Brave
He stood on the height of a scaffold
repairing a patch of dropped
shingles
by the chimney not afraid
while logic said I Am Safe–
the work structure sound
as the mountain solid beneath
him he had climbed last week
he now worked with his hands, broad
workmen hands they’d become
that could manage a nail gun
as easily as a pen, but then
wavering on a silver ray the sun had
spun
inside a daylight dream, the blood
left
his upper self and his stomach
cleaved
as he looked down over the edge
of the planet he was standing on
a blob of rock wobbling in
an elliptical orbit spotlighted
by the sun but otherwise lost
in the dark of space
and forever expanding beyond limit
of, frankly, his grasp
Scrub grass for livestock during
arid weather
As I my sandal brushed by the yellow
tassels
and spires
still as glass in hot sunshine, a bird with its beak open
breathing with wings fanning heat to
cool – no sound
coming out of its parched mouth – I
heard the hum
of a motor, a neon-clad man in the
sit-down mower
the waving grass mane, flower heads,
daisies white-
fingered or black-eyed, groundsel’s
geodomes of seed,
the stiff-stemmed prairie sunflower
crushed in a frenzy
of threaded aromas amid a
middle-of-summer swansong
while a few beige-bodied darts of
movement raced ahead
and I thought of the small tall
fellow I’d sighted
standing upright in his city of tall
grasses
as he sniffed on tippy-toe froze
long enough for me to snap a blurred
cell shot –
finding Waldo, it was, for my friend
to whom
I sent the photo and she searching
through the blurry grass
screen before he vanished down his
hole.
I wonder where he will go
with his metropolis so flattened
when the sharp-eyed hawk angles
down…
or the night
owl swoops…
That Will Be The Day
When the cherries and peaches are
baked on the trees
When the clams are slow-cooked in
the sand
When the fishes are boiled in the
sea
When the woods and grasslands go up
in flames
and smoke twirls a sooty finger that
catches in your throat
under the red eye of the sun in a
general haze
When the ice caps overflow into the
rivers and oceans
and seep over the edges of your
coastal cities
and a wilding creature encroaches on
your home
Will you say, there are too many
black bear
walking out of the woods where they
should stay?
Too many raccoon gory-littering the
high road?
Too many unruly coyote wandering
into
our living quarters -- shoot ’em! Or
no, is it
too many jackrabbits eating your
marigolds
under the light censor at night or
gophers popping
out from holes between spikes of
grass or shambling
badgers crossing the road? A collision will damage
the chrome work badly! They must be
culled…
The creature so wily, willed his way
onto the front page of my son’s calendar
his image on his mouse pad kind of
prophetic too –
Could the criss-cross of influencing
at the world’s seams know ahead
that black flap-eared pup’s face we
knew
when we met (didn’t we?)
It’s true we’d wanted another
furrier creature
known for friendliness on the
website, adopted
before we drove up, this stark new arrival
hurried through the dark of the
backdoor
returned from two households,
Be warned!
but he slunk into the welcoming room
where we waited
sleek as a black stallion under
our hands, with a whimper
at company after the bareness
of the cage he was let out from and
when I glanced into his amber eyes,
I saw need
this pup intent on a kernel of
kibble
so quick he learned what to do sit,
give a paw,
swirl and twirl, lie down, hardest to
play dead
(a second or two will do, little
one).
On the walk, he now plays tug of war
ferocious with the leash but soon
the flavours
of summer he reads in each inch of the
ground
between the tasseled grasses flowering
fragrant
along the path, the sudden leap of a
jack…
Oh, this creature jumps high
as desire
after squirrel nattering from a
branch
or onto the counter to reach the
cheese
when I turn from the sandwich I’m
making
to put away the lettuce
and mayonnaise.
But he lunges from fear
at a passing cement truck
or just now we have left him
a-quiver
in the front room to watch us out
the window talking near the lilies
with a neighbour, the shrub
sprouting
shoots, in need of a good trim,
isn’t it?
Savage with screeching wasp
furious in the window pane, he bats
it
with pounding paws (that threaten to
break the glass!)
and bites the hose, a sea monster
breathing
flames of water, when he bounds
back into the house – rather wet,
spatters
water drops in my face, rubbing
his side on the brocade).
At night, Willy is a shadow on the
floor
now it’s summer, a slinky silhouette
his black muzzle to nuzzle your hand
hanging over the edge of the bed…
now its morning…its
4:30 am… but it is Saturday, Willy!
then he leaps up
tucks his back against your leg…
until the light angles through the
curtain
with hotter clarity.
Circe sharing a bed
Across the sheet of bed you edge
over the rumpled blanket’s bulge of
cliff
and me. Why must you always hog the bed?
In the bog of sleep you are wedged
winnowing clam mouth by seashell
ear, this riff
of snore across the icy sheet of bed
where you edge
towards me. Unable to move, left
side numb, red
clock numbers three a.m. and I must
get some sleep! Very stiff
in the morning I grump, Why must you
hog the bed?
Blue eyes wide circled in puffy
lines, you declare
Me? You took all the eff-ing
blankets and left me shivering
naked on the icy bare sheet where I
had to edge
towards you wrapped in blankets
‘like a mummy,’ you said,
spooning the cocoon of you to bring
me back to liff’
(Liff?) Why must you hog all
the blankets on the bed?
Thus, we have slept, stubble cheek
by vulnerable ear since we were wed.
Your nightly migrations across the
cold stretch of bed at this risk
of knocking me off the icy sheet
into darkness at the edge|
with this dreaming of snow-shoe-ing.
Such hogs in this bed!
