In the beginning, Black Bill dressed like my grandfather,
Like a simple man from the provinces,
Which made the story my family would tell
Over and over all the more engaging,
About how Black Bill bought his mansion
In Grosse Pointe, Michigan.
When the builder dismissed him as a peasant,
He pulled out a large down payment in cash,
Leaving the builder blinking at that fat *** of bills.
That was how they interpreted the American dream.
It didn’t matter how you got there, only that you did.

There’s no bottom to this marsh.
I’ve seen shadows of monster carp,
and swarms of giant catfish.

I’ve seen an eagle drown,
and water snakes swim
into the unknown.

Divers go down
and never come up.

Those who survive
say there is a darkness down there
that’s hypnotic—

a black diamond gleaming up,
like a lake in the marsh
with endless shores,
its own sky and clouds,
a sunrise from another world.

And how deep that lake goes—
nobody quite knows.
They call it a black diamond—
rarer still than any gem.

Today will never end
Cottonwood seeds drifting
Today will last forever
Cottonwood seeds still afloat
This moment requires
No more moments
This now is now and now once more
Cottonwood seeds afloat
It’s all in the weightlessness of change
And changes that keep changing
Becoming one reality
Of a never-ending moment
I feel it now and again now
Like a joy that exceeds 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.

My head was full of the sun’s *****
It could give birth to anything
It could impregnate death with poems

The earth was my bed
Nature was my wife
I was the father of dreams

Green ants covered branches
I said to the flower bloom
And it bloomed with mirrors inside

In spectral graveyards
Every grave is a garden
Of grasses and moonflowers

When I stood
My head cleared the clouds
Who knew the moon
Could be touched by real poems

When I did peyote,
I heard ceremonial drums,
impossible to place,
and chanting, low and rising.
Later, I told the shaman on the reserve
about the drums, the chanting,
and he said, "The spirits liked you,
that's why the earth was drumming,
that's why the spirits were singing."
That was nice to hear.
Better, I thought, to be liked by the spirits
than by what passes for humanity.

1
The rivers of the river were moving again.
The shattered ice glided
In one giant flow of crystal shards.
A concert, a symphony of treble sounds,
Frozen keys struck with light and music
Glittered all along the seaward shore.

2
Was it the beginning of time?
Or had the end of time begun?
The earth was locked in ice.
Darkness was upon the land.
When sunlight filtered
Through the poison gases
It struck the ice and multiplied.
The light passed through itself,
Melting and reforming,
Until the air had cleared.
Light took the shape of a fern
And ferns unfurled out of nothing.
Light moved and there was wind.
Light poured over its rim
And from ice water trickled.
When light was exhausted
The night was born.

3
Those who live by the river
Have heard the sound of light
In that staccato of shattered ice;
In the sharp tintinnabulous
Wavering myriad of chimes,
They have heard the cold
Remote music of a crystal age.

First its stillness held me captive—
A fox snake in the grass.
Then, when I nudged it,
It rattled its tail to fool me.
When it curled up
Into a striking position,
It was like copper melting,
The essence of hydraulics
Came into view,
Like a rope of water
Collapsing into itself.
Strangest of all
Was how energized
I was by the encounter,
Like I’d been envenomated
With energy venom,
Or a spirit snake
Was crawling round my spine,
And I too was seeking the sun.

I know about dogs who are half house flies
I know too about the praying mantis
and its preoccupation with dragonfly brains
I’ve watched a leopard slug outrun eternity
I ride horses with six legs
play with ceremonial knives
if I cut myself
I bleed out a little dark energy
and move on
I’ve opened the curtains
and seen the monster give birth to a monster
I’ve opened secret doors
and stepped into the arms of the dark
forgive me father for I have sinned
for the world as it is and my idiot grin

Now that they’ve taken the body,
the German women begin cleaning,
and they clean everything, walls, floors…
Why all the cleaning I wonder?
Does death leave a stain--
or shed its shadow like a viral load?
They must clean out the humors
just like in the olden days.
Cleaning is Germanic grieving.
They put their grief to work,
and the Protestant angels
who appear on the scrubbed walls
witness the rinsing of death’s last traces.

The path through the forest
winds in and around the trees,
circling into distance—
going everywhere and nowhere.

Trails veer into singing meadows,
and here and there
a footbridge spans burbling streams
where worries flow away.

A snail migration is its own duration,
a slow unfolding measured by itself.
And the forest snakes you see
conceal what they reveal at length—
like the indigo buntings
who lie to your eye.

You breathe something greater than air
amid all this flourishing.
It’s in the breath of the forest
to be dying into so much life.

Stay longer, and the shadows
gown you in regal attire.
Bees carry a crown to your head—
I am father of the forest.

after Gil Scott-Heron

Living in the void, living in the gaps.
Dying in the void, dying in the gaps.
Rioting on the news, dying in the news.
Killing for the news, living through the news.
There are two ways to get where you’re going,
but you don’t have to take either.
You can be your own person.
You can’t be your own person.
Accept defeat, accept victory.
Straddle the gaps, don’t fall in.
Don’t let the sides choose you.
Don’t let them shoot you down.
Don’t carry their hatred in your heart.
You’re only dying in the gaps.
You’re only falling through the cracks.
Riots in the streets, war in the Middle East,
war in Ukraine, famine and the inhumane.
We’re living in the gaps, stranded in the gaps,
drowning in hatred and unhappiness.
Politicized puppets, lost in information gaps,
with inconclusive raps and toxic apps,
hating each other, deluding each other,
murdering one another, murdering our brothers.
You can’t hide in the gaps.
You can’t last in their death-traps.
We only just survive in the cracks.
We always get caught in their traps.
We are strategies on an economic map.
We are saps eating their scraps
that fall through the cracks
and drift down into the gaps.
We are races all in collapse,
pitted against each other in the gaps.
We’re falling into the gaps.
We breathe the bad air of their gaps.
We gasp for breath; we gasp for breath.

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Anger-management: shoot whom you don’t like.
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The herds will run straight off the cliff,
into oblivion.

Which is why we offer relaxation techniques
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Guest lecture by Wim Hof, who can *******
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We understand you can’t love.
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Passing the limits of feeling at all,
you can go anywhere, without fear.

Take me to the water’s edge
and scatter my ashes there.
I’ll be part of Lake Erie happily,
laughing in its waves.

Take me to the water’s edge
and hold me above its light,
like my father held me as a child
and continues to in my memory.

The sun and water—one element
in the fabric of those first sensations.
Like being born out of eternity,
I was also drowned in eternity.

Scatter me kindly when I’m gone.
Drop me in Lake Erie’s waves,
release me into that material light—
I’d rather be home than away.

Doesn’t just happen when sleeping and dreaming.
What stirs the leaves when there’s no wind?
What stands up the tall grasses?
Why do seeds float in timelessness?
Why can light appear like shimmering water?
Why, when we are well,
do we almost disappear into joy,
And the body sometimes feels
Like it’s floating on a cushion of air?
But maybe everything is wind—
the light, the clouds, the earth itself,
rotating in its weightless orbit.
Ah, it’s change that’s weightless. Problem solved.