We said Your name again today,
and suddenly You arrived – You
slipping into our speech, our song, our silence;
You like seal sliding into sea, but no
– that’s not quite right – because
You are seal and sea both,
both speaking and hearing,
tongue and cochlea.
At the hearing of Your name
I’m riveted to the sky,
I’m nailed to the earth.
Mention of You and
my skin’s a horizon
with the setting sun
now You piercing me.
These days our tree
weeps joy,
bleeds peace,
sweats sweet spring …
I gasp and she
replies, but I do
not yet speak her
tongue. All the same,
I can see her buds brave
frosty mornings and,
at midday, her branches
shimmer, like locks, with
warm sun on glistening wood.
Pregnant with promise, she
preaches resurrection, she
hymns creation, she
lauds God.
With my hand on her trunk,
at the edge of eternity,
I wonder about her roots: are they
sated with humus, or do they
pine after the sky, which
her crown so delicately nibbles?
What will come of all
of this poetry:
verses
words
letters
punctuation? Will
they fill the white space
or will it consume
them? A
Q now an O, a
bite taken out of it; a
t now an l, the ‘–’
erased…
I remember well a poem
I wrote in grade nine, published
in an education column in the Edmonton Journal. It was
sent in by Mrs. Massing, my Language Arts teacher, and cut
out by my modestly proud mother, who pasted it
on the inside door of the food pantry,
only to be seen by certain eyes, and
gone now, save in this memory:
my chewing on it,
its chewing on me.
I’m back now
after some
days away and in
diverse ways this
wandering has
left me in
wonder:
Airports are organic
too and sometimes
chaotic markets are
coherent after
a fashion.
Airline tickets have
an aesthetic – a taste of
their own while
tongues, indeed, are
dry now and then.
And change, change
that matters may be
so subtle so
chameleon like
as to be
surreptitious.
These stairs
where I stay,
stay me. Each step
differently deep than
the other. My feet are at sea:
now they meet stone too soon,
now they reach for stone not yet there.
But soon I will leave this inn, this town,
these hills, even while they will
not leave me; having taught me
not to take my footing for
granted; having taught me
the unpredictable play
of geography, of traffic,
of taste; and maybe
just maybe rubbing
off on me some
unpredictability.
You are differently beautiful here,
in this land of hills, folding over
the other, draping pleat
over knee, over there.
Here You speak in
tongues between the
crow-like beeps of
horns incessant. Here
here You gird Your
loins with hospitality.
You meet me here
in inquiring eyes, eyes
that soften mine. I hear You
call my name in laughter as Your
daughters – strong and nimble –
colourfully and gracefully slide
past muscled motored men, like so
much water navigating rocks,
softening edges
and finding a
way.
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Eve,
today your
beauty was severe
as you sang the poetry of
trunks and branches runed,
and your face sparkled
with the blush of
first light.
Your breath spirited me
to this marvel of your
possessing me fully.
Here I fall ever
anew into you, into
your sacred site of joy.
I will not slip between
your fingers, but will cling
to you until that moment when
I finally and fully fall into death; and
until that days comes, I will
practice dying by coming
again and again to
the loam I am:
Adam.
