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Poem #13: Old Growth
Eighteen years since Clayoquot Sound Today the trees keep falling Inky tears drip on the page A pulpy sheet for writing More organic, they exhort me Grow your words like corn stalks But I press them out precise Planed and stacked like lumber i’d throw a wrench drive a spike fill the gas tank with [...]
Continue reading...Poem #12: Camera Arimathea
22. September 2011
i bear my camera like a cross framing good excluding evil turning a cool compassionate eye on injustice but mostly conquering death with my obsessive recording recording recording when i return this will all be gone through photos my grief will find its consolation but when I’m gone no trace of me will remain in [...]
Continue reading...Poem #11: Dependencies
21. September 2011
Wobbly-legged, we rise from lunch and chardonnay, the capstone on a noon-time tasting. Best to pause, recover equilibrium, gaze across the vineyard rows, reminiscent of corduroy or shopping aisles. In the middle distance, a farm, hot-houses where flowers grow, row on roses, all of it— grapes and blossoms—handled by Mexican workers shipped north for the [...]
Continue reading...Poem #10: The Politics of Hygiene
17. September 2011
Can’t you snap the cap of the toothpaste tube? Keep the invader microbes from breeding there? I admit: I’m supposed to be large-hearted, above the nit picking details of domestic living, but this issue grates me so. How will I make it with you through this journey if the toothpaste gapes on the countertop moldering [...]
Continue reading...Poem #9: after the aftershock
16. September 2011
it rumbled here at four a.m., an aftershock; i felt nothing, but the dog upstairs barked and barked, sensed something below the threshold of my feeble cognizance it’s been days without news radio; i flipped the switch; a flippant bitch went on and on of politicians mired in local crises, squandering the moment with emergencies [...]
Continue reading...Poem #8: where has the graffiti gone
15. September 2011
where has the graffiti gone? across the rusted rails a pale sickly ochre washes the bricks below and above, faded corporate poster art, suffering sun, fog, unplanned exposure, scotiabank, investors group money this and sponsor that before, the walls below screamed a tagging riot spray cans colour explosion eye pop the shock of blank walls [...]
Continue reading...Poem #7: We Are Permitted
13. September 2011
The beach, the south side, Esquimalt, dancers come into view, pas de deux. Our dogs sniff & whizz while the dancers whirl in the light / out comes my camera – snap snap snap — raised to the unexpected (how often do you stumble upon dancers on a beach?) Furious waves foam not from the [...]
Continue reading...Poem #6: Kaslo
10. September 2011
Winding along thirty-one as the moon rises from the mountains, river splashing beside the highway as it stalks us from New Denver, the town leaps into view like a postcard from the rack, white wood-slat church, quaint cottages, crafty shops, a stern wheeler moored on the lake, a three-story hotel where we book a room, [...]
Continue reading...Canada from a Car Window
9. September 2011
(with a curtsy to Lady Tweedsmuir) Slow while I roll down the window. No, the breeze flaps the maps. But I want to take a photo. We’ll never get there if I slow. Brilliant scenery don’t you think? Like a postcard, a painting, or wallpaper for my computer: endless forests of north Ontario, boring expanses [...]
Continue reading...Poem #4: Drumheller
8. September 2011
I got me an acre of Bad Land. That shit is mean. – Mitch Hedberg Bad to go through Bad for wagon wheels Bad for horse shanks Bad for settlers Bad for ice fields Bad for erosion Bad for hoodoos Bad for sediment Bad for mammoths Bad for megaflora Bad for snaking rivers Bad for [...]
Continue reading...Poem #3: Getting the Lie of the Land
7. September 2011
That I belong here. Giant plastic snowman, civic mascot of some small town between Kapuskasing and Hearst. Bottles laced together and slung like running shoes over a wire. As we whizz through Longlac, a Native kid crossing the highway smiles and waves at us. We smile and wave back, and then we’re gone. At Kakabeka [...]
Continue reading...Poem #2: Driving Together Through Ontario
6. September 2011
I held your hand through New Liskeard and kissed you in Kapuskasing. In Hearst, where we stopped for gas by the pulp mill, I kneaded your back while you stretched your stiff legs. By the shore of Klotz Lake, I kissed you again because it was so good the first time, and then in Nipigon [...]
Continue reading...Poem #1: The rocks, the rocks
3. September 2011
The first installment of my poetry challenge (a poem a day through the month of September) is a response to my drive through Muskoka where the granite has been covered by red paint to hide the “kilroy was here” graffiti that has accumulated over the years. The rocks, the rocks, the solid granite faces. Here [...]
Continue reading...Poem: The poets I read are really aliens
8. August 2011
The poets I read are really aliens reporting from distant worlds all they see through bulbous eyes: beachheads by lakes of fire while overhead the sky ignites with the light of twin moons rising oceans of liquid methane churned by the tidal pull from ring-wound gas giants gravity lenses that bend light and draw a [...]
Continue reading...Poem: Toxic Tree Juice
14. June 2011
Unshaven unshowered hoodie soul-patch leash-taut dog-dragging morning stumble past the local school. SUV retinue gas-chugging polished moms leery of child-snatching fiends, scary looking men like me. Veering off the sidewalk into the cool tree-shade park doggy does as doggy-doo baggy swallows the shit. Drawn up short, I see it abandoned near the swing set: purple [...]
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23. September 2011
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