Poems

Villanelle

I dreamed I was reading a villanelle

in front of a crowd. Next to me on the floor

was a large bag of garbage I'd mistakenly

brought with me onto the stage. My own garbage.

Not the Music

Not the music.

It is this other thing

I keep from all of them

that matters, inviolable.

I scratch in my journals,

a mouse rummaging through cupboards,

To an Athlete Dying Young

The time you won your town the race

We chaired you through the market-place;

Man and boy stood cheering by,

A Blessing

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

Darken with kindness.

They have come gladly out of the willows

Skins

what a glory feeling it is to sit in the sun by the oceanside

as tulugait and naujait sing circling above

and scrape skins with centuries of arnait guiding my ulu

Sho

Some need some Body

or more to ape sweat

on some site. Bloody

purl or dirty spit

hocked up for to show

who gets eaten. Rig

Body up. Bough bow

to breeze a lazed jig

Bike-Twister

Place a foot upon a pedal,

Put your pedal-pushers on;

To the pedal pin a paddle,

Paddle-pedal push upon.

Place the paddle-pedal-cycle

On a puddle in the park;

The Swimmer’s Moment

For everyone

The swimmer's moment at the whirlpool comes,

But many at that moment will not say

We Have No Need For Scientists

We have no need

for scientists to

tell us things

we already

know

like the

sea is

rising

and the

water is

getting warm.

Let the Ponies Out

oh papa, to have you drift up, some part of you drift up through

water through

fresh water into the teal plate of sky soaking foothills, papa,

Mean Drunk Poem

Backward & down into inbetween as Vicki says. Or as Robin teaches

the gap, from which all things emerge. A left

handed…

Wishing Well

My fist holds as many coins

as I can carry. All are stamped with the Queen's effigy;

Elizabeth, D.G. Regina, the resident of pockets,

a woman I've never met though I always know

The Ayes Have It

When I think of Trayvon Martin, I think of Emmett Till,

             when I think of Emmett Till, I think of young, black men in the South,

another set of instructions

we are asking you to trust your hands. put them on your heart. trust

your heart. hear what we are saying. trust what you hear. we are

asking you to build a circle. always a circle. not almost a circle. face

Language

Do you speak your language? 

I stare — I just said: how are you? 

I thought English was my language

apparently it isn’t

I thought Halkomelem was gibberish

the devil’s language

anyone lived in a pretty how town

anyone lived in a pretty how town

(with up so floating many bells down)

spring summer autumn winter

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

The Bow

I only know rivers

Waters elongated to the unrumpled recitatif

of endless land

The Bow knows

Has tongued and grooved the firmament, baby,

of this Last Best

The Bow knows

from Cross River . Pick Lotus

9

How to describe sea

To someone who’s never seen it?

He lives to ninety-nine, he wants it, to see it

To walk on its glass surface, to blow the seven trumpets.

When Winter Comes

Rain at Muchalat, rain at Sooke, 

And rain, they say, from Yale to Skeena, 

And the skid-roads blind, and never a look 

my mother found herself

my mother found herself one late summer

afternoon lying in grass under the wild

yellow plum tree jewelled with sunlight

she was forgotten there in spring picking 

rhubarb for pie & the children home from

When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,

Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,

Riprap

Lay down these words

Before your mind like rocks.

             placed solid…

K was supposed to come with the key, I was

K was supposed to come with the key, I was

to wait outside the gate. I arrived on time,

the time we had agreed on and waited, as agreed,

Trust Fund Witches

covering

in the broadest conception

of black music, which is the

truest conception of black

music, black music can't be

conceived. a music of covers,

black music covers, and cover

more treaty lines

1790 → treaty 2, district of Hesse (step into wolf)

province of quebec

“We do herby certify that the following goods were delivered to the

several Nations”

The Windrush

Dem did sey she pregnance

Cum a sea full a mi

Weighing har down eena har shoe dem

Dresses, coco, mangoes an baggy an arl

Dem did sey de ship nearly sink

Mi mumma nebah sleep a wink

A Glass Tube Ecstasy

a glass tube

for my leg       says Hugo Ball

my hat a cylinder

Weed Killer

Our mother gave us a sack of weed killer

the size of a toddler, and told us

to spread it on the front lawn.

My sister and I lugged it there.

A light cloud of white powder

Come Up From the Fields Father

Come up from the fields father, here’s a letter from our Pete,

And come to the front door mother, here’s a letter from thy dear son.

Lo, ’tis autumn

Reluctance

Out through the fields and the woods

And over the walls I have wended;

I have climbed the hills of view

A Red, Red Rose

O my Luve is like a red, red rose

That’s newly sprung in June;

O my Luve is like the melody

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

the knowing

the re-invention of oneself 

through the tongues of whispering mountains 

the re-arrangement of the universe 

Little Song

Both guitars run trebly. One noodles 

Over a groove. The other slushes chords.

Then they switch. It’s quite an earnest affair.

Sonnet XXIX: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

I saw a perfect tree today

I saw a perfect tree today

From my cabin bed on a Via Rail train 

Through the North of Ontario

I saw a perfect tree today

It was tall and thin and scraggly and prim

Then I saw another just as perfect

Letters

I threw away your letters.

Years ago, just like that.

The tight black swirls,

circles and strokes

filling fine sheets —

I would not see them again.

The last items I had left.

Fire Watch

Hello, listen, I’m on a field phone, do not speak until I say “over.”

Repeat, don’t talk until I say “over.” Over. Do you understand,