A photo I can’t forget:
From the Globe and Mail,
A Muslim mother kneeling
Over her five dead children,
After the 1983 Turkish earthquake.

Grief has never been
Captured by an artist
Like the grief
This photographer
Found in her face.

The photo comes to mind
Whenever I need to feel grateful
For what I have not lost.

When I found my mother dead
I stepped outside to steady myself.
It was a summer at its zenith.
The night was now alive.
That’s when I saw a leopard slug
Climbing up the garage wall.
It was like I was suffering
A bad acid trip, all loss and no escape.
My eyes wide, taking in the world
Like it was some new form of reality.
I could see the slug’s
Slowly undulating body.
I could see it looking in the dark.
Nothing else seemed real,
Until cars of family and friends
Pulled into the driveway.
It was almost two in the morning.
We all went inside
To say goodbye to mom.
The next time I went out
I could see only the trail
But the slug was gone.

for my dad

The months of change do me no good at all.
In March and November, my anxiety spikes,
Under heavy, shifting pressure.
Not fear, but something primal--
Angst in my gut, like a bad meal.
At my age, a body knows the poetry--
A language older than the mind.
March wears winter like a mask;
It breathes winter’s remnants
And chokes out plastics and debris.
Only when I’m embedded in summer
Can I bear fruit from the soil of my mind,
Enjoy the long days of light,
And wear my old hat into heaven.

Almost a violet pearl between branches—
Radiant in an indigo sky--
Like a Taaffeite gemstone, rare in its brief glow,
A gift to the earth, while it lasts,
As Bizet’s aria Je crois entendre encore
Kisses the cool night air,
Before dissolving into dawn.

Sparrows pierce me like arrows.
Who knew robins had no bottoms?
A ****** of crows, frightening prose.
A hawk, a magnificent shock.
Do vultures feed on culture’s corpse?
Are kestrels kin to petrels?  
Have the pigeons been agreed upon?
Could plovers ever run us over?
Flocks of blue jays are on the way.
Cardinals and carnivals? Think about it.
A wood thrush in a frosty hush.
Swallows, those Apollos, don’t care.
Phoebes have the heebie-jeebies.
Owls and their lovely vowels.  
Cormorants and conglomerates.
Egrets sending their regrets.
Today, only the border crossings
Of Canada geese—give me any peace.

The little girl in a red jacket, skipping across
A pedestrian bridge made me smile today.
Her jacket was so red against the pure blue sky,
She seemed to be telling me something.
Spring was just a skip away, just a jump away,
And then she leapt into spring with joy,
And with a smile, I drove beyond winter at last.

Car chimes was what *** called  
All the bottles Joe would gather,
Drinking in the back seat on road trips,
Passenger to his own joyful reeling.  

Joe couldn’t go without drinking,
It was the poetry in his blood.
*** and I would do the driving
With Joe happily reciting W.H. Davies:

“No man to pluck my sleeve and say—
I want thy labour for this day;
No man to keep me out of sight,
When that dear Sun is shining bright.”

And when he’d recite those poems
The bottles would begin to chime
In rhythm to his tapping feet,
Music to our ears, laughter to our tears.