These poems of love and loss are selected from my other books of poems.
From The Minor Odyssey of Lollie HeronFeathers Singer.
(When a relationship is in trouble, the
words get fewer.
When the words stop, someone’s packing a suitcase.)
When the words stopped
My world became the empty tarmac
Of a long-abandoned airport
The hangars leaning
A paper coffee cup from yesterday’s traffic
Blowing by
To be left in silence
Is a violence of emptiness
A world without words
For me
Is the sun going down
The gray dusk washing in.
I was born the biological entity
Of companionship
Needing touch occasionally, and
Always
Kind words
When the words stopped
The cold and distant stars
Took vengeance against
This woman
(Lollie and Tom)
Like a hurdy-gurdy organ tune
To the silence by the lake
Close to the grass, you hear
The music lovers take
Give me your hand, this score
Rolls wild against the sky
It holds all the songs we dared to sing
Lovers, you and I
Loons out by the islands
Chickadees scattering seeds
Saw the songs we dared to sing
Lovers’ quiet needs
Oh, we took chances by that water
And laughed beneath that sky
We mocked the cold and tuneless night
Lovers, you and I
(Why women leave their homes to go with passing strangers.)
Only because he had a red sash
And looked me in the eye with laughter
Or so I said
Actually he had
Horizons in his eye
(Heron Feather’s mother says good-bye)
"I will not see you again," she said
Giving me a stone with the Turtle on it.
"There will be a hollowness in the
sunshine
There will be a silence in the night
I was warmed by your first cry
I burn with your last farewell
I am cold with your last farewell
Somewhere outside my uncle laughed
An owl hooted, twice
"Go with him," she said. "You
are young and
There is a big life ahead of you
I am old, and this
Is only a little death."
(Heron Feathers on her first night away from home)
Come and share the world with me
My night is full of fears
And on tomorrow’s portages, we’ll place
Our footprints on the years
Come and share the night with me
Warmth on warmth in dark
When the wind shakes the tent
You’ll be fire, I’ll be spark
You be fire, I’ll be spark
Against the tears of night
In reach and touch and sudden flame
Enfold, then hold on tight
(Jean’s poem for his Heron Feathers the first summer he goes to the buffalo hunt without her)
When you are not with me, he said, I am become
old
Like a forgotten ring of stones
And yellow weeds
Far out on the prairies
When you are not with me I am become silent
As a coulee
Where the fingers of the wind
Cannot reach, and the creek
Is become dust.
From Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont.
Louis' first love, in Montreal. Till her parents found out.
Once, he intended to come back, a successful man, and try again for her hand. He never did.I signed a contract of marriage
Marie and I
She was lovely, in the way of Quebec girlsHer parents broke the contract, Gabe
Not wanting either prophets or Métis in their familyA flame blows before the wind
And God alone corners the direction
I left the St. Lawrence to its long memories
The closed-rock walls of Quebec
Old churches and maudites AnglaisThere were muddier rivers in the west
Stronger winds
And contracts to be broken
In the sun-damned cottonwood morningsI loved Marie, Gabe
But wind and river, wind and river.
I was no Wolfe to descend the chasm of her parents
Louis left his wife his wool coat, and memories.
It was all he had. Neither kept her warm enough; she died a few months after him.Heresy, treason, and madness:
Oh, Marguerite
My only sin.
Was in the leavingMarguerite
I leave you my wool coat.For me
Plant a flower
Walk away
Don’t look back:
Heresy, treason, and madness
Make fine fertilizerBut the memory of a fire
Brings little warmth.
Madeline was the daughter of an Aboriginal woman and a Scot. She met Gabriel in 1858, when he was 20. They married the same year. In the company of their fathers, who were traders, both had crossed the prairies many times, camping often in the grassy coulees out of the winds.
We were lovers in the long grass beside the river
Hand holding on to hand
While the deerflies dove for our wild brown hidesIn a planet full of madmen
This made senseOh, Madeline, when I get the final call
And they ask what I have learned
I’ll smile, thinking of
Those deerflies and us, in the long grass of Saskatchewan
After the battle, Gabe hid Madeline on an island. Then they made their way into exile in Montana. Madeline died within a year, of tuberculosis.
Early that November I looked out the window
To see our world had become white with snow.
I was newly an exile
You were in the ground, Louis
I was long ago, far awayMadeline was reading poetry in English, by the fire
She had the cough then
We both knew what that meantShe read some Shelley, and Wordsworth
Trying to translate it into Cree and French for me
It made little senseI sang her a Blackfoot song
She smiled at me, then we watched
Our last winter coming in.
From The Tavern of Lost Souls
Four poets answer various questions.
How Do People Ever Get Together?
you stand at the edge of
the village
just past
the streetlight
it's 4 in the morning; ahead,
the gravel road
blends into
the darkness
love is
a torch:
it lets you see
the road
but not
the stars.
Blossom
How Do People Ever Get Together?
They came down a spiral staircase in the
lighthouse
One twenty steps behind the other
Sometimes one on top of the other
Sometimes half the circle away.
Across the road, at a seaside restaurant
There were scallops sautéed in drawn butter
Their world had gone round and round
They had tasted pleasure together
It was all
It was enough
Lollie
How Do People Ever Get Together?
Somewhere inside (deep
Where the mine drips water and
The floor is littered with
Dead canaries among the diamonds)
He knew they'd come hunting him,
Frightened of his Frankengenes.
He found her, or she, him
And for all the time they spent
Face to face and hand in hand
Their crooked souls hunkered
In that shared darkness
Back to back, grasping cudgels
Waiting against the frantic coming of
Torch and yell and the smell of
Burning fur.
Calhoun
How Do They Get Separated?
i looked into
his eyes
i saw paths,
roads
laneways
they were all
his
I wished him
happy trails
Blossom
How Do People Get Separated?
On his thirty-fifth day in the desert
Jesus was perhaps a bit tempted when the devil
Dropped a Pepsi machine in front of him
And offered him a shekel
‘Nice try," said JC, "but
Can you make a stop to the changes
That make strangers of lovers
The paths that diverge until reaching fingers
No longer touch each other?"
The devil turned into Darth Vader
Offered Our Boy a double-dip maple walnut cone
To say he could more easily arm-wrestle the Big Guy
Than stop the wheels of universe
"Then I must go on,"
Jesus said, watching a lizard take a gnat
"I give hope in changes;
Who would forgive me
If I sold out?"
Alf
What is Beauty?
i was just a bit late, but
when he saw me
he smiled like his world
had been remade, and
hugged me till I could
hardly breathe
every woman deserves to be beautiful
if only for a few heartbeats
Blossom
What is Love?
in the morning you lie in bed
your head on his shoulder
his cheek in your hair
wait for his first words
listen for one word
"we"
Blossom
What is Love?
Love is madness to fight the madness of the
universe
The whole poem in one moment
It took forever for her to
Remove her panties
My wicked mind made a
Transit of the galaxy
Solved the backup riddle of the sphinx
Invented a new mathematics
Populated desert plants
It took forever for her to
Remove her panties
The skies began to sing; I signed
The declaration of dependence
The Buddha said, "Pay attention.
There are four hundred billion questions and
You’re
About
To
Find
The
Answer."
Alf
What Do I Do With the Old Iron Scales I Found?
In the dream, he was asleep, curled up
On one pan of the scales, but slowly
Sliding off
Frantically, I threw things onto
The opposite pan: tables and pies
And a shopping bag full of bright clothes
Nothing worked, not even Timbits.
At last I crawled onto the rising pan myself
But it made no difference
I saw him slide, still sleeping
Off the other side, waking up
In time to call his own name
Just before I began
That long, long fall.
Lollie
Why is the Church Silent?
I whispered her to silence
Among the burnished pews
Free of social harassment
Parents, and kangaroos
With free poetic license
We wrote the naked news
And no one saw our flaunted hides
But dead prophetic Jews
No cosmological voyeurs
Saw our pas-de-deux
A place more safe from eyes of God
We probably couldn't choose
We practiced, got right
Things a priest eschews
But God and churches come alone
And lovers come in twos
Alf
When is it Funny to be a Slave?
"No," she said, the last yellow
Leaves of poplars dancing
Around her feet,
"No."
I tried to tell her what I knew, that
Laughter is made of strings.
"They've paved Florida," I told her instead
My hands in my pockets
"Can't pave warmth," she said
Kicking the leaves,
"I'll sit on the beach
Watch the kids flying their kites."
I lost a kite like that, once
The string snapping
The kite soon gone
Me, wailing after it.
I don't believe it flies
Forever
But the kite never listened
Either.
Calhoun