Cedars Trail, British Columbia, 31 July 2017

Despite the threat of better judgment,
Another month, another human marker,
Was coming to an end. Oh, how we complain
What time has done to us, and yet we use it
Continually for target practice. What shall I
Have done, have done to or for me by then?
We asked ourselves of every date invented.
Hello I must be going, said the sun,
As exceptional summer heatwaves lingered.
Can't you see I'm burning, burning away?
Beside a preserved patch of never-logged
Cedars, signs reminded visitors that the trail
Was closed, October to May. Those trees
With their huge, half-hollowed lower trunks
Were favored bear dens. No bears loitering
Nearby at the end of July, all out foraging,
Answering the relentless cry of their guts
That alone could prepare them for winter.
Such useful things, calendars! How orderly
They made the urgency of living seem, how
They tidied the lights and the clouds stealing
Over us, away from us, and all of us. There
Was a bear in the woods, went one cliche.

Shallows, Slocanada, 30 July 2017

Despite circling thoughts of the Apocalypse,
Was it possible that all this could still be
Carrying on continuously? Every night,
Daughter fell asleep to Essie Jain in the nook
Of the tiny cabin by the long glimmer
Of the steamboat-swallowing, sturgeon-
Harboring, skyscraper-deep lake. Oh, I love
You, oh I love you, oh I love you most of all.
The calculated trust of the world collapsed
Slowly, like a circus tent coming down, like
An elephant kneeling, and the vultures were
Reeling, but not really. In the real really, we
Remained forever dreaming our lullabies
In the borrowed cabin where we squatted
And played Catch-the-Stick or One-Minute
Sketches. Where? There is no where. There
Was the lake like muscled chain mail outside
The dimming window, the recorded voice
Singing, I'm not afraid of the dark--I'm just
A baby, a baby, a baby baby. . . .

A Sunlit Room, Slocanada, 29 July 2017

In the morning, the committee of foam
And dust motes, the flecks from the waves,
The suspended bits of soil and microbes
Turning in the sun, agreed to give self a turn.
Self immediately disappeared, in the way
Of all selves, by means of self reference
Dependent on words that no self could own.
I have been angry at the world for being
The world it is, and that intractably. I gave
My life over to trying to be good to life,
To loving life, to studying life, to teaching life
In its extravagant evolutions to others,
And eagerly to attempting to prove myself
A good citizen of life. That included sex,
And savor, and serious communion
With humans and with moments in the trees.
But life is the lover that breaks all our hearts.
I woke to the first yellow fingers of daylight
Finding their way into the room, parting
The branches overhead, probing windows.
Let another thermodynamic cascade begin.
Let entropy, locally, be lowered a little again.
Let the squirrels scamper over the roof,
The birds demand territory and copulations,
The dust motes float on the foaming world.
Let body sigh within me and me within body.
I have half a mind to forgive such cruelty.
But at this point, mind and body objected
To being made to sound like secondary
Properties of the self, and they rescinded
Permission for self to speak as if alone.
Awareness turned to longing, and thoughts
Turned to distractions, the plans of the day,
Any means of being beyond self and pity.

An Unlit Room, Slocanada, 28 July 2017

A little past midnight, daughter woke up.
She left her bed to come wake body up.
She shoved a snoring shoulder in until
Awareness, mind, and self were recreated
And through the body generating them
Could listen. Daughter insisted she had been
Bitten by red ants in her sleep. She climbed
Under the covers, stole the best pillow,
Wedged herself into body's armpit, and slept
Through the night, through the wee summer
Predawn blue, through the waking of birds
And then of squirrels around the cabin
At five, through the actual dawn, until seven.
But body never went back to sleep,
Meaning awareness and company couldn't
Die to be reborn but sat alertly in the head
Through the unlit hours of moonless woods
Arguing and resembling one another
Like siblings quarreling over a cold hearth.
Self wished body would just get it over with.
Mind was afraid of rebirth until self insulted
Mind's intelligence, pointing out that mind
Lived and died as much out of body as in.
Mind replied that for self the cycle went on
Only during body's lifetime, with true escape
Guaranteed at the end. Awareness floated
Up past the hum of a mosquito, to windows
Through which it was almost impossible
To make out any darker shadows in the dark.

Cuckoo Clock, Slocanada, 27 July 2017

The mechanical bird sang it was time to go
While dropping another imposition among
The gears of the mostly inaccurate clock.
Every success the planet had ever hosted
In its spinning nest was that kind of trick,
A deceit, a substitution. How to keep at bay
Entropy another day, deposit an egg the sun
Will continue to feed until its heart fire dies.
Some of us singing and begging from both
Sides of the nest can't hardly wait for that death.

A Little Ways Out in the Waves, Slocanada, 26 July 2017

No perspective kept its distance long
In that world we were planning on leaving,
Shortly. It was hard, when everything was
Conspiring either to be awful or gorgeous
Or both in superposition, to accept that this
Was not in any way important, except insofar
As every wave could be said to be important.
When a swimmer turned his head he gasped
Ahead of a mouthful of green water; when
He turned his face into the depths he saw
Streams of airy bubbles lit gold by sunset
Emerging from his pulling hands, his fingers
Like wands in the water. But he did not dive.
I did not see him dive, not this time. He
Swam, back to the stony beach where sticks
Were being rearranged by his progeny
Into lean-to forts and imaginary housing.
He had not gone far, not far out at all,
Not this time, neither waving nor drowning.

Window, Slocanada, 25 July 2017

Midnight approached no more quickly
Than noon. The RCMP station glowed
More and more brightly as the summer night
Progressed. Would it have been better
Not to know even half as much as the little
Known, of cheaters and lovers out there
Wrapped in their hungry caress, of planets
That had storms that could swallow Earth,
Of books that stated as plainly and well
As any humans ever could how we lived,
We all lived under awful, temporary duress?
By the station, trees tilted nonchalantly
In the wind that had nothing to do with them,
The same trees that in higher winds a night
Earlier crushed local hot tubs and pickups
Under inevitable and accidental deadfalls,
Freaking out some neighbors, distressing
Quieter others. From a window now comes
That false optimism that being a spectator
Means not being a participant anymore,
In no danger, no danger at all. Run fingers,
Then, on the edge of this sill. It could blow.

Restless, Slocanada, 24 July 2017

Body hadn't swum in the lake for days
For no good reason, the weather being
Better, the water warmer than all those days
In May and June when we jumped right in.
A kind of sickness in the face of death
That was neither death nor sickness proper
Had settled in. It was as if the gorgeous days
Were demanding a sympathetic response
That mind and self refused to give, but why
They couldn't say. They were disappointed
At the world for not communicating honestly,
That is to say, at all, beyond a few triggers
Of their own moods. It was the time
For swimming, for swimming hours at a time,
And body knew it and cried out for it while
Awareness shimmered over everything,
It seemed, skimming from water to peaks,
From book to book at the command of mind,
From contemplation at the command of self,
To basic needs at the demand of body,
A restless, perchless swift over the stand-off
Between the rest who wore their allegories
Like the shabby, high-school drama club
Hand-me-down costumes that they were.
Who were we, incompetent quartet nearing
Another bend in time, thought disgruntled
Mind for all of them, indivisible but never
Singular, sawing away at our dissonances
While locked in the leg irons of language
On this rickety dock over broken rocks
On the shore of a last month for dreaming?

Cabin Bedroom, Slocanada, 23 July 2017

Empty Sunday morning full of window light,
Puffy clouds over the mountains and lake,
The occasional squirrel steeplechasing
Around cabin, deck, and trees. Too far
From the road to hear any but the largest
Chip trucks grumble, and even then muffled.
Daughter off camping and dancing. No one,
For the moment, to trouble the small
Company of mind and body, self and soul.
So there we were, letting everything become
Everything else again. We conferred. We had
Solved nothing. The day divided on the rasp
Of a raven skimming the spruce. If you wait,
Eventually, one of these gently rolling waves
Will overwhelm you, said the buoy in the bay.

Nelson, British Columbia, 22 July 2017

Buskers harmonized alongside buskers
With guitars just two blocks down from more
Buskers working a fiddle and a washboard
On the sidewalks of the notably hippy-ish
Art town of Nelson on a sunny summer day.
People ate tacos at one cafe, large pastries
At another, heaps of poutine at a third.
If two persons passed each other one way
They would most likely cross paths again
Going the other, if not at some corner shop
Or checkout counter. Cars bustled, hunting
Elusive parking spots or weaving around
The pedestrians who took their entitlement
As an invitation to risk hospitalization.
In Al's basement barber shop below the pole
That had been revolving at street level above
Its casement windows since at least 1948
(The earliest any octogenarian customer
Could recall coming in as a boy to lower
His ears), seven men sat patiently in a row
While the young-ish woman now the owner
Mowed them down, chatting about camping
And fishing, the days when Gene was alive,
The days when the original, eponymous
Albert still owned the joint, and so forth.
Local history had gone back to being
What all history was once, stories and chat
That wouldn't survive except as daily blather.
Two long, young men in tattered hemp
Sat on their backpacks by the pharmacy,
One tugging his ginger dreadlocks, the other
Explaining, "But at least when I lived in a tent
I had some spending money every month."
"But you don't want to live outside, do you?"
A round family of four in shorts walked past.
A man on crutches thought, if only the stones
Could talk, not because they would tell me
Interesting things they'd heard, but because
I would like to hear something speak but not
In words, something not a monkey or a bird.

Fire Season, British Columbia, 21 July 2017

Under every yes lay a passion for no
That had not been broken. Yes was the flesh
About to take a dive. No was the insistence
It was better to wait, even now, even as fires
Swept down the mountainside and smoke
Was only one of multiple unpleasantnesses
That could overtake the stubborn lookout.
But then, the air would clear for a day or two,
The loneliness of no one inhuman to talk to
Would abate in the brilliant noon sun, almost
As if the day had something to say for itself,
And the no would grow stronger, confident
That a good change could overtake bad,
That reversals were possible in all directions,
That even rates were subject to reversals,
That it was worth waiting for the calm, even
If the fires weren't out. The yes would hide,
Another shy, endangered predator in trees,
Not really wanting to jump out and pounce,
Given the choice. A sated bear in a meadow
Dozing off a bellyful of huckleberries, yes
Could be at moments like these, scarcely
Aware enough to lift a snout to the breeze,
Which was anyway clean for the time being.
So, no settled comfortably in by a stream
And drank its fill and, unaccountably, hoped
For a good thunderstorm to unsettle things.

Admiralty House, British Columbia, 20 July 2017

The one thing body didn't like was death.
Illogical, yes, but not body's fault.
Self, the one who'd be annihilated,
Only disliked suffering and dying.
Mind obsessed about everything, of course,
And awareness had always been a ghost.
The quartet was seized with melancholy
Across the street from the Admiralty House
When the pathetic thought began in mind
That no one who could've been old enough

To recollect seeing that building built
Had been alive for a very long time.
Self wanted to counter with a story
Good to keep self in at least someone's mind
After this mind had redispersed itself.
Awareness flickered over the blue sky,
Settling briefly on that Admiralty House,
Then on memories of self in other
Times, then on the conversation of folks
Eating lunch at a green picnic table.

"OK, you should drink this." "My money was
Safer than yours." Body heaved everyone
Upright and hobbled past the picnickers
To the car to drive away from the scene.
At a small turnout by a narrow creek
An hour later and away, awareness
Was set to drift among forest shadows
Occasionally diverting to roars
Of motorbikes and trucks past the turnoff.
What had any of this to do with death?

Self thought nothing. Mind added nothing much.

Kaslo Bay, British Columbia, 19 July 2017

Night was like day. Owls came out and crows
Killed them. Were we, perverse thought,
Forgotten? Permanent departure took place
Constantly but somehow incompletely,
So that, in the long run, it was cumulative
Departure that led to ruptures that felt,
Finally, permanent. And even those, even
The owls, left little ghosts that eddied, ashes
And memories like wings circling empty air.
We sat before the burial mound that was
The woods, the mountains under them,
The world whizzing around in the dark,
And told stories about what we didn't know.
Day was like night. Owls took vengeance.
None of this was true, of course, none
Of this happened, except the metaphor
About the burial mound, which was apt.
We sat in the slightly smoky light of mild
Summer afternoon and watched houseboats
Putter in and out of the scenic bay. If you
Could tell us why we did this, why we
Bothered with the stories, facts, and lies,
Why we confessed, we would be grateful.
It could only mean you understood us
But weren't human, which was the dream
We dreamed whenever looking over or just
Pretending beginnings and ends of worlds.

Hole in the Wall, Slocanada, 18 July 2017

Body waited. Self grew anxious. Mind was
Busy stuffing itself on novels, memoirs,
Histories, poems, a book about Big Data,
You name it. Awareness, that helpless moth,
Flittered between the three of them and then
Escaped out the window to the continuous
Creek. Continuity, continuity, ever roaring
With changes, how impossible, and now
It was mind's turn to be anxious, to let
Its anxiety trickle down through poor, patient
Aching body. Self was forgotten by self.
Awareness settled on the tips of the waves,
So similar to the continually vanishing wisps
Of pale spray it could have been one, it was
One. Mind labored like the rusty, imported
Hodgepodge of clanking cultural machinery
It was. The water did not stop falling.
The sound of all that changing matter
Barely changed at all. It was stuck, it was
Stuck, mind was. The roar of differences,
The roar of discontinuity was continuous.
Nothing could pause the cleaving that left
In every least instant, itself. Mind trembled.
Awareness flitted back to self, who took
No comfort, knowing nothing belonged
To those two, that only mind and body, once
Divided in their own downrushing stream,
Would, each in a separate way, go on.
Something, something else must evaporate
For discontinuity to happen continuously.
I and awareness, thought self, we leave.
Our leaving makes this paradox possible.
But self could not self comfort. Awareness
Moved on again, noticing the shifting time.
The world must have a hole to drain change,
A hole that change can drain through, a way
To palm the coin of spacetime, thought mind.

Almost, Slocanada, 17 July 2017

It seemed to be dancing, just out of reach,
But in fact it was dancing me, through me,
Was me, rendering me nonsensical,
Reminding me of being a word belonging
Equally to simultaneous hundreds of millions
Who were also me, when they thought
Of themselves. It was the lone mosquito
Dancing near my ear and crushed by a slap
After an afternoon of pesty flies beside
The withering wildflowers. See? Flowers
Were it, too, and by withering they brought it
Closer, closer, but that must have been just
A trick. Its approach was never more than
Hypothesis, as if it existed ahead of itself,
As if it remained stolidly, almost politely,
Waiting for me to arrive, knowing It would.
It wasn't. It was everything else, everything
In the meantime, the jagged sing-song
Of a species of bird with no name for me,
The calculated roar of a motorbike down
The unseen road where scattered memorials
Testified to how previous cyclists had died,
The memorials again hinting, almost, almost,
Getting closer, but not it. It was the air
Rearranging millions of cubic meters of itself
As easily as a sighing body turning in bed.
It was the dropping angle of the light, tips
Of trees going dark, twig by twig. Almost,
Almost, closer, closer. It was the drop
In temperature, the worry about getting back
In time, always in time, not out of time,
Never. It was the indecision in the blood
While the massive conglomeration of small
Lives lived on as industriously as ever within
The foundering body that was their home.
Foundering, almost. Closer. It was not there,
However, not quite, not waiting in the trees
Or on the road or for the lone mosquito
Or in the heart of the body, song of the bird,
Angle of the light, the atmosphere of repose.
Almost by definition, it was not. It was close.

Dock, Slocanada, 16 July 2017

The young man who wanted to be a poet
Sat beside me on the dock and practiced.
That one sail out in the middle of the lake,
The only one, see it? It's like, like, like, what?
A moth. A moth's wing. A shell. A bit of shell.
I wish I could compose a sharp image for it,
Something haunting, like Williams' yachts.
I mean, look at that one white sail out there
In the whole lake. It's eerie. I just avoided
Rolling my eyes. The daughter from Porlock
Called out from the waves. The young poet,
Distracted, gave up on his similes, but I saw
Lost hands reach up and haul the sail under,
Successfully at last. All gone, yacht. What
Oft was thought but never got expressed.

Recursion, Slocanada, 15 July 2017

Another horsefly on another afternoon
Got stuck in the corner of the windshield
Again. The temptation was to say, "the same
Spot as before," but no place identical
Existed, only another event and another,
An indefinite, if not infinite, recursion.
This was the fourth or fifth horsefly
On the fourth or fifth afternoon spent partly
Beside a meadow, a creek, or both at once
In the last few days alone, fortnight at most.
And always the driver's side corner
Of the windshield. That was the thing
About recursion and similarity: as an engine
Of endless differences, the way the world
Used for changing was weirdly formulaic.
Humans had staggered around this pattern
With formulas of their own, or of their own
Cultures,' which amounted to nearly
The same thing, since their cultures couldn't
Yet evolve independently of human beings.
Consider the art-math of fractals or the old
Saw that history doesn't repeat but rhymes.
Consider random number generators.
The world reached out toward infinities
Of differences by exhaustive near repetition,
As in languages and planetary systems,
As in the myriad spiral coils of DNA, as in
This stupid horsefly in this battered car
Parked in a humming world and containing
Also a broken compositor who could only
Day after day try to find some quiet interval
In which to watch a bit of the fabric
Of everything rolling off similar presses, and
To scrabble in a black box of reusable types
For another lined arrangement to impress.

Stone Beach, Slocanada, 14 July 2017

Entropy was a measure of being, not,
As one physicist put it, becoming. Becoming
Was all about being, being all about
Becoming, thought body, nonsensically,
Via brain, that imposter the mind, composed
Of millions of alien, external, histories, self,
That sad hostage, and awareness, the little
Flame, a bucket brigade of entropic decay.
Five human beings were down at the shore,
No one under forty, no one slender, no one
Fit, no one dressed in better than swim suits.
A warm wind and the lake waves came up
Like the rollers of an actual surf. Talk
Was of woodpeckers and pack rats, cracks
And holes in cabins, the beginning and end
Of the maintenance that is life, children,
Grandchildren, and, as always, the weather.
Food, too, got discussed in recipe detail.
The women's talk turned to kayaks. The men
Discussed cutting up fallen timber.
A man who did not seem the type to have
Gotten lucky often in his life, began musing
Right on the beach, first, like the rest of us,
About the sensuous summer weather,
The breezes like caresses, but then, more
Alarmingly, about the sensual itself, random
Observations on sex and satisfaction
That would have been salacious, maybe,
If he had been handsome, or the rest had
Been more drunken, until, discomfort
Among his auditors not bothering him,
He reached the topic of orgasm, the worst
Issue to broach in mixed company anywhere.
"It's the inwardness of orgasm fascinates
Me, regardless of body type, age or gender,
Regardless of whether the wanting person
In question is attached to someone else,
Or more than one someone, or solitaire.
Porn star or dowager, you can tell, if you're
There or you're him or you're her, the eyes
Are not focused correctly, the brain's turned
Inside itself. No matter how much surface
Area is in contact between the bodies, no
Matter how many points from hips to lips
Are gripped together, the body communes
Only with itself at the moment of crisis."
Then he fell silent and all the sunbathers, all
Older and misshapen from when they were
Young and capable, but perhaps still
Thinking longingly of release that was not
The real release, looked elsewhere, beyond.

Anonymous Meadow, Slocanada, 13 July 2017

No hideout lasts. The deer that startled
Across the path had no names. The path
Had no name. The meadow the path crossed
Had no name, and if it were to be given one,
What then? The man with a quiver of names,
Every one of them fletched and razor sharp,
Bided his time in the meadow. Do you know
How time is bided? You have to let it waste
You, while you pretend you are wasting it.
The names he brought while he bided
His time may endure as artifacts for another
Generation to consider. But not likely.
The anonymity of the meadow, its deer,
Thrushes, wildflowers, grasses, birches,
And busy species of insects in summer,
Was secure. A name, known or unknown,
Is a bone, a jawbone, a tooth. It functions
For a while, then burns or cracks among
The endlessly anonymous stones.

Haze, Slocanada, 12 July 2017

Two weeks of sun and a good thunderstorm
Were all it took, and the world was on fire
Again, creamy haze in the air, fine wood
Smoke from here and there over the ridges,
A blurred light in the green forest, a ghost
Hungry to find some company. Who will
Burn this time, how many, how badly, will
You? The world was one pathetic fallacy
And one pathetic fallacy away from being
Human, humans being its mistake. Who
Else could care so much about a general
Fallacy like "The world," anyway? People
Cared for particulars important to them,
Mostly resources, partners, and themselves.
Body had a craving like the faintly pleasant
Tang of distant, all-pervasive ash in the air,
To toss away all resources, all partnerships,
To leave self naked, alone in hints of flares.
Two deer with velvet summer antlers stared.

The Moth, Slocanada, 11 July 2017

Looked like a butterfly drowning on a wave
But when daughter swam out to the rescue
Showed moth antennae and the heavy,
Hairy body, despite spotted orange wings.
To gratify longing is both the most sensible
And the most self-destructive activity
Possible in this world. The moth clung
To daughter's thumb and dried in the sun.
It climbed up her tanned arm. It struggled
Up her tangled hair. It delighted her.
She brought it inside the cabin, watched it
Stagger around the bed, try out its ripped
Wings. Eventually it got as far as the window
And daughter watched it on the screen.
For her, it was a candidate pet. She fed it
Wildflowers that she lovingly selected,
Probably all the wrong species. She kept it
In a cup with a tissue over it. That night
The moth, still following the same longing
Had kept it struggling on the lake's waves,
That drove it to cling to warm skin, to climb,
To fly at the bright window screen, after
Much noisy thudding against the confines
Of the cup, escaped. Now black, it found
A gap in a window and headed for the moon.
In the morning, daughter cried, distraught.

Cabin, Slocanada, 10 July 2017

It was a typical building in the Slocan, being
A third done well, with craft and care, a third
Done poorly, and a third done not at all, left
To sit unfinished and shift in the open air.
All day, squirrels argued. One night, the dog
Caught and ate a pack rat, tail and all.
Robins hopped about the mowed patch
Of lawn hemmed in by regrowing forest,
And at evening they added their unlovely
Blurts to the long, self-echoing trills
Of thrushes, their distant cousins. It was
An idyll and desirable, but still typical
Of the ways entropy and information
Play out on Earth. Living things chased,
Mounted, and ate living things. The whole
Green assemblage digested nights and days,
And when the full moon sailed, the moths
Battered the windows, the rats gnawed
In the unfinished roof, the innumerable
Microbes chewed through the compost
And orchestrated the living soul that meant
To write "the living soil" but was corrected.

North Shore Bigelow Bay, Slocanada, 9 July 2017

At Fermilab and CERN they found, years

Apart, evidence for charmed baryons

Paired, respectively, with down and up

Quarks, and although their measurements

Of mass so far refused to square each other,

The physicists making their reports spoke

Almost casually of instability, one baryon

Decaying within fifty millionths of a billionth

Of a second, the other in thirty millionths

Of a billionth of a second. This was not 

Armchair introspection, this calculation

Of creation and decay on scales

Of millionths of billionths of seconds.

"Appeared to decay instantaneously," 

Glossed the New York Times, but there was

No instantaneously, probably never was.

There were intervals down to infinity,

In each of which something happened,

Something arose and disappeared, became

Something else. Body was back on the dock

Where a rotten plank planted the whole

Corpus in driftwood and gravel, painfully,

Already more than a month earlier. The heat

Beat down. Machinery roared in the woods

Clearing a new path where spring floods

Wiped out the last. The water, blown glass

Mirror with faint wavering reminders

Of uncertainties in all mirrors, all measures,

Apparently didn't care. Every small ripple

Of a wave across the long pebbled arc

Of the shore contained two billion million

Millionths of a billionth of a second, so that

A Blakean universe might have arisen 

And been lost forever, unmeasured, 

Uncelebrated, unknown in the nonce

Between when body twitched and a wave

Caressed the edges of its dead awareness.

Rosebery, Slocanada, 8 July 2017

Body woke to mind and self bickering
Over whether the last chapter had begun
And what a foolish notion chapters were
In a continuously and indivisibly dividing
Cosmos. That last paradox interested mind.
Given constant change, where were seams?
The very continuity made all lines arbitrary,
But the only continuous thing was difference
And difference was exactly not continuity.
Body felt head spinning but knew it was
An old delusion created by infectious mind.
Self sighed to self. Mind could not let it go.
No matter how thinly sliced the moment,
There was always difference during the slice.
But when did difference slip in and how
Could anything ever be different at all
Without any break ever in the continuous
Change? Body, aching and grumbling
And pretty sure that the chapter begun
Was more like an epilogue already, offered
Bait to mind and self from somewhere
Near the nightside cellars of the brain:
Change occurs continuously only when
It's not being noticed. The cosmos is
A watched pot that only boils because
No mind can watch it all at once. See?
In the time you took to attend to me, clouds
Have gathered out of nothing and the blue
Reflections of the lake have all turned grey.
The light shifted over the roofs at Rosebery
While you bickered and it became another day.

Pause, Slocanada, 7 July 2017

In the passages that were not human
Nothing much mostly happened.
In the fabled and fabulous anthropocene
It was still hard to remember humans
When they weren't right in your face,
Especially if you were one of them.
The summer heat rested a sweaty palm
On the crowns of the evergreens and dust
Began to gather and deepen on the usually
Muddy back roads. The ferns browned.
This was the way you wanted to be, quietly.
Afternoon after afternoon, knowing how
Brief and galloping away the frightened life
Inside you was, you could watch the empty
Trail, the small flowers visited by butterflies
No bigger or brighter than their own petals,
The clouds left over from weather elsewhere
And see nothing larger than the palm
Of your own paw stir the air. Afternoon after
Afternoon after afternoon. You shuddered.

Bear Lake, British Columbia, 6 July 2017

Midnight just past, full moon not quite,
Thick timber shadowing the Old Ghost
Highway empty of anyone but one car
Startling a few young deer, night shining
From the small lakes near the summit.
How could you have known if your world
Was real if you'd never tried to trick it?
How could you know you had?

Invisible, Slocanada, 5 July 2017

Large, dark elk were out there. I'd seen them
On the road at night, and swerved. Also
Bears, of course, mostly black ones, the rare
Grizzly up high usually, also coyotes,
Moose, plenty of deer of two species,
A few beaver, mountain lions, and, if last
Week's encounter was genuine, a species
Of wild sheep or goat, possibly Dall, snowy
White as a polar bear, fluffy and hooved.
But none of them were visible this afternoon.
Not even the invisible squirrels could be heard.
Not even one brave grouse stalked
The high grass and wildflowers at the edge
Of the dirt path. They were out there,
Of course they were, and hundreds of others,
Including hundreds more of people and cars,
But none of them were visible this afternoon.
I, we, the composite I am, sat as alone as
Any organism ever gets under the sun,
Bothered by the odd fly, infested
And helpfully colonized by my billions
Of tinier eating and excreting angels of life,
Invisible to any of my own kind now myself,
Watching the invisible breezes stir needles,
Listening to an invisible creek, smelling
The invisible hint in the air that there is
A race among all things, even the not
Living things, to finish their business first,
To vanish, to get to the bottom of things.

Horseshoe Lake, British Columbia, 4 July 2017

Cerulean dragonflies who were nothing like
Humanity except in the myriad earthly ways
Shared by all multicellular, rapidly moving
Beings, hovered over the log-strewn pond
High in the healing clearcuts of the cedar,
Spruce, firs, hemlocks, pines. We are dying.
Awareness didn't want to kill anything. Body
Hungered to kill all kinds of things, if only
To live. Self and mind bickered over who
Was the true parasite between them
And who wanted to do all the unnecessary
Killing even body shivered to see. Humanity.

Nodding Birch, Fast Creek, Slocanada, 3 July 2017

Back at the lake shore in the sun, third day
Of the holiday weekend, paddle-boarders,
Kayakers, canoeists, the odd motorboat
Careening out on the deep middle of things,
Little toys over canyons that could swallow
Skyscrapers whole and close back over,
Daughter and body swimming in shallows,
Mind entertained and frightened self
By remembering the bleating song
Of the bad guitarist with his blues guitar
At the previous night's garden party, the one
Who tried to praise the healing magic
Of this lake by squeaking, sincerely, "there is
Something in the water. There's something
In the . . . wa . . . ter!" Indeed there is,
And that something is water and nothing
But water, the deep nothing elseness that is
The true leviathan. It lurks in the lake,
Prehistoric monster sturgeon, the lake itself
Being sturgeon home and sturgeon shaped,
But it also runs its teeth and tongue along
The threads of rushing creeks. Yesterday,
Memory reminded self as self played, body
Swam in benign sun, we had watched while
A skinny birch tree over one of those creeks
Was continuously flung up and down,
Rooted helplessly to the bank but undercut,
Its crown tossing like a frightened horse,
Non-stop, at every moment, the water
Smashing and spraying, the crown jerked up
And splashed back down into the foam,
Jerked up and splashed back down, jerked
Up and splashed back down. That had been
Going on for, what, months? Years?  Mind
Helpfully supplied, courtesy of brain's cellar
Of black wines, a passage from Sakhalin
Island in translation: "Stunted, sickly trees
Looked down from high up on the bank. . . .
Through long, dreadful nights, each of them
Sways restlessly from side to side, bends
To the ground and creaks in lamentation,
And this lamentation is heard by nobody."
There's something in the water. There's
Something in the water, the water, the water.

Future Boundary Conditions, Slocanada, 2 July 2017

Just because I never could know it never
Meant it wasn't out there, molding my past,
A sculptor who knew exactly what the end
Had to look like. What meditation never quite
Achieved, how that which it intended
To reject would save it in the end. A shape
Snaked out of processes, shaking, shaking.
As an individual, it claimed, I have not
Passed altogether unnoticed by change.
So many voices, each haunted by earlier
Talk back and forth across the corpses
That first uttered them. Language is
Plagiarism. But is it also dictation
From the unseen to be? There was a parade
On Canada Day, a tiny town's parade
Through a village in which fewer
Than two hundred humans claimed
Permanent residence. There were visitors,
Mostly from the village just up the road,
Partly from wherever, but even so,
Maybe half the town was in the parade
While the other half cheered. And already
We know that if there is to be another
Parade next year, some of us will have
To plan and survive. That's why we planned
And survived in the past, after all. We could
Feel tomorrow reaching back to make us.
The bagpipes blared the Black Watch,
Twelve older men strolling in kilts,
And the small children followed on foot
Or on bicycles, followed by festive classic
Cars in their turn, manufactured fifty, sixty
Years ago for precisely this occasion.

Sesquicentennial Canada Day, Slocanada, 1 July 2017

The day before the festivities, torpor settled
Over the feeling that something was coming.
There's nobody here but us, sang
The composite parts together. Then they
Struggled to make good on the empty hours
Filched from commonsense death
By reading and writing sufficiently. The day
Ended anyway, the ends of twenty-thousand
Plus days, two-thousand eight-hundred
And sixty-one weeks preceding it, although
Only body could credit it and only mind
Could calculate. Self had no days, really,
Never sure about annihilation in sleep
And reconstruction, moment to moment,
By body infected with mind. Poor self.
Only thing ever to truly come from nothing,
Only thing ever to truly return. Meanwhile
The village on the lake prepared for the fair.