24/365: Goodbye, David

David is dead now.
This weird knowledge unmoors me,
makes me twenty-three.
We drink tea in morning light
and laugh at his nakedness.



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The above poem is based on the Japanese tanka.

23/365: The Wild, Orchestral Contraction

Hold a baby to your ear
to hear it go lub-dub lub-dub lub-dub.
Hold a balloon against you
to hear it go like an angry, constant wind.
Hold up a tiny bird
to hear it go bap-bap bap-bap.
Hold yourself still in a copse of trees
to hear the leaves flap flap flap like water over stones.

All of it is currents and reactions,
air and electricity and water in an unstudied play
of counterbalances and kickbacks,
like oceans and beaches,
because the sand has its rhythm, too,
waving beneath the water
as it undulates in its own pattern along the earth,
rising and dipping with its dune sisters
who run under the sun.

I lean against his chest, this only chest,
this meat that beats out its time on the earth
through a magic marriage of elements,
a wild, orchestral contraction coursing through the dirt,
and it tells my ear lub-dub lub-dub lub-dub lub-dub.

I am spellbound.

22/365: Forty and Twenty

At forty, I write
about the past, what came then.
I look in and back.
At twenty, it was desire.
Without myself, I looked out.



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The above poem is based on the Japanese tanka.

21/365: Always Apart

I went
up north by car
to see trees and water,
to forget electricity,
and sleep,
but I remembered two things there:
rest never comes easy,
and I'm alone
always.

Tree lines
muddy you up,
smudge your definitions,
wander off with your known body.
You're left —
skin stretched out dry in the pine air,
dirt's colour in your nose,
stiff feet tired —
apart.



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The above poem is a series of two Butterfly Cinquains, each of which is a nine-line syllabic verse that follows the pattern 2 / 4 / 6 / 8 / 2 / 8 / 6 / 4 / 2.

20/365: Soap and Cigarettes

My nose pressed into the left breast pocket
of the shirt with the small pearl buttons,
the ones that went snap snap snap down a tidy row,
interrupting lines of plaid
with the rhythm of smooth, round stones.
I ran my hand along them bump bump bump.

The pocket smelled of sweet raisin and wood,
the notes of damp tobacco wrapped in paper,
and the hand on my head of Ivory soap,
just washed after a secret smoke,
soft and clean and dirty,
leaving a trail I could track along my skin,
later,
when we sat through church.

I crawl up under that hand, head on that shirt,
when I feel the nostalgic thump,
and the buttons go bump bump bump,
again,
under my former fingertips running,
echoing the remembered rhythm
of the heart inside a chest
that was younger then
than my heart now
beating out its own pattern
separate from these tapping fingers
running through time.