In yard-high drifts,
the small chittering tracks of a resident rabbit,
filling in quickly with the blowing snow.
I follow, stupidly bootless,
right around the house
until I see where it shelters.
Our spreading birch, in this blizzard,
shows out as a sketchy charcoal drawing,
and our miserable cat stares out
from the orangey warmth of the living room.
I plod up to the glass door, open it,
and ask my wife for carrots and lettuce.
Are you hungry?…she says.
Don’t kill yourself, (they said),
when he went out to do the walkway
in the dark.
One upstairs, with Netflix on the headphones.
The other snoring in her pillow chair.
Most of the neighbourhood in for the night.
The odd car, trucking bags of groceries
or kids to piano lessons.
So no one found him, behind the boxwood hedge,
until the movie credits rolled
and the sleeper woke with an itchy premonition.
Just this morning, Clarice went to coma. In hallways of cottony grey she swims, but not aimlessly. She has shed the displeasures of the flesh, and does not feel, as they slide the needles and tubes into it and make the lungs rise and fall. Only hears, in a fast fade, the pops and clicks and hisses. She knows there will be no visitors for a time.
So small now, with lightness, this sprite of being.
The singularity awaits, the neutron star that holds the knowing. She can touch it, she senses, but waits for divine invitation. In her life of walking, she has been shown but parts of its great story and, in those moments, her friends and kin have turned away and left her in quietness.
And soon, we know now, Clarice will return, and fill the languishing body with a spirit of soft fire. The quietness will stay in her person, and grace will shine. If you are the one to whom she turns her eyes, beware, for she may ask you to walk for a while.
Erica has her own key
to her own apartment,
on the strength of a job letter.
No more nightly pay,
unwanted bottles,
fancy but fouled dresses.
She sits in the arbourite kitchen
with a half jar of instant
and ten cigarettes.
As a spotted pigeon taps the window,
Erica takes stock.
Of unfinished school,
desperate and frustrated parents,
bad associations.
This donkey’s education.
Soured to life, in the age of exuberance.
Phantom Facebook friends.
It’s so silent in here, she thinks,
and walks, perplexed, to the window
with a finger full of peanut butter.
Bird must be hungry,
’cause it pecks like a jackhammer
and hurts her finger.
She draws back in fright. It flies away in fright.
What now? She thinks. Not a soul, not a soul do I have.
An apartment she has.
And an apartness. A leper’s loneliness, tonight.
When old imaginings
rise to their seasons
A slam of thirteen spades
Warm milk and molasses
Stop the rush
Drop the day
Believe this religion
Thank the artist, and
feel the velvet of self.
The held back tears
of a smarting sting.
The shame overheard
in a chance eavesdrop
(that slow knife, rusting in place
and broken off at the handle).
The social dread,
the uttered stutter.
Where do we put such medals?
Because
they’re not becoming of a man.
It’s to be published as a featured post. I’m grateful to their editors.
Some days,
it’s the tilt of a chubby face,
bright sun on rosy cheek,
smiles a daring smile.
Holders of doors,
thankyous said.
A girl with a broken wiper
gets help in the cold,
and someone lets you in on the highway.
Some days,
we’re in the matrix.
Hell’s voodoo.
It’s pricked our doppelgängers.
And, with a squirm,
we’ll taste the fruits
of our continents of secrets.
We’ll stare, in prurience:
The men from the boys,
the women from the girls,
the free sinners from
the chained saints.
The Vice,
The Versa.
Touch
Yes, I know
now
The warmth of nearness
The barber
The masseuse
I pay
I do
for more than what’s needed
For the expected
the guaranteed
the scheduled.
Aremyfeetofftheground 