the oldest place
we have named. The song it sings is learning
itself, beginning and ending with Earth.
More names than we can know are rushing through,
and within the names the rock is opening.
Burrard Inlet Ships
At a window overlooking water—container ships
and bulk carrier ships lying at anchor
framed in front of us. They’re always there,
I hear a voice say. As if the ships were the same ships
that sat there twenty-four or forty-eight hours ago.
As if, in the middle of the night, the ships did not
arrive and drop anchor at exact latitudes and longitudes.
And tugboats did not come and bring the ships to dock,
and other ships not arrive and take the first ships’ places—
in the middle of the night. As if the ships were not
emptied of what they brought here and loaded up again
while the ships’ sailors took their hours’ shore leave
to go to a bank, visit a doctor, talk with a priest,
buy a blouse or bracelet for a woman back home.
As if, between sundown and dawn, the ships did not depart.
And every two or three days, a new ship and new crew
did not sit at each terminal wharf. As if it was not
now a new ship visible outside the window.
All night, out on the water, the ships’ horns send out
sound signals for their arrivals and departures,
and all night, in inlet-filling fog, the ships’ horns
send out long blasts, long repeating notes—accompaniment
to the circuit of sleep in the houses along the shore.
New ships and crews come, new products are brought
from faraway locales, and new loads of coal, sulphur,
lumber and wheat are taken to faraway locales.
All night, when gulls come up from the inlet
through cloud and rain, gull after gull takes up
the same insane-sounding cry of unfathomable
emergency in a wilderness of water, and circles with the same
single message that seems wound and unwound
as on a wire anchored somewhere unknown to any gull
in the inlet circling and circling through its tides.
All night, the outsized ships come and go—all night.
As if they were not, each of them, the same ship powering
over the glowing deep blue water-globe. As if the voice
at this window had not been with me all along,
waiting inside my hearing. As if it was not
the voice of one more myself than I can know.
As if this one’s home had not always been here
where he could see an anchor-place and hear gulls.
Nest of the Swan’s Bones
She will build a nest of the swan’s bones...
—Robinson Jeffers, “Shiva”
High in the blue air above the dumpster in the back lane,
between the mountains and the tidal flats,
on the thermals and updrafts a summer hawk does slow turns.
The crows pick at the waste on the asphalt.
The men push jingling shopping carts. Or stand and mimic life
in a prison yard. The wild white swan is dead. Where I caught
trout as a child, no trout swim now. The drives
and crescents gouge ravines, make creeks disappear. Where wild
baby fish run, they run the gauntlet of penned fish. They are eaten alive,
their eyes popping out as sea lice feed inside their heads.
The hawk dances. Circles, dances. Its shadow flits
unnoticed across men, spreads over a rodent or bird
it dives to, inserts claws into, and clamps large feet on, stomping it
as if beating time. It splays flesh and flies
away with it into sunlight. The hawk takes up an owl’s hoot
and a sparrow’s last chirp, a heron’s bill-snap and a smelt’s silence
into its disinterested scream. The swan
glides in beauty in the hawk’s sight, and fills all the hawk sees
with brilliant, blinding whiteness. Moment by moment,
the men go back and forth. They search out anything they can trade
for a full bottle or syringe or pipe. In my room with the lit-up screen,
I lie and dream my dream. I feel it must also be God’s,
this dream of the person of persons. Where the dream comes through,
it punctures me, and I breathe dark air. The air thuds
into pockets like a plummeted elevator. O monster home. O
specialty wine outlet. O auto mall. The wild white swan
is dead. The hawk hunts and kills the swan for love. It will build a new
nest of the swan’s bones. It will keep this nest unseen.
I am a person. I soil the cage in which my heart flings
and flings itself against the bars. I try to own
the view of every murderer, and yet I try to sing
the way out through the hawk’s claw-holes to the repose
in the nest of fire at the tip of the hawk’s wing.
The Man Who Sleeps in Cemeteries
Refuse recyclable paper yard-bags. Refuse gloves.
Collect yard trimmings the way you know how—
I’ll do likewise. My friend, don’t hurt your head.
Afternoons, slide down the avenue. At every intersection,
karate kick crosswalk buttons. Show up mornings
a very macho character, a little threatening. Show up
fawning, a little flirtatious. Talking religion, bitches.
Going on about your lady—in the mirror, lipsticked.
Gang boy in Colombia. Gang man. You left that life.
Yes, they found you in Miami. They killed your wife,
your two kids, they threw you off a balcony. Now lay
down your head. With strands of yourself off in the trees,
running quiet and clear in the quick creek water.