Friday, 16 April, 2004
French Fort Cove Trail

and

Sunday, 18 April, 2004
Portage Restaurant,
Miramichi City.

Some of these poems were read at various readings associated with the annual general meeting of the Writers' Federation of New Brunswick which took place in Miramichi City on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, April 16-18, 2004. The poems that were not actually read are in italics. Those I did read (or that I was ready to read!) are identified with the time and the place of the reading.

Snow in Granada
Ready, but not read!

He leaves footprints, dark wake to his imagined ships, soft, in the snow; the unusual snow; in the snow they have not seen, here, in the city center for more than forty years. It settles now on roofs and forms dark ridges where the hot sun burns. The Alhambra is a wonderland: stiff, starched buildings standing out against the mountains' mass. Japanese tourists click their cameras not knowing they are part of a miracle for it snowed then as it snows now and Columbus walked these streets like any tourist short of breath, short of cash, and the seams of his boots letting in the cold, wet snow, you know how it is on Main Street, Any Street, Any Town, Any Where in Canada. And then the miracle: he has given up, he is leaving it all behind him when the messenger catches up and says "Go for it! The ships, the dreams, the ocean sea, they're all yours now!" Columbus falls on his back and creates winged shapes, dream angels sailing onwards through a sea of snow.

White Geese
Friday Evening, French Fort Cove

When the bird's wing blots out the stars and the goose quill writes its message on the dull slate of the sky, what are we to believe? There is a honking in the heavens, wing prints track across the sky's giant highway. A flock of geese, shadows of a departing summer, fly south in the night above us. Close to Arcturus, a feathered knife edge slices its path through the icy black and darkness blots out each scattered scat of golden grain. The Big Dipper hangs its secret emblem: a sky hook dangling from night's swart ceiling. Last spring, at Montmagny, the great white geese gathered by the St. Lawrence: achromatic on their arrival, flake after flake, they drifted to the land. Flocons de neige at first, they accumulated into flocks, into snow banks. Snow geese: we watched them grub for food across grain fields, mud flats, ploughed land. Swiftly they descended into fallen angels and daubed themselves with the colors of mud, of the river bank, of the alluvial plain. Guardians of summer's perfection, they spilled from the heavens and took on earthly shape. Leaving, they left us breathless, our hearts borne up on their wings, their secret knowledge carried away on a sacred wind. Without them, in a helpless flutter of butterfly wings, something dies in our hearts at season's end. What will we bury with this year's leaves?

Building on Sand
Friday Evening, French Fort Cove

Everywhere the afternoon gropes steadily to night. Some people have built fires; others read by candlelight. Geese litter the river bank, drifts of snow their whiteness, stained with freshet mud; or is it the black of midnight's swift advance? They walk on thin ice at civilization's edge. Around them, the universe's clock ticks slowly down. Who forced that scream through the needle's eye? Gathering night, the moon on the sea bed magnified by water. Inverted, the Big Dipper, hanging its question mark from the sky's dark eye lid. Ghosts of departed constellations stalk the night. Pale stars scythed by moonlight bob phosphorescent on the flood. The flesh that bonds; the bones that walk; the shoulders and waist on which I hang my clothes. Now they stand alone beneath the moon and listen at the water's edge to the whispering trees. They have caught the words of snowflakes strung at midnight between the stars; moonlight is a liquor running raw within them.

Midnight
Friday Evening French Fort Cove
Ready, but not read!

Midnight stretches out a long, thin hand and clasps dream-treasures in its tight-clenched fist. The lone dove of the heart flaps in its trap of barren bone and the world is as small as a pea in a shrunken pod. Or is it a dried and blackened walnut in its wrinkled shell of overheating air? Sunset, last night, was a wet squib failing to fire. Swallows flew their evensong higher and higher, striving for that one last breath lapped from the dying lisp of day. Its last blush rode red on the clouds for no more than a second's lustrous afterglow. When the frail, pale butterfly of its color snared in the camera's net, the photographer ran for chloroform. Color struggled for a moment, then quickly succumbed. The photographer pinned it in his photograph book and it pined away in a lack lustre display of tattered rags and dust. Can night's shadows really weave these illusions from earth's old bones? Rock is like putty, malleable beneath the moonlight. Midnight readjusts her nocturnal robes and pulls bright stars from a top hat of darkness. Winged insects with inhuman faces appear with the planets and clutter the owl's path. Night swallows the swallows and creates more stars. The moon hones its edge like an ice cold blade. A snake wind whistles dead rustling leaves round a tin pan alley dream abandoned in an empty head.

House of Dreams
Sunday Morning, Portage Restaurant
Ready, but not read!
For Mary Hutchman

The clematis unfolds bruised purple on the porch. Thelonius Monk: beneath the black and white hammers of ivory keys, old wounds crack open. A flight of feathered notes: this dead heart sacrificed on the lawn. I wash fresh stains from my fingers with the garden hose. The evening stretches out a shadow hand and I feel my heart squeezed like an orange by long, dark fingers. Somewhere, the whitethroat trills its guillotine of vertical notes. I flap my hands in the air: they float like white butterflies, amputated in sunlight's net. The light fails fast. I hold up shorn stumps of flowers for the night wind to heal as a chickadee chants an afterlife built of spring branches. Pressed between the pages of my dream: a lingering scent; the death of last year's delphiniums; the tall tree toppled in the yard; a crab apple flower; a shard of grass as brittle as a bitter tongue at winter's end.

Pack Ice
Sunday Morning, Portage Restaurant
For Judy Bowman

When the moon is a cutting edge shredding sparse cloud, pack icewalks the river's tightrope blade of dark. The soft wind scythes its harvest of crested plumes, knights on white horses borne shining on the water. Above them, golden nets of sequins, a nocturnal chain mail, these star fish dangling their sidereal hooks from a black velvet sky. The bright moon slices the night in search of the citizen who fell overboard from her silver boat of cloud. Who gifted pearls for her eyes, ivory for her teeth, coral for her lips, seaweed for those damp, dark, tangled locks of hair? Mermid or mere maid? Drowned maid, lost in an unforgiving river.

Lagartija
Sunday Morning, Portage Restaurant
For Lisa Moore

There are striations in my heart, so deep, a lizard could lie there, unseen, and wait for tomorrow's sun. Timeless, the worm at the apple's core waiting for its world to end. Seculae seculorum: the centuries rushing headlong. Matins: wide-eyed this owl hooting in the face of day. Somewhere, I remember a table spread for two. Breakfast. An open door. "Where are you going, dear?" Something bright has fled the world. The sun unfurls shadows. The blood whirls stars around the body. "It has gone." she said. "The magic. I no longer tremble at your touch." The silver birch wades at dawn's bright edge. Somewhere, tight lips, a blaze of anger, a challenge spat in the wind's taut face. High-pitched the rabbit's grief in its silver snare. The midnight moon deep in a trance. If only I could kick away this death's head, this sow's bladder, this full moon drifting high in a cloudless sky.

Caged Bird
Ready, but not read!

Herons call like whip-poor-wills at dusk and trigger my cell phone. When I call back, a barn owl answers from his post office perch in the popular tree. Am I no more than a budgie in a numbered cage, bouncing on a roster of falsified fame and endlessly repeating my very own name? Here, by the beach, at the end of all things, is the beginning of wisdom. I dial a passing star and ask for my horoscope. But who can check Capricorn's concern when heaven burns and fireflies foretell the umbrella sparks of a forest fire with its fireworks descending? Later in the night, I turn my cup upside down and consult the tea leaves. I lust after enlightenment but light upon a tepid brew of flashback and memory. The wind gets up and wags its tale. Blades of crab grass run the tips of their tongues across a long, loud lip of sand. I am tempted by a crestfallen moon, cowering like a crab apple on a barren branch.

Crazy Glue
Sunday Morning, Portage Restaurant
For Deb Lougheed

Yesterday, I got lost in the mirror. I know how to swim, but I would have drowned, except the light was too shallow and my feet touched bottom when I let the wheels down. I swam on and in looking for a deserted island on which to build my idle sand castle dreams. Two people said they saw my reflection swimming like a goldfish in the silver of that secret space. They said I stared back out at them with circles of longing ringing my eyes; but I laughed when they said they had seen me, for when I looked in the mirror this morning, I just wasn't there. My razor dragged itself over an empty space and its sharpened blade scraped white music from the margin of a cd rom that spun on edge like dust rings round a vanished planet. Now there is a black hole where my passport photo used to thrive. Someone plucked me from the circle and cut me out in the dance last night. Now I'm looking for a scrap book into which to stick myself with crazy glue that will never, never, never come undone.

The Shadow
Sunday Morning, Portage Restaurant
Ready, but not read!
For Lawrence Hutchman

The janitor said that the shadow had been seen lying down at midnight on the corridor floor. Someone dialed 911 and a police car came with a bucket and a mop to sweep this nonsense under the carpet. But the shadow wasn't there; it must have climbed to its feet and scuttled away like a vagabond crab clicking its pincers over dry moonlight on the sanded floor. It ran to an elevator and the janitor watched as the needle jerked to a stop at every floor. Now there is a fear of shadows in the washrooms. People stare at themselves in mirrors and see the devil looking out with an offer of work for idle hands. He is horned and hoofed and breathes heavily as they clean their teeth and leave the cold tap running. When the water's turned off, long, thin fingers pluck the strings of their hearts and a quaint fibrillation fills the silence of this haunted house.

The House
Sunday Morning, Portage Restaurant
Ready, but not read!

The house breathes in and out, moving thin membranes of memory. Upstairs, downstairs, a lonely route I tread while the wind at the window scratches tiny notes. Something breaks loose in the confines of my mind and walks beside me. My twin brother stalks through this silvery sliver of splintered glass, this simian mirror wrinkling our troubled suits of skin. I glimpse the old moon's monkey face through a broken window. Jagged and thin, it wanders like an itinerant snail, cobbled with clumsy clouds. Once, I descended the playground slide in a shower of sparks. A vagabond in a paving stone sky, I rumbled across metal cracks, a knapsack of nightmares humped on my old man's back. Tell me: when the snail moves house, who stores the furniture he leaves behind? The hermit crab lurks naked on the beach, seeking new lodgings. Who killed the candle and left us in darkness? Two eyes in limbo watch me roll this snowman's belly of flab across an unknown, clouded room.

Enchanted Evening
Sunday Morning, Portage Restaurant
Ready, but not read!

Late last night, a fallen star grazed by the lamp post. A bouquet of golden sparks flew from an iron tree and sanctified the gutter. The gas lamps sputtered patiently in uniform rows. A scarecrow stuttered into the limelight and shook my hand. She was wearing my grandmother's Easter bonnet, with all the flowers renewed, but she couldn't keep my heart from last winter's left over crumbs. Suddenly a tulip thrust through the concrete. It became as red as a robin and flew into the lounge bar of a public house. The bronze leaf necklace circling my throat filled with a flow of spring time song. My heart stood upright like a warped piano and my skeleton tarried at the corner to play knuckle bones with the wind. Torn butterflies of news fluttered round and round. Yesterday's horoscope winked its subversive eye and called to the hermit in his lonely cell: "Look out for the stranger with the tin can alley smile. Tie your heart to the tail of the first stray dog that comes whistling down the street and follow it home."

Blind Date
Sunday Morning, Portage Restaurant
Ready, but not read!

You couldn't see the holes the doctor drilled in my head when he thought he was a woodpecker. You were oblivious to the bland, black splinters sprouting from my fingers and my neck. Unseen and unheard, the ladderback drowsed its feathered siesta as peace descended to the cluttered attic of my mind. When push came to new love, the bluebird couldn't find the old silver ring I borrowed from the curtains. How could you care about its failure to sparkle in the sun? When you ran your fingers through my hair, you cut yourself on a feather's edge and my shirt rose up in the air and flapped with sudden writing, as red as blossoming flowers. You sensed their crimson dampness, but couldn't see the petals turning skywards to a pallid moon. The clockwork mouse ran down the tower. The clock struck the chaos of a universe at sixes instead of sevens and we knew we two would never be one. Before you drove away, you told me to keep my pity for falling leaves, for sparrows in winter, and for the defenseless chickadees who quest at the feeder and leave in fear of the kitchen cat with her dogged stealth: a game of paws and pause, crisp and silent through the green hair of the grass.

Cage of Flame
Sunday Morning, Portage Restaurant
Ready but not read!

Now you are a river flowing silver beneath the moon. High tide in the salt marsh: your body fills with shadow and light. I dip my hands in dappled water. Twin gulls, they float down stream, then perch on an ice-floe of half-remembered dreams. Eagle with a broken wing, why am I trapped in this cage of flame? When I turn my feathers to the sun, my back is striped with the black and white of a convict's bars. Awake, I lie anchored by what pale visions fluttering on the horizon? White moths wing their snow storm through the night. A feathered shadow ghosts fingers towards my face. Butterflies stutter against a shuttered window. Hands reach out to grasp me. A candle flickers in the darkness and I am afraid. Who mapped in runes the ruins of this heart? Eye of the peacock, can you touch what I see when my eyelids close for the night? Black rock of the midnight sun, rolled up the sky, when will I be released from my daily bondage? Last night, the planet quivered beneath my body and I felt each footfall of a transient god.

Mist on the Miramichi
Saturday Night, Rodd Miramichi River
Introducing Lisa Moore

Slowly, trees grow downwards, topmost branches solid now, mottled trunks emergent. Sun grows stronger, second by second. Mist flows out like a tide, lingers, melts, weaves itself into clotted knots, then fades away. Trees wade waist deep in filmy fabric, bending slightly in a tranquil sea of soft, moist light. Land and river slip mist’s ski masks from their faces. Now you see them, now a fine grey wool rides over each mirage and your eyes are pulled into darkness. Suddenly, ghostly gulls guide an ice floe, fast, down river. Their pinions are trimmed to uniform grey, to this seething sackcloth swishing by, sometimes silently, sometimes in a grinding of grumbling words, and sometimes in a watery chime of fragile, tinkling glass. Seagulls slice the mist with beaks as sharp as a morning razor blade ringed and tinged with blood. Long John Gull, perched on one leg, steers heroically through mist, all hope centered on some distant horizon filled with memories of a long lost sun. Now mist renews itself, is born again from some strange, fundamental funnel. It clamps its final, fatal curtain down and down until water flows invisible: an unseen presence sensed and believed in. Each concrete city bridge, a leap of faith, spanning from known to unknown.

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