reading room

Inevitably – the sky a bitter blue the pasture white with frost the horses crowd a triangle of sun sept2020

two versions I started with a black notebook – my phial of little bitter pills- scribbled scrabbled drifts of words straining to be understood-   and then I found a muse among the silence of the golden hills, among the trilling of the robinsong among the maple wood.   Aug 2016     At first

another river whipsaws across the plain undermining our beautiful bridges why not wade in – why not feel the pull we fear?  

could fill the Great Lakes    spill along the St. Lawrence   swish in the brackish tidewater   slip undistinguished into the sea   I content myself picking berries these mornings the ritual   distinguishing the ideal colour and drop of the drupes    my fingers the berries soft as summer sunrise heavy with mist    each berry a bead on

The Hadza: a waltz The Suit: a square dance     I am just a moment, not momentous, here for now on earth and in time. I have an easy rhythm with the good for nothing soil, the thorny brush, the biting flies, the sinking water holes. I have other things I take round wrapped

Speak, Cirrus.  Your ice-crystal plumes, paper-white on ink-blue sky, trace glyphs I can’t decipher.  Their lacy trails can only hint at whispered dreams of wedding veils.   The cumulus parade with buoyant joy their swelling hearts.  With such pleasing substance and airy volubility, they yet can’t express your love in words that I can see.

As silencing as snow, the living layer of green buries another failure of civilization … what’s left of it a shattered geometry.   A living layer of green, berries, sedges, horsetails, goldenrod, aspen… what’s left of it? A shattered geometry, slabs of sidewalk, crushed  concrete poles.   Sedges, horsetails, goldenrod. Aspen, necrotized and skeletal. Slabs

  pink is present, gift, paradise clouds collect the blushing sun on it’s way down through the western gate (the one by which we’ll all soon leave) flower petals frill and fade (like me -maiden to crone in moments – it seems) pink is bubble, brief, volatile tinkling ice in my pink gin a lavish,

gentle indigo evokes a calm reflection of the day well done   the last light in the sky draws us heavenward body  invisible– goodbye   the dusky prelude to the wheeling stars and fearfilled dark   was artificial light our worst invention? robbing us of heaven   we’ve lost our way in the light of

The tomb of the unknown soldier contains the remains of one unknown soldier disinterred in France and reburied in the tomb.      The Canada’s Missing website lists 229 unidentified remains of men and women who died in the last 50 years.  Further, in 2014 the City of Toronto buried 281 identified but unclaimed remains.