and nail of this splintered wreck.
Jesus I chant to the bucket,
Christ to the empty bucket,
and lean on the broken door
as contrails pierce the pure world
with feathers as frail as glass.
My daughter’s eyes are dull; the song
all her grandmothers’ ghosts keen
by the well is true; the leap
over Sharp Mountain is miles deep.
Now the bride-wind blows her word
to God and winter and spring her
lover and frost that won’t last.
Picker’s Sons
1.
Those we loved are dead
and not as small as when we
buried them, but loud
and everywhere. See? Grandma
in the roofless hall leans on
her cane and asks do
we know what we’re at, letting
in all that cold air
and birds, spring rain and dirty
critters? Don’t these rough rafters
on night sky describe
the wrecked hull of a ship sunk
deep beyond human
help or hope, lost with all hands?
So I raise my head and look
up past her thin face
at the moon, a herring school,
frozen silver cloud,
mandala that will crack, bust
to fragments. Soon as we shake
hands and start again
life will rain down on us and
death will be precious.
Buddy, we were never seen.
I want you to look at me.
2.
No. I’m shouldered out
across the border of your
country and maybe
gonna pounce on such a dish
as pulled sinew, white bones, crows.
Huddle over down
the treeline house now there is
nothing left but time
to cut firewood, fish the bay.
For me the foghorn is all.
My family’s left.
Gone the saltlick calves learn to
want. Your cows cry wolf
but wolves hunt what I know: that
those we love are dead as dirt.
3.
Sure, but remember
they kept us in golden corn,
spuds, rye, alfalfa.
In spring, though their names are gone,
crops still poke up through the weeds.
Remember the town
cousins who drove down to fuck
us in the hayloft
and smoke dope and hypnotize
the city lights till the barn
caught fire? They’re still
at it, letting the wind loose
and all the horses
and cows and swallows wheeling
over ash grey nests.
Buddy, they wear coats
in the rain, wait for the word.
Pop from his box shouts
a warning that has in it
nationality, not ours,
but if we listen
we might figure a new barn,
all fresh-cut wood filled
with yellow hay. In nation
dwells fire and fire’s end.
4.
A barn leaves no trace
once it and a year have burned,
only fireweed.
I orbit the treeline hut
working blind and led by crows,
your full moon running
out to tell me I have run
out of places, used
up wood and wasted what life
you can’t shepherd me across.
No more yours and mine.
No borders for owls to blur.
Nothing left but wind,
glints of sun on the freshet,
the night beacon’s quick thrust.
Hand
I don’t recognize
my own as my own because
an old man’s scrawl
as old as the hills
joining sky & field
can’t touch birds flying
above the roar of traffic
now the valley’s gone
new winter houses
delivered by men in trucks
throw bones at the sky
I take forever
to lace my shoes since fingers
forget all they are
assigned regardless
the birds – the time – infinite
tasks in a ghost wood
it takes forever
to uncloset what I need
for the outer cold
snowlight in the hall
through the open door a claw
poised to crack my skull
I held a brown bird
stunned by a summer window
the name escapes me
The Last House
North
sun on the willow
the woman carries the wash
over the grey dog
asleep by the open door
cliff swallows reclaim the line
years ago we chose
a red butter-soft puppy
who liked us & did
not pee all the long drive home
except when we stopped for gas
I led him gently
to the end of the pasture
& over the fence
to hack through ferns & deadfall
looking for a new way out
I courted island
& city women & once
left him on the boat
where he waited & waited
until everyone had gone
Sky
Elegy Eight
my hands on the steering wheel
her hands in the soil
night numbers flash slim thighs
fingers pull wireworms from spuds
South
I touch alder buds
& fill the bird feeder
transplant iris corms
I’ve immigrated this deep
sold three houses one condo
cleared a drainage ditch
of clay silt & hurt my back
same year-end I smashed
the glass because she wanted
to fuck the Maritimer
life’s done what I said
now I must transform the blood
in my heart and veins
blood of past relationships
sun sinks beneath the swamp
machinery noise
swallows the music that still
means something still yes
to who will say yes heart wide
for the sea wave & tide
but call this heart cave
let current fill rock & still
my cock’s as silly
as a penguin with tennis elbow
trying hard to fly
Antarctic Ocean
finish the loose ends won’t you
forget the ice cubes
& that big hole in the sky
& all those stars I will change
East
a crazy man loose
in the valley steals seven
eggs from a hay bale
then beats a girl on the road
threatens to shoot her all day
blunders windy hills
(we hear him spending ammo)
running deer & descends
by night to steal a rowboat
& goes wild on the next island
the girl visits me
(her face is blue one eye closed)
wearing a gold dress
no one is guilty she says
no one person is to blame
we smoke cigarettes
& hold hands there’s only room
for one here she says
we look out
of the windows
at the strangeness of the world
we drink retsina
her small body fills the place
I watch her all night
carefully no plans no deal
sleep already full of prey
the fox leaps so there’s
still time for everything
time’s mystery fox-
glove red-tailed hawk in the air
mouse in the tall yellow grass
Earth
saw a fox curled stiff
by the London-Brighton tracks
saw a red fox sniff
a cornfield down a roly-
poly Devon hill saw a fox
leap into highway
traffic south of Vancouver leap
through metal
the dense median
deep into greener traffic
West
I’m borrowing this
body I need to transform
again the feeling
in the open outhouse wet
dog snug between my knees
how much longer till
my life breaks through this tangle
or my cards max out
October zaps the trees red
maples ruddy the wet dog
tell me what to do
I feel the tenant burning
tell me anything
wisdom takes the green path
ghosts gather round the last house
this plywood hut
that smells of my own brave life
snags all the wide world
in my throat & I can’t breathe
maple leaves chase in frenzy
night & debt press
forward pitch me closer to
great difficulty
a grave behind the dug well
easy to lose one’s footing
Papa Chaos
Postcards
I don’t love you don’t
love you the way I used to
wish you were here
I like my penis
how fat & sturdy it feels
ripe bulrush bending
Night
terrible wind yet
under the house the mower drips
oil on a sand tray
so many dark clouds
rolling over our valley
turn every new leaf
first light on alders
dead before it hits the ground
peeps out of rain drops
such cool morning air
the Kiftsgate rose denuded
petals on the step
Hartland Dump
eagles flew through firs
as if the forest owned them
air looked like water
the tollman walked up
the giant hill of garbage
popped a pink umbrella
Dad said be careful
my finger went in the road
tar is poisonous
Trap
how full the world is
every night I set a trap
each morning check it
then one hot midnight
as I drift away to sleep
a grey mouse is caught
who belongs to me
the way dreams belong to slaves
& slaves to no one
when I’ve had my tea
fed the dog & showered we
ride to the bible camp
amid wet green ferns
dark mud & gaping caves
branches cross with light
setting her free
is setting my own heart free
both of us are lost
Pair
in a green barrow
in the little yard we built
the ducks swim circles
cayugas chasing
sunlight & flying water
the last day of spring
now the white duck rests
her head on the drake’s blue back
& lets him paddle
BBC World Service
let me hear a thrush
to know it’s all right weeping
birch catches street light
in the dusk windows
shadow boys fight shadow boys
what is this city?
blame & massacre
birds singing from Sri Lanka
the curtains part
a child is caught by
all that spins
all that gnashes
World Trade Centre
and again I pull
my finger from scalding tar
stick it in my mouth
while fierce sun burns him
black this man my dad and still
I have high blood pressure
two parts of one thought
fish eagles who will cross the field
as if the forest owns us?
who will hold whose hand
once the landfills fill
with land?
Wren
For Stephen G
What the sky interrupts is evidence
of what he can’t name
though naming may be evidence of sky.
On earth trees collide, wind pushes inland.
In the ICU
Stephen lies dying or changed. The wren floats
into space, as if life is too much to
live. As if leaves are
birds who fall, and we are best left alone.
Stephen cannot imagine the road west.
It gleams in the last
light through bare cottonwoods, quick slant of rain.
V
Courtyard
Middle Region
Mountains range the horizon. We commute
the coastal plain north, say no and no to
the radiant haze of burnt gasoline.
Ours. The bus driver rides the brake to shape
his timetable, but we can’t recognise
our stops because his time isn’t ours.
We close our eyes and follow the snowmelt
downhill, losing a little at each stream,
home at last, too tired to find the key,
so settle for alleys till they are full
of bodies, books sleeping with thin pages,
so frail the slight breeze mixes us up, so
his fury jackals against her sadness
and her nostalgia blooms and thickens
his regret and his nervousness ignites
her strength and the pages shred on chainlink
and we all arrive in the foothills as
bits of snow, bits of mist, and join with smoke
that coils from pits and timber piles serviced
by foreigners trying to burn the earth.
Courtyard
for Denise
A day of dogs when they stop the bombs.
Then leaflets, quiet. Birds outside
the window in the hedge. We know when
it’s time to go, to put on frailty
like a disguise until it mimics
the thin branching of time, the burn
of autumn before colours die and
days lie still, the same old door open
each midnight to Mum and Dad fighting,
their fight not ours. Autumn’s yellow
was not ours, nor were the blood red leaves,
and starlight fades as the day strengthens,
starlight that lit the river that
led us here and meanders toward
a future distance we measure now,
especially now, in every cell.
Nor was Christmas ours, and not houses
(though gardens were lovely), nor cars,
holidays, countryside, the sea, and
all those times we loved and were loved back,
the moment we made a child out of
almost nothing, what you came with
and I gave away, a child we don’t
kn
ow yet. We wait by shuttered cafés.
We wait with pigeons (who know to wait
patient as stars who wait for night).
We wait in the warm courtyard and scan
the wild stone hills above the crop line.
Leap
Okay. There’s a frog on the moon. The dwarf
hatches when the faulty street light blazes.