at Big Bay, August 2001

 

7

Surely it’s not a lie
to say you’d make do
with the blessed sound
of running water,

a breeze in the tall trees,
the last of the sunlight
bronze on the ruckled forest,
a patina on the slopes

of Red Mountain in the east
that’s worthy of notice
in the sense
it’s of no serious consequence.

 

8

It’s said a poet’s a poet
when scarcely himself,
though that’s beyond
the himself that’s the collection

of recollection that
trips him up, the things
(or thinks) he thinks
he thinks, the buzz

that stops him saying
what he was going to
because he’s not sure
what good it will do.

 

22

‘We are ourselves
pools in a long brook’,
says Ammons, who is, presumably,
more honest with us,
and himself, on paper
than in person.
He’s not alone there.
I fear I may be a bit the same,
and it makes me feel
part of a team
whose members are told about it
by self-appointed selectors.
Like rivers at noon in high summer
we glisten, we mumble, mutter.
And when we take
a shine to the world
it takes a shine to us.

 

25
Chicken or the Egg

It was his fault,
he changed.
It was her fault,
she changed.
Both have truth
on their side.
It’s a win-win
situation
that no one wins.

 

26

One trudges on. Stops here
and there. Scratches
and scuffs, signs of wear
and tear. One unlatches
gates and crosses fields,
then pauses, till time yields.