In search…

An empty space with vague contours I seek to fill inside myself,
I scour the world to find the puzzle piece that fits and see:

A face in the sky,
A light fresh breeze that swirls the leaves into eyes.
Cheeks are formed where clouds collide.
The shimmering heat rises into a smile,
The red and pink horizon like elongated lips.

The clear and shifting, the invisible made visible
Avoids a caress by letting it pass through.
Impossible to seize and hold,
She flows where she will
And dissolves with a laugh in the turning of the spheres

To reveal a face of water,
The swift current and its foam over rocks.
The dark deep mere
Where nothing stirs
Not even a ripple.

The sea and ocean whose waves
Evolve from blue to green to dark gray slate.
She cannot help but change her mood
And slips through the fingers
Leaving only her encompassing wetness.

The fiery sun reflects in the flood
Her face of burning fire
The passion of her hot embrace
That cools to austere reflected white
Of the watchful moon.

The red glow of lava
And of embers in the woodstove
Show forth the hidden desire barely contained
By her consumption of wood and rock,
Which over time leave only ash and earth,

Leaving the traces of a face of soil and mud
The deep impressions of footsteps
And the former beds of rivers,
The traces of her tears
Over dying life, the end of mortals.

She is the bed on which lie
All living things,
Both rooted and swarming.
She accepts all into her bosom
And shapes them into herself.

Underneath the layers I pass,
Each face but a veil over what is true.
And what shall lie beneath these many covers?
I descend yet am not sure of any ending.

Wolf Moon

The deep cold pierced me with sharp icicles.
Awake, I awoke still more
As the warmth of the car disgorged me on the driveway.

The knees buckle, the shoulder remembers its aches
The tickling weakness about the hips throbs
And the brain is hazy from the leftovers of infection.

All was black but for crispy snow, iced onto the pavement
Or where it was interrupted by street lamps
And a strange silver whiteness behind the garage.

I walked up the slippery slope and turned the corner.
The backyard lay under a sparkling cover,
Each snowflake capturing its bit of overwhelming moon.

White face burning in cold fire,
Its light everywhere in the twinkling blanket,
I was invaded by the many rays like darts

Whose tips slipped in to every nerve.
Stunned, I stood astonished at the aim of the huntress
The frozen goddess by whom I have been wounded.

The hooked barbs pull like tide
At the strings of my heart
Filling it with longing for what I cannot have.

The giant moon calls forth an echoing fire
In my own beating breast
As I reach for a distant face beyond my grasping.

I am riven by the howl of wanting,
The loneliness of being thrust by implacable fate
Towards whatever’s coming.

The illness mounts into my lungs
To make me cough and leave me gasping.
I am evolving.

But with skinless hands I reach for her
And hold her to my disappearing flesh.
A source of life and the opposite of diana.

Love brings me back from the future.
I tear my eyes from the biting lovely moon,
The strength of my hidden sun firms up my step.

I am walking home on a cold crisp night
Shielded from the hungry maw
By the thrumming star inside me.

I hear your voice in the sudden quiet.
Awake, I wake again to the end
Of wolfish yowling. I am alive. I still have hope.

Classical gas

An old Italian ship sitting in the bay
Below the ancient attic city
Clings to wavelets up and down,
Dipping deeper as water from the estuary
Emerges from the edges of the forest.
Floating freely on a surface flecked with gold,
Guided by the gliding current toward the hills,
Hull aglow with amber on the Ionian,
I lean on the wooden railing. I could jump,
Just let go and fall to unknown knowledge,
Knocking circles into cooling green blue liquid,
Like some random rock from a cliff at midnight
Making a silent splash in the here and now.
Nature’s cooling breeze awakes. My eyes come open.
On the nearer shore there are waving people,
Pulling us to land more quickly.
Quivering muscles strain and pulleys squeal with moving rope,
Rapidly we are tied to docks on shore.
Suddenly I see a movement from a tower
There. Soldiers have laid planks and come up.
Upon the deck they stand, shields and visors
Veined with bronze. “All hail,” says one who
Wears the captain’s marks, “A laden xebec!”
“Xenophon,” I say “of course, the hold is full, yes.
You were expecting something else? A bolt from Zeus?
Zigzag across the sea I’ve come to you.
Yonder is my home. I go on from here to Xanthus.”
Xenophon took off the helmet, smiled and winked.
“What cargo do you sell to us poor Greeks, Vitellius?”
Very quickly, amphors of wine and oil were unloaded.
Underneath the ship the waterline went down, the
Tops of our masts rose higher, the swirling seagulls
Soared across the darkening blue, a thickened line of red
Ran right across the cloudless heaven. The empty hold stood quiet.
Quavering voices fade. I seek my sleep in peace.
Perhaps the brilliant stars draw my soul from inside out,
Or other worlds call to me by what was once my outer name,
“Numa”, they whisper, “fill your hold and hoist your sails upon the masts.”
My men awake me with the dawn, and take on supplies as light
Loads up the skies. We take our leave, they treat us kindly.
Kissing the sea with its bow, our ship’s prow outward jutting,
Joints straining with the wind, we set a course toward the ancient Island,
Ithaca. I invoke, along with Zeus in heaven, Hermes
His messenger, Hera his holy wife and Poseidon, gods
Governing our daily fate upon the sea as we fly
Forward toward our next harbour where Odysseus, entombed,
Enwrapped in his shroud lies waiting, detained by death,
Deprived of any tricks to work his escape. He was clever,
Crooked was his thinking. Now he stretches straight, below.
Before us looms the coast. Once more we are arriving,
An old Italian ship, just sitting in the bay.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Until we reach the end of our epic mundane journey,
The fates determine our final destiny or doom.
We send again our sacrifice to Zeus.

Hamlet misremembr’d

Or be the nobler mind,
The arrows fortune take,
A troubles opposing.
To sleep and sleep
We heartache thousand
That heir a to-
To sleep perchance -
Ay rub that death
May we off coil us the makes.
So…
For bear and time
Wrong man’s pangs.
Love delay of the patient, the…
At what time might bare would?
To sweat weary that of death.
Country bourn returns will us.
Those have to we of does, of …
And native resolution o’er,
Pale thought of and this currents,
And name Soft The Nymph,
Orisons my remembr’d.

Alone and eyeless near Gaza

In the ocean there is a hunger for the desert,

A watery longing to be filled with sand

That flows as itself in waves

And carries travelers over buried monuments

And cities like Atlantis.

How deep are the dunes of Sahara?

They cover the coral reefs of older seas

And ride the ghosts of currents past

Impelled by wind across the open flats

To blow hot and grainy on the face of Ramses.

The hungry locusts descend like seagulls

Destroying fields and giving space to

Shifting pebbles, the home of scorpions,

The crawling dried out lobsters of the land,

That come to eat the flesh of carrion,

The rotting memory of pharaoh’s army

Covered once by overwhelming water

Now lulled by the cold night breezes

That gently stirs the bones of what once was

And whisks away the spirits of the past.

The ages of the armies swallowed up in dessicated earth

Lightly pass across his face.

The trail of motes is outlined

In their passage through the moon lit sky,

Dust to cosmic dust.

He sits on a hill in Negev,

Engulfed by stars,

All eye and eyeless.

The inside is out and the outside in,

One aware and all, and yet alone.

I lift up my arm and the bodiless sand

Sifts through the solid fingers of my hand.

My epic journey

In Winnipeg, wind went through me like I wasn’t there
And left only frozen fingers on my innards.
The sun, a pale reflection from the south, struck down hard,
The snowless landscape broke in shards to match my fragmented self.

The airplane flew over vast landscapes of pine and rock and lake;
The lonely north gave way to huddled towns and crowded cities in the south.
We landed late, the runway slick from last night’s sleet,
The open maw of metro waited to take me in.

In Toronto, tears trickled from my eyes like melted mist,
The clouds hung low and kissed the ground,
A fine spray spritzed the outlines of human figures,
Slogging through the slush and stagnant pools on dark cement.

Then the light of Chanukah and holiday and children singing
Pushed back the enclosing black,
A face of burning flame tore up the lightless curtain of the night
A fiery cloud to block relentless foes, a stay against eternal tick and tock.

Then the train rushed through the fields of South Ontario
A light powder frosting on the yellowed grass
The poles and bare trees flashing by, slivers of gray light in my open eye,
When the snowbanks of Brockville rose up to overwhelm us.

The white of winter showed its force
Creeping up from empty wetness through thin scattered sheets
To this foot deep blanket that softened all contours.
The mailbox and the car and the tractor all looked the same.

In Ottawa, the tall tips of pines and cedars stood out like points
To guide my glance up to the smoky heavens.
I was coming back, to be buried in shoveling and scraping.
A single star broke through: a memory of hope or a harbinger?

I hunkered in my seat and headed home.

I bet on love

Trees unleaved under gray slate skies
Shake slowly in the icy breeze,
The denuded branches slightly snowed.
I hear the silent scream of nerves unfleshed.

The sun turns white and spreads out like butter
Smeared against the paler blue of heaven.
The geese and deer and ducks all gather in the fallow field,
The gang’s all here to give thanksgiving.

The mist slips wet fingers into every corner
And blurs the cars to darkened smudges.
My lungs are infected with moisture
That tickles out a phlegmy cough.

The water’s troubled by the absence of martyrs
Stretching over the vast expanse of the Rideau,
And only the concrete bridge keeps my car from falling
With me into those darker depths, unplumbed.

We walk with plaited hands and knitted brows
Woven tight on the loom whose threads unfurl
Leaking shape and substance over edges advancing toward the past.
The bright full moon follows like a puppy on a leash.

The stars send sharp needles of light from great distances
To pierce our sated hearts with strange sad pangs of joy.
The ephemeral now keeps receding and yet, the future keeps us smiling.
Undestroyed by the threat of nothing, our hands clasp tighter.

Winter hovers with its dark wings just emerging from the horizon,
Soon empty white fields will be the earthly double of blackened skies.
But I squeeze my eyes to catch kaleidoscopes of colour, the hope of spring and life until it is.
What are the odds? I pull the gentle face of the moon to my own and bet on love.

On the cusp of everything

November holds its breath: When will snow fall?
Trees are leaning but not bending.
No leaves remain; nature unclothed awaits its whiter cover.
Reaching for a brass door knob,
The hand reflected in its shiny surface hesitates.
Who waits behind the door?
The cosmos gasps in astonishment.
God suddenly awakes and tenses.
I have an unexpected power
To direct the course of reality.
I am on the cusp of everything; countless universes wait to learn their fate.
In surprise I realize I do not know what I will do.
Will I open or turn and leave the porch?

In pieces

Going to Toronto on the long four oh one
Heading down into those concrete valleys.
The sun is shining in my eyes my love.
It burns the salty tears that tremble on the edge of falling.

We stopped for gas near Gananoque
The trees around us all were grey and bare.
The plants around were yellow, the fields all sere.
The rest stop like an isle of green amid the brown.

And oh, I cannot leave you
And oh, I cannot stay.
The sun is shining in my eyes my love
I don’t know what to say.

We’re on the road, the black top cut by painted lines
And my heart’s like a two way road and comes and goes
And sinks into the briny depths like drowning men
And flies up to the skies like sea birds soaring.

And I am torn in pieces by the Bacchanal
And one piece runs to you and one piece dies
And one piece hides inside a cave
And one piece just stays and stays.

And oh, I cannot leave you.
And oh, I cannot stay.
And the sun shines in my eyes, my love
And one piece runs away.

But you are all inside me love
Your hurts and cares and griefs;
Your pains, your joys, your smile, your burning fire;
There is no way to rip you from my womb entire.

So stay inside me always.
And bind yourself to my sinews and my bone.
And when autumn turns to winter and the cold draws near,
And vision fades with light into obscure night time haze,

You can be what holds me fast
Whether you be close or far.
I dry wet tears and pull us both into this one car.

And oh, I cannot leave you.
And oh, I cannot stay.
And the sun shines in my eyes, my love
And this is what I’ll say. This is what I’ll say.

Looking for some permanence

When in turbulent torment of the great unknown,
I sought some peace for a troubled heart
Down by the river.

The air was thin
And the pale blue sky was running high
Like the rushing tide and the beating pulse of time.

The shore sloped steeply to the edge,
The small round pebbles dry then wet,
Ground finely by the wheels of the gods.

Squadrons of geese swooped down on the surface,
Scattering the squawking ducks
Honking their hellos as they let the current carry them round the bend,

Floating on the flood of sharp metallic waves,
The choppy grey liquid taking them to calmer waters
In a quiet bay, the end of their long journey.

The trees stood bare, helpless to hide from sight
The foamy rapids of the flowing Ottawa,
The distant shapes of Gatineau.

Gone was the leafy camouflage for creatures in the branches.
I saw the abandoned nests of birds or squirrels,
Shielding my eyes from the November sun.

The damp cold breeze froze some flesh
And drove its icy needles deep to bite the bone
And lingering in the joints, woke my longing,
.
A solid tree received my weight, unbending.
The thick bark was rough and mottled,
Large patterned lumps emerging from the charcoal grey.

Another tree was split, one slanting upward towards the east.
Some were tall and thick and long enduring,
Something more permanent than fleeting seasons.

I wrapped my arms around its wide girth
And dreamed myself, a man upon the land,
I was a tree upon the shore.

Inserting myself into widening cracks,
I would extend my arms and fingers until they filled all the branches.
My toes stretched down to drink the earth.

I left the river, outside the tree.
But the woody strength that I acquired
Means perhaps, the tree’s in me.