VIEW TO THE EAST
Reading haiku
in the limb veined dawn
I do not long for spring
Tag Archives: Winter
BIRCHES DISROBED
BIRCHES DISROBED
Birches disrobed
Weep in their nakedness
Pray for the snow
HOMESTEADER’S GRAVE
HOMESTEADER’S GRAVE
Homesteader’s grave
soft blanket of November snow
white on Gray’s Elegy
BREATHING IN WINTER
BREATHING IN WINTER
In Saskatchewan in winter
your breath is certainly plain to see
And while I don’t actually believe the story
that you can warm it in a frying pan
and hear all the words again
I can’t help thinking how nice it would be
if I could just inhale really, really hard
And get back that awful dumb thing
I said to you this morning
AFTER THE CHRISTMAS PARTY
AFTER THE CHRISTMAS PARTY
Antifreeze or whisky
too much or too little
and you’re in trouble
This is the scene
that you would see
if the swirling snow
would let you
A young man
in an old Fork truck
heading West at
three miles an hour
Driver’s window open
arm extended full length
Mittened hand holding
twelve volt spotlight
beam groping the ridge
along the gravelled lane
Two feet from death on one side
ten on the other, and happy
A PICTURE POEM
A PICTURE POEM
Mid afternoon, mid December
American Airlines from Dallas
drops into Calgary with the snow
Soft flakes fall as we rent the car
stop as we drive north into
an Ansel Adams world
Sky pillowed gray on gray
Houses and barns and bales
covered in white powder
Trees all a-bloom with hoary frost
both sides of the coal black road
For the next hour
any picture we take with color film
would still come out black and white
Until we top the overpass and see from a
horizon that was not a horizon
the rising of a Mandarin Orange moon