Cabin, Slocanada, 31 August 2017

The last day of absolute summer began,
Astronomical and meteorological versions
In sync for one more spin. I had completed
Fifty-five orbits as an earthling since birth.
I was not likely to complete another,
Although no one knew how unlikely I was,
Not even me, who suspected the worst.
Back at the disjointed little cabin on the lake
After seventeen days orbiting Canada alone,
I stayed up for the personal New Year's Day
While daughter slept in her cubby with toys.
I waited out night and thought of the absent.
Someone unknown moaned in the woods,
Possibly a neighbor, probably nothing
Serious, but an unnerving cry nonetheless,
So close to midnight. The news of the world
Was one unrelenting moan that night,
The moon glowering orange through the smoke
Of our great summer of ashes in the north.
The lake lay low under the smoke, existing
As accidental phenomenon to which I gave
The holiest identity it was mine to bestow.
Past midnight, the most arbitrary human line,
I thought of my mother in labor with her first
Child that old night, and of the long winter
Night I waited for daughter myself, howling
In unison with her cleaving mother. Suffering
Is special for our species, we who know it
In our moaning bones for what it really is,
Simultaneously temporary and inevitable
As is a season, a year, a vanishing, a sleep,
As any return to a difference, as a three-part
Shout in the dark from an unknown throat,
Then the sound of an engine in the woods.

Decomposer, Saskatchewan, 30 August 2017

Got on my prairie playlist, Jimmy Rodgers,
Jesse Mae Hemphill, and Django Reinhardt.
Grasses, grain silos, cows, and irrigation
Jacks flowed past. I saw the red pill, said I
Want to paint it black. No Wonderland under
Hill here or anywhere, only underground.
That's where the real adventures were.
But there I was going, horizontally, stuck
To the surface of change like a stowaway
Barnacle stuck to a hull it mistook for a rock.
On the top, it was Canada, prosperous.
Underneath it was the realization that
If you could follow your demise down
You wouldn't only wake up revelatory,
You wouldn't wake up at all. All my songs
On the playlist were recorded by bodies
Insistent but infected, and now long dead.
They never existed. And I thought, we all
Live on the lives that never existed. Yes.

Brokenhearted River, Manitoba, 29 August 2017

The name was convenient, but the river
Was real, as rivers are, as far as rivers go.
Why not camp out there, out past
The western edge of the kettle lakes
And the eastern woods, where grasses
Gathered, cut by barbed wire, under
A half-faced moon? Henry Threadgill Zooid
Would be the right backing track
For the sound the water made as it crossed
That threshold hemming it in, say, "In
For a Penny, In for a Pound," if you know
What that would sound like. Chortling,
Almost. Ruminative as the cattle around it,
Like the gurgle of a broken heart trying still
To pump without drawing too much attention
But failing because it's bleeding self pity and
It stains the sunset red, such a bloody mess.

White River, Ontario, 28 August 2017

It got dreary, after awhile, how reliably
The most probable things kept happening.
It was probably time to be done with myself.
The town of Wawa with its rampant giant
Statues of Canadian geese on the north
Shore of Superior weirdly reminded me
Of the giant white crucifixion statues
In the cemeteries of small-town Quebec.
The town of Timmins distinguished
Its self-similar streets and scruffiness
By being the hometown of Shania Twain.
In Rossport, one cafe stood open to the wind
And rain, but accessible only by steep stairs
Through dense gardens, the mists blowing
Spindrift all the way into the hills, like me.
In White River, a dirty filling station boasted
The sale of a half-million dollar lottery ticket
Barely a month ago. Might as well been
Forever and gone to the dark of the moon,
But I bought a ticket myself, predictably.

Kenogami Bridge, Ontario, 27 August 2017

At the pub there was no one, but the light
Was on and the kitchen hadn't been closed.
In the last afterthought of a gone daylight,
The small lake communed with a gleam
Past the deck of the joint. The air indicated
A locally particular combination of woods,
Mosses, a bit of damp highway strip's oils,
Wildflowers faded into dark, a musk,
And the unnameable that would have to be
Named after the place it identifies, the way
The color of an orange is best called orange.
It smelled like Kenogami Bridge on the deck
Of the Kenogami Bridge Inn last night,
That's the best I can describe it. You can't
Remember being anywhere anyway if
You have no memory of the scent. If you can
Remember a scent, then you know you were
A lover once, no matter what became of you,
The only way you know you were there.

Quebec City, Quebec, 26 August 2017

Back in British Columbia, daughter was
Closing in on a year of Sundays since birth,
Doing so in a cabin by the lake. I was gone,
On the road, across the country, a farcical
Company of pronouns, with no idea of where
In hell was home, beyond what small hope
Daughter anchored. Where I was, who knew
What language first to speak? Bad French
Or vulgar American English? Stumble badly
Or natter on rudely?  You would know, I
Think, if only you weren't a hope they long
Ago schooled me to imagine my own. Mercy.

Baddeck, Nova Scotia, 25 August 2017

All afternoon on Cabot Strait, the porpoises
Passed the city of the ferry in small pods,
Always swimming in the opposite direction.
A few people on the seventh-level deck,
Of ten, hung on the railings, spotting them.
Inside, hanging televisions, a dining room
Serving diner food, and clusters of berths
Bustled above the the clutches of metal
And polycarbonate machine eggs awaiting
Their owners, locked and silent in the hold.
Outside, around the boat and porpoises
And everything else the ocean held alive,
Mechanical, organic, coincidental, or dead,
The waves swelled relatively quietly, horizon
To horizon, nothing magical or menacing
About them, about anything, about nothing.
Then we docked in orderly fashion, left
The parking decks in orderly fashion
And proceeded on our various ways.
On the deck of a back room at a motel
That evening, one of us, me, who was legion,
Watched the pale gold, nacreous glow
Of sunset in the clouds above another sound
And read, in peace, "I had caught a glimpse
Around the blinders, and what I saw
Was the landless grey expanse of a northern
Sea, that emptiness of pewter ribbed
In wind and sun. There was no channel
Marker I could find, no shore to crawl up on."
Which was truer, the details or the vision?
There are at least six major traditions
Of thought in Indian philosophy that bear
On this question. In at least one, the facts
Are not only the illusion, they're the menace.
Where were those porpoises going, anyway?

St. Christopher's, Newfoundland, 24 August 2017

Before the wind and then the rain closed in,
There was a time you could have stood
On the shore, hobbling if you had to hobble,
Watching the surf churn in the arches' maw,
Knowing the waters were rising, had been
Rising for the past twelve thousand years,
Holocene, Anthropocene, end of scene.
New arches were being gouged by waves,
Even as the old arches became more frail
And ready to collapse. But those waves,
They took their everlasting time about it.
You could have stood there, if you could
Have stood it, until you literally fell over
And died, and the arches would have stayed
Visibly the same. So you couldn't stand it.
You drove back through the incoming
Weather off Belle Isle Strait, down, down
Toward the ferry town, asked St. Christopher
Intercession on the passenger side. Couldn't
Go anywhere. Couldn't stay. Not in those waves.

L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, 23 August 2017

Could have been Vinland, could have been

Markland. What it became was the usual

Grave-like grassy mounds in a meadow

By the interminably varying, interminably

Similar waves of the rising and falling seas.

Its restoration was careful, close to the bone,

Making allowance for the wider, higher doors

So the Canadian and other senior citizens 

Just off their cruise ships could fit through

Comfortably. Even on a summer day,

Tour busses and RVs in the gravel lot,

There was a conspicuous absence of kids

And very few young adults. Dead Vikings 

At the end of the world, grassy mounds

And sea fogs in a depauperate cove 

Were perhaps not the best inducements

For the young. Once upon a time, sagas

Were fullest of dark magic at their most

Accurate, the vicious gossip of ghosts.

Last night, along the long peninsula,

The combination of twilight, low woods

And curling fogs hiding the dark boulders

Of grazing moose in the wet wildflowers 

Made for a scary beautiful drive back

To a safer, uglier world. A woman I knew

Who used to care about the facts of the lost

Cut off any long-distance conversation

About that moment when history, as ever,

Balanced on a change in the weather.

She wanted to talk about her own ambitions,

The life she was busy perfecting each day.

Threatening shadows of blundering moose

Made a good excuse to cut her off in turn,

Or at least to not have to reply. The dead

Have their revenge, not by haunting us, but

By inviting we carelessly living to join them.

The day the invitation is accepted will not be

The decision of the living. The host decides.

"Oh my gad, me darlin,' Oi've gadda 

Do sumpthn with my life!" snorted 

The helplessly laughing barmaid to the grim

Old customers at the Torrent River Inn when,

The dead fog against the windows, we were

All for the moment somehow safely in.

Gros Morne, Newfoundland, 22 August 2017

Sat on a bench on the boardwalk overlook
Just north of Cow Head in Shallow Bay,
My eyes closed, face tilted to the sun
Waiting for the day to dim. This far
From the band of total eclipse, most folks
Went about other business unawares.
One family flew a kite. Another taste-tested
The cold sea water. "Tastes really salty!"
"I'm going in." Elderly couples on vacation
Strolled the shore in pairs. "The tide is out."
We're not really sharing information are we?
Most times when we use our words, we are
Touching base, getting comfort, sharing
The little germs of language unintentionally,
Like the couple holding hands. The light
Shifts, not so much dimming as weirding.
Four young adults, infected with the news
That this is it, this is as weird as it gets
At this latitude, this occasion, join me
On the overlook, armed with their special
Eclipse-watching glasses, murmuring,
English tourists who had hoped for a bit more.

Port aux Basques, Newfoundland, 21 August 2017

Finished crossing the night ocean alone
In a double berth cabin on a fogbound ferry
Blowing its mournful horn half the crossing.
I wasn't convinced of any horror in the claim
That everything is just books, that words are
Souls, our possession their transmigration.
Word horror doesn't reach me easily,
And as for possession by books and stories,
Well, that's a stone-cold fact to the last word
But it's got nothing to do with souls. Souls
Are what comes after, when body parts
Company with words to become true body.
I stared out of the pale porthole, a company
Of pilgrims in a single set of worn clothes,
Feeling the soft sway and continual rumble,
The almost uterine environment in the boat,
That giant, plaintive whale machine. Bodies
In bodies in bodies, all afloat on the waves.
Earlier, on the deck, I had walked under
The remarkable cold-water life boats,
Sealed orange, whaleshark shaped, capable
Of holding seventy people alive at once
In those waters that swallowed the Titanic,
Complete with propellers underneath
And a little glass dome on top for lookout,
Like a submarine bulb, a gunner's ball turret,
Or the one-person domes set into tundra
Near the University of Alaska-Fairbanks,
Where a person could stay insulated
While observing the winter Aurora Borealis.
No. What words and books have done
By their possession of us is to wrap us up
In ever more inventive and alienating sleeves
That protect flesh from the world beyond
Words that it fears but quietly longs to rejoin.
The only shiver in a night ocean's the last act
Of imagining swimming straight into the cold
That comes at the end to take words away.

North Sydney, Nova Scotia, 20 August 2017

Plagiarism or half-intended collaboration,
The plagiarizer being the intentional half?
The CBC radio show debated and illustrated
All afternoon while monsoonal rains doused
New Brunswick. Only half an hour meant
To answer the question. The rest was
Unintentional, except to a careful listener.
"It's hearing the robber speak in the voice
Of the robbed." You could always just rob
The robbers, and then whose voice are you?
Yours. Language loots the floorboards
For the painted skulls of buried ancestors
With gold obols in their jaws, but who
Cared at the Hotel North that night
Beside the ferry to Newfoundland? Packed
Parking lot, laughter in the pub past ten,
An exceptionally chipper young woman
With a large backpack, Asian features,
And a California accent, checking in,
Offered to help the the broken man roll
His luggage on a bell cart down the hall.
The rooms smelled of the kind of funk
Only old gym rats should know, but still
Someone had strapped a paper ring around
The lid of the toilet to plagiarize the sign
That indicates, it's all friendly, it's all clean.
It's hearing the tourist in the voice
Of the toured. It's hearing the helper
In the voice of the helped. Can I help you?

Quebec City, Quebec, 19 August 2017

"Let's remember Adam," suggested a billboard
By the side of the King's Highway, later to become
Chemin du Roy, complete with the school photo
Of a tow-headed gradeschooler over a warning
To always watch out for stopped school busses.
The real Adam, evidently, had been struck and killed
By an inattentive highway driver. His smile beamed
Across a lily pond dotted white with blossoms
And above another sign warning of moose crossings.
A light fog wrapped itself around the scene,
But then I was gone on down the road. Past
Sunset, after a showery twilight, I arrived
In Quebec City, the leafy streets with big houses
Still mildly, fragrantly damp, the old town
With narrow streets, doing its colonial best
To pass for European, and the young adults
Out for a Friday night at the restaurants
And bars, laughing. I drove slowly through them
Winding my way home where I never belonged,
Wondering how a creator could have been content
To deliver death to to the creator's own child
And to that child's children, in perpetuity, down
To this generation that wandered the streets looking
For a good time, a good life before death, when it was life
Who was god and who had delivered them unto death.
Old, old serpent me, you see, just trying to remember Adam.

North Bay, Ontario, 18 August 2017

Made it at least twenty lengths out over
The canyon's edge with no one, except me,
The wiser. The joke was always on Wile E.
Coyote in the cartoons, and yes, it's me
Who'll have to do the falling, but in fact
It's the coyote who knows first he's defying
Gravity almost successfully, long before
The audience knows he's past hoping.
After a long loop through the nearby north,
The edges of the Arctic Watershed, edges
Of boreal forests, muskegs, First Nations
Communities who, despite the past
Few centuries, can still be kind to a stranger,
Can still forgive a hobbling coyote for being
What he never says he is, I found myself
Overlooking railroad tracks that ran along
The shore of the blue velvet lake. Who knew
A sesquicentennial ago that railroads would
Look romantically nostalgic, even backed up
With boxcars in lurid colors one day?
The highway I rode in on will be its own
Myth eventually, but for the time being, I was
Hanging over the ledge of all of this,
Pretending momentum prevented me
From noticing it was time I looked down.

Thunder Bay, Ontario, 17 August

Just a bit northwest of here, fear and mosses
Formed thick, plush, variegated mats
Of greens and subtle oranges on the rocks
That showed themselves also capable
Of pink, buff, and black where they showed.
Without fear there is no travel and without
Travel--that is, difference, change--no time.
Where were we headed and when would we
Arrive? Every dance is a side step away
From the only precipice that exists, nonexistence.
We moved, body and company, sans daughter,
In a car, east and east and east, meaning
To rendezvous with a wish that could
Have come from the lost life of a past wife,
Could have and did before she drownded,
Never to be granted. The lakes used to be
Greater and before that they were ice.
We stood on a bridge in a decaying port
Looking south over the greatest of the last,
Watching young Metis women, singly
Or in pairs, push strollers with sunken babies
Down the sidewalks near downtown, to where?
You have to ask whether you existed, you do.

Winnipeg, Manitoba, 16 August 2017

The Weakerthans sang the saddest song
In the world. The subject of their angry grief
Made no sense anyway. A town laid out
Like a spider web in the middle of prairie
That had been the bottom of an inland sea
That had been dug out by the meltwater
Of continental glaciers that had scraped
And retreated and advanced and scraped
This scruffy shield over and over again,
Such a town doesn't deserve love. The woman
Serving beer at the lounge came from somewhere
In Central Asia, somewhere where they know
Something about civilizations. The man
Answering his smartphone at the bar spoke Arabic.
Outside ghosts of various modern humans
Wandered by and body thought of the drowned
Towns that had so fascinated me as a child
And a teen, those villages in the way of dams
That were relocated in the flesh but obliterated
In the lightless depths, the walls of churches
And the walls of houses arranged like riddles
Under so much black water that they had
No choice but to give up the ghost.

Medicine Hat, Alberta, 15 August 2017

"Since the first hunters dragged in a kill
Bigger than any one of them could possibly
Defend or eat, no one has ever owned
Anything. There's never been actual wealth,
Never been money, only ever forbearance
And credit. The man offering to help
With the cumbersome luggage cart, saying
The wind off the prairies meant a big storm,
The woman swiping plastic behind the desk
And saying the same, the customer blown in
From somewhere west of here and sad, all
Depend on the delicate tissues of trust
And misplaced belief to find a place to sleep
Tonight in Gas City, soon to run short of reasons
To believe, since the needs of the world shift
And with needs shift beliefs," you said to me
As the wind blew down the highway and through
All the leaves without trees.

Last Ghost Highway, Slocanada, 14 August 2017

All night on Mt Aylwin, the dragons opened
And shut or squinted their flaming eyes.
Body woke repeatedly whenever the scent
Of smoke grew particularly acrid in the air,
All the cabin windows open, daughter dreaming
Restlessly on her pallet in her cubby, hugging
Her stuffed familiars to her. Finally, a new
Smell, petrichor, the first rain on the dust
In weeks, and then a drumming downpour.
By morning, the threat and high summer
Had passed. The weeks of heat and haze
Had broken. The old Kootenay rains were back
Sluicing to the lake. Relieved and disconsolate,
I tried to pull my composite parts together,
Ready to go forth as if a single being, solo
Into the dragons' now vanishing world. I tried
To admit that it had not worked out, none of it
Had worked out. Anything gone is long gone
The instant it's gone at all. Time to go.

Dry Thunder, Slocanada, 13 August 2017

Spotter choppers shuddered the air
Within minutes of the first rumble.
The mountains were tinder despite
A long winter and a wetter than usual spring.
The smoke from large fires north and west
Had hazed the lake already for weeks.
Now it could be our turn. No rain came
With the dragon's tongue. How was it
That any culture identified lightning
With kings and hierarchical civilization
While imaging serpents and leviathans
Hiding in caves and the sea? The dragons
Were the ones with the lightning, the gods
Were the ones in the caves. In any case,
We were not getting any rain from this
Dry confrontation. By twilight, the rotors
In the distance suggested something
Truly ominous: every Armageddon is local.

Wee Sandy, Slocanada, 12 August 2017

Common camping spot, far side of the lake,
We'd only come here twice before, once
Years before daughter's birth, carried here
Under a September moon in the motorboat
Of a park ranger, and once again two years
Ago, swimming the whole way in the sun,
Daughter a four year-old towed with others
In their swimsuits, life jackets, and sun hats
Colorful and cheerfully noisy as cockatoos
Behind a slow flotilla accompanying
The swimmers. We buried a box of treasure
By the falls and last night finally returned,
This time neither under the sun, just slipped
Behind the mountains, nor under the moon
Not yet risen in a smoky, cloudless evening,
This time neither motored nor swimming,
Paddling a kayak instead over glass water.
The first time there'd been no one at the falls
And the second time there were dozens
Meandering the trails. This time two families
Camping, slightly disconsolate in the twilight
Because of the ban on campfires, looking
Ghostly sitting on rocks, lying in hammocks
As the haze paled and darkened. We didn't
Find the treasure, although we brought
Our map and dug in approximately the right
Places by a trio of trees. Ah well. It wasn't
Deeply buried. Probably found by someone
Long ago. That's the problem with dreaming
During the day. Over two years, imagination
Delighted in the occasional thought of return
With a large group to dig up the treasure
Playfully and in triumph, laughing all the way
Back across the lake. But those friends
Dispersed, and when we finally returned
Quietly, just with daughter, she was excited
And enthusiastic but disappointed. We sat
On the pebbly shore, sharing watermelon,
Then paddled back. She kept the map.

Winlove, British Columbia, 11 August 2017

Why stop here? The whole gang wondered.
There was sleep for sissies. There was food.
There were lottery tickets galore. There was
A kind of confusion about what was here
And what was here before. Once you could
Have bought books and books and books,
Printed on paper and bound in paper
Or cardboard, call them hardbacks,
In the last door on the left of a strip of doors,
Jenny's Garden it was called, speckled in sun.
Now it's another irrelevant store. The death
Of a body obsessed with thinking of death
Should not have, will not have happened
Here, here in this dust, after all worth being
About here wasn't here anymore, no more.

Sandon, Slocanada, 10 August 2017

There's never enough ghosts in ghost towns
Muttered one man beside a homely manikin
Dressed as a miner In ill-fitting clothes
And carefully posed as if about to strike gold
In an actual hole in the rock below
The rickety museum, one of the few hotels
Left to stand after a century of abandonment
And fires on the edge of the relentless creek.
Chunks of galena of various sizes lay about,
Along with heaps of rusted late Victorian
Tools and machinery. The immigrant
From Manhattan, arrived with the hippies,
Now in her seventies, played a few bars
Of Procol Harum on the vintage pump organ
And then explained to daughter how the ore
Was purified enough to weigh, how blown
Glass spheres the size of softballs contained
Carbon tetrachloride to hurl at fires, then run
Before the sudden lack of oxygen killed
Everyone caught down in the hole. Daughter
Nodded gravely. Imagine throwing that ball.

Three Forks, British Columbia, 9 August 2017

Wouldn't mind dying if dying was all,
Went one old song I liked, but I disagreed.
I'd always taken up with the reverse opinion
That it is what's before death that's terrible
Not the nothing coming after. I understood,
Nonetheless, the weird nausea of extinction
That came with contemplating the end
Of the contemplative too directly. Nights,
I often experienced some form of the dream
Of final certainty, of spinning over the edge
Of a cliff, of hurtling headfirst at a tree,
Of someone firing a gun at me. The key
Part of every variation was that moment
In the dream when I knew for certain I was
About to die, that sickening, vertiginous
Oh-well-too-late-now as the gun fired
Or the car rolled or the ground rushed at me.
Every time, the remainder of the dream
Consisted of waiting not to be, and always
I clung to awareness in perfect expectation
Of death, trying to extend thought beyond
The end of thinking. I never woke as I died,
But as I gradually realized I wasn't dead yet.

Rocks, Slocanada, 8 August 2017

I sometimes imagined a fool from another planet
Requesting of a simulation machine, Make me a world
Where I am unique but helpless, a thorough-going solipsist
Who can't control a thing. Make me a world where I am
Stranded, incapable of decision, forever
Hopeful but frustrated from minute to minute.
Make me a world and abandon me in it.

Afternoon Swimming, Slocan Lake, 7 August 2017

Then one day body managed to convene
Self, mind, and awareness together, asking
Them to examine and consider how
They'd become hollowed out as they were.
Was it debts denied, regrets suppressed?
Was it unhealthy habits of body and mind,
The fragmenting memories that frayed self
From awareness? For a few minutes they all
Held it together. Then this is what they said.
A ghost is not a figment of dead imagination.
A real ghost is never entirely dead, only
Lost instead. A ghost is a living body, living
Mind, living awareness and sense of self
That has somehow missed its exit, a guest
In the world of the rest of the living. It's not
Depression or forgetfulness that causes it.
It missed its expiration date by some mistake
And although all the living bits of it remain,
The invisible aspect that was appropriate
To it, the timeliness of it, begins to drain
Away from it. Not necessarily even sick
In the body or in the head, only probably so,
A ghost is an organism meant to be dead.
Body shrugged and scattered the fools,
Because body was all about living for as long
As body could. Still, that was what they said.

Moonlit Slocan Lake, 6 August 2017

There was nothing idyllic about how
I ended up down at the dock.
A series of petty plans had been thwarted.
Life was level best falling apart.
By the time I had reached the concert,
Alone because abandoned by others
With better lives and other lovers,
The concert was sold out, and I sat,
A hunched homunculus, self-pitying, aged
Man at the edge past the ropes, marginal
And determined to feel cast out.
An old acquaintance found me, settled
On massive hips beside me, and talked
Of the loss of ex-husbands and stepfathers,
Of New Orleans, Mustang convertibles,
And her years selling Mary Kay.
We watched the older and the younger walk
Or dance or swim in the Kaslo Bay.
From the lawn outside the paid attendance
The bands were muddy sounding and not
In a good muddy way. We had saved
Ourselves by not getting in to hear them
And we congratulated ourselves in a way.
Then her son nearly as old as I am
And as ne'er-do-well as well, in his own way,
Texted her to say he was in a lot of pain
And headed for a hospital. I gave her a lift
To her car to rescue him. I ate at a familiar
Diner before driving up the Ghost Highway.
I got home almost contented despite
The emptiness of the day. I used to say,
Any day I don't end lying in a ditch, a jail, or
A hospital bed hasn't been an all-bad day.
(A morgue would be okay.) I was in a lot
Of pain myself, of course, but that's normal
For me and my physique, and I had no love
From humans that would make it worth
Those reeking hospitals, not that I would
Seek them out anyway. The world is petty.
Any shore reveals a staggering obsession
With ever-so-slightly different bits of rock.
Any living organism eats its order and shits
Decay. But the petty world never ends today.
Back at the cabin a note from a miserable
Bastard who couldn't make himself happy
No matter how many notes he'd made, made
Me annoyed. I wasted an hour composing
A response to this inanity, an hour I had
Supposed to be free from demands for me.
When I came back to myself I was sweating
In the muggy night. The fatly gibbous moon
Was up over the haze from the forest fires,
Looking orange itself to the eye but throwing
An improbably silver glow on the mirroring
Lake. Disgusted with my own pettiness,
Each littleness capable of barring my way,
I stripped off my clothes and hauled myself
Naked, absurd, and irrelevant, silly bastard
On my crutches down to the crystal shore.
It would be hard for me to suggest, for you
To imagine a more tranquilly romantic scene:
The moon, the glass water shimmering black
Miles away and away, the lack of any boats
Or voices, the absence of humans or dogs,
The flick of bat shadows over the empty bay.
I staggered into the phosphorescent ending
Of that day, half dreading surprising a bear
Come down in the glimmering dark to drink.
See? Now it all should sound pathetic, idyllic
As a conclusion, the lonely midnight swim
Of the broken, the surface sufficiently
Delicate to feel like lace caressing the face.
But that would not be it. Have you ever dived
In water too dark to see the rocky bottom
Even as you nearly struck your head, but
So clear you could see that darkness glass,
Scalloped obsidian lit by the moon? I did.

Diner, Nelson, British Columbia, 5 August 2017

In a universe so tightly woven that not even deepest space was truly
Empty, a fly-strewn diner on a sweltering afternoon in a provincial town
Could serve as well as any juncture for an illustration of our irrational
Urge for purpose. But why bother again with describing all that, the milling
Pedestrian sidewalk specifics? Why not just admit that a conviction
One saw something worth saying, worth saving among the dusty atoms
And their endlessly elaborating coincidences, the world going about
Its daily business of coming apart at the seams, something worthy just
Because impossible to save, amounted to the most exquisite torture of all?
At one table in the back, someone muttered something about Voyagers
Still sending signals back from outside the heliosphere after now forty years.

Nightmare, Slocanada, 4 August 2017

Shadowy illusions turned the head.
Peter Rugg and Jenny found themselves
On the far side of the continent, in another
Forest, country, century, further and further
From home. A bit of blurry white twitched
In peripheral vision among the young trees
Whose thickly woven needles cast a blanket
Over the naked stumps of their once-mighty
Ancestors. A darker twitch flew over
The roof of the carriage, birdlike,
Without the bird to throw such a shadow.
A body could hazard a conviction that forces
Of material import, themselves invulnerable
To material senses, were gathering there.
A thin piping from an unknown species,
A haze that burned old eyes to tears,
A moment of forgiveness, also an illusion,
Added to the general atmosphere, but Peter
Was still circling slowly further from home.
And what of the old ghost horse that pulled
The father-daughter pair? Where did she
Come from, why was she punished with this
Eternity? Ah, she was the mare. She was just
Bringing to punishment, not punished there.

New Denver, Slocanada, 3 August 2017

Daughter made an elaborate series of nests
In the shrubbery around the laundromat.
Her fairy fort consisted of a bedroom,
A main castle, and a spy lookout. When
It got too hot even under the vines to play,
She borrowed change and wandered off
Down the street to buy two cans of soda.
Then she wandered over to a neighbor's
Home to see if his daughter could play.
Body sat outside with a soda, sweating while
The clothes tumbled in the sweltering room
Behind him. Acquaintances and strangers
Wandered down the sidewalks. No one,
Least of all body, fell in love, although
Somewhere other people he knew were
Doing just that, also healing, also dying. But
Here the air was smokily empty of love
And body alone was neither healing much
Nor much yet dying. Beige haze obscured
Valhalla wilderness and its floating ice field.
What was going on this summer afternoon
In New Jersey, forty-eight years ago? body
Wondered, pulling up nothing particular
About early August 1969, after the big Moon
Landing the month before, that blurry all-day
Tedium on a small black-and-white TV.
Must have been something. Daughter likely
Will not, body thought, remember this day,
Likely will not recall a single detail of this day.
Later, back at the cabin, a loon called
From the lake. That detail may stay.

The Fairytale Cafe, Nakusp, British Columbia, 2 August 2017

Nine years ago, this was Middle Earth,
Replete with kitsch statuary of wizards,
Elves, dwarves, hobbits, and dragons,
But the German couple whose dream it was
Split acrimoniously, the man descending
Into paranoia and legal filings, the woman
Finally forced to sell the business two years
Later. Last I saw her, she smiled tearily
And gently pinched daughter's infant arms
Ringed with baby fat, murmuring "Spaetzle."
For years the place was shuttered, sad sight
On a grey day, a brown box across the street
From an ugly small-town motel. Then, magic
Descended again, in the form of someone
Else's dreams, another German immigrant
As it happened, who salvaged some gilt
And dark wood decor, restored the counter,
And rechristened it as a sandwich shop,
This time replete with kitsch fairy statuary,
Of the butterfly and dragonfly-winged kind,
Pottery nymphs discretely nude or filmily
Robed, lounging in real and pottery flowers.
And daughter, who never knew Middle Earth,
Likes to come here for a pastry, a hidden
Chocolate behind a small porcelain fairy
In the door within the door. The owner's
Exceptionally tall and fair daughter would
Have looked at home in Rivendell and has
No wings. Every dispensation echoes
Lost others. Out on Tolkien's western isles
The elves are still in mourning for the years
Of the wicked rings. Time dreams all things.

More Smoke in the Forest, Slocanada, 1 August 2017

Past the middle of life, I realized I was lost
In a dark wood with no path forward at all,
But still I had somewhere I wanted to go
And some things I wanted to say, so I
Stayed. I discovered I could live in the dark
Wood for a surprisingly long time, although
I can't say I ever got comfortable or unafraid.
The longer I stayed, the more I had to accept
That no magical beasts, no spirit guide,
No door in the woods would appear
To lead me onward. This wasn't a comedy.
It held no divinity. There was a dark wood
In front of me, behind me, all around me, but
As long as I could live with that I would.