monday thaw

On TV it looked like a high-speed photo of a milk drop

the dying leader of the Pana Wave laboratory cult smack in the

centre.

Acres of white cloth streamered his followers, who

circled him like crown jewels.

More and more I'm responding to stark white on black,

letting the morning frost finish for me.

Calgary is fur-lined in the sun. Although the cold front

will chop us down to minus, there are hints of a melt.

Dad's three-legged shadow bends blueness

on the salt grained snow.

His cane stabs seed grasses that hang in dead doublets over a pond.

No goddess-catching here on the sly, icy bends of Bowness Park.

We trudge over a footbridge, just as a skater passes under us.

And though he calls his legs moi-yoong, good-for-nothing,

it's still the best uncertainty that finds us here.

Beneath the white ice, light is reaching down

and allowing self-assemblage —

strong wind with minimum repose

for dragons about to wake.

Skin is ever folding inward, shaping new drives

that rise from nothing,

into the same white hourglass.

We start over again

by inversion.

Snow pours down from one bell to the other.