My cousin Joe was a simple man,
But he was also a man of the earth,
Which meant he was deeper than most.
In the final weeks of my father’s agonizing death
From stomach cancer, Joe came to visit
To say his last goodbyes.
My father, after yet another seizure,
Was sleeping somewhere near his death.

How many seizures can you bear
Before you reach for those Dilaudids
Prescribed to your father,
To numb your own pain?
How many episodes can you endure
Before you wish for death to take him—
How many words can you cling to,
Before they all sound false.

Outside, Joe sat beside me,
Sensing I had reached my emotional end,
He said nothing at first,
But the silence felt like an answer.
Then, quietly, he spoke
About how he grows his potatoes
And why he has such a big yield.
How deep he dug his holes,
How he covered the root potatoes
In loose sand, not soil,
Giving them space to grow,
Waiting for the flowers to bloom and fall.
I clung to every word
Like it was some holy truth,
And in that quiet moment,
He placed his hand on my shoulder
And said, "Come on, let’s go back inside."

At the grassy margins of the marsh,
The reflections held the child’s gaze.
He opened his eyes,
To the vastness of the marsh,
And the watershed beyond it.
As sunset touched the distant trees,
His father said, "Anything could bite."
The water deepened to purple and green,
And stillness held a thousand reflections
In which the child was almost lost.
With reeds swaying in every direction,
The marsh began to seethe with sound.
Before nightfall, his father warned,
It would soon be time to wrap it up,
Watching his son with a smile,
As the child cast his line
Into the unknown, for the first time.

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.