The End of Summer

the grasshoppers are full of summer life

how suddenly
they give up
their limbs
to the hard beaks
of sparrows
who hastily
carry them away
like pale cigars

the starlings hunt them too

up in the green pyramidals,
stabbed to death
with able chisels

all these deaths
and no one weeps,
no mournful regrets or tributes

we save that
for our own kind it seems

why is that we deny
the many signs
of our own mortality
leaping willingly
across the sun baked lawns?

The Day of My Return

Do you know what the sea has done to me?
Some investment that I made, a promise to return

So many things have happened since then,
a life moving like a riddle and the small discoveries
only revealed looking back
That summer when I splashed in the salted pools
and plundered the beaches with pail and shovel,
bursting colours in a child's hands
My mother lost me one day so that
I would remember

Do you know what the sea has done to me?
A love of what is real, the tactile and the tasted

I knew to spit out the salt and bury my legs
in the wet density of endless sand.There are more stars
in the heavens, Carl Sagan once said
It is new every day, that is something,
life eager to begin again with its eternal blessing,
the briny organic and the table is set

Do you know what the sea has done to me?
The shattering of light on the black water

Precious stones without the hard matter,
how the dying sun pours its copper and gold
then flings it all against the sky
There is always passing-by gulls,
boats going here and there, countless epiphanies
when you can't see the bottom

Do you know what the sea had done to me?
Showing me the otter in Oak Bay

Its lifted head wanting me to see the glossy
stretch of him, as fluid as any stream
And the driftwood heaved and alone
has a memory of wooded hills and storms
I watched children poke a jellyfish
along the tideline, and the curious crows
not too far away knew better

Do you know what the sea has done to me?
It wanted me to go away so that I would love it more

Meadowhawk

a community in the tule
and rank grass
where the wetted spring
heaved you out

you inched up a stalk
to split and shiver,
concealed from the world
to dry your gauzy wings

and when you paused
to show me your
cherry eyes and perfection
you did not mind my scrutiny

you must have felt my shadow,
overheard a father tell his son
about the truth
and seamless beauty of unity

The Great Bear Rainforest

The sparrows in the garden
lift the day with their stories,
a poetic rising of the sun

And aspens in the chalky groves
speak to us with the slightest breeze,
a community of a thousand years

The rainforest drinks from the clouds
and the white bear sleeps in the shadows,
a visitor to our oldest dreams

Stones along the ancient shores
have a song of heavy notes,
an enduring murmur in the cool waters

A salted pool pulses like a beating heart
and children answer with their fingers,
a vital cleansing in the shells and shimmer

There is only the expression of the One Life
trusting the voices who know,
patient for our blessings and remembering

Forgiveness

there is the innocence of love,
white as a sheet pulled
from a sun-kissed line

and shades of misunderstanding
that begins as a bruise
then runs crimson from the tongue

know that what is true
has held every error that ever was
and released them like doves

Evening Grosbeak

you fell from the trees like ash,
tumbled down in your dappled suit
and knocked at my door

I heard your cheery petition,
smacking that beak like a castanet
and all of your fellows near
with their yellow caps tilted
to show me that one hungry eye

you will ruin me with another bag of seeds,
hefting it out there in an unseasonable rain,
that dripping down my neck while you wait

the sparrows told me
that you are only passing through,
filling up for a flight north

shouldn't you have gone by now?

and they say that you have a reputation
for such things,
ransacking feeders up and down the valley

I wonder if you are alright,
that life is good and your undulating flight
will be there tomorrow

never mind about the seeds,
I have seen how the sun catches your girl
in the morning, a black white whir across the yard

Super Moon

I know its fat face, as round as my father's pancakes
bubbling with craters, open wounds

We all go a little nuts with it looming over
the rooftops working its ancient spells,

A woman knows such things when the tide
pulls her away from the shore

And men, we keep it deep down
until it loses its fullness

No one sees us shaving the ungodly hairs
that grew in the night