Her Eyes

Her red hair against the green,
her red-amber eyes from the shadow of the porch
watch all,
are seen in return,
don't mind.

She raises cups of strong sweet coffee to her lips,
sets them down again on blue and white saucers.
Drinks to hide her thoughts,
the smile and scowls that chase across her lips
on the very edge of St. Joseph.

Her pale winter skin,
white hands,
flaxen forehead, eyes of silk
left too long out in the sun.
Her stilled voice,
sighing now but what she
says you can't understand.
Her ancient forest voice,
the rustlings of sap, brambles reach,
and every tree is woken.

Following the Wake

(Written in the early morning, February 15)

How long
since I have seen this light?
White light, mingled only
with the blue of latent evening,
early morning,
daylight shifts receding
into twilight. Slips th'abysmal
thread of lucid admiration
onto fingers white with plying
river waters. Under chariots,
under bridges run the tendrils,
gellid fingers, run the marvels
of a winter early dying,
of a February morning,
of returning, of the past.

Of the past, and of the passing,
as the snow is briefly falling
over aquaduct and thicket,
spent the summer briefly waking,
spent the autumn bearing berries,
spent the winter spent, and making
up for time lost in the turning
of a tertiary season.
'Tis the season.

Winter, call me.

Ceilings

Late morning Saturday,
late February,
late winter in the month
before rejuvination, motion
to the new old house, seeking
always to be home, to come to this nest of pillows,
music soothing from your cavern to the south.

A creature of the north, I adore
this house.
The ceilings call me,
after many nights of gazing
in the gloam of early morning
at their ragged, crannied skins.

Squalls

The wind has changed direction.
By the flag over the house acoss the street, I know this. Blowing from the east,
a storm is coming. Is it true
that squalls against the city threaten more than rural hurricanes?
Someone wrote that once,
a Parisian.

Napping and Dreams

Napping
February 21, 2010
5'' x 8''
Pencil, coloured pencil on paper

i/
Dreams

of reading together, glorious uprooted passages

purring through the cave of your belly to my ear,

through the cavern of my larynx to your fingers on my throat. Know what matters.

Know that the pattern,

the precise colour of late-afternoon sunlight from the south,
pollen-yellow,

faintly apricot,

I will not say gold,

is so much more essential.

ii/

Know these things,

and why I want to live here.

Know the purpose of a canvas on the floor.

Know that doors opening inward

only beckon. Know that

the ladder on a balcony only ever leads up,

while the mountain only ever leads down.

Know which streets call us away,

and which ones bring us home,

and which chords are always warm,

and which words heal me.

iii/

Know the reasons I sit up late

in the front room, barely rocking,

watching early-rising walkers on the street,

with a paintbrush in my hand.

Know the textures of the floor against your back,

against my thighs, sitting childishly,

while everything important

hangs in the air between us.

Everthing important,

in the ocher coloured air.

iv/

Dreams, sienna dreams

of henna tinted home. Words flow.

And in the early morning, have I woken?

Have I slept?

Does it matter? Mist is fading.

On the street, the early walkers

hurry out against the thinness of the day,

but you won't rise for hours:

'Below the thunders of the upper deep . . .

The Kraken sleepeth.'*

And so, until the end of days,

or else this afternoon,

which I would argue is even farther off,

the sun and I are lovers without you.

v/
A room for dreaming outward,

and one for dreaming in,

and all the other moments of our house, in the spaces in between.

* Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 'The Kraken,' in Tennyson (Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 42.

Mendicant

February 28, 2010
30'' x 60''
Paper, coffee, tea, gold foil on canvas