ODE TO NERUDA
You have gifted the world with your being
and your words the fruits of your being
You have seen the mother and the lover
in the sea tides rocking rhyme
In the flowers of her hair
in your politics of care
You remind us of the role of all poets
to open and meet the world naked
To perceive the world naked
to receive the world naked
To sing the world naked
naked as your hand
SUNDAY AFTERNOON
It was a Sunday afternoon about a year ago today
I couldn’t sit, I couldn’t stand I just knew I couldn’t stay
So I took off for Toronto fifteen hundred miles away
Two days of boring meetings,
couldn’t stand to have one more
didn’t know where I needed to be
but it wasn’t here I knew for sure
So I grabbed a train to Windsor
and Detroit which lies next door
Outside spring was springing and calling more and more
and I’d get to see some country that I’d never seen before
Oh, the sheep were soft upon the land
and there was magic in the day
as I sipped my rum and cola
and rhymed couplets all the way
Checked in on Wednesday, wondering what to do
maybe I could try to call a good old friend or two
There was a man I’d met in Banff
just three weeks before
a man of love and wisdom
that I’d like to see once more
And a lady of my poems
that I’d seen just twice before
thirty minutes in an airport
and two hours on the shore
He was busy in a meeting she answered on first try
she had booked off work without knowing why
And when I told her that I was in her town
she said “I’ve got a story and I’ll be right down”
It seems that her grand dad
who had raised her as a child
had died not long ago
and the grief had drove her wild
The family all were fighting for the pennies on his eyes
and there was no one there to hear her heartfelt cries
So she ran from that hospital not knowing what to do
and stood on the highest hill alone in a sky of blue
And loudly called my name
“Please come, please, I need you”
When I asked had she made this cry
and had I come real soon
“Oh it wasn’t very long ago
just Sunday afternoon”
SMALL TOWN – GRADE SEVEN
In a town of six or seven hundred
you get a cross section of the country
One classmate’s father’s suicide with shotgun
splattered walls
One boy my age, drowned
in an upturned truck in a muddy ditch
One with leukemia, white as the snow
One redhead, Leslie French, as beautiful and
mysterious as the language
One blonde, Shirley Long, to long for
She’s only interested in grade 9 boys
One bruised heart
Not yet hard enough to be broken
OUT OF THE NEST
(for Carolyn going away to college)
You have the soul of a bird
It’s so joyful, light and fair
and now it’s flying to a world
that the frightened people share
And I pray you safe
when they see you there
Drawing water from mirages
For the flowers
round your castles in the air
OH TO NERUDA
Oh Pablo you rise up
from a land, long as a woman’s back
And you have loved your land
as you would love a woman
as you have loved women as you loved
your land
Every rock and shoal of their coastlines
every mood of their tides
You have caressed them
with your mind and your heart
and your hands
And have received the treasures
that must
always rise up
from their endless depths
to meet such a touch
EAGLE ON THE MOON
When the Eagle lands on the moon
the Indian will come back
into his power
When the mother is in pain
the children who never forgot
will remind
They will have the medicine
to heal her wounds
They will sit with her while
strength returns
And the children who forgot
will remember
and bring flowers
SEPTEMBER 1986
I’d love to share my southern friends
the northern lights tonight
as they shimmer and they flow
in a dance of pure delight
A thousand miles of motion
at a hundred miles a minute
with every color of the rainbow
shading in and out within it
A rainbow just above my head
but a rainbow now set free
where greens, and blues, and pinks
can each take a solo spree
Then melt into the whole again
and softly fading fly
to white light and to rest
against a moonlit sky
While I in love’s sweet afterglow
wish all my loves this love could know
ALBERTA AIR
(a song still waiting for the music)
Alberta air, Alberta air
You’ve gotta breathe
that good Alberta air
It rolls in over the mountains
it rolls out over the plains
it smells of age old glaciers
and brand new gentle rains
It’ll cleanse your heart of worries
and wash your soul of pains
for there’s a world of love and kindness there
feel it blowing through your hair
Alberta air, Alberta air
REQUIEM
“There is nothing sad about an empty shell.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupery The Little Prince
My
poetry
is the shell
I leave you now.
It’s spiralled substance
all I’ve known of life and love.
See how it winds, and ever opens
stained with all the colors of my growth
and every gift and every touch of all of you and more
Hold it to your ear
you may hear the ocean
FOR THE POETRY
The ups and downs of loving you
may grind me up before we’re through
And my friends see a victim, namely me
but then again it just might be
that I’m only in it
for the poetry