the beer truck backs up

~ beep beep, beep

at the vet's window, a happy black cat

stripped bare,

 

 in the cold the trees let fall ~

a new beauty

Fathers

           Sons

We showed up for work early

“I told you so” I said needing

a public airing of blame

No time to return home so

we went down to the harbour

and sat looking at the lake

We did not say much

truthfully we never had

too late now for either of us

Is that what wisdom is,

                late.

Seeing  the school year starting again and frost on the cars

this morning, I decided to rerun one of my older poems.

 

Guy

 

Days of Construction Paper and Macaroni

Office bound how often the seasons, years go unremarked.

In the younger grades you decorated the classroom.

Iron autumn leaves between sheets of wax paper and it is fall.

Black cat cutouts, Halloween, an accordion turkey, it is Thanksgiving.

Cut out intricate snowflakes for winter, macaroni trees, it is Christmas.

February and there are Valentines for everyone for once.

Easter eggs, paper tulips, it is spring and change is in the air.

And in the summer you ran thru an endless twilight

until the street lights called you home.

                                                                                        Guy

Gulls gathering,

all to soon a new white

on the grass

Seven grackles

bright as new pennies,

one last chaa

a bee flys off ~

the purple flower nods to

sun and shadow.

Showing blooms and berries

a hawthorn both ~

spring and fall.

August

lion-maned clematis ~

all sway, no roar.

Roses fade

leaves float on water ~

carry me along

Yellow yarrow and

soft pink roses, oh!

that bee stung.

Purple thistle

ants tend their aphids:
a leaf falls.

Shaun

Summer's hot breath

a small dog pants:

later lightning.

I went for a walk

way out beyond the far fields

clouds followed me home.

                                    Guy



No cherry here

 this poem turns
to roadside weeds.

Summer days

along a country road

dragonflies everywhere.

                           Guy

Red Squirrel in Red Deer

Waiting for a meeting to start, always early,

time to worry, wrong place, wrong day?

I watched a small red squirrel at the foot of a large spruce

no time for self doubt there, but I wondered for him.

How did he choose which of the hundreds of cones

to hoard, to bury, to eat

how did he decide to leave his tree for another to get a cone there

to bury back here.

What instinct drove him, industrious, territorial

always acting, always moving.

What memories can he harbour in May of a winter to come?

And what should I hoard from this, what to treasure, from this moment

with its lesson in industry, preparation, self confidence with

a leavening of obsession.

                                               Guy

The Dawn Deer

A solitary silhouette at dawn, ears wide cocked like the gun

I do not carry, we are both poised between past

and future, and so we wait, trapped in the amber light.

For me this is merely a walk, I have simply paused

between one step and the next. But an error on your part

is freighted with consequences and finally you slip away.

Today neither of us is prey, but mute to each other

we know only what has been, not words, not intentions.

                                                                      Guy

Chickadee dee dee

Who has tamed your wild heart?

No one here I know; so how far have you come

with obsidian bright eyes and dainty clawed feet,

expecting the seeds I did not think to carry.

Your expectations may have been extinguished but mine

lit by your wild beauty, shine like a minute sun.

You hated visitors but loved their shoes

For so many years you slept a

small still weight by my restless feet.

When I got up you would claim

my spot, leftover warmth, a cuddle.

In the end you who were silent

cried out waking, sleeping, lost, alone.

I would hear and nudge you gently,

not knowing if you were awake, asleep?

To let you know I was always  there

awake, and with you in the dark

Ice

Ice

Once you folded entire continents, oceans rose and fell, lived, died at your whim

you coughed up boulders big as houses, pulled vast sheets of rocks across

thousands of miles, as effortlessly as a child with a blankie.

No one stood against you not man, not mammoth not muskox well maybe muskox

but mostly you came out on top, your gallstones ground a world to stretch marks and

your cousins rolled through space with a heedlessness that made dinosaurs tremble.

Now it's all downhill, you clutch little boys tongues, nip their noses, lurk

in the mouths of alleys to attack someone home from the shops with a bag of apples

and today you tripped a small white dog in red boots who bumped his chin on the curb.

Despite a short lived triumph as the screaming eagle centrepiece in a buffet

your future is mostly ice hockey, curlers in loud sweaters, and bobbing

around an unfriendly world in a gaudy pink drink with a paper umbrella.

So there!

 Camera frost  crystal trees

   

                                                Guy

On a Bus Headed North

20 below, everything fades to white,

fields stretch to a white horizon

each tree, woodlot is rimmed in frost

and the white non-light still holds

against an unseen dawn.

On the snow mantled farm the

red buildings bleed to rose,

the yard light shines like a grounded star,

and if I could stop and walk

up the long path, pass the granaries,

the black on white piano key

repetition of fence posts,

would I be a mysterious guest

a magi, or merely home?

But we continue north to a grey,

shuttered city, waiting for spring to come

and open it like a can.

Sometimes a Falcon is Not a Single Edged Sword


Magpie eye, magpie mind, always tempting fate

a blue black jester, wings arched in a graceful fall.

Time and the world conspired to create

violence and beauty wrapped in a strident call.  

King among cattle, nothing you won’t steal

a lonely egg, fallen chick, any sad mischance,

life offers so many, for diversion, for a meal

There’s always your own agenda to advance.

Yet at the height of your triumph, in fading light

another blade equally hard, equally honed, took

you broken to the ground, only one shape ascends

two ill fated lovers launched on one final flight.

And I found your feathers here by the foot

of the power pole where the fence ends.

                                                        Guy

Calender with Magpie

Early spring, late winter

wobbly magpies busy with sticks

it begins again

Late spring and magpies

kill jackrabbit leveret

unloved assassin

Summer comes, time

for weaning fat magpie chicks

raucous noise follows


On sunny lawn a
magpie pecks sleeping rabbit
futile kicks follow

Amid green leaves

many loud magpies come to mock

embarrassed tabby

Fall and teenaged

magpies wrestle the plant tags

but for now wire wins

Winter magpies watch

as we slog thru slushy snow

watching just watching
                                   
                                                            Guy

Dreams of Disarmament

Harry the great polled Charolais

swollen as the sin of pride,

heavy with muscle and vitality

counts his kingdom of one

way out in the far field.

He spares us only one baleful glare

for his thoughts are far away

down to the main corral where

Morely the half-pint Hereford

flashes his horns for an admiring throng.

                                 Guy

                            

Golden

Golden lay light upon the sill

after lunch, after school.

Day lingers slowly, a patch of light,

time pursues day retreats

but the moving trail is still new

and I wonder at the golden pool.

The window still speaks of sun

after night after years, decades of time

I see that golden time, still.

                                               Guy

Genuis Loci

The desktop gods Ganesha, Hanumazn practice stillness

laid down in the carving, one arm so, trunk askew.

I admire their stoic motionless contentment with their place

beneath an old master postcard and family photos

as one more day moves imperceptibly

but inexorably towards some twilight resolution.

I harvest the silent monument, unspoken words,

sculpt contentment, confinement into my bones.

The world may spin for me centred in my web

but I will turn instead to the filed word, unpaid account,

my compass the world of desktop gods, paperclips

and not let guilt or gyration carry the day away.

                                                                 Guy

In My Field

Sleep Rabbits

So I should recount to you

the passing day.

The bandaged wrist of the

server at coffee.

The death of family frail

amid the tubes.

Ending with an ovation to

important immediacy.

or

In the early winter morning

four rabbits sleep in the field I pass

appearing or disappearing like the snow.

Foot traffic drives them out during the day

they crouch amid gravel bed and shrubs

chivvied here, there, somewhere.

That’s where they go but what is it

about this cold dry windswept field

that brings them back?

                                       Guy

             

Days of Construction Paper and Macaroni

Office bound how often the seasons, years go unremarked.

In the younger grades you decorated the classroom.

Iron autumn leaves between sheets of wax paper and it is fall.

Black cat cutouts, Halloween, an accordion turkey, it is Thanksgiving.

Cut out intricate snowflakes for winter, macaroni trees, it is Christmas.

February and there are Valentines for everyone for once.

Easter eggs, paper tulips, it is spring and change is in the air.

And in the summer you ran thru an endless twilight

until the street lights called you home.

                                                                                        Guy

About Face

For each small sad thought, another.

Late summer, young magpies gather in the yard

pulling frantically at the tags on the shrubs.

Two crows perch on the skyward 4x4s

the barcodes are treasures beyond price.

A pine siskin runs joyously through the yard

collides with a blade of grass, down then up.

                                                                 Guy

                                                    

Paths

                                                  “Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,”

                                                        Tintern Abbey  

                                                                   William Wordsworth

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Time was I did not walk this path alone, but words uncounted

could not tame the world to hold your shape once more.

Gone now, like so many, gone and I await some future call,

but until then I am here, remembering a questing spirit,


who pads the pathless night, the trackless starfields,

the wild aurora, thru great winding fields of light.

But remember to return by way of these tamer fields

so that one day we may take that walk together.

                                                                Guy