Racer

 

Tell me something different

Tell me what the world has forgotten

Tell me where you have been, what secret

places touched your long and fluid belly,

what dark mysteries drew you to the hole

where I found you

 

But of course, I didn’t find you –

you allowed my presence so I could

look into your eyes and wonder how

the plates of your skin were constructed –

no welds that I could see

 

You allowed me your image, the one

I didn’t ask for, but the one you granted me

so that I might shout the glory of

of your yellow lightning

 

 

Winter Tree

walk in the cold stillness
where the white silence burns with memories
of frozen hands useless against zippers
and snow angels falling under our shadows

wander, recover simplicity and lay down
everything that doesn't matter,
make friends with the flickers drumming you home
and hear the one song in your weary head

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