Balanced
I
try to take a balanced view of life
for the sake of my health and equanimity.
A documentary film about
Phillipe Petit, who high wired
between New York Twin Towers
on 7th August 1974
taught me that sickening fear,
rather than external physical danger,
is the greater killer.
Drum
Play to your own boom whacker basic beat
which may or may not syncopate:
if (drum roll) by happy chance
your cymbalic clash
rewards you with a thrilling
gong, beguine together for
some common time.
But mark my bones, ‘ you skip a beat,
and hit the snare, your ghost note floating on,
revise your phrasing, note your pulse
adjust your seat,
long may you sustain your mighty solo song.
Black Lashes
She hunkered on a Galway Hooker
so when waves rapped
against those black eye lashes
she could up-anchor before they
sank her, and red sail fast away.
When cross-tides conflicted
to drown her in distraction,
she tied her wrists to the mast,
and swung her bluff bow into
the vast ocean, rather than succumb.
Fee fie fo fum, she defied those
dinky dinghies, tony tugs and
wet-nosed corricles to upset her equinimity.
No escutcheon betrayed her anonymity:
black lashes sailed today.
Retreat
The alarming sound of bells pursues us
to the edge of our slice of peace.
so we hurry upstairs – retreating
to a place of monks and poppies,
framed for offering their opium heads
boldly in this high heaven.
No gardener, tending and tidying
the earth for human delectation,
rather would I let roses ramble
and weary travellers rest
in shady gnarl of broken bow.
So it is pleasant here,
in your rescued window seat,
away from those insistent bells
calling us to be pious, reverent,
diligent.
Here I am picked but not potted,
some kind of old seed, regenerating.
Canadian Adventures
Part 1: Hat
A different light casts possibilities:
friendships blossom in a land of hats, and coats bloom, revitalised by an eco artist’s hand.
Life takes on a happy texture, when time is a backwards flowing river
and wheelchairs carry festival smiles upstream.
You knitted me a holiday;
altered my pattern and sold me some yarn.
Our stitches flew with rooks, walked with coyotes and laughed with friends.
Tangled by snowberry mountains
we slipped and cabled,
two together on a Golden adventure,
with maple motif and the prospect of bears.
Part 2: Boots
Yesterday, we defied road closed snow
to ski up mountains in regular boots,
Waving to impossibly long trains as they
snaked by, down spiral tunnels.
Today, We left downtown
to straddle snow blooms and boulders
and sink our feet and claw downhill
Where beavers creek and water falls.
We shared the road with acoustic coffee house yawns,
long lines of round nosed trucks and invisible hauliers.
Slowed by construction projects, brake checks and broken pine,
We left the highway, hungry for a cabined night in the red heart of the green forest,
tucked in like those illusive bears.
Part 3: Coat
Strutting with the wild things
The Canadian mountain me
Pretty hat, pretty coat, pretty Japanese pants,
An eco print queen bee!
Part 4: River
Vast rocky hollows emerald green,
From winter’s sleep there springs a dream
of summer, doused in scent of pine,
an artery unlocked by time.
Beneath its petticoats of snow,
this river heeds the call to flow
by elk and bear; it cracks the ice,
and journeys on through paradise.
Part 5: Lakes
Which God is to say if there is more beauty in alluvial blue water,
or in the vast Medicine word Lake exchanged between cousins?
I heard it in the soft shoe shuffle
as melting ice stacked and shifted,
and saw it in the striped tail of a disgruntled chipmunk.
Part 5: Death on Mount Robson
Travelling backwards, lost in time,
to a place where I was nine,
and drinking iced tea through a straw,
(the paper kind they had before)
Traced memories of a patriarch –
Three thousand metres to the top,
We mortals kept a lowly road
By Fraser River’s icy cold.
And past us, on the snow-packed trail
ran an officer tall and pale
On, up the hill, to where a soul
drew one last breath so icy cold.
A team worked hard for goodness’ sake
but soon he slept, no more to wake,
His still slight form was borne to base
by men in black with sorry face.
Great Robson’s might so drew us on
to Kinney Lake where we sat down
and made a raft from lichen green,
to sail our Easter eggs downstream.
Pebble
When I held out my hand
I expected nothing
But to help you cross the stream.
When we crossed the stream
I expected nothing
Yet you gave me a smooth, shiny pebble,
As if you had considered for some time
What would give me joy.
At dusk, when a cool breeze whisked
The river’s edge,
the pebble still warm in my hand,
You put a pretty shawl around my shoulders
And I gave you only a smile.
Wild
I took a friend up to the hills that we all know and love
To show her vistas far and wide and peace from high above.
My good friend was a city girl who seldom left the smoke
And somehow took me by surprise when she turned to me and spoke:
She bade me promise I would watch these hills on her behalf,
And pay good heed to clumsy deeds which threaten nature’s path.
“The countryside needs guardians, who care about the land
To keep a home for creatures who live wild and need a hand,
We’re quick to take their homes and once we build they will be gone
And we’ll forget, but soon regret the passing of their song.”
Flying
In a difficult week, in one of those years,
when emotional turmoil turns laughter to tears,
when the brakes are unhandled, with life in freefall,
you may find yourself flying in the face of it all.
Tip your chin to the stars and trust you can ride
with your heart on your sleeve and your arms open wide,
Let courage embrace you and soften your pain
so your dear ones discover the real you again x
When
When there is space for my heart to dance
and my breath is a free beat
untethered by realities
I look longingly at rope and regulations that structure and contain
and artificially create my own from candyfloss and impossibility
knowing I will break through immediately
with an imagination that laughs at the absurdity of self-imposed boundaries.
