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.