No Ordinary Waters: Canoe Poems from a Strange Mind
Lenny Everson
No Ordinary Waters:
Canoe Poems from a Strange Mind
By Lenny Everson
rev 1
For Dianne, my paddle-partner
Copyright Lenny Everson 2011
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Cover picture by Dianne Everson
****
Chapter 1
Strange Craft Observed
They came, it is said, in finely-made craft
To the old stone circle, the old place
Witnesses said they seemed to conform to the standard
Body type of such aliens.
It was broad daylight.
That, too seems to be a common factor in these visits.
As was their custom they made noise continuously,
While some walked in circles.
Bluejay assumed they were marking territory
But this seems unlikely, now, as does the theory
About mating dances.
Mostly, they ate packaged alien food - they seem unable
To process local foods, except berries and fish.
(Squirrel is grateful for that.)
Witnesses say they dismembered and ate four fish.
Oddly, they kept only the
Muscle tissue
Using a fire to partially digest it
Before eating it.
We are told they departed as they came,
Noisy beings in silent craft
Leaving only trampled grasses and
A lingering odor of strangeness.
****
Cosmic Shoes
Lower your hood
Search the skies
For intent
And old brown eyes
Moses wandered
Goats, tents
Without the eyes
What made sense?
Unless it's true
Someone sees
Why the birds
And fallen trees?
Morning campsite
Tents, canoes
Clouds are dust
From cosmic shoes
****
Chapter 2
Canoes Like Rocks
The first thing you need to know about canoes is they like rocks
I mean it. They like rocks.
Sharp ridges, blunt stones, dirty-rotten sub-surface sunkers, drop-dead cliffsides and coldgreen granite blocks
They like rocks
Canoes can’t be trusted except well away from the bumps and grinds
That’s why you bring a paddle
The stupid things make a beelined deadeyed path to any rock it finds
A shallow river is a nonstop thousandstroke battle
You can never let them run, drift, or skitter along
A moment-by-moment need is the gentle persuasion of a pry or a reach
You must understand this. Maybe they have itchy backsides;
A canoe can find the only rock on a five-mile sand beach
Like whales to the shore, men to their myths, ivy to the elm
They’re pilgrims to the nearest attainable knocks
In an eddy they challenge your rights to the helm
Canoes
like
rocks
****
The Canoe is a Dark Form by the Shore
My bones chill
At evening dark
As shadows crawl
Across the park
Darkness brings
New rules, laws
Enforced by stealth
And ivory claws
In the night's
Endless deep
We hide by fire
And escape in sleep
But in the tent
We shift, in dream
Half aware
Of a primal scream
****
Chapter 3
Dust
The magic days are over
Our gypsy tents are gone
Campsite and misty lakes
Are silent in the dawn
All friends of mine are gone to sleep
Or lost in distant dreams
The world is not, it never was
More than what it seems
The magic days are over
The firepits lined with rust
And questions asked when I was born
Are answered, now, with dust.
****
Against the Fall of Night
The measured heart
Of the planet beats
Time is a tide
That never retreats
On Buzzard Lake
In the curling noon
The world turns
Too late, too soon
I am a son
Of the very last day
Carefully I threw
It all away
You, a daughter
Of worn brown rock
Casually drowning
Grandfather clock
The lake is shameless
In wind and light
We paddle against
The fall of night
****
Chapter 4
Dandelion
On favored ground, the aspens grow
Strangling out the weeds below
The exist, or die, as best they can
Without the benefit of plan
Seeds from dandelion blow
Caught by fickle winds, I know
But I choose my place to spend the night
Logic shows which ground is right
I’m on my way to Triangle Lake
Well aware of the route I take
I’ve counted every gram and can
For I - well - I’m a thorough man
Oh, I think, when I’ve done my route
If someone were to puzzle it out
This September excursion would seem, at best
Another seed, not yet at rest
****
I am Darkness, Passing By
Life is full of rocks,
And paddling for truth, I
For I have loved water more
Than hard-packed road
And every river takes
Me closer to a destination
I cannot name
Bays more than parking lots
And rivers more than trees
There is not in this world a thing
More nearly alive than water
The river is a wind
Thick and full of bassbirds
Cruising slowly
In this atmosphere
I am a dark cloud
To the fish
****
Chapter 5
Sparks Like Stars in the Night
From space, you’d see the ragged line of dusk
Sweep Pacific islands into dark
And in the midnight blackness, too small to see
My campfire makes a tiny, warming spark
The flame leaps up, blinding me a bit
The trees grown still, the branches silhouette
The canopy of slowly turning stars
And catch the moon within a sliding net
The dawn’s over Africa, still hours away
Beyond the beached canoe, two loons complain
They pause to let Andromeda clear the hill
And carelessly disturb the velvet lake again
This September night, below the speckled dark
Of seas of stars and endless deeps of sky
I poke the fire and listen to the lake r />
And sparks drift upward, and galaxies slide by
****
Had Jesus Canoed
Had Jesus canoed
This northern lake
What strange routes
Would history take
Had he owned
A red canoe
Every pope
Would have one, too
Paddling pilgrims
Would come to gawk
At Michelangelo's God
Painted on rock
Cathedral walls
Would be green, and sway
With sunlight blessing
All who pray
****
Chapter 6
My River
All that I have ever done
Is lost in endless river run
And all that I would ever be
Moves, stubbornly, to the sea
When I’ve had too much of if and when
And the nattering of people who ought to know
I look for the peace of turn and flow
And move with the river, my river, again
When too many choices surround my brain
Touching the currents redeems my mind
Straightens my kinks where the smooth waters wind
And I launch a canoe on my river again
I gather treasures from the old canoe
Some well-known shores, one favorite tree
So the river becomes a part of me
But I am part of this river, too
All that I have ever done
Is lost in endless river run
All that I would ever be
Is part of my river’s mystery
****
Some Weekends
Perhaps the snaking bowline
Slithered off the docks
Perhaps the Sunday morning
Was plagued with slippery rocks
The camera decided
To photograph the fishes
They celebrated the arrival
Of all our sooty dishes
Now the growing thunderheads
Turned the waters dim
Two camped-out blots of fly-food
Learned again to swim
Finally came catastrophe
In the tumbling of the sky
With the rolling blackness
Mama nature whispered, "Goodbye!"
****
Chapter 7
Forgive Me
Forgive me, I was born
Where cries of loon are torn
From the dark heart of the lakes
Onshore, crows fly black
Calling for sacrifices, but I lack
The certainty that data makes
Forgive me, I have been
Only what I seemed
Hell-bent
In a dew-wet tent
I've let out howls
That shook the owls
When they found out what I meant
Pour coffee on the ground
Pull the canoe around
Stir the ashes into dust
I do what I must
Forgive me, for I am I
****
Surely I Am No Ordinary Man
These are no ordinary waters,
They are wild, they all
Shelter fish
These are no ordinary rivers, underneath
Are mysteries of bass, wisdoms of carp
And lots of places to hide
These are no ordinary lakes, inside
Such boundaries are ebbs and flows
Of smell and pulse and cold, cold deeps
These are no ordinary creeks
Every one dances with life and never
Is the same ten feet downstream
These are no ordinary waters, look
Deep into any and when the movement slows
I see
Me
****
Chapter 8
When the Ripples Settle
Why this day
And where has it gone
When the ripples settle
And the moon comes over
The hogback hill?
Why a blue canoe
Scattering brown carp in a small river
Small as the vein
The prodigal sun
Burning overhead
My hand cold with water
Running down the paddle
And why is the marsh
Empty of redwings
The woven nests
Swaying
In the wind
From the north
The river goes clear in fall
Goldenrod goldenroad the hills
Rolls of hay freckle the fields
Why this day
And where has it gone
When the ripples settle
And the moon comes over
The hogback hill?
****
When They Ask
When they ask, “Did he truly live?”
Say I canoed rivers
To the edge of my dreams
Say I knew what the morning was
The light through the woods
The dew heavy on the tent
Say I came to each river bend
With anticipation
Almost greed
Someday, when they ask, “Did he truly live?”
Say, “There were a few rivers
A few routes in June
That made his life a poem.”
****
Chapter 9
Where Pines Touch The Stars
On the ridges, the old pines are touching the stars
Sifting the galaxies, tickling Mars
Long after fire-out, at the edge of the lake
I watch the path their silhouettes take
Late at night, the small talk grows thin
The campfire is doused, and the dark washes in
I find a sheltered place down by the shore
To watch the old pines scrape the cosmos once more
Down here, in new forest, in the slow growth of wood
Our tents crowd where the shanties once stood
In the change of the seasons, in the movement of sky
The old pines watch the decades slide by
The waves slap steadily on the island’s rock
The tents are full of shuffling and talk
The canoes are mounds of silence and dark
An owl hoots softly, somewhere in the park
Long after fire-out, at the edge of the lake
My eyes trace the lines that silhouettes make
Sifting the galaxies, tickling Mars
After midnight, out here, where pines touch the stars.
****
Eulogy
My last weekend is over
My last campfire is cold
But spared, a least, a few portages
On the trail of growing old
Sometime when the canoes are beached
And shadows walk the lake
Remember me for the life I lived
The routes I chose to take
I was born to run those rivers
That turned towards my dreams
Too often forcing passage down
Narrow, log-blocked streams
In a land where rivers run
Toward the far-off sea
I found love and shared a passage
With some who cared for me
Stir the campfire proudly
Beside the rocky shore
Remember a man who loved the waters
A poet who is no more
Recite, perhaps a line or two
Against the falling dark
Make them a part of the winds of night
Like each dancing, fading spark
My maps are packed away, now
The canoes, still and dry
Oh, keep this world beautiful
For travelers such as I.
*** END ***
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