There's a commotion on the river
and Geese Shadow
There's a commotion on the river
In the air a host of seabirds
clamour with voice and wing.
Their chorus is a celebration.
They swoop and dive and land,
take air to swoop and land again
as one, like great feather-gloved hands
clapping hurrah.
On the beach a multitude of bodies, eyes pecked
and scales dull with death,
sleek and proud almonds
no longer slicing through salty seas,
released at last
from insane obligation:
to battle upstream;
to wrestle beneath unyielding logs; flip
vainly in still ditches and
surprising pools.
“It’s Nature’s way” a man grizzles
from within oilskin and hipwaders.
His rods lean idle.
Last week, the river was full of him,
sentinels,
marking the passage
of something noble.Geese Shadow
Something
is pressing on the windows.
I think it might be God.
The skies are full,
can’t tell the birds
from the debris.
While the mountains stagger,
in their usual motionless way,
all else is aroused.
The trees have been scrubbed,
their nakedness
protests like dry bamboo;
gangs of leaves and colour
compete across the highway
desperate to fill the other ditch;
geese shadows
rip along bone-
white rooftops
and in the basement
I can hear the dog -
pacing.
It is as I predicted
when we traded rings
and later
excised them from our flesh.
That terrible blue sky persists;
so too the fierce
and autumn wind.
The fire is next.
Although I’ve written poetry off and on all my life, I took it up in earnest in 2002. This was the advent of internet poetry workshops - a place where someone like myself, living in a small and somewhat isolated town, could do the work of learning to write. There were some fantastic critters (our word for people offering poetry critique) and although my poems were ripped to shreds repeatedly, I stuck with it. For a long time ‘internet poet’ was considered synonymous with bad, but some of the most amazing poetry I’ve read has been a result of those online workshops! If you are a new writer and are looking for feedback, do drop by The Waters Poetry Workshop and dip your toes in! And just so you know, The Waters does not allow shredding so your poems will be safe.
Many of those early poems will never see the light of day. But here are two that I still appreciate especially when I miss the river and mountains of the Squamish Valley.