Wavering Place

I’m slowly bringing things back, clearing
the old path through these trees. My friend circles
an arm over a splintered bench where we swelter
this August noon. A lunch with the past, sandwiches
under oaks, tomatoes he seeded, salted
and drained. Slick glasses of tea instead of the Purple
Jesus we shared in college. Grandfather drank it

out of the family, he says of the white columned
house, the land he has bought back. Inside, room
after high-ceilinged room, massive fireplaces, fractured
plaster, carved mantles holding art propped,
most unframed. One in gold gilt he hands
to me.  My son’s.  Painted the year
he died. We sketched all over Italy.
Turning away — Read what he wrote,

if you want, but not out loud. Words
scrawled across the back of a canvas – grove
of cypress lit by a cracked moon – a long note
thanking a father for good
and bad. We were becoming
closer, he says from the doorway.  And then.
From rumor, I see
his son gunning a sporty car

into the trunk of an oak. Years away, I know
nothing.  Stopping at an unfinished
self-portrait, he smiles at the unsmiling
man in the painting. Well, there I am, still working
on things. Still here. Through a floor-length
window, the towering trees
splinter in rippled glass.

Fence

She built that fence
in the snow. All
we saw of her
was her red anorak
and the upward
flash of her tool, a
hammer. Later,
after her husband died
and we tried to visit
she wouldn’t come
to the door. Now all
that’s left is that fence,
weathered, sturdy,
still barring us,
though she has moved
away. She took her
dog with her but she
left the dish behind.
Now, it sits there like
a bright blue plug. We
think if we remove it
the whole yard may
swirl inward, down Hell’s
drain, taking house and
tree and logpile, leaving
one reassuring fence, inviolate.

Being Me

The Trip across Texas is mine.
Well, it’s in my name.
The bank picks up the tab,
I grab the fantasy:
he practices my autograph
in a cheap motel like a kid
does Mickey Mantle’s.
His girlfriend is horny,
pretty and young, naked
but for an anklet with chain
linked to a ring on her toe.
Her thighs are tattooed
with flames.
He says, “Wait one Goddam
minute,” goes out to test
my card on a carton of Camels,
beer and a convenience store rose.
“YES, YES,” she shouts applauding his success.
He complains, “Can’t play the Lottery
with this fucking thing,” as she kisses
my hologram, licks my magnetic strip.
He lights a fat strawberry candle.
My MasterCard bounces on a pillow
like a mint at a Sheraton.
On the way to the malls,
a cop pulls them over.
She slips my card down her jeans,
flirts the ticket down to a warning.
At the Texas Art Supply
they buy expensive brushes.
She digs being painted with air.
It’s a Wal-Mart for a rifle,
fancy camera and telescope,
CD’s of nature noises.
Returning to the room, they stop
for a dozen Dove Ice Cream Bars,
a home pregnancy test.
She says if they don’t get caught
she’ll name the kid after me.

Accidental

Stowaway from Singapore,
no papers or passport,
surname unknown,

Short-tailed Babbler, Japanese White-eye,
Orange-bellied Flowerpecker,

whoever you are, passing passerine,
drawn to perch on a lifeboat winch
by some crumb or flash of an earring

as tugs yank the ship out into channel
and two days later, in the South China Sea,

you’re stuck too, nowhere to flee
from here to horizon, as shown by forays

of fluttering panic over the waves
and back before exhaustion drowns you,

little prisoner, condemned to be
transported to a dirtier city,

or if you hang on and cross all the way,
Black-throated Laughingthrush
or whatever your name is,

a snack for hawks in the U.S.A.

Lover’s Quarrel

1

Because you cling like cigarette smoke, thin and acrid, in the brim of my hat, as if
you know God lives on the addiction of our breath.

2

When the shadows finish wallpapering the bedroom, and the crows flock east
with the traffic, is when.

3

How can I watch, in peace, the city bathe behind the sheer plastic shower curtain
of the rain? My eyes towel off a nakedness not ours.

4

Because it’s late, and we know it will all expire, and I’ve programmed the wind,
an oscillating fan, to scatter us, like loiterers, from the world. Forgive me. I love
so much.

Commercial Drive, Vancouver, BC