Interview with a Great Plains Chief, derived from the journals of Marquis Lorne
Fort Carlton
“You may have seen
the poverty
of the land as regards
to the animal- that
was my hunting ground.
I used to find them
all I wanted. Now
it is a solitary
wilderness.”
The Horse Head Nebula
and Saturn’s rings.
Let’s stop, and take a moment to think
about how
small we are. Let’s stop for a moment
and think about the enormous complexity
of a bug.
Lets
go hug our mothers,
and if they have died
let us take a moment
to think.
The Black Velvet Dress
As the stars ornament
the fabric of night
and the lake’s glimmer laps
under a moon and thin clouds
while a breeze gently rocks
the dark elm tree boughs,
So sequins adorn
black stallion pleats
as the Ballroom hall glimmers
from bracelets and turns
and the swoop and the timbre
of the waltz and the gown.
and as the swirling of steps
becomes the parting of guests
and the last hug is blessed
and the black gown of the hostess
floats down and around
the legs of a chair,
and a grin spreads to her cheeks
when the frog print pajamas
and blonde hair of her son
peek shyly out from the hallway
so does the night’s darkness soften
at the whisper of dawn.
Awakening
Blackness. Formless, I have passed into knowing no lines, I have a translucent (grab the sheet, at the foresail) center, and I am regenerating, and swell with the indefinite bloom (friend at the shore) and collapse of meaning. Defying time I have been like this for - ever, a moment, that lasted, how? - and I
need this.
When suddenly a shout below deck, clamber now go, wedge the tiller by’, duck, I, under hatch, and rummage through boxes and maps, (we are two hundred feet above hay fields and cows, in the clouds) and someone is calling from under those boxes. Calling for help, rummage quick, the screeching for aid and peeping and bleating and beeping and beeping and beep .... beep....
oh. I am in bed and so comfy -get- and dozy and - up- warm. I breathe. It is dark and sheets are draped over me, my fingers and toes stretch and reach out, they are reaching to reach and my head burrows deep -I have to- into my pillow - get up. I know when the dawn is.
The Finch’s last dream before Dawn
The thatch on the roofs, and stone smokeless chimneys
amongst the stars and the fields and the brambles and briers
are wearing darkness
in the way that kittens wear fur
as they sleep curled on the hearth
beside only ash at the end of the night
when no has tended
to anything for quite some time.
However, the drawing room and the cats
share the dry warm aroma of rowan smoke,
and the darkness outside is more clean, more like
the darkness inside of a log’s mossy hollow,
and a breeze puffs it upon the cart path and bridge
it ripples down the brook at the edge of the woods
and the woods stretch up and over the hills
and the dark exults upwards over the shire, the cliffs
and the valley to the stars past the moon and expanse
Of the galaxies.
Not even an ear
is flicked
by the cats as you creak
out the door
and walk past myrtle and pine
towards your favorite hill
where the finches
will be opening.
A Newfoundland Caribou Herd
The weekend at the cabin is over.
Before dawn we wake up, and load our things,
to drive back north, through the darkness and fog.
We listen to Cello lament on Radio One,
and the dashboard’s gentle glow
haunts the interior cab of the pickup.
As we chortle over potholes
the station fades into static.
My host scans for another,
she tells me “in high school
we joked that the disrepair of this highway
was a ploy to amputate Marystown
and rest of the Burin Peninsula
from the Capital City of St. John’s.”
The cello comes back
and I turn to my reflection, a ghost
on the passenger window.
I was hoping to watch the day break on this drive,
but being to foggy I am shown instead
the grey resurrection
of twilight and the silhouette
of dark forests
winter barrens.
I can sense something out there.
Their velvet antlers clunking branches in the dark
winter fur snagged, hung by old man’s beard.
Body heat, steam, at twilight they moved,
hooves stamping the wind-crust, their muzzles rummage
for lichen. They stream from the forests,
conjoin on the barrens, they
are landscape.
Fog billows
over the frozen ponds.
Below the Horizon
Five a.m.
Harbor
black cloak
of night
is swallowed
as twilight
Emerges
the inversion
still
except
for the
allegro
of a
chickadee
sun under
the world,
and through
each air
particle
light slowly
comes out
The Sunrise
is when the horizon bursts with a fire
and pastels become versed on the clouds
singing pink oleander crimson and rose
while the sky trumpets arnica
and the petals of marsh marigold.
It is the time when a flag, flamboyant, sublime
high and lofted, heralds the day,
and after the transition is through
and the sun is on course
the flag is furled once again
into its invisible case
Secondary Flight Feathers
The tips of my fingers have prints. They look like the anticline waves on the faces of tectonically folded mountain ranges, but smaller, and they could milk cow teats. I am holding a bald eagle’s feather. I spin it gently by the shaft. Its color looks like a hologram, looks like a mudslide bursting out of a glacier at zero gravity, but fits on a symbol. It belonged to a young eagle, you can tell by the color. I cut the air, and fan. I raise the whole thing and let it go, but the ground interrupts. I take it outside, and the feather bucks in a breeze, so I tailor it’s tilt. I sprint through the arboretum, trying. Wind, hair, sun, cheeks, woodchips and maples leafs, the vane of the bird is bowing and fluttering, im running, and when I stop, the feather reminds me that I won’t understand. An american crow hangs like a child’s kite just above me, surfing a head wind, it’s feet folded in. A seagull reels past the telephone pole.
Commitment
The acrobat’s eyes
are closed and imagining
the approach, legs bent.
The runner stretches,
temples sweaty, a circle
on his calender.
A man feels his ring
and lowers gaze as the
secretary turns.
The radio alarm
has been programed to ring
at dawn
Sedimentary Dip
Epochs of rock strata lean, and appear to either be plunging into the earth or blasting into space. I stand on one of these dragons, understanding he will have to break through one hundred kilometers of crust before turning molten, and then it’s the distance from Anchorage to Havana until the center of the earth where temperatures reach six thousand degrees like on the face of the sun. It is a nice hill, but me and my mom have to check into our hotel room before coming back. It is night when we do. Ninety seven and a half percent of the surface of the earth surges against a dark cliff face behind us, while in front, it looks like Vincent van Gogh painted ten thousand paper lanterns to float on the crests of glacier carved city. I think of Macleans magazine, university ratings, and Animal House. The next day, Mom gets back the airplane. As I tour the campus for the next couple years I don’t get to lonely, every time I look past a black ash or the library to the hill that we stood on, I feel the enormousness of where
people aren’t.
Tumble Stone
A cold stone to squeeze,
to rub, to slowly absorb
the stress from my mind.
Just a little piece
of slate stone in my pocket
rounded by the sea.
I could pluck it up from among the cobbles
which tend to endure the drive and the rush
and the surge and the crush of a cold surf
that leaps and slams upon the rocky strand
at hours when, in night or day, the grey sky
sends a wind that cracks a whip at the waves
and raises a mist that slashes and slits
the quivering spruce bunched up in the bay.
With no shelter to turn to, and the cliffs
giving way, the beach is subjected to change
with the ocean smashing and smashing away,
but the rocks in the surf erode slowly;
they are pushed inland a bit by the waves
and then sucked down a few feet towards the bay.
A patch of the sky
clears to blue. A sandpiper
skitters in the foam
and I shut the door
of my corolla and walk
down to get a stone.
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