One More Paper Heart

One More Paper Heart     

Dream-long day beside this window

waiting for you. No clock

in my head or anywhere.

Old cream-yellow radiator

from the forties puffing warmth

gallantly, a Lancelot in those ribs.  

Beyond smudged glass, the L-

shaped neighbour block, bricks

& windows, taped ACs—  

snow skirls in vortices, dot

matrix static, gone abruptly—

(nowhere other waiting, calling)                 

calmly letting in the world,

I learn your green-gold eyes.

Beggar's Dream

Beggar’s Dream

Disc so pale and flat in gray winter          

sky—sun gone moon

in peaceful haze

of day-night-day, floating

shyly to view receding

behind drifting flakes—

a beggar’s dream

in wan tumbling light,

scuffed dime now glimpsed

now gone—glad

fleeting ghost 

of unearned, unhoped-for keeping. 

Eyes Blue (Approaching the Lunar New Year)

Eyes Blue (Approaching the Lunar New Year)

Kids tugging at my clothes, small dirty

fingers busy far below my sightline. Where             

did you go? Why did you stay away so long? Remembering

you’re childless means nothing to this plucking.  

Eating an Orange in Agincourt Mall

Eating an Orange in Agincourt Mall

Segment by segment. Carefully.

That’s life these days.

(Or always was? Clear            

seed misplaced in banquet blurs.)

Rotate in the hands with

gentle pressure. Pick a spot

with give to poke teeth into.

Unzip with thumb and two

pronged fingers, trying for a continuous

curl, forgiving yourself the snaps

and pick-aways. Plug with

pith tail levered free, and

clinging web of membrane

detached in branching strands.

Now. Colour’s fragrance is this

taste reclaimed from rushing roads 

and greasy hours. Spurts of             

sweet sweet juice as flesh gives

way, dissolves, becomes a part of

you.

March Squirrel

March Squirrel

Wedged

blackly in

branches encased

in clear unbroken cold,

seven weeks from zero.

Nothing in your paws

to peel or rotate,

your jaws gnaw

chronically

on hard, budless bark.

Winters

all have ends

save one. You and I,

can we mine null hours

to find ice flowering?

East Window

East Window

Inching my chair back to stay in sun’s slant

path, its February arc brisk beyond 

this east window. Frugal as a basking lizard,

I finally run out of speckled ledge, find

myself in cool shadow, beside the Christmas

cactus. Flowering again, it needs water.

Looking for the Mother

Looking for the Mother           

Another toddler, the second in as many days, gone

wandering without clothes out into bone-shock cold,               

-30 wind chill. This one still alive, spotted and brought

inside by a neighbour. Police are looking for the mother.

Later in Longo’s, in the busy produce section, this small

old man with pinkish juice flecked with seeds dribbling

down his chin, evidence of a snatched piece of fruit he

ducks his head in vain to conceal. Ragged clothes, thin

and old—someone should tell him to wait at least till he’s

in a quiet aisle and to stock his empty cart with some items.