POEMS

KLEE WYCK
For Emily Carr

The stones that eulogise the lilies
where you thrived
are rough unspeakable seeds.

Bride of the painted field,
sister of sea and sky,
loved by the unloveable,
unloved by the one beloved,
you gave yourself to the Haida,
godtrees carving themselves
out of the burnished ground,
saltburnt faces old
and puckered as the young maize
stripped
from its ancient roots.

Now earth contains you
like a silenced tongue a word.
Yet asleep in a tent of sun and rain
the seasons' girl is again
the trees' divine interpreter—

Boldly still your spirit brushes
the changing line
flesh of ocean/
bone of land.

Your eloquent silence stuns
and honours us.

The big blue raven praises you,
Klee Wyck,
O Laughing One!

THE GEOGRAPHER
On the painting by Jan Vermeer, 1669

Under his left hand, the unopened
volume; in his right, the twin-
legged gauge of expanding centres
hovers over a blank parchment
unfurled—translucent wave
where a map will come to be.
To his inward and distracted
gaze these objects, like a shoreline
blur; he speeds through stillness—

Dipped in a dream he leans
like a trader's prow
away from the known
into encompassing
light from the quartered window

while in the foreground, thick wool
from Turkey or Persia
folds over the table trenches of blue
surging into stunned peaks of light
above spice-coloured borders.

Put away, almost ignored,
the conscripted globe
on the back corner cupboard glows
from darkness like a moon. Near full it sails;
fixed above his forehead
as though to the spire of a plunging mast.

DOROTHY
For Dorothy Livesay

Her sterling softness
and the halting shuffle
of arthritis
convince you
she's a gone old woman.

You will not expect
the little handcarved people
in Swiss dress who dance out
of her pupils on the hour
hammering the rusty air
with bells; they vanish in a blink
of light.

Then you'll hear the quiet
counting itself down
on the fingers of two hands.

NUPTIAL

My art is like the mirror in the hand
of Utamaro's shaded-blue lady;
it marries an angle of seeing
to an illusion of being.

Each line is a clear strand brushed
up from the nape of the mind and pinned
before the placing of the veil:
art is my wedding veil.

My art is also craft.
To show my love, I conceal it,
flesh bone with articulate light,
heighten detail between folds of shadow.

Now I hold the white sheet
bound with words.
It is even more perfect than a veil,
a contract subtler than a given name.

SEEDBED

Time's flower the clock
unfolds the child in me
who in my dream awakes
to find her body sepalled green
with flame.

In her brain
the tongue's blue root,
the fire sings her secret name.

From her navel,
an umbilicus of light
stems a black blossom
whose galaxies of pollen
slow ponderously
winding her in

'Till the clockflower's pistils
fall thick as if from rain
and pause in the finished hour
so the key that flicks
the black seeds back
can turn and spin her 'round again.

On wakening she opens
wizened eyes
and I touch
with her timeless hands
the face of an old, old
woman.

PATH

The wet path struggled
to hold me back.
Spring's tough bracken
and branches hunched with rain
slapped my face.

Out of breath
I stopped midway. Swung
to stillness, the limbs that overhung
dangled new green beads of elderberry,
and each suspended in a clear globe of
rain
the upended image of the trees.

In that magnified miniature
my green path curved toward the sky.

TOYFISH

Silver carp,
fat goldfish in a cosmic pool,
you were my little-girl god;
you were where the thread
crooked
filled the invisible spool
head to tail.

Still swimming like a shuttle
you weave bright
lightyears
between the stars,
those silver pegs where
knots of matter are
on the black frame
of the spacetime loom.

I've made a toyfish,
much like you.
Slender, three-finned
it ascends, heaping an overspin
of fire behind it
a trail too fast
unravelling

My new fish dives
like a needle
toward the cratered button
of the moon,
and threads it,
and heads for the dozen big
buttons, grey and marrow-red
and the asteroid
scattered necklace of seedpearls
flung between the worlds.

Silver carp,
slim goldfish in the cosmic pool,
when you've unwound
from argent head to tail,
when you're a skeleton,
a fishbone wishbone
by that first knot
dangling from the finished thread,

My toyfish
that is much like you,
and you,
will make a dark rendez-vous,
a docking manoeuvre
over the last black rent;
will bring you thread enough
to silver the separate spaces
into one whole sun.

ARBOR VITAE
Tree of Life

A child questions whether trees
have their winter roots
in the ground or in the sky
and whether there are leaves
underfoot unseen
filling the veins we mine.

The child is answered
that only human roots
have their trees in the sky;
and if leaves
became an acceptable mode of exchange
our land would still be bankrupt
of wonder.

OASIS

Weightlessly, the elephant lifts
her pregnant bulk
from the mud

As she swings her curved quadrantal ears
the galactic arms
of her ivory tusks flash
and disappear

The black hide of space glistens
with drops
of water.

WINDOW SHOPPING

Yesterday, a fall sale of birds
flew south
over the checkout counter,
their cries ringing
the sun's cold zero.

This morning the aisles are emptied
and one red sweater
swings
high on a branch
while invisible workers
whitewash old walls.

BOILING EGGS IN A WHITE-FLECKED BLACK POT
For Angela Beyde when she was little

Bald women are snorkelling
in the north sea
where an ice-floe breaking
up awakens
white blind fishes in a sub-
terranean river
on a strange world
where three slim crescents
of moonlight float
among the flecked enamel
stars.

PORTRAIT OF A FAST CAT

Grandma on the back verandah,
the Final Edition in her lap
throws her tea to hit
the neighbours' cat in our flowers.

Pragmatic, the pussy watches
the arcing body of hot water
somersault through air off-target—

The first drops rattle claws
on the rock ledge
as the missed cat scrams

And a backwind catches the brown tail
of liquid still descending
into the gold chrysanthemums
and splashes it in petals all over
the red verandah gate.

Irate, grandma enters the kitchen
for another cup
then settles in the lawnchair by the steps

watchfully,
the news rolled up like a cannon.

Between slats of the high, weathered picket,
eartufts twitch in the sun.

WHY I WOKE YOU

I heard our two watches talking.
They talked a long time.
They talked in circles
All night to decide
Which was best at hours, yours or mine.

Yours was very proud, being new
And meanly mocked mine
For falling behind:
—No fault of its own,
Because I bought it second-hand.

My watch called your watch a bad name,
Your watch did the same.
"Now, wait a minute—"
Said mine, losing face,
"Darn digital, your number's up!"

My watch hit your watch a backhand.
Yours gave mine the works.
Really boxed its gears.
That's why I woke you,
To ask you what time it is, dear.

REPLY TO RILKE'S "AUTUMN DAY" (previously unpublished)
For Steve and Mona Alapi

Love, it is time. Come, lie upon me
like the shadow on the sundial
and over my mouth let your strong mouth
measure the falling minutes. Let us rinse

our mouths with wine of kisses
forced to perfection not by the sun
but by the first frost of autumn.

Then let us sleep and awaken
and write and read in one another's bodies
long love letters in the script of touch,
and build us a house of love

and together hew a bright pathway to and from
that either may take when after the other goes,
we must walk alone where the last wind blows
shadowless under the equinox.

SUDDEN RAINSTORM ON THE ROOFDECK

While we lie still
in the emptying bowl of light,
our bodies lengthwise to the poles
(like glimmering spoons)

Kite-winged the gull
rides wind
smudged black
as her own wing-tips,
the burnt sky spreading west and east
from her darkness-whitened breast—

—Cloud surfaces shift
unearthing footprints of wind
in the treadmill of ash-colored cotton
unbolting overhead.
When those
first kernels of cold ignite
our sunbruised skin
you kneel to gather
up oil, watch, keys
into your green plastic beachbag, roll
your greenedged mat, then ride
your heels
(like the white
gull hanging still
over the mountain as the sky expands).

Then the blackening sky
lifts and breaks northwest
letting down cold grey cones of rain
like pale rays of light into the ozone air,
and I strip from the line
our sheets
that all morning filled and filled,
shaping this coming storm

then await, like you, the now
doubly desired downpour
(the fluttering streaming of the white gull's wings).

FIREFLY

In the darkness
the cyclopean red glow
of your cigarette
is your real third eye.

You smoke
only to catch my hidden face
in the sudden matchflame.

Laughing,
you show me
the blue genitals
of the fire
pulsing
on the golden stick.

When you walk away
from me,
the light weaves you
a flaming sweater;
and sleeves, bluer
than shadows
spin from my emptying eyes.

RITUAL

Our bodies impress the static sand
with grace, and dance
among the swordblade reeds
that sunward thrust
salute

until we lie suspended
windless as the dunes

under the swordpoint
stars

CHAMELEON

We stand at morning's window,
Praise the golden needles in our eyes
Embroidering the sun
Like an Imperial Dragon
On our silken lids.

Turned from the wooden frame
We admire our tapestry.
I pull a stray thread
from your forehead—

—you unravel.

The dragon's tail falls cold
on the stone window-ledge.






The end

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