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.