I used to walk my
dog through the lane behind
my place
late, late at night. Jazz & I were the
only ones alive, & the
world was black where the
lamps were burnt—
amber where they shone.

Once, before my eyes adjusted to
the dark, I tripped & found a
man, his face an
oozing mess, pulped & open so wide…
Jazz sniffed a hand & I
pulled her away from the
growing stain.

Shot in the face, the news
screamed—
Drugs & Money.

All I saw was a gaping,
oozing shell
&
the stain that grew while I
sat against a wall, petting Jazz
like madness.

Islands-- the whole
World is islands clinging greenlike to
The sliding slate-coloured ocean
And there, another one rises larger than the
Others, a piece of
The ocean's bottom swollen
Through to touch Heaven.

Nothing moves at first glance. Not us, even
--just hanging in the welkin.
But then a tiny boat skips the
Waves, leaving a foaming V...

But it's all so far from where we're
Hanging godlike in the sky.

I : Your House

(Morning)
Nine o'clock
Your arms are draped like
Candlewax across the sheets.
I take the two steps from your
Bed to the kitchen,
To watch the ants
And the kettle
Boil

(On waiting for a friend at Loyola)
December is cooling the steps where I'm sitting &
The air is promising snow
Soon.
And woof, a dog
Jumps across the browning
Grass after a squirrel
While my breath turns
White and
Runs up and away from me.
End of semester.

II : Sidewalk
There's a broken leaf lying across a
Crack in the pavement by my boot.
Look closely, now. You can
See how the edges are cracked, curled in towards the
Centre like little red foetuses. And now, there it goes,
dancing down the sidewalk, careless and dead.

But I'm thinking of this morning, when the
October Sun reached in past the drapes and
Lay across your skin, bare and brown, which
Rose to gather rays and
Sank back,
Wealthy in breath and
Sunlight

Next to my boot, a gang of
Leaves rushes by, hurrying Hurrying...
But I am back at home, in
Bed,
Licking crumbs of your breath from your
Cold pillow.

III : My House
It's strange how a candle turns the
World to sepia.

Guttering in the tangy breeze released by the window
Beyond like
The first secret flake of Fall, the
Flickering light playing warmly like
Children across your gently rolling breasts, and down the
Slope of your waist

And your smell lingers faintly upon my lips
And misty on the fingertips that
I'm holding to
My nose.

I 401
Beyond the city, time opens up like the miles are rice-paper
pages peeling off and fluttering in the vortices we're
leaving behind. It's a crappy American car with no A/C, but we don't
care. It's not that
it's harder to sweat out here, it just doesn't matter as
much; even with the angels of heat we can just about
see rising from the highway.

No matter how fast we eat the miles, there's still an end
less strand of broiling asphalt stretching
away; curving a little right here, chopped from
millennia of rock over there. And there's an eternity of
forest that no-one's sold yet sprawling away to
obscurity and brushing the underside of the sky.

I am momentarily
shamed by the splay of sunlight
slanting across your twenty-dollar
sunglasses. Behind
them, you've got eyes I would curl up in if you'd let me
And I know you'd let me. Billy
Joel's on the speakers, singing songs that are older than
you. You've claimed them anyway -- songs are longer than lives, sometimes

It would be easy to love cars this
way, easy to cling to their
ersatz manumissions and pretend like we're never
coming back. Like there's nothing holding us down, just
the wind flipping by outside, just you with your nutmeg-coloured
skin echoing Haiti as you grip the wheel

It's hours still to where Toronto smudges through yet
another Friday; we'll get there soon. I don't
know what we'll find there, and I don't
know what's coming for us; but for now, all that
matters is your sun-burnished skin, the wind in
your hair and Billy Joel swirling in the
air.

II Backyard
When we sat out back and chatted about nothing under the pallid Toronto night--

w hen Gila and Dave sat with us, Ontario microbrews on the table--

w hen I looked up and saw a shooting
star striate the sky, you missed
it and so did they.

I know it was the cataclysmic end to a chunk of heaven, huge against it-
self, small against the millennia it takes to get from rocky yonder to a
streak of ashen nothing drifting over Toronto

When the Universe shows its hand like that

then it's not even amazing how distance reduces everything to a slight swipe across the
sky.

III Niagara
Niagara's a whore dressed as a clown, so
when the dark rolled across us and the
falls started changing colours, I wasn't even surprised.
But earlier
they'd held grace in every curve and their
distant roar had sounded like an endless whisper.
I said happy birthday and kissed you like you're made of
dreams, then turned to look across the
few dozen metres of river to where people
believe different things.

I remember I
marvelled at the tonnes of water surging over
the edge and
more so at what you did in the parked car after dark.
So much of us happens in your car

Then we left, Thirty Bench Pinot jostling the
Featherstone case in the back and I thought
sidereal thoughts all the way to
Toronto.

IIII Drive home
Us,
straining eastward but trapped
by roadwork somewhere this side of Kingston, Montréal is
a mirage made of hours somewhere ahead.

We're
sun-dried & ragged -- I
have to get out; you don't
even ask, just find a parkinglot in Nowhere
Ontario.

You
repose under a tree while I cast
about for anything that
matters.

I
see you under my sheets, your head just
short of the pillow you never use, sleeping off this
long-assed drive. I run back to
you and your car. It's time to go
home.

It's because of the banality, I
think. There's really nothing here worth saving.
No, that's a sophistry; there's nothing worth not saving. And anyway,
sometimes banality convects into solace.
Sometimes.

A beginning is an obligation: you
see it through to the very last breath. A
whisper -- even if you can't hear
it, I know you feel it too.

Lives are secrets waiting to be told. They're
frisky. They need to be shared or they rot
inside. They drive people together with a crash and a moan.
There's nothing like it for a while.
There's nothing but secrets -- well
maybe hopes, but nothing that can live in solitude.

An ending is a hummingbird buzzing minute zags until it lands. It's a
carnivore, it leaves nothing but the
silt of endless regrets, deposits of intents and impressions.
You, you're a hummingbird too. You'll leave
me with nothing but an
impression
and a lingering scent.

Snow, caress the air,
Last leaf leaves the twig behind

No-one to catch it...

21 may 1996

I. Sail
Remember that time ? We sailed
all the way around the island, and as we rounded that little cape, there
were two deer standing like inuksuks on the rock. They
were so still and so close I could have caressed one. But
when the mother nudged
her fawn away, I sat
back and looked out to sea.

II. Wave
And I heard the sea crash
against the shore, felt it, even here in the
way the deck quivered slightly, in the rattle of
the window behind, and in the
hush of the leaves.

And I smelled the sea driving on the
wind that swayed the longgrass, twined in the scent of
cedar everywhere,
in the tang of salt and wet in your hair, and even
in the steam that rose off the mug cradled in your
hands.

III. Torrent
But it's just a lie :
when the ocean cracked the shore, rain
shook the windows in their frames, torrents poured
through every crack and washed the cedars clean, and the
wind shrieked like
banshees and drove pellets through my skin

But when the sun shone and the wind died to a sigh, each
wave caressed the sand like a sister.

When I stand next to the ocean's profound
swell, I
am primal, my feet are salted by the sea and my
eyes are stung by the blade of the horizon.

That's when I can taste
it, and my tongue tangles like the kelp that chokes the waterline
and the words in my head defy any language.

I can cry out with the throats
of gulls if I want, or crack an urchin with a stone;
so hard outside,
so gentle within.

Brand-new cats