reading room

What I don’t know

July 27, 2020 No Comments

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
a rosary    a praise
 
maybe one workday
I’ll drive past
the office    next
stop Niagara
Falls where I will observe
my ignorance slide
over the scarp
smash into the rocks
and I will rejoice
in the heavenward mist
on the lids
of my unseeing eyes
 
 
 
mia burrus
july 2020  

Small World Tales

July 20, 2020 No Comments

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 in a blanket
carried on my back, a bow and arrows, knife
and pipe, some good smoke I swapped
for honey, running from a dripping hive I smoked
of heavy bees.  (It stings my eyes, the smoke, the honey
rings my wrist like a golden stream of sun.)
I have a wife as well, for now, and she has some things, some pots
in which she boils the sap that drips from the desert rose,
drips like the chilly silver of the moon, distilling thorn
and poisoning the tips of our arrowheads.
I have some luck in hunting too, for now, and with my arrows
tipped in deadly drops can down all but the largest prey
and then there’s meat for all.
Hunger and the sun and moon mark the day,
deepen and lift the darkness, sharpen and dull the scent,
blur and focus the sound, prickle and silken the skin.
But none of it is mine, not the silence, not the dark, not the day.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Just a moment.  Who the hell are you?
You who have no crops or livestock
wealth or leaders,
epidemics, social classes.
Free from bosses, bills,
taxes, money, schedules,
you are ill-defined,
a faded star
without a constellation
of cheap or peak oil,
blood diamonds,
large scale war,
détente, diplomacy,
an all consuming afterlife.
 
My god, how do you live
without cathedrals,
inquisitions, gilt
reliquaries holding bits of bone,
confessions, guilt,
the wrath of someone else’s god?
 
I am…
just a moment…
I have a
drive to satisfy
a hunger rarely felt.
I broker
structured fractioned
M&As
carbon transfers
credit default swaps
tweet with hashtags
blog and like
I’m Baby Einstein baby
I’m personally trained
my life is coached,
politically correct
I text
all of my thoughts
I celebrate
with gifts and drinks
I fundraise for
and drink some more to
National Whoever Day and
Anything Awareness Month
muffled buffered
gotta run
I spin I doctor
wheel and deal
walk and dodge
a virtual reality
of best and routine practices
couple up and drift apart
partner trade and swap the top
scoot the reaper
run from life
now keep busy
all go round
 
who has the time?
 
 
Mia 2016

The Cloud

July 6, 2020 No Comments

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.
 
Nimbus, you must bear the green-eyed Jezebel
within your anvil head and darkened heart.  That heat
portends a storm of tears and thunder impossible to return to sender.
 
And who can read grey stratus as it dims the sun, as it all
day and all sky long thickens from a windy scud?  A sigh
at best, or doubt, or change of heart made manifest.  
 
Love letters, no more mine to burn, to cherish or to read aloud; 
I’ve committed them to vague posterity, to mere electrons in some cloud.  
 
 
 
Mia Burrus
Sept 2015
 

At Once City and Country (a pantoum)

June 21, 2020 No Comments

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 of sidewalk, crushed concrete poles,
stripped of utility, twisted and spalled.
 
Necrotized and skeletal
trees blackened by cormorants and
stripped of utility, twisted and spalled,
guard reeking beaches of pebble and tile.
 
Trees blackened with cormorants and
tattered flurries of gulls
guard reeking beaches of pebble and tile,
screaming, bansheeing as one.
 
Tattered flurries of gulls,
a silver jetliner coming in low,
screaming, bansheeing as one-
as deafening as thunder.
 
A silver jetliner coming in low …
another failure of civilization?
Deafening as thunder,
silencing as snow.
 
2016

Pink -a draft

May 25, 2020 No Comments

 
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, unblushing
look from my love
 
 
mia burrus
may 2020

Eve by sky -a draft

May 18, 2020 No Comments

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 night
gentle eve  - stay
 
our twofold universe
made one – made less
by man -perverse
 
 
mia burrus
may 2020