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
I never thought Michiko would come back
after she died. But if she did, I knew
it would be as a lady in a long white dress.
It is strange that she has returned
as somebody's dalmatian. I meet
the man walking her on a leash
almost every week. He says good morning
and I stoop down to calm her. He said
once that she was never like that with
other people. Sometimes she is tethered
on their lawn when I go by. If nobody
is around, I sit on the grass. When she
An eagle egg fell into a farmer’s chicken shed
and when it hatched the farmer gave it chicken feed
even though he was the king of birds. The farmer
clipped the eaglet’s princely beak and raised him
as a chicken. When he grew large, wildlife control
called on the farm. “It has the heart of an eagle,”
said the public servant. “It will fly.” And the farmer
asked, “What if he likes it here with all the chickens?”
As they spoke, the birds crept off to don disguises.
scurried around a classroom papered with poems.
Even the ceiling, pink and orange quilts of phrase...
they introduced one another, perched on a tiny stage
to read their work, blessed their teacher who
encouraged them to stretch, wouldn’t let their parents
attend the reading because parents might criticize,
believed in the third and fourth eyes, the eyes in
the undersides of leaves, the polar bears a thousand miles north,
and sprouts of grass under the snow. They knew their poems
Dad reads aloud. I follow his finger across the page.
Sometimes his finger moves past words, tracing white space.
He makes the Moon say something new every night
to his deaf son who slurs his speech.
Sometimes his finger moves past words, tracing white space.
Tonight he gives the Moon my name, but I can’t say it,
his deaf son who slurs his speech.
Dad taps the page, says, try again.
Tonight he gives the Moon my name, but I can’t say it.
“Morning of goodness to you”
— “Morning of goodnesses”
Or add flowers: “morning of roses”
Always multiply the gift—
“welcome” to “two welcomes”
“a hundred welcomes and kinship and ease”
Keep offering tray after tray of words
When someone fixes your engine
passes food, serves you in any way
say “May your hands be whole and healthy”
They echo “god keep you healthy and hale”
Wishing a sneezer “mercy” is a three-step dance
They reply “guidance and rightness of mind”
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
— Robert Hayden
Weekends too my father roofed poor neighborhoods,
at prices only his back could carry
into profit. In the name of labor’s
virtue—or was it another bill collector’s callous
calling again?—my brother and I became
his two-boy cleanup crew. During those hard,
gloved hours under the sun’s weight, I studied
my father, from the ground—the distance he kept
i thought you were gone / stupid bird / darling worms shifting in the mud / this time i am not so certain / is it kinship or are you gloating? / have i grown bitter with the bees / how they bring the blooms reliably?
Let Us Be Fireflies
All day we
practice morse code signals
telegraphing ghosts
of intent.
Between us
unsayable things
heavy as bone.
For any hope of plain
speech we must do away
with skin suit propriety &
Where did the handsome beloved go?
I wonder, where did that tall, shapely cypress tree go?
He spread his light among us like a candle.
Where did he go? So strange, where did he go without me?
All day long my heart trembles like a leaf.
All alone at midnight, where did that beloved go?
Go to the road, ask any passing traveler —
That soul-stirring companion, where did he go?
Go to the garden, and ask the gardener —
That tall shapely rose stem, where did he go?