The closest I ever came to a river
was thirst. It’s ok, love, I was always sad,
more or less, yeah,
from the beginning,
before there was even you. Sometimes
the river isn’t a river, but a flood deserted
by a storm. You get to know the taste.
You know it as soon it leaves you with nothing
to fill it with.
Author: Paul Hoy
I enjoy poetry, art, film, and wilderness tripping.
I enjoy wilderness tripping in Canada's mid to far north, with my boys or solo. Up there, you are surrounded by a great solitude, a singular, omnipresent, and indifferent beauty, not a silence but only what I can describe as a kind of hum of mystery (and I'm not trying to sound poetic). The pursuit is also physically demanding - and dangerous: I've lost up to twenty-five pounds on some; I've capsized in a freezing Yukon river; I've survived hypothermia; I've received third degree burns; and I've encountered bears, one which I can only describe as a transcendent experience, an epiphany. So, wilderness canoe tripping, for me, merges the physical and the spiritual, the material and the unseen. It becomes a relationship between the inner and the outer landscapes. For me, it's a redemptive journey into what it means to be human. And because I'm so intense about these things (as you can see), I love to canoe with my son, Breanndan, as he lightens things up (not excluding the load) with his out-there humour and his much-needed navigational skills.
Wish
The wind plays
at being startled by my presence,
and rakes my body for wishes
my eyes have made, the silver cravings of
two coins. It is falling head
over heals to carry you over dirt,
follows as I walk across Macdonell’s Field
until peering into the Mennonite well,
I see into the neck of the heavenly earth,
and the bare brown trees circling
our extinct sun. And in each step, the ground waits
to feel what it must give into next.
What if a word could breathe on its own,
or swim in a pail which we would draw up,
and shining, coldly, let us drink from it?
You are the Forest
I am lost in the forest.
There is no forest.
This will tell you something
of the birds,
drawing in the sky
like comets.
The earth has lost
another me. The sparrows
are the seeds,
My palm, the feather
in your hair, the lashes
fluttering
are the last things
I see.
You Will Think of Birds
Your body in darkness lives another life.
It mists the window of your room,
lays out the southerly transmigration of dreams.
Breath writes there, trails of sleeping flesh.
So, when you wake, you will think of birds.
Lips will hum the missing words.
This is
This Is
the grey sky
pressing windows
with exclamations of birds,
the strength
of the free,
their loose hold.
I think
of you escaping
the storm, me
unremembering
as much as I loved you,
so you
become another,
this her, that she,
this wind,
the
birds
forgetting they
are not meant to break
through glass
made with
the blink of an eye
which sees
what isn’t, then
for a second,
is.
ok
Ok,
love,
here I am,
so that you
will not
find me
missing
among the
missed
words,
explanations
for each
breath, each
other –
and yet
know
there is
still
beauty, that
you
will not
feel it, my
hand
in the breeze
of your hair,
the way
perhaps
you
feel
it.
Soil
Winter
Thursday evening the dogs run ahead
through the unraked cheeks of leaves. I’ve let things stay
and circle around too much. I’ve lost the air
for other things. The drive into the city for winter tires,
the tail-lights that need repair, the brakes
I’ve been riding too long.
I stand here at the door
a little while more, and let the dogs
feed scraps of barks into the breeze.
I suppose, to them, its seems alive, shuffling along,
casting out and resurrecting the dead. But dogs
shouldn’t dream. Night’s here, the week is ending.
In a few minutes, winter returns.
Earthbound
I imagine you must be free now. You always knew the secret to it. You’d just change your name, live on. Meanwhile, I wonder. There is waking. There is sleep. Is there a third world? Is there a place for earth to rise and to fall? Are you there, still? Can you give me a hint, how to say it now?
november 3
november 3
No stars, geese low, traveling south.
You feel that your body in darkness is
another life.
It rubs lightly past the faint window
of your room, an image, still,
skimming water between morning
and the southerly transmigration of dreams.
Closing the glass, it whistles a thought,
sleepily, but you,
your lips rest, and hum another thing.
You think of birds.
