Fragmentary Life

Nightly I rise up through water, then submerge again, over and over, 
swimming or drifting through dream after dream, liquid and changeable.  
Like eel or seal, I undulate from surface to depth and back, in and out 
of light and dark, through a moil of other creatures.  Some inarticulate 
preoccupation the dark urgent current on which we ride.


Waking I shed dreams 
like water, only a drop 
clings 
here and there 
refracting light.  



Listing

Bubble bath, she thinks, bubble bath.  
And calcium.  A bar of good chocolate.  
There was something else—I'm sure
there was something else.  She bends 
again to the keyboard, its intricate 
possibilities.  And or but? Which or that? 
The alphabet remains impassive, waiting 
for her to choose.  But how? 
So much on offer—uncountable 
combinations of 26.  Dizzying.  The list 
in her head starts to fade.  Bubble bath, 
she repeats—b—b—b—all those b's  
round bubbles themselves with tails  
flung to the sky.  She herself is more 
like a g—that g from good perhaps, 
a bubble dragged down to the ground, 
subdued, still.  



Something to Say

This thing that I wanted to tell you, this—
this—  motion.  The way I moved through the city 
which was also moving, and the two motions 
together made a drift, continual and giddy.  
Some days, remembering, 
the view is washed with water as if seen 
through the sheer of a cascade.  

But today it's snow drifting down, coasting, silencing 
all but the indoor hums, the murmurs 
of fridge and washing machine, water running (even here, 
water) through the pipes of the radiator.  And along 
Yonge Street the crowd washes into and out of 
stores and banks, alleyways, streetcars,  
averted from the one who sits on the sidewalk wrapped 
in a blanket, head bowed, and that other 
flung on the heating grate, limp.  

It lurks out there.  That also is what I wanted 
to tell you, the city circling and circling out until it drains 
into the lake and floods across the countryside.  
Bleak now in the damp snow falling while I sit motionless.
And this thing, this motion I thought to show you, 
tell you, is for the moment only 
a smear across the view obstructing and obstructing 
like the sheep dog that turns the sheep 
in a slow curve out towards the stony pasture, their little hoofed 
feet lifting and descending on the rocky path, slippery 
in the aftermath of deep snow, a stutter 
like this   this    this    thing

 

Sunday Morning, November 

   outside the window  
green cedar, fading ginkgo 
   shake under rain


   only half-awake 
I stare at the opaque sky—
   crack! crash!


   yellow-leafed maple 
baring itself—naked   
   rain-blackened branches


   tremble of lightning 
red leaves flare on the street
   then dull

 
   even the squirrels
flatten in the jagged light  
   houses hunker down