second day back home

i had forgotten these photographs

taken the second day back

the light 

the beauty

and sadness

age hard

same day-only the light had changed

age graceful

an image

wrote me a song of longing

a four letter word

the colors of bad love

a certain red gone mad

with time to escape

before i went blind

there is always a story

after life-return to Bucklaw

openings

4:52 am

i am your poet as

the same car passes my house every morning

at this time i sit here

with the same sweat pants on i was denied to wear

that stayed in the bottom drawer for nearly two years

the stove is cold as the warm car passes routinely

i know the sweatpants aren’t flattering

never cared

only for the freedom

who drives the car?

who sits here?

you and i

we are the same

with joy and sorrow

in search of an answer

watching the headlights disappear

i too dissolve into the predawn black of self

do you have warmth now at 4:55 am?

will the spoon sit in the same spot after the second day bath?

a tuesday run in the park with a lover

i never ever had an insurance policy

the grief would be the same with a week off or not

there is grief in living

in sending me away

no policy would help

6:09 am

for you

there is longing still

for light that cast shadows  

of independence gently

back and forth between us

without love’s routine

of the night light’s flicker to black

at dawn

i am your poet

with the strength of my head bowed

without words that will suffice 

the ridge

Margret and the young buck


She said her name was Margret as she pulled the tire-iron from the neck of the deer. She told me she seventy. The windshield of her half ton was shattered and I could see glass shimmering in her silver grey hair mixed with the steam of a crushed radiator. Blood ran from her right eye and from her left one I could see she was crying. She was calm. We dragged the two-pointer to the side of the road, the smell of blood and antifreeze was like some death elixir concocted by witches. We walked arm and arm to my truck were I helped her to the passenger seat. Once we were both inside she started to shake. I turned on the heat, but that wasn’t it. We sat for a while until she spoke. She asked me to take her home. I asked her if I could wipe the blood from her eye. I used my sweat shirt sleeve. On the way back to Iron Mines she told me she was just heading to evening mass a mile down the road when the deer jumped out in front of her. There was no time to react.

Up the dirt road about a quarter of a mile she pointed to lights in a window of a small modest cabin. Turning in the driveway I rushed around to her side and arm and arm again we pushed through the front door as comfortable lovers after an evening out. I phoned nine-one-one against her wishes. When the medics came she was after washing and putting on fresh clothes. She took the stained white high collar blouse and jammed it into the stove. On top she gently placed a stick of maple. I made tea.The medics sat her down and took her blood pressure and looked after her eye. They wanted to take Margret to the hospital. She would have nothing of that and told them to fuck off. She asked me in a completely different voice if I would call her son. The medics left as I dialled.

I spoke with John-Hector and told him of his mother. He arrived shortly and tended to her after I briefly explained the scene I came upon, about the medics and what Margret had said. We all had a laugh. John-Hector told me he was fifty three and was just let go from the mill, a very common story here these days. Margret smiled the warmth of a morning sunrise and told him, “There will be better days.” As we sat over hot tea with Carnation milk there was quiet.

It seemed the right time to say I was headed out. John-Hector took my hand in both of his hard and callused one’s with the same warmth as his mother had given him and thanked me. Margret got up from her chair before I could reach her, put her hand to my cheek and whispered in my ear, “We fall but we must not lay down.” She kissed me at the door and waved as I backed down the driveway. Driving home I could smell the blood on my sleeve from Margret’s eye mixed with her perfume from days gone by. I describe that smell as the perfect scent of love.

I thought,

I will not lie down.