Tuesday, June 29, 2010

thank you, sky

thank you, sky
for choosing to rain
only while we sleep
and not while we play
outside among ladybugs
and songbirds and ponies
in pastures after long drives.
we really appreciate it a lot.

Monday, June 28, 2010

sebastian the terrible

it doesn't matter how long we've known each other
how many hours we've spent together, learning,
learning about each other, learning together.
after feeling so confident that my hand on his shoulder
would calm his fears so effectively
i have been proven wrong, once again.
he's always proving me wrong, making me a liar
by doing things like pulling posts right out of the ground,
trotting away, eyes wide, nostrils flaring, tail straight up in the air.
and the biggest, most beautiful, floatiest trot---one he won't give me
when i ask him to in dressage tests, even if i ask nicely.
he reserves that kind of talent for covering ground
across the lawn, past the house, down the driveway.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

weyburn

the eyes can only see so far
at least, mine can only

nice not to have interruptions
sky scrapers, apartment complexes

blocking out the sharp line
of a saskatchewan horizon

the brisk but blurry ending
of land and beginning of sky

the eyes can only go so far
but the heart can go forever unchecked

tender shoots

in ways we are old
but mostly we are so, so new
just sprouts from a bud
soft, pale green, tender shoots
still reaching
through the darkness of soil
of a lack of understanding
just waiting to push through
into the the wide, wild world

st. albert is too far away

the neighbours are having a party
or something    there's a campfire
and laughter and the general hoots
and hollers accompanied by beers
and i am just arriving home
from another city    it's close
as far as cities go    but far
as far as my desire to be near you
nearer to you all the time goes

one day we'll get the chance
to joke about the neighbours' parties
when they're our neighbours
and we're pulling up outside our house

you are alive

you are alive
and so am i
and if that weren't miracle enough
somehow we found each other.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

to ted hughes, i haven't found them yet.

got lost in a used book store today
down in the basement where they keep poetry
and tomes on anthropology and wilderness hikes
and i looked fervently for your name
ran my finger across the spines of so many words
over and over, looking for your letters
for the words that told the story of your love for her
all of her madness and brilliance and the things
that made her the most beautiful tree ever dreamed
still branching out, or a bird still singing from bookshelves
even though her voice has been silenced all these years
but i didn't see you there, nor her
and felt sorrow for you both as i climbed the stairs

freedom from

i keep a caged bird
feed him treats
give him shiny toys
and place him by the window
so he can speak to wilder cousins
call out to them about freedom

not freedom to

but freedom from.

north-facing

the light that doesn't come in my window
enters instead the house across the road
i watch the plants in their front yard
growing and growing    they're in full bloom
while my own little potted attempts at greenery
keep fading away   drying up   wilting down
if i could pick up my house and turn it right around
i would    let the living room have sunshine
let the living things in the living room have light
for once in their dreary, north-facing lives

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

for r.g. hancock, with love

he is old spice and the faintest whiff
of cigarette smoke from that one before dinner
a man who refused for so many years
to just curve the brim of his baseball cap

he is working on saturdays and always trying
to do a good job, feed all those girls
who scramble into the bathroom after him
that's the one thing he gets: the first shower

and my memories of crawling onto his lap
thick denim and plaid, comfortable and comforting
giving his cheek a goodnight kiss,
joking about the whiskers left in my lips

someone else

let me help you now
i wish i could have then
when you could have really used it
when you really needed it
needed everything so badly

was it my blood you needed?
was it any part of me?
i would have given you anything
if it could help you focus
your eyes on mine in that dim room

grey light and bony angles
beneath starched, bleached sheets
and a pain so great it swallowed you up
swallowed your words
took the blood right from your skin

blood i am trying to give back to you
a transfusion across worlds
you're a universe away now, so far
and it's too late for my offerings
but i will give them to someone else

there is always someone else

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

pipe tobacco

what are your twenties for
if not for sitting outside
on ikea patio furniture
next to the garneau
at two in the morning

friends introducing pipe tobacco
telling you to hold it right
to not be such a girl about it
to breathe it into your mouth
but not your lungs

blowing smoke against the brick wall
while the light on the corner changes, no cars

Monday, June 21, 2010

an important question

september
in one of the most beautiful places
i've ever been to, ever seen
with my own eyes,
ever touched and breathed
with my own fingertips
my own lungs
you asked me an important question

now going back there
standing on the receded dunes
of a lake once much more picturesque
i know the landscape has changed
and will always change
everything changes without meaning
except for my hand in yours
looking out over water
and wilderness
and the dramatic peaks

that saw me tell you yes

wapiti

always arriving at night
there are only silhouettes
dark pines hiding secrets
like wapiti by roadsides
seen only by headlights
antlers lit briefly, a glimpse
and back into the forest
to a life i'll never know
and a home i'll never see

Sunday, June 13, 2010

highway 21, sundown

alberta, you didn't let me down

we drove south with the windows rolled down
so hot, finally, after so much drizzliness and sweatshirts
the sun refracted through my windshield in millions of heatwaves
and she complained about the heat, about its relentlessness.

but i promised her that the drive back would not disappoint;
that the setting sun would be hazy and low in the sky
and that the ground would swallow up the extra heat
and that the alberta landscape would be seen in its perfect state

and alberta, you didn't let me down
you showed up in your wild, beautiful way.
your golden sunset glow and long, dark green shadows
were exactly what we needed to see.

we could

we could admit defeat
start acting our ages
get mortgages and go to bed
at reasonable hours
stop trying to cook things
via microwaves all the time
and spend less money on beer
or we could remember
what it's like to stay up
until five in the morning
with full glasses     good friends
not caring it's two thousand ten already
or that it's time to throw in the towel

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

wednesday night, 10:20 pm

rainy wednesday nights
are not suited for anything
except being warm and dry
with beers i've never tried
with a friend i haven't known
nearly as long as anyone
but this thing -- learning to know
another person from the start
is something i haven't done
in a long, long time.

interstices

standing in the space between rainfall
an interstice i wish i could fit myself into
this too an area in which i have not succeeded
another place i haven't settled easily into.
life had become rather like walking through rain
(it always gathers on the tip of my nose,
the shape of my face funnels it there without fail)
rather than being comfortably in between streams

except for maybe three places
but only one of those three can be known for certain
as a fit that will never change.

the record collection

she was thinking about his record collection
when it happened   so sudden   a sharp pain
like a bandaid being ripped off    no    worse
a stab wound (& should we take out the blade?
would it be better to leave it in    or worse?)
she was thinking how she wished he'd order it
somehow    categorize all those faces
those people with lives and lovers and pets
who also happened to put out albums
how they should go in some sort of order
and not lie around the apartment stacked up in piles
(don't they get wrecked that way?  it doesn't matter now;
everything's wrecked)    she was thinking
about this haphazard collection of songs from
all of those people    when the letter
the scrap of paper announcing his departure
sat clenched in her hands, opened at last
to a few apologetic words and a cleared out closet
and all these records just lying around.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

for mama

this is about you, mother
about your curly hair
and the way you can't sing
and the way you tucked me in
at night, every night for years
how i would cry when you left
make you leave kisses on napkins
little notes to remember you by
for the long hours between 5 and 9 p.m.

when i was a child i used to dream
you had died, a terrible nightmare
a recurring fright that blurs now
but i remember wearing your green spring jacket
and standing over a casket at the front
of a long, wide room filled with strangers
waking up with my breath caught in my throat
tiptoeing down the hall to see you
crawling in to be warm next to you

it's about calling you my friend
and still missing you when we're apart
(but i'm too old for kisses on napkins
and i'm too old for almost everything
but not too old to cry when i saw you last
it had been almost three weeks,
but hugging you felt like it had been years)

most women dread turning into their mothers
but my worry is the opposite, that i won't be like you
that i will never be as wonderful as you are
that i will never learn how to care for my family
as skillfully and lovingly as you did
that i will never learn how to balance work
and real life, how to live in both worlds perfectly
how to commit to loving five other people more than i love myself

but more than any of these things,
there is a quiet worry that's entered my mind
like a fish hook, barbed and lodged.
that one day it will be longer than three hours
or three weeks, or three of anything
that i will go without seeing you, hearing your voice.
this day, though far away in a future
i don't care to think about
is inevitable, and i will never be prepared for it to come.

brightness

where we would go
wherever we would go
it would be bright white
light leaping off buildings
we'd have to wear sunglasses
oh the sun, the sun
it will be there, wherever
we go, the sun will be
almost too much
somewhere like barcelona
or santorini or some other
mediterranean locale
just aquamarine and that white
and that sky, thin blue
obliterated by heat
you might be too warm
but i would be just right
and you'd look at me
one hand over your brow
shading your green eyes
and we would be the brightest thing on earth.

Monday, June 7, 2010

on digging out

we aren't used to upheavals of this sort
of the painful digging out of our homes
we've already stashed so much of ourselves
in these burrows    packing things away
in places out of sight    we didn't know
we didn't think we'd need all these odds and ends
these little memories and all this junk
but now we're tearing them up by the roots
hauling everything out to a friend's truck on the street
extracting ourselves   wrenching free    leaving
with our tails between our legs and our hearts
still stowed away in a closet somewhere,
forgotten.

a borrowed umbrella

rain today on patio tables
on the garneau block
no awning or eaves
just abandonment

the day would seem gloomy
were it not for mugs of coffee
and a four-block walk
with a lime green umbrella

84th avenue

the trees, they finally touch each other
they've been reaching out all spring
green buds like closed fists opening
and stretching fingers to grasp one another
above the street, its boulevards and sidewalks
and neighbours, some friendly
some strange, some strangers
but the trees, they touch over the road
an old-growth tunnel steering me straight
towards home

Saturday, June 5, 2010

weight

growing up for a long time now
i think it started early, even before
first heartbreaks, the ones i thought
would last forever, would change me
forever, but that was nothing
compared to losing her.
standing at the front of the church
the words on the paper unreadable
through the welling of tears
that could not be blinked away,
and hands clenched with each others'
so tight in the pew in the front row.
but even before all this growing,
being forced down and somehow
somehow
straining upwards again
there was all this age weighing me down.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

lost wolves

somebody tacked up a photo
on a residential power pole
of two wolves in the wild
gazing off into the distance
at some far-off prey, maybe
or at something the photographer
used to distract them from himself.
he didn't want to be eaten
only to snap some shots
of their lank shoulders, grey coats
and yellow eyes, mean and sad.
but why the power pole?
these two mythic creatures
surely belong to somebody
and, obviously, are lost.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

on missing you

the sun was setting on a perfect day
and you were gone.  we were lying
on the grass watching horses graze,
tired of talking about it, our hearts
too sore to remind each other.
weaving grass through our fingers
listening to birds singing evening songs
and you were dying across town, giving up.

my life without you is a reality
that will never feel okay, never
be acceptable.  every day i think of you
and your smile from the driver's seat
of your old green truck and my heart
tries to push right out of my chest,
it's so sore for you.  for the lack of you.
for the lack of myself -- without you.

and for once i'd like to go on living my life
without this shadow of loss, it's a burden
too heavy.  your absence is simply too much
for me to carry every day.  for once
i'd like to think about God and the world
and my placement in it and feel a little less small.

today it's june 1, four years later --
today is not the day to feel bigger, better.
it's another day in the four-year string of days
i've missed you since you left.