Watching Bees

come down to the clover
with your bumblebee memory
and sip the purple blooms

come down to the clover
with your bristles and buzz
and heal a world that cannot be won

Dandelions

my father paid us boys
twenty-five cents a bucket
to pull them plenty
and now the neighbours are out
with their stomping tools
sucking them out by the roots

and of course you cannot forget
the careless old fools with their bottles
of dreadful herbicide, on their knees
along the sidewalks

to call them weeds is an error,
outrageously human - much maligned
and I'll never know why

to see them out on my lawn
like yellow stars against
the green firmament,
and later the tall puffs of them
light as air

Saskatoon Berry

All bloom now, arriving like new snow
and a surprising sweetness
carried on the valley wind

I feel all right when the flowers come,
a certain spring in the green hills
They know that I count on them,
their radiant light after a long sleep

They never fail, so patient
for the sun and eager for the bees
to plant the summer fruit

The blossoms will fall in a few days,

absorbed into memory, these passing things

that hold up my world

Stairway

what is my music - but a driving rhythm,
the timeless imprint of a singular moment when a song,
a band spoke my name, called me out to hear
Dazed and Confused, and a man possessed
with an incurable guitar, the thunder of drums
and that wailing on centre stage
that led me away from everything else, saved me
from the ordinary, made me want to be more,
kept me stretching, longing, moving,
always the music with me, never deviating
as they grew older, grey and wrinkled,
beautiful men who understand the full glory
of their history etched in the hearts of boys
now aging with them

The Deep

a wilderness vision shouts

from the marrow of a man,

carries a message of himself

into the mountains

and into the deep

listen to the life

murmuring at your feet,

there are no possessions

into the mountains

and into the deep

not a thing to own

but a purpose, a will

and a song

into the mountains

and into the deep

Icefall

The hard colour,

ribs of slow shivering

and glacial stone

It does not  move,

such a still and unshakable presence

as if time rested a while,

a breath to take in winter

It is unmoving for the eyes,

for the senses that become ice-bound

and arctic

I could not move my boreal limbs,

no will to look away

It wanted me to know its presence,

its moment

But how could that be?

And then the ice broke away above me,

fell, tumbling shards – a sound of beads

on a tile floor

Then I knew what is existence,

what is a moment

Nothing lasts - snowflakes die in the wet streets

and the sun bursts above the horizon

 in a singular instant for Chris Hadfield

above the Earth

Nothing lasts

Nothing lasts but the awareness

of ice and the thawing days

January

for Mark



All is raw and cold slices,

uphill against a distant sun

There is no respite from the pagan dark

but the seeker will not be idle

I have found the secrets

in the coastal gardens, snowdrops

shivering in their daring blooms

and flowering cherries undaunted

and reckless pink

I know where they are, old friends,

 hazel with its yellow tassles

 and nearby the wooly grey heads

of willow inform the waxing days

You see, there is life, ever present

pushing a common will

We are the steady ones born under

a heralding spring, early perhaps,

but someone  has to break the good news