Eye, Fly, Awry in this Landscape of Words,

They say don’t feed the birds, you encourage

dependence, promote non-native species.

who knew, it seemed such a harmless lark.

And what is the result of my two week vacation,

starvation throughout Brentwood stretching to

Dalhousie and Charlewood, or is it more widespread.

They do fly after all and we go through a lot of seed,

will they be dropping in Shanghai and Topeka,

and if not mass starvation, perhaps delinquency.

The whole of bird society breaking down, begging,

sexual license, belling cats, downing power lines

pushing each other into the air intakes of jets.

Or could it be positive, native species returning

Bluebirds, Martins sundry Warblers all jostling

wildly for the vacant nesting boxes and bird baths.

Maybe we should think big, Passenger Pigeons,

Carolina Parakeets, Labrador Ducks, who knows

what these misplaced Weaver Birds were up to.

Maybe we will see the great brown spurts of Bison

moving out of the river valleys with their attendant

packs of Grey Wolves and lumbering Plains Grizzlies.

And if I stop feeding the sleek Black Squirrels

that hang like misshapen fruit from my feeders,

what can I get for that?

                                                                                      Guy

                                                                     

by Max

The Cat Wishes to Use the Pen

To write doubtless,

about the space under the rug where he keeps things and

the spot under the coffee table where he also keeps things

including himself, dreaming of jungle, he would like to

immortalize lurking unseen.

Unless he wants a drink in which case he will write

of the white porcelain tub where he sits demanding

a drink from the faucet. Or yowling through the house

until someone follows him to his dish to witness

the wonder of a feeding cat.

He would include a triumphant inventory of the

clawed furniture, the red leather chair, the sofa, the

good  Lazy Boy. The declawed cat broke lamps but he

is all about fabric, sweaters, wedding dresses,

comforters and of course the good Lazy Boy.

He would surely write about laying across a warm chest

with one paw extended purring happily. But there will be

no mention  of the small white dog who sniffs his butt,

let him write his own poem.

                                           

Corson's Inlet/Windsor

Windsor

From Corson’s Inlet A. R. Ammons

“ like an inlet’s cutting edge:
there are dunes of motion,
organizations of grass, white sandy paths of remembrance
in the overall wandering of the mirroring mind: “　

Days hot as a train burnished penny,
small footprints traced in asphalt.
Stop and go, hide and seek
childish shrieking until the streetlights come on.
Sitting on the porch while the day recedes
cats drowsing in the heat of a window ledge
nighthawks rising to the currents of dark
each dawn seems life foretelling death.
Day no more than a featheredge
like the inlet’s cutting edge


rolling to night’s sleepless sea.
Sparkles, fireflies, fireworks
and a fat moon face in the window.
Great search lights ever scanning
giant footsteps ever stamping
foghorns on the river, dream of the ocean.
The man at the top of the stairs; no light can dispel
rain sounds, headlights, great snakes of shadow.
Sliding slithering englobed by a nightmare sea’s devotion
there are dunes of motion,

sky great clouds and swirling curtains.
Remember a park big as the world
with all the world’s knowledge at its heart,
piled with leaves, flowers gone to seed
swarming bees, red birds, bugs in jars.
A fathers time, a childlike allegiance
evening, walking past the baseball diamond
sucking on a straw full of candied sugar.
No relentless waves of truth can unbalance
organizations of grass, white shady paths of remembrance
　

of tales told in a graveyard night
cobblestones eroding under waves of cars.
Home from church in the dark
the moon now no more than a rind.
Freighted so with emotion in today’s dawn,
thoughts of return sadly declined
as every wave propels the swimmer forward,
no tide can carry back the past’s lost child
to a nonexistent city now confined
in the overall wandering of mirroring mind:

Guy

Form Glosa

Carving A Bufflehead

Sitting here on a hard wooden chair in my room at the Capri Centre, It looks like the wind is rising and I see lightning in the distance,

I am restless for home.

Riffling through things I could be doing there, I remember books, errands, projects and a small wooden duck now long gone,

can I carve another?

I have done it before, so no doubt it should rise a small winged shape whirling up from the turbulent surface of my mind,

has it been there all along?

No longer than my hand, a small black blemish from the black paint of the eye staining the clean basswood of the head,

enshrined now in a coat of vanish.

Is it there, the person I was still buried in the person I became, can I reclaim that person with each stroke of the rasp on the same blond

wood that gave that other bird life,

I want, I need to summon back that small delicate migrant, to float once more a calm still shape in my mind

can it find its way back?

Carrying  on its wings the feathers and pinions of not just one me but all the selves  that loved white pelicans floating in a northern river,

drumming grouse at dawn.

What will it carry, what will I receive, the sound of marbles,  the smell of chalk brushes, snapping kites against a blue sky, frustration, longing, joy.

A lot of freight for one small bird.

In Some Far Future Autumn

In Some Far Future Autumn



Standing here with my firefly mind flitting wildly, I wonder what it was I needed in this room, which

errand has slunk silently away with more of my confidence, do animals go through this, does the

squirrel or sparrow have the luxury of confused revelry or endless trips in search of keys or the

word powerbar.



Maybe only long lived animals but its hard to believe that parrots, the bright punctuation of the world

stop lost in thought, perhaps tortoises, after all who would know if they stopped to remember whether

they were seeking food, or sex or fleeing some geologically paced natural disaster measured by

decades.



Will being a poet help, since one is always sifting through one’s mind for a shining tag to end a

metaphor, maybe not, spelling and punctuation were always problematic and remembering the words

of songs or poems, but now the words themselves threaten to disappear.



Words I do not wish to lose have migrated to some farther lobe, artifice has gone taking travail with it,

iambic pentameter has scuttled centipede like into the undergrowth, its many syllables high stepping

rhythmically amid layers of colons and semi colons.



Occluded is almost hidden from sight along with any hope of spelling kaleidoscope or kleptomaniac

without a spellcheck and pronouncing quetzal, forget it and should I meet a pangolin or a

brontotherium in the park I will be reduced to saying that’s a, that’s a followed by a lengthy,

inexplicable description.



And if this is aging, along with sleepless nights and stiff hands let’s hope I reach some equilibrium

amid  loss and gain, and when I finally go, let it not be like an aged cat calling from room to room, let

me drop like a leaf in due season, sere and quiescent, rising only to dance in the wind.



Guy

 Washing Dishes

Outside the window the wind tumbles

the sparrows, seizes the leaves in its teeth

and scours the bricks with the bodies

of summer turned autumn gold.

Later tonight I will waken, anxious

in the winter dawn, and know briefly that

death is closer than birth and that my past

cradles more years than my future.

Outside now the wind has vanquished

both sparrows and leaves, still

a jay confident in cached nuts

screams defiance at the coming cold.

                                                      

 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

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!

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.

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

                            

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

Lost Things ( decorating with)

They said keep what you like, within reason.

But my backyard is too small for tank like ankylosaurus and the great

stegosaurii with spear backs and spiked tails.

So I settled for a single giant sloth who is nibbling the unruly

caragana bushes by the passenger pigeon’s dovecote.

The kitchen is raucous with Carolina parakeets who perch more

comfortably on the high backed kitchen chairs than I ever could.

The tub enclosure is given over to Labrador ducks and countless

anonymous orchids so it’s showers from now on.

My living room is much improved by an aquarium of paisley trilobites

(who said they were black),

and the little rodent guy asleep in his terrarium

(who  is after all family) .

I am sure given a proper nurturing environment the

Tasmanian wolf pups will learn to coexist with carpet.

In the library the dodo (over by the Lewis Carroll) helps me shelve scrolls from 

Alexandria , early episodes of Dr. Who and the remaining verses of Kubla Khan.

And on Saturday nights you and me and the australopithecine, resplendent in his

bright red jersey, will be in the den watching a Red Wings game.

                                                               Guy

I took the photos from of a series of books I have

by J . Augusta illustarted by (the great) Zdenek Burian

Night Geese

Calling geese swept up the years.

Blossoms, snow, discarded days

joy strains forward, memory interferes.

Seasons morph despite our fears

of the bald man the mirror displays.

Calling geese swept up the years

that saw our plans reduced to tears.

When every dream so slightly strays

joy strains forward, memory interferes.

Despite every efforts it disappears

all things leave and nothing stays

calling geese swept up the years.

When someone lost suddenly appears

a chance resemblances that quickly frays

joy strains forward, memory interferes.

On a cold autumn night as winter nears

or spring’s first blossom suddenly cheers

calling geese swept up the years.

Joy strains forward, memory interferes.

Guy

So Much Unknown

So Much Unknown

But who shall so forcast the years

and find in loss a gain to match?

Or reach a hand through time to catch

The far-off interest of tears

Alfred Lord Tennyson 1850 In Memorian

Riffling photos so much unknown;

unasked, the dog’s name, the smell of the park

the colour of a hat lost now, no eyes to see,

when so many days lay ahead; but

the tunnel ends, alone now with cast off bags

no one spoke, when there is time to hear

your friends name, the make of the car

All orphans to the world suddenly alone

Questions for empty rooms, empty mirrors

but who shall so forcast the years.

A legacy of things holds freight

a story of a first this or that

weddings, service, gifts cold things

warmed by a breath of life

Held now as your absent hand

For memory, words, stories meaning attach

to the humblest thing, the simplest occasion.

Identity itself is risked in every loss

and life itself will clutch and snatch

and find in loss a gain to match?

Or in gain a loss to hatch

For each day is not a puzzle to unravel

And some nights, peace is best

Every occasion is not greater

Then the sound of dice in your hand

Sometimes from the present we detach

new memories for old a warm touch for cold.

Like a child with a favourite book reread.

Striving with every moment to stretch

Or reach a hand through time to catch

a moment once wasted now wanted.

It seems that age can only embrace

what comes it’s way regardless.

Each loss, each parting

each cold alone awakening.

Those unanswerable fears.

change callow youth to miser

hoarding half remembered days.

Some long delayed reckoning nears

The far-off interest of tears

Guy

This version Sept4/05

Glosa