for Brian Wilson and family in Red Deer
Over many days in the Summer of 1971,
you are visiting the oldest patient in her room
in the geriatrics ward of an Edmonton Alberta hospital.
“How old are you?”
“Oh, one hundred. Or so.”
“When were you born?”
“On the 22nd of June.”
“What year?”
“I don’t know. I lost track.”
* * […]
I will thunder the drum of stampeding buffalo. I will cry with the crashing
scorched bones in the sun
I will ride the train whistle over ripe prairie grain fields, over land yet untouched by the hand on the plow
I will raise my glass to monuments of loneliness of sacrifice of hopes
to broken promises of […]
I run barefoot in spring
not because of need but because of desire
splash in roadside puddles, feel mud ooze up through toes
Feet feeling winter retreat deep
into the earth, hiding, regrouping.
My feet drum the mating call of spring.
I run barefoot in summer
run barefoot until calluses no longer wince at each stone, skirt each thistle
run feeling warmth of […]
sideways six hours
from noon this light this late
fall sunset lasts half
the day
to the careless eye
everything is brown but
smaller spectrums catch
the sun pushing through thickening
air in tricks of gold, amber,
copper
in the city
we don’t notice the sun
all light is street
light interstitial and weak
mountains are wired with a switch
between the binaries I’ve never
seen the red in your hair […]
the desert makes me lonely but not in a thirsty way
pictures of earth from space are lonely
round blue skinned so thin with cloud and air
water echoes here in the gully and undulation
even lizard flows
a small river over sand
great seas have been and gone
hear the quiet receding
the slow revelation of dry
the way skin and flesh fall […]
