In my birdcages I have robins,
red-winged blackbirds,
cardinals, jays, and a Baltimore oriole.
He shines brightest of them all,
with a flute-like, liquid song.
There are no bars on my cages,
all doors left open wide—
for my pets to come and go.
They return because I sweeten
the water with freedom.

They have green teeth and drool rain.
They deceive your eyes and cloud your ears.
They fill your chest with unsettled seas.
They are the cancers of time,
Ravaging the landscape of spirit.
They make you lean into the world,
Even as death pushes you back.
They are the decapitators of flowers,
Mad gardeners with scythes.
Beasts with a thousand open mouths,
Chimeras of their own emptiness,
War-machines advancing on many fronts,
Waterless tsunamis of anxiety.
They hammer air like blasted eardrums.
They are out-of-control vessels,
Tossed on the seas of oblivion.

And yet I see flags of change flying.
I see dance on the stage of stillness.
I quiver in their intenser waves,
Like a shaking reed or shuddering flag.
And yet I feel their power to uplift,
Tearing the leaves of my voice
From the tree of my being,
Like ashes from unextinguished fires
That might glow again in other storms—
A promise carried on Shelley’s restless breath.

Did anyone else see it today?
Gallons of goldfinches
Poured out of the clouds,
Like gold coins were falling,
Like the wings of the sun
Were coming undone.
Some flocked, and others scattered,
Singing and flying
Like improvised jazz,
Like the music of joy,
Like playthings of peace—
Heard and seen,
But just out of reach.

My head was full of the sun’s sperm
It could give birth to anything
It could impregnate death with poems

The earth was my bed
Nature was my wife
I was the father of dreams

Green ants covered branches
I said to the flower bloom
And it bloomed with mirrors inside

In spectral graveyards
Every grave is a garden
Of grasses and moonflowers

When I stood
My head cleared the clouds
Who knew the moon
Could be touched by real poems

First its stillness held me captive—
A fox snake in the grass.
Then, when I nudged it,
It rattled its tail to fool me.
When it curled up
Into a striking position,
It was like copper melting,
The essence of hydraulics
Came into view,
Like a rope of water
Collapsing into itself.
Strangest of all
Was how energized
I was by the encounter,
Like I’d been envenomated
With energy venom,
Or a spirit snake
Was crawling round my spine,
And I too was seeking the sun.

When I did peyote,
I heard ceremonial drums,
impossible to place,
and chanting, low and rising.
Later, I told the shaman on the reserve
about the drums, the chanting,
and he said, “The spirits liked you,
that’s why the earth was drumming,
that’s why the spirits were singing.”
That was nice to hear.
Better, I thought, to be liked by the spirits
than by what passes for humanity.

Floating over puddles from last night’s rain,
May apples and trilliums carpet the woodlot,
Birdsong and light darting between branches,
This walk, endless as the light that follows me.

for Bruno Ramirez

I met a guy in Montreal who knew Giuseppe Ungaretti,
A Nobel Prize winner in literature.
He said the old Italian poet would repeat words,
Over and over, mumbling and murmuring,
Like a madman, chewing the fat out of them,
Leaving behind a short, lean poem
With just the right words, enduring the chaos of war.

At the cemetery the light rain of tears.
Half the sky is cloudy, like my grief;
The other half is lit by the sun, like my hope.
I start my car and turn it toward the light.

I find a wild bundle of asparagus
Growing in the woodlot behind my house
Like coming upon my family somehow.
Nature always returns what it takes,
Even from memory– and plants it–
Where you wouldn’t have dreamed.