SIGNAL

   for Jim Mottonen

Back when I was an Indian
I am climbing through the dark
with my best friend, Billy.
We prowl the deep cuts until just
out of sound of the rampaging
dormitories.  Stradling a fallen tree
we take swigs from a flask
of wine,  draw breath,  and listen.
Above us in the black beyond
the swaying tips of bursting branches,
string tangled in the branches,  our yellow
 kite flaps in a hard wind.
Billy grins and whispers,  three days,  three nights.
In a nearby field two lovers gaze
at the sky,  imagine a ghost,  a UFO.
I look up.
Murmuring,  Billy remembers being
a boy frozen by spidery
shadows on his bedroom curtain.
I remember hands like webs.
He takes the flask from my fingers.
The string is still taut.
We haven't been to class in days.
No one has noticed.

  - Mark Turcotte

Epitath for a Romantic Woman

She has attained the permanence
She dreamed of, where old stones lie sunning.
Untended stalks blow over her
Even and swift, like young men running.

Always in the heart she loved
Others had lived, -- she heard their laughter.
She lies where none has lain before,
Where certainly none will follow after.

   - Louise Bogan  (+ 1970)














.....

Almost Ashore

winter sea
over my shoes
shadows
and bright
round stones
at san gregorio

every wave
turns a season
forests adrift
empty shells
memory of fire
so far away
in the mountains
and canyons

silent pools
raise my faces
by early tide
slight my hand
shoulders
almost ashore

light breaks
over the plovers
certain steps
my traces
blood, bone, stone
turn natural
and heavy waves
rush the sand

   - gerald vizenor  (anishinaabe)

by: Miodrag Pavlovic

I wake up
over the bed a storm

Ripe sour cherries
fall into the mud

In the boat
dishevelled women wail

The whirlwind
of wicked fingernails
chokes the dead

Soon nothing
will be known
about that

   trans. - Vasa D. Mahailovich

A LESSON FROM THE FARMER

you told me to ask
and so i did
ask for love
to fill my heart
bigger than the sky
stronger than the dark

you told me to seek
and so i did
look for you
to guide my way
through every up and down
where my life chanced to stray

you told me to knock
and so i did
upon your door
you opened wide
to my delight
took me inside

your seed fell not
upon the path
but on the soil
and sprang right up
within my thirsting heart
you filled my cup

why was it then
i soon forgot
my depth of need
so eager to be on my way
is it enough to taste your tea
when you would have me stay?

yes stay my dear
drink more, i fear
the sun will scorch
your tender shoots
so rest and sink
deeper still your roots

and then return
another day
if love seems cold
as well it may
and you should find
thorns choke your way

we'll sit and chat
and sip some tea
i'll tend my vine
that in you grows
until it yields
some thirty-fold

    - sally mcgill

a picture from Lahore

The Muezzin stumbles down the dark stairway

    grumbling in his beard.

 He passes the arch of the entrance and disappears.

Then the stifling silence settles down

       over the City of Dreadful Night.

The kites on the Minar sleep again,

      snoring more loudly,

the hot breeze

    comes up in puffs and lazy eddies,

         and the Moon slides down towards the horizon.

Seated with both elbows on the parapet of the tower,

      one can watch and wonder

        over that heat-tortured hive till the dawn.

‘How do they live down there?

 What do they think of?

When will they awake?’

 -  Rudyard Kipling

50

take another look

There be many shapes of mystery,
And many things God makes to be,
    Past hope or fear.
And the end men looked for
         Cometh not,
And a path is there where no man sought,  
             So hath it fallen here.

        -Euripedes