Tiny Wet Beads

After just finishing Holy Skirts, a fictional novel about Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven -- poet, avant-garde and woman extraordinaire -- I was thrilled to hear Kje speak poetically to me this morning as I was dropping him off at a friend's house.

I had to write it down.


I love these days,

warm days when my hair is wet.

I shake my head back and forth

and back and forth

and stick my hands in the middle where

tiny wet beads of water hit all over. 

Haiku

Black bad-ass Ford truck
dappled with cherry blossoms
petals drift behind.

How You Define It

"To the poet, a pearl is a tear of the sea; to the Orientals, it is a drop of dew solidified; to the ladies, it is a jewel of an oblong shape, of a brilliancy of mother-of-pearl substance, which they wear on their fingers, their necks, or their ears; for the chemist, it is a mixture of phosphate and carbonate of lime, with a little gelatine; and lastly, for naturalists, it is simply a morbid secretion of the organ that produces the mother-of-pearl among certain bivalves." Excerpt from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Although I technically fit with the ladies, I think I will join the fleet of the Poetic Orientals on this one. What about you?

What's On Your Fridge?

Every once in a while, I edit the visual poetry of my fridge-front. Deconstruct the randomly-fed collage. Banish broken magnets, dispel dated photos, evict postcards from Prague or Vienna or San Francisco, and recycle stained coasters from the Cedar Cottage Pub. Usually, it all just gets added to the pile on my desk - like teenage love letters, hard to let go.

Here is the story of my fridge now:

• A photo of our Mongolian friend Lkhagvadorj and his family
• Scooby Doo and Shaggy magnets
• Two butterfly magnets that our youngest son made at daycare
• Our youngest son's assignment from his first day of Kindergarten: "I am a: BOY. My favourite colour is: BLACK. My favourite sport is: RACE"
• Proud supporter sticker from WWF
• Garbage pick-up schedule for the City of Vancouver (currently we are on Wednesdays)
• A picture of my husband in his cold-water dive gear, which is held on by two dive magnets - one from ANDI and one from SNS
• Spiderman magnet
• Map of where in the world MSF/Doctors Without Borders is currently serving
• Grace, Jack, Emily, Megan, Ryan, Savannah, Ross, Isabelle
• A hypsilophodon magnet
• A male magnet: "It's so involved being me" superimposed on a picture of a Mr. Rogers lookalike
• A female magnet: "A career...a family to care for... gee! I've got it all!" superimposed on a picture of a June Cleaver lookalike
• Poetry magnet: of blue guitars
• Mark Longpre - Real Estate Agent Extraordinaire and proud new father
• Purple P, red 1, orange Q, blue Z, orange K, purple A, red G, green C, blue W, red ETC
• One tiny red bubble magnet with a yellow "Star-Belly Sneetches" star in the centre

What's your story on your fridge?

August

Above,
a louvre of willow leaves
oscillate in twilight, each leaf set apart,
like stars before Saturn
relative to stars beyond Neptune
two planets, miles from lakes shore.

Below,
two lovers mount a tripped tree,
bark mellow with wisdom
limbs lopped from time
two trout renunciate in slowmotion
two swallows absolve their guilt
two spiders gallop across craggy rocks
set in clay by August's sun.

Nearby,
tulips cup droplets of evening dew
two women pick swollen blackberries,
discover hands stained darker
than blushing cheeks, tittering they look away into willow leaves

Night Falls

Night readies himself, brushes back twilight,
buttons up fog in mother of pearl, seven holes, Solomon
casts a sable cloak round his neck,
loosens whispers of shadows,
who skulk black alleys of latitude.

He takes a swig of moonshine (Mongols howl going down)
and trips over his imagination
into the Himalayas,
Kathmandu rises in chaos as if water ran uphill.

He dances drunk
drums conjured within purdah, set free in
Jaipur Jalapur Nagpur Jodhpur
hash dens concealed behind Indian nights

Aiii ya Aiii ya
his windpipe hails tribes of Arabian nomads
screeching atop camels to Aqaba, indigo nights

Aiii ya Aiii ya
sandstorms lacerate his shoulders,
shrouded by the Sahara
bahr bela ma
a swig of moonshine (warm ripples of sandsheets, waves of dunes)

in Senegal hung under an acacia tree,
velvet leaves his imagination
Night falls, desert sun.

*************
(warm ripples of sandsheets, waves of dunes -National Geographic article March 1999)

Winter

sometimes while winter driving
solo
i open the windows open
(blast blizzard whipping wind)
and open the heat open
(air boiling hot box)
so that i enclose the sometimes
in a cosy of snug warmth
while i still solo surrounded,

part of the world outside