Widow
What You Left
Good for You
This Morning
Kissing the Ghosts Away
Troubadour
True Romancing
Blackberry
Port of Angels
Blue Leaving
Sitting Alone
Watcher
Healing Game
Remember
Earlier versions of some of these poems first appeared in ARC, Convolvulus, The Malahat Review, Poetry Canada Review and Prism international. My thanks to the editors. A selection was also published in the chapbook Waiting Game (Reference West, Victoria, 1998). A Project Assistance Grant from the British Columbia Arts Council in 1997 was very much appreciated.
For their help (literary and otherwise), I am grateful to many friends: Patricia Young, Linda Rogers, Anne Kelly, Kerry Slavens, Margaret Blackwood, Liza (E.) Harris, Cathryn Dimock, Ian Callan and the late Robin and Sylvia Skelton. Georgina Montgomery, Bryony Wynne Boutilier, Jenny Winstone, Monica Turner and Sharon Churchill are still The Girls. I thank The Hawthorne Society, especially Sandy Mayzell, John Gould and Horst Martin, for carrying the torch when we lost three of our founding members. Joy Gugeler, editor of editors, I thank for her patience, professionalism and her profound insight. Michael Doyle, with his Irish generosity, made available his beautiful home on Pender Island when I most needed sanctuary. So, too, did David and Andrea Spalding, Kathleen Lightman and Terry Chantler, Georgina M. and Lawrence Pitt. Blessings on your Pender homes. Bruce Morgan of Virtual Consultants is my virtual angel and Alex Lavdovsky of Classic Engraving my artistic avenger.
Finally, and forever, my love to Ben and Joanna Lillard. Your dad would be proud.
Note: All quotes from Remy de Gourmont are from Letters to the Amazon, an inspiring but sadly out-of-print book published by Chatto and Windus (London) in 1931. This translation is by Richard Aldington. The music of George Ivan (Van) Morrison continues to give my life a soundtrack with soul.
Did ye get healed? Yes.
Waterford Vase
It captured Sunday night’s sunset. Held Monday’s sun. It caught Tuesday night’s firelight. Look. It saved you some.
We begin to long for vague happiness which at the same time would be profound, close at hand and far off, soft and sharp, complicated delusive pleasures which are frightening or laughable from their folly. This desire knows only too well that no one has the power to heal its restlessness.
—Remy de Gourmont, Letters to the Amazon
who greets my arrival at the gate,
moves among my feet, along
the path wetly paved with
half-frozen December leaves,
leans on the door.
I fumble for the key,
carry my overnight bag
inside, take off my boots,
hang up my coat.
I am the season’s warmth,
human kindness, giving
to be given
in return. There is a cry
to be let out
when Grace
has had her fill.
of the front porch, forced iris and tender primula veris bloom in clay pots, leaves serene. Beyond, everything is buried in winter, an unwelcome guest settling in. Oh, the kindness of friends who leave keys under stone angels. Ground level and snow-lit, this suite is full of books and straw hats. I try on a shiny blue boot but its owner’s foot is dainty and I’m an outsized Alice.
When it’s time to go home I’ll have to walk
in the footprints of others, haltingly,
in unsuitable shoes, facing immutable spring.
March came in like a madman.
Patches of darker grey when we believed
the pewter sky was solid, of a piece,
and our private heartache
would save us.
Stars we gazed upon that cold night
a reminder how fleeting
small lives. In the vast
classroom of the universe,
we’re forced to kneel
and tremble, the sky
not finished with us.
The robin’s swan song,
insistent, urgently cheerful,
draws me to the window
where I see nothing more
than the sky finally clearing
in the west now that the sun has set.
Wet cedars droop into night.
I move through rooms
extinguishing lights,
when the bird’s startled cry
calls me again.
The flat plane struggles to reveal
what’s left of the longer view.
Not wanting reflection to confirm
how tired, how old, I look
beyond the pale moon of my face.
There is grace in the world’s turning,
if not in the way I draw
the curtain, or turn to leave the room.
Hunan
ginger beef
and salty smoked duck. My empty plate
a shiny disc.
Outside,
a strange glow over the neighbourhood
skyline with its white
observatory dome.
Look at this
My friends press close against the table’s
bounty as the luminous platter
of the moon slides onto a velvet backdrop.
Familiar faces are