(i) Heard, Said, Saw, Thought
Everyday peopledon’t use semi-colons.
The heron obeysthe Emily injunction,tell it slant.
The friend living aloneis the plantneeding the most water.
Hopegets inthe way.
Watching your handsin talk, I takethe temperature.
In the metro carseventeen phones,three books, and onewindow starefixed on me.
Her heart’sin the right placebut everything else isn’t.
The Seven Deadly Sins,where did they go?
Long shadows,that’s whenthe deer come.
(ii) Island
Paddling past the wall of cedars, I looked for the pink tongue of granite that you,the blithe spirit,promised existed, a landmark that foretold a stretch of sand, of driftwood in shapes the river sculpted,the prong antlers, hawk’s head, lunging trout. I guided the prow into shallows and shore,the islandyou urged I explore in this pandemic May. Flicking hair from your eyes, you said forgetwhat fate’s making you eat. You: the drinker of bitter tea.
I tied the canoe’s twine to a branch and stepped into a camp widowed by winter.Two plastic chairstipped over, crushed cans of Labatt, a pair of work-gloves stiffened into clawsand a lavendertoy bike, all littered near a pit of charred wood. Thinking I heard a noiseI spun around…only driftwood, arched forward, looking like characters coloured in grey, pale-blondor tan,lifted from the living to the dead – though not dead, their limbs smooth, Olympian.The strip of sandcurved like a starting-line for moonlit, driftwood harriers of all species, river marathonersracing from shoreto shore and back while we, the rooted forms, continued to slumber, dream, snore.
Island rhapsodes, the driftwood wanted me to slide a hand along its skin, touch the historiesinto being, telling,the government flooding the farmland for a dam whose bulk and iron-teeth shonefrom downriver,a concrete monolith, ruling the living and the ruined. Once, last year, you helped me imaginethe landand animals hit by that rush of water, you took my hand, leading me down the on-land startof a drowned road.In deepening water, we walked until you swam above this road you named Proteus, believingit will become something else.
The sun was at its zenith, heat pouring down like a potion…I stretched out in brown grass,pillowed my headon jean jacket. I dreamed of daring voices, half-hearing your whisper, work the awkward.The gulls woke me. Their cries. Their swooping shapes, so familiar.
(iii) That Would Be Nice
Your signature phraseso Britishly conditional,the words cross-grainedwith hope and irony,the line spoken slowand finishing on a lilt,you powering the thoughtwith that certain smile,the way your lipscurl at the cornersas if embracingboth my random idea(Let’s drive to Whitehorse!)and the bigger wishyou do not believe,that our worldstops swooninginto doom.
Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash