A More Powerful Love

No longer will I cook for you
or sit beside you.
You will never call me again from overseas
or look into my face.
Nor will wisdom flame
in the familiar fireplace of conversation.
Nor will the ship moor to
the dock it has known for 20 years.
I can come to you as anxiety
when you're too lethargic, lax,
and the time has come to act.
I can come to you as loneliness
to wake you to your selfishness,
to wake you to the fact
generosity may burn the brighter.
Where once I fed and clothed the child,
made the bed and cleaned the room of the child,
I can now illuminate your solitude,
weave the melodies of circumstance
pleasing or grating, deepening your art,
be the silence savoured of a wanderer
who has found a home without stone or walls.
Sometimes, no friends around, you'll pine.
Sometimes, your friends will seem far away,

Those Twelve

A piece of May slanting its way,
falling on the piano’s worn-out wood,
a peace cradling May had this to say:
the 79 year old body that you wore
writhing and struggling two months before
on a hospital bed some twenty blocks away,
succumbing to delirium -
that's all the doctors could see...
They saw and examined the x-ray;
they saw twelve tumors in the brain
and alleviated the body's pain.
They didn't see the spirit's ecstatic storm
breaking through, blazing through
the confused and delirious human form...
The pianist was giving way
to twelve angels bearing you away,
the winged fruition of twelve notes
masterfully handled with your fingers of rain,
appearing as twelve tumors in the brain.

The Loving One

The image of you
sitting in the living room chair,
the ears and eyes then meeting
its silence and space and stare
suffice to ward off distractions,
thoughts of inconsequential things,
meditation unfolding her wings.
Never again to see your human form,
never to speak with you again
is strong enough to silence any storm,
is sufficient for meditation then.
Like a black brushstroke poised on a gleaming reed,
an afterthought of the rising sun
bending bow-like over the river's glass,
we're a black butterfly, beloved One,
one black wing your death, the other mine,
the butterfly weaving an uneven line
over the water - till it disappears,
till there remains only the Loving One
appearing as shifting glass and the sun.

Mother to Son

For some months I have left you alone,
For I saw that a flower does not grow
The more easily with a rain of stone,
Or insistence such-and-such should not be so.
I would not confine you with my country's past
Nor impose upon you my culture's cast.
Questions about these can feather your sky,
Can weave their arcs in a passionate style,
And you can be sure I'll oblige with a smile.
But if no questions stir and break their shells,
I won't be bothered, I will leave you be.
But I fear there's as yet no clarity
About freedom: It is not desire
Simply to do what your pleasures demand,
To be in the clutch of frivolity's hand.
A cell can be of gold, a comfort as well,
But it remains, after all, a prison cell.
You wanted to paint, you expressed passion,
But you expected the stars at the start.
You thought excitement was the kin of stars,

First Love (1)

Long buried in the drawer
the photograph looked at me
as a dimly lit chink of a door.
Behind my father my first love stood,
violin in hand, her freshness all aglow
on the stage of teenagehood.
An old song softly made its way,
a haunting of harmonica and piano
calling to mind her standing one summer day
on a balcony, then a balcony with snow.
She married years later, while my father
was swept away by an alien tide
so that during my visits once a year
I heard his drunken laughter masking fear,
great artistic promise not quite meeting
the luminous, long-remembered career.

The photo went back in the drawer.
The bedroom curtain tapped and stirred.
Dandelion seeds were scattered, blown away
as the summer light with the voice of a bird,
a faint afternoon perfume, stood aglow
opening a strange and familiar window
to one...

The Glowing Arc

The mother bird was often tired,
foraged for worms, the bushes, grass,
the fallen trees, rotting wood
in the grip of rainy days.
Each day was undistinguished like the one before
with wheels, wheels. Chicks cried and cried.
She knew the wheel of circling about,
never far away from the nest, never reaching for
the clouds, never skirting the forest's edge,
until, it seemed, something else moved and flew
instead of the one she once intimately knew.

The weather had warmed up, a sliver of light
pierced through the leaves hugging the nest,
and pierced through her, like some distant thought
at once familiar and strange,
some poignancy perhaps unveiling her delight
in which was lodged some thorn,
lodged a feeling akin to what one feels
while recalling young love, the recollection
of which is at once delicious and sad.

Amsterdam Park

Anonymous One,
The mature bloom of yellow afternoon
Waved at us, and we entered Amsterdam park.
September spoke softly to beach and sand dune,
Passersby, deer, trees, red-berry bushes, till the Moon-Dark
Of ourselves and aloneness silenced words,
Scattering them as though they were a flock of birds.
My friend and I - we walked and walked and some profound,
Vast and alien meditation suffused each trail and mound.
I could no longer say the rabbit stirred the grass
Or deer leapt; any movement that would pass
Was rather some anonymous force bending space
In infinite ways; the green-glowing beetle was Your Face.
We stopped by somewhere and only felt there was no mistake,
That we had never been elsewhere or ever could be.
I say now that we had come to some water
With austere presences, each towering tree,
But it was Aliveness before the world began:
The horizon and...

The Young Man

Sometimes when she saw someone turn around
The corner, or pass through a restaurant door,
Or when spring with its symphonic score
Of buds performed and surged without a sound,
She felt him, a presence, an absence, and more...
There was no longer grief, but a strange pain,
A part of her that thought the young man hadn't died,
A part that thought she would meet him again.
But she knew, she knew it was fantasy,
Though the fantasy bore a grain of truth.
Certainly the vibrancy, the light of this youth
Looked through the eyes of the passersby,
Looked through the eyes of those
Sitting at the restaurant tables, looked from the sky
When summer was absorbed in poetic blue,
When winter was absorbed in the sharpest prose.
When the young man was alive, they would share...
Presence had reached an exuberant pitch
Of love, adventure - but his absence would stitch
...

You Sit, Face Averted

Anonymous One,
You sit, face averted, I'm in awe of you.
The pond's lotuses are your other eyes.
The crickets are your speech, the leaves your sighs.
The corridor of fussing autumn trees, its space,
And twilight jellyfish moon can't exhaust your grace.
You have said bitter things when you were ill.
Your sayings don't always have eagles' eyes.
You sometimes drink, palm resting on the windowsill,
With webbed words that won't let yesterday go.
But you're still Eve before the fall, in spite of woe.
I don't know you at all, though often mind
Thinks it does, enamored as it is with memory.
I have images of you, your being kind, unkind,
Ferocious, a skilled lover, a song in bed,
But these are not you right now, these are dead.
I can't say who you are, so how can I compare
You with others, think you are not quite as rare
Or intellig...

You're Lying There Still Asleep

You're lying there still asleep, the sheets
Below your knees, your skin poured smooth as coffee cream,
Your curvatures of which hills themselves would dream.
Our sheets and pillows are like geese
Leaning against each other, and you're the Golden Fleece
Now suddenly, as Jason's look alights on your form.
Your beauty is the quiet storm
That my temple would like to assail.
I see your intense whirlpool drawing my spirit in...
I don't care if there's something of the Siren in you;
We all get destroyed in the end, let it be with you.
You twitch slightly, the Golden Fleece may be waking you up;
You rub your lips, you smile, you see my temple's up;
You stroke it as though a cliff-triangle of cranes
Were anticipating paradise in the sky,
And I'm like a long-forgotten well that needs
A beautiful woman to drink, who boils, who bleeds.
What we do, my...

The Whole Artwork

Anonymous One,
The well-woven verse, the brilliant brushstroke,
The singing sculpture, remarkable film -
These are echoes, or so much apple peel,
Sweet, yes, but far from the beauty You reveal.
Reader, imagine if You will, a face,
Beautiful in its proportions, cream-colored grace,
Such as Venus herself might not possess,
But befuddled or bemused, and bodiless.
It might float like moon of white wine on the sea,
Yet it gasps like an asthma patient without an inhaler,
Never knowing even half of what it is to be.
The whole artwork is no less than the entire
Composition of a steady, fulfilled life:
Each gesture, each word, each movement amid strife
Skillfully rendered, each a poem of love,
Or saber fencing with Your beams above.

March 22nd

The farmer was bending over furrowed land
When the sandy, serpentine trail claimed me.
There was an embrace of irregularities,
A nonchalant dismissal of symmetries.
Imagined perfection had no business being there.
Jagged rocks thrusted, asserted themselves.
There were muddy patches and caked brown leaves.
A few brown leaves crackled on dignified trees.
Broken boughs, fallen pine needles, pine cones,
The coarse bark, the pine trees, crooked and humped,
The hiker, slightly turned, peeing up ahead,
Other types of trees leaning, almost mischievously,
As though by some imagined door, overhearing
A secret or confession of someone they loved -
All received the warmth and affection of March.
Amidst such affection, I sometimes heard
The distant call of a train, the cacophony
Of dogs, the twitter or piercing note of a bird,
Someone thumping down a brow of wooden stairs...

My Wife

Anonymous One,
If I turn my eyes from You, lovely words,
My thoughts become a screen through which I see:
There is no creation, I am my own
Enemy, kin of Narcissus, like a painter turned to stone
By his painting, as though he tried to fit
The kaleidoscopic world into that one image alone.
Words, too, are like young women in an office room:
I work with them, admire their forms, their dress,
But my Wife awaits me, and true happiness.
She is Woman without image I cannot leave
As I cannot leave myself, or if I try,
I shall grow old as Adam, I shall grieve.
So when I work, I work afresh, anew
Because I feel You inside, only You.
I flow in time, though not of time, a joy
Which no diverting pleasures would destroy.
You lead me not to comfort, but open spaces;
Of shelter, security there are no traces.
After all the thoughts, images that float
During day...

Meditation

Anonymous One,
Sometimes when cranes circle overhead,
A person washes dishes with a circling hand.
Sometimes when a bear runs and catches a silvery prize,
A tennis player finds his perfect stride to the public's cries.
Sometimes when a brand new car is first driven out,
A bunch of new stars shed their cocoon.
Sometimes when green leaves blush with the dawn of June,
A virgin overcomes her awkwardness and doubt.
Sometimes when it snows in Montreal or Edmonton,
The flakes floating down, calm,
That means that though the person has never known snow,
His mind's calm, as he sits under a palm,
While a lake in Vermont evens out to staring trees,
And a dragonfly's perched on reed, at her ease.
A leaf has fallen and a wind has blown
In Africa, and a famous man emits a final moan.
It's not quite synchronicity, it's much more:
It's perhaps meditati...

More Beautiful Differences

A single bird is pulled as needle from blue cloth.
Hills drunk with shimmering green rustle being.
A stream meditates, almost courting seeing.
A figure, hunched over, is a kiss of distance,
Each movement of arm almost embrace of soil.
Three gray boulders are alive, mesmerized stillness.
All movements, non-movement are luminous fact;
Ideas scurry off like mice in light of fact.
I don't stand here as Canadian, denying fact.
Canada's a dream; there are people and earth.
I don't know what I am, but I'm not Jewish;
Being Jewish is yet another dream.
There is seeing now, these hills, figure, stream,
With unknowingness as my only wings.
I don't embrace such ideas, and so
I don't encourage division, needless woe.
Is this throwing out too much that is rich?
Is this the end of grand stories we can stitch?
Not so: It's the beginning of me and...

Red Cottage Days

Simple -
The country town store, its smoke-smelling wood,
And my father buying groceries there,
Then putting them in the car, driving through wood,
The stillness embracing cool morning air,
Crisscrossing beams under some sort of spell,
Shadows concentrated in a trance-like stare,
The path with a pebble-crunching tale to tell,
Building up our anticipation, excitement,
The red cottage hedge glittering a smile,
And tall oak too, to the effect it's been a while...
Sometimes we would have a barbecue soon,
Then some hours later go fishing,
Once twilight had shed its cocoon,
And the lake had ceased its restless wishing,
Our boat slicing through quietness, rocks and stone
In the water slowly disappearing
Into meditation, all becoming more intensely alone.
We would often ride the car to town
Once the night forgot itself in fireflies -
Ride to the auc...