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.