Isle of Hoy

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1,092 posts

[isleofhoy]

Inbreath

The monks say we’re merely thoughts, highs and lows only passing clouds, do not cling to either. But this morning, winter was nearly spring, and I saw what looked like clouds of ice evaporating to make a breathing space for sun.

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[isleofhoy]

The Story

It’s the same one over and over. I learned to speak like youas long as I wouldn’t understand — Untranslatable as musicso that when you spoke,the silent rooms of treeswould hear you. The same way they say a lakeis a song about a breeze.

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[isleofhoy]

Beautiful Cellar

~ for Thomas Merton Write in the cellar.Pens, frozen pipesand roots,to be something winter-planted, a hand-full, like the weight ofthat falled-apart Finch you picked-up, late summer,so surprised, a delicate wordso airy in your handthat one would writeall night to fall tobe grasped againby flight.  

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[isleofhoy]

Northwest Passage

Stepping into a room And seeing its light I remembered the window. Placed, set, squared. And on walls and floor Phosphorescences of What could be, shards Of water jars, sea phrases. I breathed, Not exactly what belonged But what was there.  Not belief, not knowledge. An opening.

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[isleofhoy]

Ghazal #2

With them, I break my animal trail, Canoe scrapes treelight for creeks.

Words dam rivers,   Comets rise to feed.

I breathe like them, Airholes stars have pricked.

Having passed under it all, A world’s run over with me, 

Migrant island boats steeped with spruce, My boots choke on the taste of clay.

Blazes are the eyes of steppingstones. I see perfectly when they come to me.

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[isleofhoy]

Umbrella

[isleofhoy]

Today

A drive to another city. Getting lost in a forest. Your stillness in the grass. Birds again.   Sumac in your hair.

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[isleofhoy]

A River Passing

This is the way you must look to birds, nothing but a breeze. Which rounds the hand, loosens fingers’ memory, how in your hair they digress. To the other life behind the trees, overhead, a river passing.

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[isleofhoy]

53

On this hill that sails tamarack woods, my shoulders are a clove-hitch ache.

Thirst overflows our calves, we portage the camel bone it’s made that slowly says, along the way, this is rough bowl hand-sewn by hands that still would like to drink.  

Like everything at 53, even the thirst is heavier, the creek in the palm of the valley, as I climb, overflowing with leaves of air,   a little stonier, the…

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[isleofhoy]

How much simpler to disbelieve uncertainty

How much simpler to disbelieve uncertainty Than to trust its unfaithfulness.

To believe a plainness, I miss you,

You, a strikethrough of your absence Blurry because I cannot comprehend

Only misconceive The expanse of your closeness.

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[isleofhoy]

Poem to a deer

There is an apple orchard that leans against a crest, A shadow of a road

The horses from the barn sometimes wander there, Scenting fruit

Breaking branches on the dull horizons of their backs, The chase of scrub light

Mixing with you, Loving where you take us

Wading into trees, marvellous in the thickets of wind, To bring back

The appetite of anger The hunger for forgiveness

To love as…

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[isleofhoy]

I loved you before

Like the world that came to us, claimed itself a sphere, despite the sun, a spirit level, nights laid between you and me.

Like the poem you love; on the tip of your tongue, its truth, its desert flood, no mouth to say, its taste swallows you. No synonyms for why, but word by word, the course it sets from you.

But you are not a poem, of course. You are stuck in traffic, frequently. Like trees, you pretend n…

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[isleofhoy]

Madawaska

I carried you inside me, frozen river carrier. But I leave ice to bury the current it will bury. I leave pines to stand for me, fly their ancient flags. I will let stones be stones, feel their hold release their million birds of silence, their shadows lain in snow.

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[isleofhoy]

403

I cannot wait for you. Ice like mink slips into rivers. Creeks rear up in horses’ eyes. The snow is a nomad’s rags.

Winter was an envelope for Spring. The sun was a stamp on the window circling me. You are a foreign word on glass the highway scrawls.

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[isleofhoy]

Love of a Dirt Farmer

How does the breeze make you new under the old sun?

How can your perfect blue words shine from the eyes of your black sea? How do you turn your body into morning in the entranceway’s night?

And the fields and fields of chrysanthemum dried in the small vase on the table next to you that I think bend to be scented again?

Nothing is beautiful as it was, but let’s say you’re a breeze who can fly while…

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[isleofhoy]

Bird Dog

You cannot save me. I’d wish you try.

To glimpse the torches’ dusty eyes. To hear the church of their wild dismay alight the smoky tongues of creek.

Like a braille of us, which said, at least, you came near.

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[isleofhoy]

Bonfire

You feed the fire many things. It takes everything. Stars back away.

Its heart, bodiless, embodies the asteroid belt of your outer ruin.

You cannot say what it is. Like you, it is almost lion-hearted. It is mostly human.

Brightest of every most broken, you see what you feel in your eyes, ferocious engines of a spaceship.

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