(On Cabbages and Kings, Poems 2012-2019, Aeolus House) Dusting a book shelf, I came across a poem venerating life in simple phrases hopeful even in the face of illness. From time to time lines from them return to haunt me. We had a lot to say that wouldn’t keep till morning. Always we have questions
As she flows in and out, we wait. Attending. Attentive. A tension. What is to be paid? What owed? The river is shallow for the season but its current runs deep. Consciousness flickers, will-o’-the-wisp only altered by constant choice. Sharp shards hold us close to home since she is almost ninety -five, almost ready to
shorts and sandals on a hot October day 30.1 degrees Celsius this is a riff on changing times on changing ways on changing days salmon are jumping and people are oohing the weir too high, they spawn and die the water runs swift like the beat of a riff cormorants soar while cascades roar susurrant,
canatara beach a mile of beach along lake Huron ribboned in summer sunshine holds more than shiny sand among the silence of the dunes are the captured sighs of broken hearts the wild grasses sing silently the ecstasies they have witnessed on their leaves wet sands hold the souls of soles that stepped upon it
Worlds fused confused as I coil from one to the other and back Northerly winds sooth cool pseudo heat. Gone are the scorched canyons. The taste of sweet viscous dates fades away with sticky maple sap drips salted sea diluted by a shimmering lake. We too are mellower now, as we grow older in this
The tulips of bold spring colours were in full bloom now they linger in liminal. I haven’t chucked them into the bin at the faintest wrinkling of petals; decay has its wondrous mutations— the purple petals flap open an unfurled upside down umbrella, exposing the pistil and stigma—so immodestly phallic! and the curled red
The lake waits all night for me. Fettered boats rock and drift gently, answering unseen currents. Tadpoles, soft black bodies like commas, wriggle along the honeycombed shallows, awaiting their metamorphosis. As morning ages wind wrinkles the lake’s skin, but as I slip into blue its fingers are all satin. You have to understand: poetry
How well-crafted is the daffodil how like a poem growing from one tight-fisted sphere requiring nurture from deep surroundings shyly the leaves emerge, flourish in tender green, the slender stalk in triumph lifts the full-blown blossom, a bright signal to the world, the beauty of life.
Ghosts of Winters Past I remember the Christmas when I awoke to see a shiny new toboggan standing tall beside the tree and winter breaks spent sliding down a frozen hill where neighborhood kids could all be found rosy cheeks and tingling toes under sunny skies at ten degrees below boots trudging and crunching through
