Of bells and roses
Sunday morning in Pimlico
So quiet that from across the street I can hear a couple making love
Perhaps in the rumpled aftermath they listen to the church bells
A carillon that soars and soars over silent rooftops
a celestial workout summoning angels from their beds
I am in a cafe trying not to listen to a man on his cell phone
Fat chance!
I know all his secrets
He thinks he has found a renter for his flat in Geneva
And better yet (are you listening?) he has the signatures of all the people in the revenue stream
Across the street a couple unsmiling emerges from a doorway
She is carrying red roses still wrapped in cellophane holding them downwards by the stems like a furled umbrella
Are they the ones?
The bells are silent
I can still hear them
In my dreams
Last night I dreamed -
It was clear in my mind
Poets will save the world
one poem at a time
In a tsunami of wisdom
In hundreds of tongues
they will write and create
And share where they can;
Words, phrases, couplets
such brilliance, insane,
Whirled like a dervish
In the synapses of my brain;
Then alas, I awoke
And nothing was there
Save this one poor thought
I am happy to share
And it is this:
If you will unclench your fist
I can hold your hand
Time and tide
I
Hot sun cold beer
the fairground smell
of frying onions
sausages sizzling
and squirming
on the grill
poked and prodded
by men with tongs
jostling for position
like cave dwellers
around a dinosaur fire
On the listing porch of
a fragrant and
tangled garden
their wives
studiously
Ignore them
sipping Sauvignon blanc
from the comfort
of wicker chairs
Then the snags
are cooked
the day is done
the hunters
lick their fingers
one by one
and carry the spoils
to the table
You can have
yer Michelin stars
yer aiolis
and yer drizzles
there’s absolutely
nothing finer
than an Aussie
sausage sizzle
in the high canopy
birds you hear but
seldom see
cackle uproariously
Kookaburras in a gum tree
Sun and moon together in the twice-blessed dawn
Stir the wind to shiver among singing pines
The ocean changes its rhythm sending waves in gangs
Grinding rock to sand in the blink of a millennium
Time spins on its axis
The patient raven awaits the dinosaurs return
Raven spins a story as old as cosmic dust
of chaos spawning order
The end before the beginning
a spider that swallows its web
A seed in a nut in a cone grows trees that give us light
The singing pine shelters the mountains
And raven blackens the night
The strangled ocean drowns all whales
crabs without claws hunt fish without scales
And sand heavy skulls with bottle cap eyes
Scream plastic truths and laminated lies
On the yet-dead shore waves flop and die
And Raven casts its shadow on the stillborn sky
In praise of an Aussie
sausage sizzle
Girl in the black dress
A photograph
in search of an image
a moment
awaiting its time
footprints on
a soft sand beach
beneath the sweep
of cloudy skies;
Suddenly, there she is
the girl in a long black dress
A vision etched onto
time-scarred rocks
black on black
against the
tumbling
pearl-black sea
Your hand in mine
If I could turn back the clock
I would go back to yesterday
And take a photograph
of a man 77 and his granddaughter not quite 2
walking down stone steps
from a restaurant
to a parking lot
That would be me and Abby
I said to her ‘will you help me down the stairs, Abby?’
And she nodded solemnly
And held out her hand
I was afraid I might stumble \
and embarrass her
And I nearly did on one step
“Oi” I said.
And Abby said “Oi”
As if that were part of it
Paging Passenger Hamlet
(Written in response to a CBC Canada Writes challenge to put a Shakespeare character into a modern setting)
Hamlet checks in at the airport and boards a 747
What manner of going is this
Where men of high estate may be,
Stripped of footwear, poked, prodded,
Goods and chattels untimely seized;
Herded like cattle into pestilential pens,
Assailed by voices heard, not seen?
What Hell is this that hath no name?
Randomly scriven in a devil’s tongue
Writ only in numbers and letters
Mouthed by fools and charlatans;
Terminal C, Gate 10, Row 2, Seat B;
What artifice lurks in such foul
Guise, more conducive
To the slaughter of innocents
Than to dreams of Elysian shores?
Virgin! Delta! Tango! Transat!
Sunwing! Westjet! Zip! Zoom!
No Birds of Paradise these avians be
but dragons of acrid and fiery breath
Dispatched to fetch us to the jaws of Hell!
But Hark! Here comes the Harpy
All battle-clad and red-lipped fury
Yet smiling like a cruel assassin
To challenge my very being;
2B, or not 2B, that is the question
Whether tis nobler in the mind
To take thine place upon a gilded throne
Or shuffle into the monster’s bowels
And there squat with the masses
Alas, my docket yet tells the tale
And I am cast beyond the pale;
An Upgrade! An Upgrade!
My Kingdom for an Upgrade!
Yet e’en if I be wrongly placed
Should I be unseated so?
Mine goblet snatch’ed from mine grasp
Hot towel sudden turned to ice;
But wait! All seems not lost
The bonds that bind me at once are loose’d;
Yonder! See? The portcullis rises
The drawbridge falls,
Arise! For England! We’ll breach these walls
The flag and the shadow
I saw a flag that said ‘if’
If what? If at all
I saw a tree spindly shadow
Pinned to a wall
-
I saw a wooden church
With a slattery roof
Saving souls on Sunday
With a splintery truth
-
I saw a long-dead barge
With a barnacle suture
And a crow on a pipe
As black as the future
-
I saw a bubble machine
Streaming globules of light
And children chasing
It was fine and right
-
In no
particular
order
The first day of spring
with a buttery sun
And summer
a poem away
-
And a crucible moon
hangs with the dawn
as round as
grandma’s tray
-
And buds on the trees
hide their secret away
to blossom another day
Gone fishing
Gone Fishing
Said the sign on his
bedroom door
So an old man’s duty was clear
Get on board, grab a ride,
Watch the humpbacks breech
And hear the sea lions roar;
Off Andrew’s Point
on Haida Gwaii
With the sun dancing lively
on the waves
The guide set the rod
And steered the boat
But it’s the kid who won the day;
For when the reel sang
the fight was on
And it is was he who claimed
the prize
Holding tight
Until his knuckles were white
And pride shone
In an old man’s eyes
Photo Viire Daniels
September 9/2019, West Coast Fishing Club, Langara Island
Ethan Grange, aged six,
with his 29 lb Chinook
When the
wind blows
Trees in autumn throw down their leaves
dried and spent; no need of these
Yet reds and yellows
are the colours of the dawn;
harbingers of spring
beneath the sleeping snows
Lest we forget
You hear them before you see them
Overhead under lowering skies
In that missing man formation that says
We’re here who died;
The missing man was my cousin
Killed the day his son was born
He was your uncle, your granddad,
Your geography teacher,
She was the girl who sold stamps
At the post office before she went to war;
So today we stand in silence
That deafens all our sighs
And I’m grateful if it’s raining
For it’s the rain that blurs my eyes
