monarchs

this was the primordial sleepless city
where the crickets never quit
under bright sun bright moon

on they sing accompaniment to
willow joy by great lake breezes
like a thousand crosswalkbuzzerboxes
chirps here deliver mannahatta shame

orange and black and orange
and orange and black
these living leaves they fall
upward and against the wind
to make mention of gravity
of journeys greater
than any anymore might take

the waves here lick
muddy hard lake sand
to wash the runny shit out
brown in
and delay swimming
for another day
instead they gift
bleached plastic shell things
left heedless to sway
with the flows they are buried
under black paste cattail humus and
in white gulls stopped guts

twice yearly they stop here
in subdivision and thicket
coached to rest then flutter
by timeless calls of the cricket

erecting roofs in a park in the rain

the rains went and 
the temperature drop dug deep
for the thickest of late season fabrics
from blackness inhabited by dusty gear.
pumping the propane sucking the batteries
igniting the chords of wood. buying more
and more ice to pack animal product bits
until the last brunch. we deliver
home to the woods. we take without
asking borrow without knowing and
embrace the feigned perpetuity
of hope. we deliver home to the woods.

about a pile of white grey ash
three wet squares our tent footprints
this here is how we left no trace
amongst the moss fern rusted ring
and swollen picnic table permanence
unknowing of the theres
that gave up their creatures' breath
their deep buried sunlight
their plastic polluted labor hours
to bring us a setting less touched.

we drove other fuel here
under open clouds and
blinding pouring bearing unease
of what to do if our arrival found
no relief from the elements
our conditioned rooms humbly shrug
for us. there, rains always stop.
there, spacestation city habitats
create voyeurists of us
in prepackaged safari zoos
with inch thick safetyglass
only permitting looks at things
we did not make.
if rustic and real are synonymous
what then are parks?

the rains went and saved us
from an arrival inconvenient 
for having to acknowledge all this life
responsible for that convenience
of restoration in ours.

waiting for victory rose

flat. and in pain i quit cities
and their failure to own
their secrets. hope in change
rides on the contrails of
dragonflies born yesterday
and the sun keeps setting.
i dreamt of Great Lakes
and dunes i haven't yet walked
from canada or from one divided state
it is no matter. the world is
this canada
finally shrugging
american hemmed handmedowns.
the world is this canada
buying flying weapons
grasping for Northern sovereignty
digging deep holes of austerity
to seek the false throne
encrusted with mineral extraction
and the ice keeps melting
and the bears keep swimming.

damn these dreams only
dreams of land
where property has no meaning
trees fall on their own
and souls are redistributed
to nonbipedal things.
damn our stalled
momentum and the
incapacity to keep it.
we are too many
and the dandelion
cannot weed itself.

beck

i used to think of beauty of
british columbia and its verdant shadows
and lands distant until that night i
met your son forever four.
we listened to rock music jangle sounds
that birthed our testosterone
sounds tolling a mediocre ring to usher in
this decade they forgot to press vinyl.
wet meat avocado peeled
an unnoticed decadent pairing brought
on the ceaseless new flows of athabasca tailings
and fires of frackwater. we swallowed
all with saki warm enough
to unshelf that tiny photo album.
your son knew only time of perpetual hope
frozen by his aged innocence
and given over to no man. he was
as a machine of stoicism 
shrugging every tussle they threw
wearing his ochre skin
like a deep space swimming suit of courage.
but his demons did finally come around

and when they did
i know he gave them his soft cheek
and offered quiet embrace.
on that night i met your son
i fell in love with you
each and together.

chesterman beach

tofino sands move only for the water
hard as clay they refuse
to abandon the memory winds swept
generations ago without abandon.
those ten thousand who once knew
this broken peninsula as home
also knew the fir tips
salmon berry
miner's lettuce
but not by this tongue

its former names are lost to me.
above barrel waves wearing basalt
against this deep crescent
licked with salt and dead things bleached
these have no sound.
i learnt of sea grass sway once
how it stood as ocean floor forests
thick thick life
i learnt how all this left when europe arrived
but i learnt not the why
the company of these sands
are no longer a metropolis of sea otter
cougar
steller's jay.
daily now the white-head queen stands
waiting for the extinct rivers of coho
waiting for our inevitable leaving
atop the loneliest snag

and watching for the flash spark
of day snuffed out by our rotation.
i am not here to resurrect

the alberni clearcuts around their ashen bone scatter
i am not here for the perch purchase and the paving
of hidden drives to peak season units and backyard beaches
i am here for the kinnikinnick
the courting of tides
and dreams of naiveté
that time travel might some yesterday
set things right.

halloween

with the fog he
could smell east van from miles
its gunpowder pungency
seasoning this cold thick soup.
with his ears he
could hear fighting past
the dusty orchards of normandy
cracks pops whistles a
patternless ceaseless cacophony
to match a war's meaning.
maybe at least the ducks
found cover somewhere
in the black of the north shore
in the blacker shadows of the
towering doug fir. they could
wait it out with the geese.
still the unquiet youth are here
swallowing processed sugar gobs
smashing pumpkin globes
beneath the flash glory of
roman's candles and
witch's whistles and
forever night shades
of a city's yellows cast.

of Kenko-ji

Shunmyo Masuno came here
to speak of zen dryland gardens
and of beauty in imperfection.
robe black sandles white
head shaved and bright to match
his graciousness. he spoke read
with english broken. yet
answered our queries with
eloquence foreign to our
assumed mastery of a tongue
barely second to him. we listened
with hearts eager to soak up the
purity of his practice but
left the belly of the planetarium
knowing only more of our greater selves.
I am my creations, he said.

welted with spikes

despite his embrace too slim
to secure half an armhold about her trunk
he would take her down. he would
given days of patience or much less
with his brothers of sleeveless gusto.
---
they would pull her to the earth and deliver her
wet and horizontal and on rails
mirrored steel glass laid yesterday.
a double seam of silver it snakes still
mid slope through the passes.
they rode here as cattle
and still are
nights ago in the echoes of a steel can.
---
a true dubstep cut was all their ears knew
for two days in the dark. a rhythm granted only
a shadow of life to the chorus of cicada and cricket
and grasshopper
present in memories of east.
---
occasional lines of brilliance would flicker
attention away from the audible gaps in the rails
and frame the long doors to either their sides.
doors shut to movement
the only company to keep flesh and skulls
from greeting bleached basalt ballast. 
---
she was here in the valley. quiet
for centuries
nine total.
she believed in the pace of the trickle
and drank generously
until they erected their thin walled camp
alongside the opaque rapids of screaming glacial melt.
above the constant rounding of stone under water
their glass and their metal
brought out by nightly spirits
sang her absence that would be and is still. 
---
they are here deeper and again to bring her in
for pulp and planks and pay for one more day
while hope lingers on the breath of the silent planters
who will follow with long shadows
again to begin with haste
what for millennia knew only the balance
of eagle and bear and the musk of salmon carcass.

new river

a future myth past

my thoughts leap
out of the blocks
there is no pistol
---
the images i know of you
are mostly still
yet i walk with them
across ancient lawns
now a dim cedar sea
---
i was here before
when we blinked existence
and believed in myths
of progress and apocalypse
of buying and fixing things
---
i was here before
when we were
relearning love
and all that is all
---
we were still unsoaked
with boundlessness then
and bet on a dog named death