Devil's Club, Trail 5, British Columbia, 30 June 2017

A narrow-gauge railroad, extra narrow,
Ended near here once. The rails were torn
Out decades ago. What was left was a trail
With charm and scenery but little adventure
Or death anymore. Always possible, though,
Emily Dickinson's gentleman caller,
Omnipresent in these trees, always ready
With an inky, voluminous handkerchief
Should someone, anyone, happen to sneeze.
What a wicked disguise his beauty has been,
Not because he comes to collect, wanted
Or not, but because there was nothing
Graceful about him for all the gothic charm.
Even in the quiet afterlife of this ghost town
Once frenetic with prostitutes and miners,
Bankers, con artists, and newspaper men,
Where he was jauntier, nimbler, muscled,
Now back to being a kind of sinking whisper
In the stream, a bear shadow near a den,
Hardly substantial enough for a fetch,
Hardly worth anthropomorphizing as any
Kind of man, robed in gentle green summer,
He's the very devil hedged about with pain.

Darkest Barkshadow, Slocanada, 29 June 2017

Daughter played outside in the sunny corner
Of sloping lawn bordered by hemlocks,
One day that is, and spent another indulged
With computer games indoors. The two
Seemed to reinforce each other, however,
Elaborate nests of practiced tricks, skill sets,
In the way Daniel Dor suggests that words
And the world co-generate the technological
Dialectic of imagination, experiences not
Possible without language but not, either,
Determined exactly by it. Daughter made
Names for the fairies and doglike heroes
Of the castles and forts in the grass, names
Suggestive of formulas from game-makers
But of her own invention as well, Darkest
Barkshadow, Deleaf Roof Demok,
Spikeneedle Talit Roof, Rosetta Bark, and
Her hero, Gardener Leafneedle. Should body
Feel fraught with guilt for taking these leafy
Names down for later use, or for allowing
Hours and hours of screen time, or for
Not having daughter learning in classrooms
And piano lessons instead? "There's a little
Monster that comes out of his hole, and he's
Looking for the words," daughter said.

Last Bridge, Slocanada, 28 June 2017

After the last bridge, the gravel eroded
And the road promised a dead end soon.
A little dust hung in the air from the pick-up
That had grumbled up and roared back down.
On one side of the road, wildflowers in sun,
On the other, mosses and ferns in shadows.
Gaps in a thin line of spruce on the crest
Of a narrow ridge showed a peak with snow.
Birds made themselves heard in the trees
Despite the re-echoing wind and water. A doe
Wandered through with two fawn daughters.
The air was resin sweet where the hermit
Hunched and wondered how much longer.
The angle of the light kept shifting lower.

Four-Mile Creek, Slocanada, 27 June 2017

Any ordinary human's animal brain could do
It, didn't even need to be a human brain:
One, two, a few, a lot; one, two, and infinity.
But once arithmetic wormed its algorithms
Into the imported mind that squatted, like all
Minds, heavily on the functions of neurons,
The little link was forged to four and five,
To calendars and triangles and probabilities.
And then it was no longer so easy to jump
From one, two, maybe three distinct things
Straight into infinity. Then the mind told
The brain, quite firmly, we're both doomed,
You particularly, and self began to mourn
Itself, and suddenly the embodied brain
Began counting obsessively. All the numbers
Are against me, thought one composed
Of these and other compound thoughts,
Leaning against a hemlock trunk beside
A foaming mountain stream in summer,
Which a soft deep-woods sun lit pleasantly.
All the numbers are against me, but I can't
Quit counting and calculating them against
The odds they illustrate for me. I can't bring
Myself to throw this nonsense in the stream
Because although I know I need to stop
Counting, measuring, calculating, recounting
Everything before I can glide into infinity,
Although I know I will complete that leap
Despite me, my mind will not let go of me yet
And has not finished with me until it's left
A husk of me to seek someone else's misery.

Shallow Water, Slocanada, 26 June 2017

Naturally, the injury lingered, naturally

The world was coming to an end again.
The body that never could walk well and now
Could no longer properly swim swayed
On the double stem of bent legs, a lily
Of forgiveness offered to a cosmos
That invented sin. The sun wavered above
The ice fields and far past the atmosphere.
The way to be done with all this is to forget
The fear of the finishing, the pain, and begin.

Shelter Bay, British Columbia, 25 June 2017

A happy expectation on a sunny afternoon

Infected the line of cars, trucks, and bikes
Waiting to board the ferry to Galena Bay.
Why? Just the sun? Maybe. A hundred,
Hundred and twenty years ago, these
People, these costumes, these kinds
Of machines had never existed. This kind
Of excuse for poetry, neither. Now, we were
Here, all hands on deck, combustion engines
And smartphones, bare limbs, teeth, shades,
Faux tribal tattoos, chatting excitedly,
Our new world in this tense common as dirt
Because the past was churning under us
And the mountains in their patchwork woods
Had yet to fall down on us, although they did
Occasionally slip or burn, and what was next
Was creating us the way the big-dog diesel
Engines throbbing at our feet were creating
Our intricately braided, vanishing wake.

Revelstoke, British Columbia, 24 June 2017

Colorado kind of town. Decade ago
Had no rooms left on a summer Friday, sent
A body on to Glacier. Now an appearance
Of a place to pay for minor, essential repairs.
Cute enough. Prosperous. Peaceful. End
Of someone's world every month, at least
Every year, and many a week nonetheless.
Man with his mouth full of marbles couldn't
Have said it better, although maybe quicker.
The breeze in the tops of the conifers,
The traffic on Canada One, the summer
Students carrying music camp instruments,
The college students home on holiday
From Vancouver and Kelowna, the hunch
In the back, hunch in the parasitic mind
Having infected another brain over a screen,
A laptop or such at the Main Street Cafe.
No one will ever know what happened here,
Even if many claim it was nothing much,
Even if many, confused by breathing, forget.