Final Birdsong
There used to be a forest here once,
a meadow with lilies, too —
where we came every May
to sing together at sunset and dip our feet in the stream-
the sun would turn molten and then pink
through the dangling forest leaves
as we counted all the pebbles the stream was kissing good-bye-
then night would fall over the scent of summer flowers.
They say all the friends we had here
have moved to toil on another land
for here now stand pipelines of oil and buildings of prosperity —
the stream is now grey-green
and its pebbles and the forest are gone
at the whims of plans they’ve drawn from far away
about who’s to leave and who’s to stay —
our songs have now hollowed out like their relationship to us —
this place used to smell of flowers once
now the flowers smell of this place.
Maybe it’s time that I now fly away
with those of them still left
wondering if this is still the place we used to fly to in May —
I must find a distant land now
for those who destroy their own
will come again a year later —
looking for a new stream,
a new forest,
a new greed.
To the Voice of Leonard Cohen
Now so long, Marianne
It’s time that we began to laugh
And cry and cry and laugh about it all again
from ‘So Long, Marianne’ by Leonard Cohen
I wish you knew how your warbling voice
rose and danced in euphony with the rising dust;
how guitar strings in your alluring play
fill the fleeting gray silence of an apartment
full of brown packing boxes like a hazy 60s song —
I last heard it at three years old —
my eyes discerning the night sky through the cold window of a moving car —
wondering if the stars and the moon ever meet.
Mama said she sang it often with friends,
that her dad too intoned your same refrains that measured
his steps again and again in mornings scented with eggs, butter and toast.
The guitar notes and your words are now waning but
my soul longs for another song to show me those reels of
half-remembered, half-concealed images through another window I’ll never see again —
I still wonder if the stars and the moon ever meet
Metropolitan Ghosts
It is one of those winter days
that drowns in itself without ever blooming —
The gentle rain feels heavier than its weight
when such an evening descends,
leaving a dark blue sky patterned with even darker clouds.
Human shapes haunt these darkening metropolitan streets
as they pass through you without a glance or smile —
Ghosts dressed in hats and coats
to feel more real than reality,
their eyes grayer than the asphalt sidewalks
where they stand next to each other in wonder
of conjuring a pretext to say Hi! to an adjacent shape —
Hoping to get words through the hats and coats
before the roads part them again at five-thirty every day
of the week.
of the week.
The colors of traffic lights are the only colors that
pull them and push them
along with the downtown advertisements gleaming through the dark distance
and scores of invisible ghost bodies.
Montreal (Flashes of a City)
Broken into flickers of yellow, white, and pink
over a stretch of urban distance,
the city’s burning bright breath speaks
words I’ve escaped all these days in different ways —
these whispers bound in the embrace of
church bells and February winds are hollowing into
the starry night
the starry night
like the thoughts lost between thought and sound.
Lost loves and past fears are forming tears
as the trickling snow on the rooftops below.
As the night settles over us, the city begins to breathe in me —
every flicker is a death,
every light that lights again is life —
and when I close my eyes, the image persists.
Before the Next Day Comes
Let’s fall again into memories of starry nights
when the sky lay over the valley like your black, beaded shawl,
when mountains conversed in breezes brushing through valley trees
while a violin sang in the street below
Let’s fall again into memories of lost nights
when eyes lit by a gleaming sky never knew the tears they would cry,
when locked hands never knew an embrace that would ever break
and every distant light went out like a perfect story with a perfect house
Last night, rain fell over this place in puddles like seconds
that the lamp colored as molten sparks dying into themselves —
today, birdsong still played around us and grass had risen
from the stone and the ground like a city waking to a spring dawn
The clocks all tick the same way and
mountains, birds, and violins follow their still smooth, still stable sway;
if all else has stood the strain,
then let’s fall again into memories of lost starry nights.
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