Narrow Cradle Read online

              into the street just in time

        for a plough

  to bury it. I find a cave among

  the new mounded boulders, slip

        into the muffled quiet,

              renounce my anger and

                    curl up to wait for the thaw.

  —flurries

  in your frigid gaze

        each breath becomes a snowstorm

              over the mountain

  —high anxiety in red head cove

  for Greg and Erinn

  A frozen cascade in the shadow of the cliff locks gravity inside stalactites, broken bundles of bones some stained brown by the slow trickle that mocks my memory of this waterfall. I’ve come to play, to defy the thaw. And never wonder, Why? To be one with the breath? Whatever that means. To find my edge? Is that enough? I retighten my boot laces, snap on cleats and where the icefall meets the beach, pause to press the icepicks to my lips.

  The blades chip the ice face once, twice, each time I inch higher. Each time tiny shards splinter around me. I rest my cheek against the ice, and for a moment I’m grafted to this element even as a large bundle breaks away, falling silent until it smashes into surf below.

  Reborn, I am cradled in the cliff’s shadow as one of its own. It’s a communion, foundation enough just to keep climbing. As the sun breaks the ridge, ice surrenders somewhere inside. The cold face shifts and I look up to the unattainable ridge. Meltwater mingles with tears.

  February on Lawlor’s Brook

  Beneath a balsam fir near the footbridge

  A huddled wraith shivers in the snow.

  Between her fingers, a cigarette’s red glow.

  Her breath billows into the stillness, merges

  With moonless starlight. In contemplation

  Of the heavens her head tilts back. I search

  For reasons to explain my timid approach.

  A gust of love for this apparition

  Shoves me down beside my daughter’s crutches,

  My arm slides gentle around her flight feathers,

  And I feel her edge, this waif. Just hold her.

  Just let her go. Forget all those who judge.

  As we lean together, I understand

  I must find the courage to be her friend.

  —february/march falafel

  for Kathleen Winter and her old guitar

  Let not lone lunching on a bleak winter day see you forgo a garnish!

  Let not solemn clouds in a low-hung sky sap joy from a sprig of green.

  You see your face upside down, suspended in a teaspoon stirring

  Syrian lemon into your tea, knowing this is the saddest you’ve ever been.

  Let not grieving bones bound in a shawl keep you from savouring summer.

  Let not headlines, where they lie beside your plate, steal your truth.

  Put a smile on your fork, forget where your lovers might be, or how deep

  lie the roots that leave you restless and lunching alone in your booth.

  —changing channels

  Sit with me on the couch tonight and see

  How trust is betrayed in a merciless game.

  Watch lives undone in the camps of refugees.

  In news footage from a rock-strewn alley

  Planes barrel bomb hospitals. Who’s to blame?

  Sit with me on the couch tonight and see

  Children who are stripped from their families,

  Are lost behind wire fences, mired in shame,

  Their lives undone in the camps of refugees.

  Hauled from the tide they become nobody,

  Slouching in long lines, reciting their names.

  Come sit on the couch with me now and see

  How they are all pushed slowly to their knees

  But somehow find the will to tend the flame.

  Whose lives are undone in the camps of refugees?

  We mistake scars from their fight to be free

  For nightly news and 15 minutes’ fame.

  Sit by me on the couch tonight and see

  Our lives undone in the camps of refugees.

  —fighting for father

  His voice jabs me in the ribs, a blunted foil:

  Keep your guard up.

        Wait. Wait.

        Move your feet.

  To this day I still wonder what he wanted

  from us as we learned to dance with pain,

  fighting those brothers of mine in the basement.

        Wait,

        punch. Punch!

  His words, hardboiled, dizzying as his knuckles

  to this day. And my hands in thick gloves clasping

  a collar or torn sleeve to pull a body towards and under me.

        Lunge, upper cut.

        Head thudding

  door frames. And knees. No room to grapple

  or throw the clincher. But I see now,

        the chafed and reddened faces,

        my young brothers crying.

  —song in february

  What do willows know? That the time has come? The nights are still so cold that the day’s sun-thawed puddles crystalize overnight into delicate sheets of ice that shatter hollow underfoot. At dawn snow is a thin blanket on a lonely bed.

  Nothing moves except the brook and a gang of crows working the neighbourhood. Two months more before dandelions roar. But along the river mop-headed choirs emerge from willow buds bursting with a chorus of woods and meadows and hope.

  March on Lawlor’s Brook

  Their new buds sticky in the freeze and thaw,

  Spruce, balsam fir, beech, oak, chestnut and cherry, —

  Roots freed from cold plastic nurseries—

  Ten springs growing, reawaken to draw

  Winter’s thinning blood into greening shoots.

  I planted them on the south bank of the brook

  To one day shade the pools for trout and hook,

  Where two children splash and a duck objects.

  I dread the approaching fall of my decay,

  Yet marvel at that fear when a satellite

  Traces across the dusk a thin pathway

  And then vanishes into spectral night.

  Grandchildren’s children may forget grandpop,

  But I pray wading shadows never stop.

  —electric and falling

  Every single flake forms around an electrostatic speck of dust, Florence hollers over her shoulder and steers into the maelstrom.

  So, without dust, no snow?

  I suppose so, she says. Dust static.

  So, no clouds? Without electricity?

  Question for another day, she says.

  It’s Easter Saturday, before the sun flares on the horizon, and with my keeper, I am riding to the old Wolf Brook heliport. Then, near the Gaff drumlin on Old Track Road, the air crackles and we are bathed in a blue halo. The wall of white collapses and the sky surrounds us on an ocean of snow, three months thick, that smothers lichened grey granite and berries blue as blood.

  She opens the throttle and we surge ahead. Behind us, a trail of apparitions.

  —a cold case

  In memory of B.F.

  A schoolboy chasing his soccer ball found the body

  in the woods behind the mental hospital. Half buried, cold,

  fetal, failed by a world that could never just let you pass.

  A coroner examined the scars from how we abandoned you,

  declared a heart-attack and exposure in the snow.

  Two weeks dead. Soon to be ashes in the family plot.

  We last met in the frozen section at the market. There is a plot

  against me, you told me. Somebody

  wants me dead, you whispered while I
held a bag of frozen snow

  peas in my hands. Your eyes wide with cold

  dread, and as paranoid as you seemed to me, you

  foretold your shallow grave. I downplayed it, This’ll pass.

  There’s a way through it. My hand on your worn fall jacket, I

        passed

  over the strain in your voice. It’s a plot,

  you said again. I can’t go back to the shelter, not now, you

  said. Something bad happened there but nobody

  believes me, you said. But I can’t remember what it was. I

        wanted to scold

  you, cousin, but your clenched knuckles know

  you need shelter. Sheilagh’s Brush is coming. 15 centimetres

        of snow.

  Where can you go? Do your sisters still live beyond the overpass?

  Grown children? Your ex-wife? I asked.

  Let’s not open a cold case, you said. We laughed. Your life was a line I couldn’t plot.

  I just wanted somebody else to help you, anybody.

  So instead of offering real help, I asked where I could drive

        you.

  We climbed into the van and I asked again what I could do.

  But I was useless. I lied to myself. I spewed words, a snow

  screen, feigned empathy, while I fought every intuition in my

        body

  to let you sleep for one night at my house, withheld a repast

  of sympathy and instead gave my best Judas-smile and joined

        the plot.

  I smiled, Yes meaning, “Be hungry.” I said, Take this, meaning,

        “Be cold.”

  You wanted to talk but I jabbered on to stop you cold.

  As we drove, I recalled the winter I lived with your

        family, you

  played trumpet, your parents were both alive. Each second a

        point in the plot line

  to the mall on the other side of town. Wipers smeared flakes

        of snow.

  I slipped you a twenty and pointed to the food court. Your

        impassive,

  Thanks for the ride, is still with me. No blame. I was

        nobody.

  See you later. No wake for your body, just a small gathering in

        your memory.

  Driving home past the Waterford, I see kids playing

        soccer near the woods.

  In my garden plot I will soon plant snow peas, now that the

        nights are not so cold.

  —letting go

  The sun’s arc is steeper. The dog pants as it stretches along the sliding door. The old girl is a puddle in a summer road, barely lifts her head as I slip by step out into my breath, fetch the pitchfork from the shed. In the far corner of the yard, I scratch at the skin of the compost the core is still frozen. It’s too soon for seeds, but there’s still time to plan the planting. I know I won’t. Likely all tomatoes again this year.

  But even as I cling to tradition, I feel the change. My hands, that once could dig all day, rebel. I bend thumbs into their palms to stop the spasms. Rubbing my hands together helps unclench the tendons. What was it I meant to do? The greying brown boxer that I call dumb as a post sits round-eyed in the window. Her leash dangles from her mouth.

  —soup bone

  in the back garden

        the dog worries a chicken bone

              inside I dream eggs

  —binocular

  Moments after the gunshot,

      an eagle spirals ragged

           out of the afternoon, veers

      into the north wind,

  collapses near the edge of the eyrie,

    hangs a second beside the single egg,

  then topples like a child’s kite

           from the topmost branches

                    to boulders

                         at the base of the tree.

      The male, smaller, drifts close, circles

           the nest. A hare dangles in its talons.

  Its piercing call unanswered,

           the male drops to its mate,

      and after flexing and flapping its wings,

  attempts with torn flesh

      to rouse her.

                    Next week under the perch a few

                    feathers

              is all the coyotes have left.

           The male is perched high overhead

      where with another cry and a show

           of wings he forsakes the sky

              and nestles down to spark

  the warm fracturing from within.

  April on Lawlor’s Brook

  This spring a dozen double-crested cormorants

  Pitched on the river gabions and left

  White fecal trails on the black sediment.

  They vied for the widest shelf to nest.

  They courted there for weeks but never spoke,

  Never made a sound, never roused me.

  Silently left the brook for the Atlantic,

  An ocean wide with possibility.

  Perched at this table, it’s immaterial

  Whether you upend a bowl of cereal,

  Or whether antipsychotics ease your pain.

  There’s time to embrace before we abandon

  This moment you and I share today

  And admit the lost ties we once obeyed.

  —american goldfinch

  for Shawn Fitzpatrick

  I hear a soft thud

    on glass, and pushing

       back from my laptop,

           I run to the sunroom window

  to see the sharp-shinned hawk.

  But the birch branch

    is bare. Juncos unruffled

       at the feeder, toss

           sunflower husks to the snow

  where a yellow finch lies,

  black wings limp

    as an old garden glove.

       Just as I turn with a sigh back to work,

           I see his legs twitch once, and again.

  So I jump into boots and scramble outside.

  The bird, stunned by the falling,

    plays dead for the giant who crouches

       and exhales a cloud of pity.

           I cup the bird in my hand,

  marvel at its sturdy weightlessness.

  If I carry him inside, the sudden heat

    or the strangeness of captivity

       might finish him. So I wait.

           The juncos stop chirping

  and return to the feeder.

  The wind pinches my fingers,

    pokes sharp twigs up under my shirt,

       and I covet my coat,

           still slung on its hook in the porch;

  The goldfinch flexes its wings.

  His claws clutch my ring finger

    as I sidle one handed

       across the snow crust.

           Ice crystals rake my knees.

  The juncos startle again.

  Under thorny branches bent low

    with blackened rosehips,
/>        I flex my hand,

           but the bird will not release me,

  resists my persistent nudge.

  My fingers burn with cold

    when the finch finally steps onto a shoot,

       wavers there, holds.

           I stagger inside, claw a duvet

  over my shoulders, wait for flight.

  —heart failure

  for Chris Brookes

  I’m lying, you have to believe me.

  I

  Let me be the battery that powers your radio.

  Let me play you stories you never knew you wanted to hear.

  From the last house on Battery Road,

  I hear the fishing boats labouring

  in Fort Amherst Basin. I hear the sea

  sweep over Chain Rock

  to hammer the wharves and what remains.

  I wish the tide could drag my past

  out through the Narrows and scuttle it

  out there where it might stay true.

  But I’ve floated all my stories so often

  they no longer resemble the truth.

  Whenever I repeat your name,

  it comes out as static. Each syllable

  acid on my tongue. I sip nettle tea

  and pray for resurrection.

  Mine or yours? Is there a difference?

  If I blame myself for remembering,

  could you love me again?

  I rise in the Battery and preach

  like a radio tuned to gospel,

  things I didn’t know God wanted me to say.

  You tell me, You sure sound good—too good—for someone

  I buried in my past.

                 But I know the thief

  who lies in wait beneath your grief. He will take everything.

  II

  On the deck of our 65-footer you laugh,

  your fingers entangle at the back of my neck.

  I wait for you to pull me towards a kiss,

  but when I look up, I am back on shore.

  I hear the low hum as the boat slides slowly