, as they are alive,
a breath for me, reminding
me of existence,
and such, late
Sunday afternoon
and all blood within
a prayer.

A life composed till later.

And now Monday morning comes with a buzz
like a fakir.

Reduction awaits till eventually nothing does.
Old age complete, supine you will go.
The undertow that we know: the tremble, the thunder,
the fallen, the wonder.
Come here to me and breathe Life says,
Come here and reciprocate and
listen full to secrets everyone sows.
Self-deception is good, a night and day turnstile
always understood. A psalm that gathers
and heals wounds. A film projector coughs
putting face to years and soft magic with time
and the months behind. And the months behind.
The hours we've come to love now.
As a mouth desiring song. As a source
conjuring the river long.
You will know this too my friend.
Paid in full, pure, incandescent,
in some forgotten weekend afternoon,
we hedge upon daily increases
till the bough saps and shrugs
and our tensile selves, in twilight shadow, ceases.