Saturday 3 December 2016

I am sad

Yesterday I said
I was sad
And today I am
Especially so
I read of a girl

She was nineteen
And I see the
Beauty of my son
Sixteen almost
A man resting
In his bed

What was it she did
That our government
Withdrew
When the clock
Ticked over
On her birthday

Whether it was
Foster care or
Fentanyl or whatever
No one knew but
She was dead

In a tent
On waste ground
In winter
In the city
Thank Christ?

Wednesday 12 October 2016

introduced to a tree

i think it a she tree
it has her attitude
not fuck you
but yes i'm here
and i should be
so what!
my waxed green
is showing
in the rain
and yes
you can look
if you like
my red is 
young but strong
needing feeding,
but stripable
discovering cream
and alabaster, 
at winter's 
tightening,
always newly me.

Monday 26 September 2016

Addiction

Dreaming darkness enlivened
minds seek solace,
dipped relief of sorrow
spawns its shame,
unfulfilled promises
cast shadows back
in ghostly gray half memory.

Attention seeking outlet
mixing passions as
drunken vomit
cannot fail
to splash feet
that wept
to dance with grace.

Awake aware
certain deaths
close down all hope
of resurrection,
in a veiled world
shaded eyes glisten
and laugh at my sad song

Saturday 27 August 2016

the separation

The separation between 
Mary and her hands
deepened after Joan left.
caught in the rolling turn 
of changing times
Joan was sucked from the kitchen
into an opening beyond 
the picket fence.
Needing something other than the life
of a logger’s wife Joan took
small steps that led beyond barrooms
and the haze of smoke and voices
to a difference she constructed.
A change happened one Sunday
over the stove
deftly flipping
white and orange
against the black cast-iron
seasoned by time,
slow heat and fat.
Mary’s challenge shook 
her mother’s body
turned her face and made another
same September impossible
An old taunt new voiced.
“why don’t you fuck off
and do something with your life”.
Familiar words exposed, stripped
of the rasp of tobacco 
and the smell of beer
countless times more potent.
In Joan something moved,
and a primitive fish
turned in Kootenay lake
past the hotsprings 
past the Ferry
west to Nelson,


Joan followed..

Wednesday 24 August 2016

museum

standing
welcoming arms
still
outstretched
looking intently
nowhere
bought and paid for
moved and stashed
before our troubles.
You moved
to the island
to your new life
of being,
looking
in a
souls statement.
Do the waves
still whisper
your name
on the salt wind?
Do white-headed
eagles cry 

for you?
Does the bite of salt
miss your ribs
where
dark haired people
netted freely?

Monday 1 August 2016

Out of the woods

noble trees
stretched broken
born before boots
beat a new drum
in these woods
and bare feet
and deerskin walked
softer paths
fifteen thousand years
in the making
raped in fifty
what remains
Blindness with eyes
backpacks and boots
chains, saws, cables
steel ships to Asia
and the mills
golf courses
where perfect girls
and boys in dark
glasses and black
shirts ride green
Jimdeeres on tarmac
for those taking the
Air
Bosses in regional
development where
everyone chases
a buck, economies
profit or a salary to
meet a mortgage
or a banker or
medication costs
keep it up
as the final firs
Weep their last
i saw them today
because i could
and you took me
after fifty years
since as a boy
looking for silence
i found the home
of letters
where leaves rustled
and giant cedars
peeped in pictures
saying
come to me.

Friday 17 June 2016

dirt

Fingertips and the point of contact
beneath her nails
where she stored the memory
of gardens she had muddled
and other uninvited visitors.
the sharpened pricks of hardness
and the cold sweat of Prison.


I love the dirt that’s spurned
by the cleanliness of order
adore delicious damage
done in rejection of ease,
give me people peeled in
pursuit of other truth
pilloried for chasing whispers.


I can only love what's broken:
from my own feet and all I've ever touched
to the stomping boots that visit in the night
and then
there are the sweet scents and colours
children's clothes and gardens of herbs
where anyone can rest



Wednesday 3 February 2016

the second day

watching creases
in her feet
hung on the ends
of brown legs
dangling,
end of summer legs
hanging over still
water reflecting
reluctance to
shoes and pavement.
preferring docks,
salt and sailing

swelling
hours
of morning
deck feet
balanced
skipping
dancing
swimming
'till evening's
lapping,
fish friends
bring sleep

never to
shoot a seagull
nor wear it
round her neck
at home on
gathered waters
ere she could
rightly know
dry ground
or that it was good,
wishing today was
the second day

Saturday 23 January 2016

letters

Thought to send you a letter.
That seemed contrived
and it better fit to tell you here
I saw the trees
sometimes straight sometimes knotted
sticks and branches
perfectly spaced to catch light
not a leaf to block
raindrops clinging
silver glistening
on mottled greys and browns.
Caged trees in city lines
they made me cry for fields
and mixed god thrown types
that catch imaginations’
wanting, take me
away from this lock box
of concrete and cars,
this people prison,
give me a hill 
where waters ripple
where grasses wet my feet 
as forgiveness
runs to a cove
and a small boat at anchor.
Would you meet me there
        or
would you rather a letter?