Lazy Song at Last

Lazy Song at Last

Write this on the breezes stirring

in this quiet, nameless spot where      

woodland rock descends to wetlands.

Take the ambitions I’ve no use for

anymore, sail them on a maple key

down this trickle emptying the bog.

With luck they’ll find the river I

hear faintly beyond the trees, maybe

reach Lake Huron before freeze-up.

But even if they stop at the next        

windless inlet, snagged on some chance

tangle of debris, it’s enough to watch

as they drift silently away, helped

by these straying breaths of pine.

Hold Hands

Hold Hands

     after Robert Fulghum

Hold hands, yes, when crossing busy streets,

or on icy sidewalks, or slippery stairs,

hold hands when walking in the park,

hold hands when walking up the street to the convenience

store and back again. Hold hands if you feel like it.

Hold hands when receiving milk from another’s body,

or offering it, or looking on as a not-so-innocent

bystander of whatever sex.

Hold hands before you kiss,

hold hands after making love.

Hold hands like they do in the movies

(there’s no need to try to be original),

hold hands when no one else is doing it

and when everyone in sight already is

(see originality). Hold hands with strangers,

not every chance you get (obviously) but

certainly far more often than you do now.

Hold hands when getting good news

you can’t believe, hold hands

when getting bad news you can.

Hold hands today, you’ll thank yourself tomorrow

and—this part’s magical—you’ll thank yourself yesterday

                                                            too.

Hold hands when you feel like it and sometimes when you

don’t. Hold hands across a table in a restaurant

and in waiting rooms, and as the plane takes off

and lands. Hold hands when it’s obviously

the right thing to do, and sometimes when it might be

exactly the wrong thing—chance it then sometimes too.

Hold hands at your own times, for your own reasons.

Hold hands at home.

Hold hands with yourself (you don’t need

to call it prayer though you’re welcome to).

Hold hands when the lights go down

and when they come back up again.

Hold hands at awesome spectacles, hold hands

at ordinary ones, hold hands at famous fabulous

landmarks and famous boring ones and famous mixtures

                                                  of both.

Hold hands when you’re least expected to

and also when you’re most expected to

(this was said already but it’s important).

Hold hands at places and events too numerous

to mention and easily imagined by anybody:

beaches, fireworks displays, off and on in

movies, your child’s first recital, your child’s

last recital, someone’s graduation, entering or leaving

a cemetery etc. etc.

Hold hands fairly soon after reading this poem.

Hold hands long after you’ve forgotten it.

Hold hands when one or both of you

is going into the dark, and hold hands when one

of you doesn’t come back. Keep holding hands

a little longer when an official- or kind-sounding voice

tells you it’s time to let go, because it

isn’t quite. Not yet. Hold hands.

Drinking Frappuccinos on a Dementia Ward

Drinking Frappuccinos on a Dementia Ward

At last, the night-mind’s unconsoled colic                          

—bleak lashing tears, fumblings in shredded  

junk—gives way to day’s sweet milk you       

once brought me, need before word, word    

before names, a world certified by just           

this warmth, soft touch, familiar smells.     

There are holes in your head, there are holes 

in mine as well. I don’t speak carelessly—

How could I in this place made only of          

particulars: one bed, one bureau, two scuffed

chairs. A tiny plastic dog that was the year’s best gift.

Self’s own siege grinds devious. Opaque as opening

your hand while keeping it clenched tight. Hard as the

glare ice that forces water from my eyes

and lets soft colours bloom.

What a passage nature shipped you on. Its                 

scissoring deaths and random flaring births, your      

dogged hemmed-in fight stamp witnessing to space. 

Vacuum voice to murmurs, murmurs into void.       

                                                                                  

But heart is not a hole. In its dark, thick

wild shoots and rustlings, swarms of succulent     

tiny tadpoles huddling in mud-rut puddles.

Deep earth hum of sitting quietly together.

This peace we sit in, sipping, being beyond    

names, is also beyond time, a thousand          

day-nights passing exactly the same way:                   

sun coming up, sun climbing a pale blue hill, sun

going down. Milk of moon and cloud exchanging places.

Poem Written on a Circle (Tangent: Lines by a Bed)

Poem Written on a Circle  

The hospital is a strong animal.

Never more lustral and barbaric

than when entered before dawn, in chill

drizzle, and exited a half-day later

in sheeny damp, twilight spangling gutter water.

It could never be my ally or my enemy.                 

I harbour an abundance it can never quite despoil,

which it does me the honour of despising openly.

The traffic jam on Avenue Road is an abundance 

too, forest of ruby taillights thrusting

such opulence silently ahead.             

Home again, I read a few ancient poems, too      

tired to take them in deeply but needing their     

pine-cliff vistas. Dusk sways, scenting the air

with pollen curtains. I fix myself a salmon

sandwich. Switch on a dead man’s lamp.             

(Tangent: Lines by a Bed)

Lees of loss, typhoon renewals—all mapped. 

Can you tack into the strangeness that is sanity?

In. Out? Spirit bubble in your throat the whole

globe’s turning. Hold it, floating, a moment longer.

Shadow is light’s mute ecstasy.

Three Days Dry

Three Days Dry

Bigger and closer. Things jumping                   

to view in random zooms. My own                  

eyes lunging at me from mirrors. Looking

a little clearer (is this possible already?)

with more green mixed into the brown

than I remember. Effect of moss, rain-

washed, gleaming from old growth hollows.

A space. Thin envelope of air, or

not air, around what I seem to be doing.

Like one of those clearings we kept

watch for in our camping days.   

Silence. Not ringing yet but feeling it could.

That chuch-like sense, as we laid out our gear, 

of a place set apart, cut out, from the larger forest. 

Slipping Through the Cracks

Slipping Through the Cracks

Makes it sound like magical escape.

Like a fish from a net that isn’t torn

or a fugitive through a cordon

drawn tight and drawing tighter.

True, some do go on the lam from help

all their lives, the decent concern they’re due

an alien element that would suffocate...

But it lets us off the hook, this phrase—

For no one ducks assistance quite unnoticed,

quite unexplained. Always there is one, or

knots of few, cabals of knowing large as all,

who see eluding’s chance before it’s true:

Spaces opening around the silver scales,

shoulder to shoulder admitting yards, then miles.