Poems

pimîhkân

Here's how you make pemmican

1. wiyâs 

2. pânisâwân

3. kâhkêwak

4. yîwahikanak

5. pimîhkân

Here's how you make pemmican

Lord of My Heart’s Elation

Lord of my heart’s elation,

Spirit of things unseen,

Be thou my aspiration

A Short Story of Falling

It is the story of the falling rain

to turn into a leaf and fall again

it is the secret of a summer shower

to steal the light and hide it in a flower

and every flower a tiny tributary

We’ll Not Die in Paris

You forget the lines smells colors and sounds

sight weakens       hearing fades       simple pleasures pass

you lift your face and hands toward your soul

On Food/Bannock

baked, square or round globes formed from the rims of used pickle jars
i don't have milk, use water
i don't have eggs, that's okay, only some people use them anyways
i only have a bit of sugar, that's okay, throw it in

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s

Tide

Would I have seen her?

The tide tugging her gently past

the Comfort Inn; houses, tall and gabled,

Dick Pics

Two dicks, sitting in

my daughter’s inbox,

like men without hats,

waiting for any door

to open. 

*

Sighting a stranger’s penis

used to be rare. Remember raincoats?

The Blue Guitar

They said, ‘You have a blue guitar,

You do not play things as they are.’

The man replied, ‘Things as they are…

No Coward Soul Is Mine

No coward soul is mine

No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere

I see Heaven’s glories shine

The Swimmer’s Moment

For everyone

The swimmer's moment at the whirlpool comes,

But many at that moment will not say

Laurentian Shield

Hidden in wonder and snow, or sudden with summer,

This land stares at the sun in a huge silence

Endlessly repeating something we cannot…

January, 1795

Pavement slipp’ry, people sneezing,

Lords in ermine, beggars freezing;

Titled gluttons dainties carving,

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

First Things

This doesn't have to go in order;

that's the first thing.

I looked inside

an egg,

poked and blown

pristine, made clean

by the passing of its own slime. Inside

From Correspondences

Sometimes we are led through the doorway

by a child, sometimes

by a stranger, always a matter of grace changing

The Flea

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,

How little that which thou deniest me is;

Me it sucked first, and now sucks thee,

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

At Melville’s Tomb

Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge

The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath

An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,

i am graffiti

i am writing to tell you

that yes, indeed,

we have noticed

Vancouver Lights

About me the night        moonless           wimples the mountains

wraps ocean      land    …

Imaginary Dad

                                  Was so imaginary   he ceased to exist

Children Listen

                    It turns out however that I was deeply
Mistaken about the end of the world

Sometimes a Voice (1)

Sometimes a voice — have you heard this? —

wants not to be voice any longer, wants something

whispering between the words, some

A Stone Diary

At the beginning I noticed

the huge stones on my path

I knew instinctively

Hail

Hello from inside

the albatross

with a windproof lighter

She Walks in Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Light Shining out of Darkness

God moves in a mysterious way,

His wonders to perform;

He plants his footsteps in the sea,

31

We’re all aware that human hair is dead

Yet we spend thousands taking care of it.

It’s like an endless funeral.

The moment your hair hits air, it’s toast.

It only lives inside the follicle.

Insomnia

Thin are the night-skirts left behind

By daybreak hours that onward creep,

And thin, alas! the shred of sleep

The Last Laugh

‘O Jesus Christ! I’m hit,’ he said; and died.

Whether he vainly cursed, or prayed indeed,

The Bullets chirped — In vain! vain! vain!

My Brother at 3 A.M.

He sat cross-legged, weeping on the steps

when Mom unlocked and opened the front door.

         O God, he said. O God.

TREATY 8

queen of great britain and ireland, by her commissioners the

honourable david laird, of winnipeg, manitoba, indian com

Amor Mundi

“Oh where are you going with your love-locks flowing

On the west wind blowing along this valley track?”

“The downhill path is easy, come with me an it please ye,

Hip-Hop Ghazal

Gotta love us brown girls, munching on fat, swinging blue hips,
decked out in shells and splashes, Lawdie, bringing them woo hips.

As the jukebox teases, watch my sistas throat the heartbreak,

Ideas of Home

              i

Winter has landed; my boot bucks on a stone

surrounded by snow; I swear, I murmur

Oracabessa. “The rock” is what I call home,

The Chimney Sweeper: When my mother died I was very young

When my mother died I was very young,

And my father sold me while yet my tongue

Could scarcely cry “‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!”

Hotel Centrale, Rotterdam

I am awake between stiff

sheets tonight in room thirty

four, listening to the heat

God the Tea Master

All the weapons we marshal to confront the day

You ask to be left by the door before entering.

The sword in its sheath must lie on the grass,

the quiver and bow hung off a branch.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;