weight of bone, muscle and organ, escape you, to rise up, to loft,
till you are all breath filling the room, rising, escaping the white, the white
sheets, airborne, taken in a gust of wind and unbridled ponies, let the ponies
out, I would open that gate if I could find it, if there was one
to let you go, to drift up into, out, out
of this experiment into the dome of all breath and wind and
reappear in the sound of the first year’s thunder with
Chigayow cutting the clouds over your eyes expanding, wafting, wings
of a bird over fields, fat ponies, spruce, birch and poplar, circling
wider than that tight square sanitized whiteness
you breathe in, if you could just stop breathing you could
escape, go anywhere, blow, tumble in the prairie grass,
bloom in the face of crocuses
appear in the smell of cedar dust off a saw
in the smell of thick leather
in the whistling sounds of the trees
in the far-off sound of a chainsaw or someone chopping wood
in the smooth curve of a felt hat, in unbridled ponies
THE PAY WICKETS
to my dear papa
in sanitized gown between
hard sheets buried
in a codeine sleep
dear papa, I know
you’d rather be betting #3 and #7
in the Quinella and you’d rather
be dressing in leather
belt and boots, tailored, rather be
choosing your hat and bolo tie
the one you braided and cut antler bone to finish
papa, you’d be betting #3 and #7 in the tenth, no doubt, and
making a big-hearted bet, more than your hands could hold
anyway, you’d bet, testing the odds, once more
just one more time before
the wickets closed, the pay
wickets closed
WHAT MORE THAN DANCE
* * *
WHAT MORE THAN DANCE
what more than dance could hold the frame
that threatens to fall and break the kiss
of foot and floor, in time with your partner
what more than chance could draw out space to its breaking then
back to close, what more than dance
could make your body answer
questions you had been asking all your still life,
what more than dance could make you come
to your senses about where and how hard
your foot falls between starting and stopping
what more than push and pull, this
symbiotic rumba of sorts, what more and
all the more reason to
dance a jig, find your own step between
fiddle and bow and floorboard
what more calls your name, makes you trust
another will know the step and won’t let go
round and round till the dance is done
what more than dance could make you lean to another
as if you’d been leaning that way all your life
between yours and that other space,
the steps you learned as a girl to follow
instead of lead
‘Oh, you knew how, you just didn’t
for fear of having to answer’
what more than dance could make you climb
out of your darkness into another’s so you could
find your own light, what more could make you
answer, set you cold in bright light and
let you step out through it all
BEYOND RECOGNITION
now when you stand at
my bedroom door
you are real
only now
it is odd
you stand there
at all
one year past thirteen
one chilling year
past six of despair
you smile
and I feel
I have never seen you
smile before
AS IF I WERE THEIR SUN
the shrimp-coloured gladioli
you push at me,
unabashedly,
through the door
take my breath away and
remind me of your mutability
under protective crust,
their shells open
and then I know why
I accept: their sweet tissue
unfolding,
as if I were their sun
HORSEFLY BLUE
“. . . d’ you believe in god?” I ask
he says, he “doesn’t
know,
care”
“but,” I say
“can’t you see that this sky
is the colour of the Greek Mediterranean,
and won’t last?”
although I’ve never seen the Mediterranean
I have faith
“can’t you see that this light,”
“what light?” he says
is the same as all those other afternoons when
the light was receding like
our hairlines, when it shone through
our winter skin and we
awoke from a long nap and
it was light all the time we were sleeping?
“doesn’t this light remind you of all those other times
you looked up from your reading
and were expecting to see
change and nothing
did change except the way
you looked, the way you met the light,
greeted it at the door as a friend
or smiled at it from a distance as your lover?
“can’t you see that the sky is
horsefly blue?
I swear I’ve seen this light before;
before I was born,
I knew the colour of this sky.
When I was five
the yard I played in
had a sky this colour,” I say
“what colour?” he says.
SPINELESS
the welcome image of you
is gone; the unwelcome
image of me is still here
big, loud and bitching.
bigger still are my myths,
the ones I threaten your small frightened frame
of mind with
now finally shrunken to
life-size.
all you’ve heard are lies.
and hear me
bigger than life
too damn wise and smiling
bitch of the North
colder than Jasper and 101st.
in a minus-forty wind
waiting for a bus
nose dripping
short a quarter
and too mute to ask for change.
BLUE SKY POKES
blue sky pokes through my curtain
like bluebells in the grass
and I look into your endless eyes
and see
that you know
all the things I’ll ever say
or do
to hurt you
before I do.
you know
even before I do
how imperfect
I am
how human error
touches your gentle skin
one fine membrane
by membrane
and you in your rough-hewn face and porcelain eyes
forgive again and again and again.
WHEN YOU WALK THROUGH MY DOOR
now I know
now I know why
sounds are born from the belly
when death and birth join hands
I am alone but held by the heat.
I am drawn to you I’m scared I want to cry out
in agony of losses. a sound collects in m
y throat
like rain in clay pots, bursting in movement and sound.
let there be sound of death and birth at the same time.
the hot wind licks my body, licks
the rustling grasses on the hill where I watch you drift by
I want to hold you the way the swelter holds me.
the moss-green bush,
the muddy green river meet at the edge.
and I want
to reach out and make love to it
like I want
to reach out and make love to you
when you walk through my door.
WILD BERRIES
when I watch you move
it’s as if
my eyes are old hands
uncovering and furtively picking
wild berries
before they fall
it’s as if
I am parched
and you are water
and my eyes drink
till I am quenched
by your smooth taut skin
it’s as if
you are a gift I open
my eyes long fingers
slowly untying a thin ribbon
that slips
beneath crisp paper,
smoothed out
by one long slow glance
A HARD BED TO LIE IN
a hard night, slept up against a rock face on the side where my mortality looms like a mountain, leaving my life where it is on an edge looking down,
tempted to jump, sprout wings as fantastic as the married arms that would catch me if I leapt
I could have easily been a doe on a highway – you a driver, your wife beside you sleeping,
me grazing, ruminating the coarse clover, wet blades a mixture of green desire and
regret that I didn’t accept the offer even though
a gold band shone like a beacon, to ward off prey – not to be mistaken for a jacklight,
just a doe, a stretch of road, high beams
headlights, your eyes,
legs petrified at the speed of light, a flash burn, flare
transfixed by the jacklight and the daylight of the woman who moves touching you with her mouth of the moist night,
the night of my turning, aching, having to disclose your desire for me, turning to yet another confession in my bed, another crease,
the safe imagined hand crosses my breast to my waist, pubic bone and thigh, turns to another imagined and perfect clean slice of a meeting, the one where I would have met you years ago when you were an open space, a meadow to be walked through at high altitudes
and the nights turning
down, wears out
trust in my age, that
flat sheets and a hard bed will not forgive.
TALKING ON STONE
pull me to the place
of talking on stone,
pull me to talking
on stone, on rock, remembering
not your face or figure, your
breath’s weight on my outer layer
of dust, common layer
of dust, ash, ochre, blood,
paint, draws us to the space, to the
heat, we are drawn to the line, common line
of talking on stone.
RECOVERY
it may be too deep
for you to enter now
you can enter slowly
you know
you enter by breathing in deep
and when you breathe out
you’re inside
a tree branching out
your palms running up
the inside of trunks
into limbs that reach
for spring air and hope
spreading fingers that point
into leaves
blades of grass
now fingers running through
black
moist
edible
earth
that you inhale and enter birth
SPRING BREATHING
you’re ready,
that even though
you’re silent,
you’re ready,
that even though
you’re still,
you’ve changed
and that even though
you’re reticent,
you’re
resolute
like the grandfathers.
and I go on moving
ashamed
for I know
I have lost
the meaning of your signs
and the trust
in your breathing
BREAKFAST OF THE SPIRIT
things that are
like nothing else is,
familiar as the smell of your own scent
taste of your own skin
sight of your own body
familiar as the force of spring water,
the sound of chickadees
in a stand of mute spruce
familiar as the ripple in your throat
waiting for your voice to return
from the sealed-off jars of memory
released now to feast on the preserves
after you’ve slept so long
tasted now, at the celebratory breakfast of your awakening.
A BOWL OF SMOOTH BROWN WOOD
a chant, a chant of movement, a movement chant, holding light and letting go, gathering again, garnering into self, gathering flowers in a field, sweeping them into the cave of the belly, holding them vase-like, gently cradling their stems, petals, roots in the palms of several hands, cradling, suspended in the space between, in the moment between earth and body, passing light from the fingers outstretched into the room saved for our opening, our tender dangerous opening, woman’s space, space free of rule or sin, free to move, thrust out and back and around without censor, without viewer except the mind’s eye of the wise woman, the compassionate woman inside who loves the gentle swish of her womb in hips free of scrutiny
a chant, a movement chant, chain of movements linked to breath and light and sweep and flick of letting go, pulling back to pulling into the round, space in the curve of, the curl of your belly bow, in the curl of your body-belly, arms and legs, a bowl of smooth brown wood, older than the memory of itself, itself changing, recomposing, petals drop to allow the stamen / stamina to fill out space in the positive
pulling back to pulling round space in the curl of the body-belly, arms and legs curve a bowl of smooth brown wood, older than the memory of itself, the memory of itself changing
YOU ONLY KNOW AFTER
open door, opening wider to warm air, a sound so calm it opens your pores, skin pours out into light, sun falling on the warm last day
there is something thankful about events that take place without plan, without thought of just opens like a letter from a deep friend, opens like your eyes every morning, like a curtain unfolding the day and you only think of it as you lift the cup of coffee to your lips, as you slow your steps at a corner, you only know you’ve changed after, after you turn off the light and you find yourself back in bed, in your familiar hollow
or after you sit quiet and know that something inside has after walking down the same street you’ve walked countless times only this time tracing every line in the sidewalk, every reflection, every angle of the glass in the store window is new, every face profound and familiar
after the voices inside retire, after they have stopped talking, after they listen, when they finally hear the sound between after they go quiet and turn their heads to the sound that suspends you over the same ground you stepped before, over the same path and wooden steps you sounded down before
after passing through the same door to your home, after the song is over you hear it hanging in the air like clothes on a line
MY MOTHER’S ARMS
gentle giant in my head
warm me.
gentle giant in my bed
; soothe me,
bathe me in love,
in light from your eyes
warm as my mother’s eyes at night
in sight of birch trees
young and white
as I am old
in my mother’s arms.
GUILT IS AN EROSION
of self, a cleansing
a rock in a slide
ground down
wedged, crushed, scraped
against rock
against ice
a filing
a polishing
what remains is cold
black shiny
granite
perfect palm size
NOT JUST A PLATFORM FOR MY DANCE
this land is not
just a place to set my house my car my fence
this land is not
just a plot to bury my dead my seed
this land is
my tongue my eyes my mouth
this headstrong grass and relenting willow
these flat-footed fields and applauding leaves
these frank winds and electric sky
are my prayer
they are my medicine
and they become my song
this land is not
just a platform for my dance
ONE DAY IN MAY
a photographer exposed you