Rummaging through old photographs, I found a picture of a
distant relative holding his hands above his head, grabbing a
large curved tusk-like object. My imagination took over from there.

I was there under the fat black clouds,
Struggling with the jagged lightening –
Shouting through the tumultuous storm,
Groping like a half-dead man in the mud:
Cursing my dog for chasing that rabbit.
I was there when the wooden dam gave up,
And the river’s wrath was awakened –
Tearing trees, razing houses, drowning barns –
Carrying the debris of emptied lives:
Dolls, mitts, books; shoes, plates and loose pictures.

And then I found my dog pawing the water –
Desperate and loud in her frantic gyrations,
While I swallowed more river-water than grimy air.
And then I slammed into the strange tusk,
Strong like the bone of the ancient Behemoth:
Snatching the debris swept toward its ready claw,
Except my scared yelping dog.

The air is thick with automotive farts;
My eyes burn with the sewered scent.
The television warns our dimes are parched –
My pocket book weighs less than rent.

Sulfur isn’t so bad with the proper guard.
Tomorrow the leaves will die and fall,
Sautéed and golden: a perfect rosy park –
Removing the deer for the industrial mall.

I watch the air move and feint its way
Through dark clouds of labour-laden breath;
Mockingbirds, robins heave and sigh –
Songs deprecated for a small swallow’s death.

O I miss the sheared green grass:
Blue skies have mated with epic adultery.
Oil is brandished on our slippery lives –
Imputed for our swollen Uncle’s perjury.

            for Claibird

Martini-laced impartial laughter
Happens to most all
Who dance with friends and sisters
Toasting their cabal

Fountains have a Siren’s charm
Rules are no concern
We’re wet on the lit wet steps
Nothing to discern

Trees seem irresistible
In their silent bark
Up and down we climb and clown
Mooning in the park

Morning sun is always early
But, there is the table
Gifts Juice Honey and Bubbly
Recounting what we’re able

The northern parula pokes her blue head
out into the March morning steam
pining for the green and the bees

The frost still clings to the twigs
weighed down by the lugubrious winter storm
heaving itself on the heavy white roofs

Smiles on school children, exploding suns
melting the branches, stretching the leaves
as she sings out to the absent-minded spring

a hearty song reviving the hairless trees

I find it hard to replace my voice
with the sounds and the thoughts
of someone else, some other one with
a story to tell. Anne Marie I’m sure

Is replete with wisdom and overwhelmed
with the scars of words and glares,
permeated with a story that would shift
the soul of an emotionless engineer

(Caught in his cubicle with skipping fingers
on worn down keys, grimy and germy
with the smudges of cold brilliance
imprinted on the tight-lipped plastic).

I am not a medium. I do not know 
the craft of witches who can catch
another’s spirit in the earth’s windy
breath. I cannot re-present her eyes.

The musician takes you on a journey
over sewers and through teary fields
of smiling purple flowers, succumbing
to the wind’s dirty musical dancing.

I should take you on that shifting
journey. I should transport and transfer
the voice of your neglected neighbor
into your glassy eyes, bypassing sewage

Like a heart surgeon cleaning Pipes,
only I would put balloons in your mind
and your soul, not your trapped heart only.
Alas, I am dumb and deaf and clubbed.

I smile at all the right things and I
collect all the right books, but I can’t
dismiss the not misappropriate looks
of those who’ve read more than I write.

My voice is not diverse enough to thwart
the cat-calls of Ezra from the Pisan 
prison. Rilke too snickers in the corner.
My eyes are also panther blind, barred.