Just Listen

Just listen,

listen to the music.

fall into the silence of the un-struck notes.

turn off the tube, the whirr of the fridge.

they are eating the world.

The low hum of computer fans,

the chatter of printers borrowing into the mind,

the chirp of electronic phones.

turn them all off!

            Is it quiet yet?

            stop     breathe           listen,

            listen to the music.

The lazy buzz of a fly following

   the warmth of oak leaves

   passes into the cool breeze rustle of the shade.

the earth is moving to a

   sway of yellow notes.

The tick of a clock measuring

   out our lives

the creaking bones of the house

   as it cools, passing into

   the shade of clouds moving across the sun.

Just listen,

listen to the music.

music not defined by notes

   but by the space between them.

Down deep in there,

down into the center of the earth,

who plays that flute there?

who is that re-creating the world

            in each moment?

   maybe it is just the song that we are.

Tangerine

slowly peeling the

tangerine I watch

as you undress

A Pot of Gold

Jessica came running in a short burst down a slight hill in the park. Her right arm was raised trailing a string and a kite. Once the kite was aloft, she slowed and watched as a gust of wind took the kite and a hundred feet of string from the spool in her hands. Up, up it went into wild gyrations as she pulled this way and that. Her heart soared. She could not remember when something pleased her as much as flying a kite on a sunny summer afternoon.

Now she found something other than kites that pleased her in a different way. It was Frankie. He was slouching on the grass of the little hill in his un-athletic manner, watching her. They had little in common. He was a night owl. She always rose early. He exhibited little energy, while she bounced and ran at every opportunity. She wore warm colors and favored braids. Frankie wore black, black jeans, and a leather jacket. He even wore black underwear.

As she squinted at the kite crossing the sun she thought back to the time she first met Frankie. He had come to visit his grandfather Frank Riordan who was spending the last weeks of his life in a bed on the ward where she worked at the hospital. She took to Frank from the first day of his admission. Even though his body was ravaged by cancer, he had an almost jaunty smile that was genuine, not faked. She began to realize that he had smiled like that all his life, when he showed her a picture of himself wearing his uniform in the first world war. There he was saluting for the camera with that same smile. He must have been only eighteen at the time and now 75 years later he had the same sparkle.

The first relative of Frank that Jessica met was Carolyn O’Connor, the same Carolyn O’Connor who was a local politico, a member of the board of supervisors. She breezed in one day in a mauve suit talking 500 words a minute. After sitting less than a minute she bounced up to wipe something from her father’s lips. She cracked small nervous jokes and then laughed to cover her discomfort in the presence of eminent death. Frank didn’t mind. He just smiled. He obviously loved her and was used to her antics. Frank’s face beamed even brighter when in walked Frankie, his grandson.

Jessica at first thought he was a biker with all that black leather and chains. However, it was obvious that he never did anything as athletic as raising a leg to get onto a Harley-Davidson. Carolyn turned pale as she saw her unfortunate progeny. She checked to see if any of her constituents could observe that she had a relationship with this person before she began to talk. What she did say revolved around black motorcycle clothes, laziness, not going to school, and how she had to rush off to a committee meeting. In a purple puff she was gone.

Jessica usually stayed out of patient’s rooms when they had visitors, but she found herself drawn to this strange pair, the grand-father and his grand-son. It was clear that they loved each other. She felt like a thief who' d just discovered a pot of gold.

as through a glass darkly

I step hesitantly through

   this strange house

the air punctuated with shafts of light

    changes from dim to clear then back again

The hardwood floor stained

   with generations of shadows

darkens away from well worn paths

   towards walls notched with doorways

In one, a beveled mirror framed

   in dark scrolled wood

My father, long dead,

   peers back at me

his arms held out

   as if to beckon

   as if to embrace

on my neck, one by one, each hair subsides

   and slowly, oh so slowly

I lower my arms and smile

   and he smiles back at me.

Haiku 4

in the mirror

the shadow of branches

on the wall behind me

Melvin & Emma

Melvin got wearily down from the cab of his truck and walked slowly towards the restaurant. Emma sat at a window table and watched him cross the parking lot. It was raining softly and the traffic was splashing by on the cross road running under the freeway. A slow freight train was passing on the embankment behind the restaurant. Eighty five cars filled to overflowing with coal from the pit mines on the other side of the mountains. This train had just divested itself of the extra engines needed to climb the pass. Now the trip was all down hill to the coast and then on a ship to Japan.

Melvin entered the restaurant and looked around at the sparsely populated tables. There she was, sitting at the table at the end of the room below the velvet painting of a panther being ridden by a woman with improbably large breasts. It was the best table because from there you couldn’t see the painting.

Emma had come to meet him here. It was the only way that they could spend time together in the next week. He was making the long-haul trip carrying mining equipment up to the asbestos mines in some bleak town up north, a 3000 mile round trip.

He had met Emma three years ago when he was driving a log truck out of Fernie in the forests to the west. They spent two happy years together and then when the forest had been clear-cut, the work ended. He couldn’t keep up the payments on his log truck and the bank just took it. They spent another six months growing vegetables and doing odd jobs. But it had become clear that he had to get a serious money job or they would lose their couple of acres and the cabin. So he signed on to this long-haul job. It meant spending so much time away from Emma.

They would meet here at Polly’s Roadside Breakfast Hut for two hours in the middle of his run. It would be five more days before he could spend two days with her before he had to climb back into the cab for another run. Emma had a long drive just to be here.

Melvin smiled as he approached the table. He had one of those off-center smiles that fooled some people into thinking he was snarling at them, but it warmed Emma’s heart. It was one of those odd things about Melvin. He was a kind and gentle man who would always say how he felt about things. He could never keep things hidden for long. Sure enough, just as their lips parted from their kiss he said, “This is the last trip to the mines.” It was simple as that. She knew what it meant. They would probably lose the land they both loved, but they would be together. She laid her head on his shoulder and hummed to herself while he ate his pancakes and eggs.

Counting Cosmic Rays

The satin black moonless curtain of stars

          fades at the edge

the hard crunch of snow

          crosses the open meadow.

I come puffing clouds of frozen air

          to count cosmic rays

          a cosmic ray is like an invisible pelican

                   wings tucked back

                    dropping out of the ink-black sky

          its mouth scoops open

                   ready to devour the whole universe

          our solid earth-ocean parts,

          the pelican passes through and is gone

                   leaving only a trail of scattered fish

          I come to capture those fish

I walk down a row of down-turned

          concave mirrors as big as search lights

the metal frame groans

          as I turn up the polished mirror

          and pull off the cover

my hand searches the darkness

          for hooks to anchor my cosmic net

I look down and find a face

          looking back at me

          from out of the star strewn sky.

Breathe Deeply

breathe deeply, slowly

slowly fill the lungs

millions of molecules

oxygen, nitrogen

other bits

carbon this, carbon that

maybe that one piece of death

that comes in and waits

and breathe out

add your part to the mix

swirling about the planet

among those millions, billions

are one or two bits,

the last gasp of Marilyn Monroe,

King George III ranting the halls of the palace,

the Buddha holding up that flower,

certainly some Medieval mother

screaming the birth of my

great, great, great, great …. grand-mother

we are intertwined with all

back to the creeping ooze of some primordial swamp

breathe deeply

take it all in

Chicken Little

Chicken Little was wrong.

The sky is not falling

   everyone knows that.

But, do you know that

   a tree sucks up bits of the air

   and plants them in the earth?

If I were to state

   with great certainty,

   in a steady voice,

“The shortest distance between

   up and down is not a straight line”

Would you doubt your knowledge?

If a second voice would add

   “Yes he is right     it is true”

Would you give in then?

How many would it take,

   Two   Three   Ten?

At what point would

   your stomach begin to turn?

There is one thing worse than being right

   and that is being alone.

Do you see that, over there,

   out of the corner of your eye?  Could it

   be a piece of sky drifting down slowly

   end over end.

Traffic Dreams

traffic is heavy

intersection lights controlling

   the lanes in all directions

one row of cars gets its turn

   then another

the afternoon sun is warm

   windows rolled down

I sit waiting to make my left turn

watching the screen of cars passing

   in front of me

their left turn brings them

   within a few feet of my eyes

faces pass

   stories pass

a story in each face

jaws tight or relaxed

some smiling, some sad, some singing

one head hangs out of the window

   emulating his dog

the dog is smiling and so is he

one woman turning left

   looking right, saying something

   to the man sitting next to her

this is not a happy car

 another story, then another

 last in line, a Harley-Davidson

a woman, long auburn hair streaming

   no helmet

a face at peace in this furious traffic

   an ever so slight smile

in an instant

   no, it was longer

a gasp for breath

and I fall deeply in love

            they say that just before

            you die, your life passes

            before your eyes

I see my imagined life pass

   along with that motorcycle

then the light changes

   and I drive on

Haiku 3

Motorcycle accident -

an empty boot

on the road to Death Valley

Important Things

The obsidian eye turns,

a jay, black hood over stellar blue

creeps down the arc of a fragile branch

her weight sags closer

to reach a cluster of dead leaves

she tips and tumbles

dry fragments of leaves explode

the vacant branch nods in time

music of a tree, a bird, and a falling leaf.

Was this the irresistible urge

   to pad posterity’s nest

or the ticking of a moth

   born of a curled leaf?

There is no great drama here

no emperor crowned

no bloody battle lost or won

nothing worth noting

But this tree will never be the same again

this paper with its marks of black

   no longer a blank screen, the residue

   of (soil, water, fierce sun) wood

the remains of a tree in which once sat

   a blue creature who spied a person

   sprawled on a rock

dreaming of important things.

shoot me she said

shoot me she said

what?

did I hear right?

my mother was known to speak her mind

but was she serious?

my mother, my doorway into life

always present,

not known to make jokes

shoot me she said

I don’t want to

spend my last years

in that place           

that place with its

smell of urine

creaky corridors

whispers and cries

shoot me she said

but I don’t have a gun

and if I did I couldn’t

shoot me she said

as if spending

the rest of my life in prison was

the lesser of two evils

I couldn’t,

she shrugged

I move away

half a continent

another country

a year later, the call came

she’s gone my brother said

as if it was the end of everything

I was with her he said

she had been sick for days.

I was helping her

back from the bathroom

she just collapsed

a stroke

it was like she had been shot.

he looked at her

touched her, no pulse

waited

waited

                      waited

then he called for help

they came

              so fast

pounded on her chest,

electric paddles,

“extraordinary measures”

assaulting her cooling body

he prayed

prayed that they were too late

they were

Haiku 2

Sudden icy gust --

the maple tree pouring down

red letters of grief

The Song of the Meadowlark

Minnie turned her head slightly, directing her ear towards the open fields beyond the fence. “Did you hear that bird?”

Gussie, not looking up from her knitting, mumbled to herself, “You’re always hearing one bird or another, I don’t know how; I know you’re stone deaf.”

Minnie went on, not hearing her sister’s response, “It is a meadowlark, I’m sure. It’s about this time of year that they’d be arriving. Last year they showed up at the end of March. They’re one of the first to show up in the spring.”

Gussie watched a fire red leaf fall slowly from the maple tree beside the gardener’s shed. They were sitting on that section of the porch heated by the early October sun. She turned to her sister with a slow affectionate smile and added, “The meadow lark does have a sweet song.”

Minnie adjusted her shawl, looked out into the fields south of the fence line as if she was seeing something there. “James always said that an early appearing lark meant that we would have a hot summer and an early winter.

Gussie digging deeper into her knitting, “He said no such thing. That was father. James couldn’t tell one bird from another. He would hardly ever raise his nose out of one of those books of his to notice the changing of the seasons … There I go, talking to you as if you can hear me.”

Sitting back in her chair, Minnie looked over towards the maple tree and the gardener’s shed and smiled lightly. “James – do you remember James? Do you remember that one spring when he came fussing around? He said he wanted to talk to Mr. Lawrence, the gardener. Remember how he would look up here where we would be sitting. He was so crazy for me.”

Gussie harrumphed and muttered, “You always thought that it was you that James was interested in. You never considered that it just might have been me that he had eyes for.” She sighed as her face hardened. “It really doesn’t matter. Father chased him off. He never came back. I guess his heart just wasn’t in it. For all I know maybe he just had his eye on Mr. Lawrence.”

Minnie drew up her shawl even tighter. “I really think it’s going to snow soon. Look at those gray clouds.”

Gussie looked up into the sunny cloudless sky and then at her sister. Minnie’s eyes were filling with water. A big tear was making its way slowly down her cheek. She licked at it as it crossed her lips and said, “Father never did like James. He was so mean to him, never appreciated his finer points. But James was strong. He stayed around longer than any of the others.” After a pause she continued, “He sent such a dear letter when Father passed, sent pictures of his children. He had only nice things to say about Father.”

“He was the only one then!” Gussie added, looking down at her motionless knitting, her face chilled by the coming winter.

Minnie rocked back in her chair, a wet smile weakly forming on her face. “James really did like birds, you know. He mostly liked the song of the meadowlark.

Firewood

My wood stack has a curve to it

       each morning I look out my window

       to see if it has fallen over

stacking fire wood is an art

each piece like each word

       is irregular

the hump of one fits

the hollow of another

       when I was young an old farmer

       saw me stacking wood and said

       “it’ll fall down”. I looked at my

       plumb bob straight work and

       smiled.

       It took 20 days, the stack

       leaned like a dozing drunk

       and landed face down.

I had built my stack east to west

one side parched by the warm sun

the other sucked in the cool green shade

now I stack north to south

and like these words, these lines

have a curve to them

take pleasure in imperfections

       carress each piece, each word

look through the window

       of your life and follow the curve.

Crumbs

There is a time early in the morning

when the East turns faint

and color still slumbers

gray lay upon gray

edges of things are unformed.

The tentative songs of birds

coax warmth out of the thin light.

I think of these birds

trying to figure out which call

   belongs to which bird

as if a name would make them more beautiful.

I love these creatures

  but alter their rhythms

feeding them crumbs from supermarkets.

out there on my deck rail

   lay bread broken in an offering

a feeble attempt that they might befriend me.

It is then that I see the fox

   a gray fox

a canine that moves like a cat

she stands there (did I say she?)

more cautious than any bird

   a quick nibble

       a sniff for danger

           nibble again

Oh that these crumbs would go on forever

   but the light brightens

   color creeps in

   brushes against her flank

her edges become distinct

   and she disappears.

String Figures

what do you do when you want to learn something

                and there is no one to teach you?

I remember from the grainy shadows of my youth

two girls passing a string back and forth

                a string formed in changing patterns, cat’s cradle.

 the cavernous anthropology section of the university library

                row upon row, stack upon stack

                I run my finger along the book bindings

                not looking down I stumble

                reach out for support

                grab a book as I fall

“Aboriginal String Figures and How to Make Them”

That book became my teacher

I tie a length of string together

and go through page by page

                “Jacob’s Ladder”

                “Apache Door”

                “Many Stars”

Follow the words

                do opening “A”

                step one

                step two

                drop the string off the little finger

                insert the thumb

                now do a Navajo Leap

So easy, but then I get to step five and I have to turn the page

                I look at the book

                then at my hands

                the tangle of string trying to make a getaway

                open my mouth

                stick out my tongue

                and go onto step six.

Haiku 1

Quiet evening

just me and

the mosquito

Bird Watching

The song of the singing bird

       directly over our heads

we arch our backs and squint

lean away from the horizon of reference

       and enter another world.

You jump and point – there! there!

       I stand at your back

       follow your arm, your finger

and there among the swaying leaves

       out on a branch

a gray breast of feathers

       covers tiny pulsing lungs.

The song begins again

       and then from a distance

       comes a faint answer

the breast swells and flutters.

We grab our book

search for a name for this

       but only find white pages

       covered with black marks.