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I Dunn's Beach

Light, a needle, passes through bare-limbed
trees at the top of the bluff.
             Wind gathers things,
lets them go.
Across the harbour,
trees are flecked with yellow, scarlet. In the evening, moon
will come in Chinese slippers, so quietly

no one will hear. I rest my head on the moss;
it's warm, close to the earth. Below,
the beach is fringed with honey-coloured
grass. Near the shore there's still a ring of stones
my daughter arranged last August.

             No harm would come to her there,
I told her. She'd always be protected.

I walk down the slope from the windblown
hill, stand in the circle:
teeth in a witch's mouth. Now I see gaps between
the stones for things to get through.

Tell me, I say to the wind,
tell me those I love will always be safe.

But the wind
fingers the leaves of the wild roses, brushes
the aspens, the black spruce.

Water keeps moving
against sand, like breath. One thing passes
through another. Sometime, sorrow
will have its small-leafed shine
of dark red.

II Monk's Head

Far off, white boats move together,
apart. And closer in,
one glossy-headed seal, nosing up and down.

It's low tide, and scattered below
the cliff are rocks, razor
clams, broken mussels. The air is a shelf

of blue. Anyone could step over the edge
without falling.

I finger the points
of a star-shaped aster, radiance
at its inmost place. I eat it, petal by petal,
taste its small, hot heart.

How do we carry a body
on fire? How do we lower it to the grass, tenderly?

I walk to the barn,
where hay is loose across the boards. Darkness,
stranded in the corners. Nothing here,
but still we're afraid.

If we put out the blaze in one place,
it starts in another. It burns.

Let it burn.

Past the broken
barn doors, a rectangle of daylight. And further,
the ocean, with its smooth gestures. A distraction of gulls.

One or two
fires along the fine bones of the wrist.

III Dunn's Beach

A nest, a circlet, woven with white down,
moss, sticks. I find it
while walking along the bluff

where sky is an open hand
joined to the elbow
of horizon. The sea rises, falls.

Each breath is quiet.

Listen. This is one of the holy
moments, almost

unnoticed. I find the nest
under clusters of Pearly
Everlasting, florets turned powdery.

How does love make itself so small?

Think back. Think of the times
it was box of lead.
It couldn't be lifted.

But here it is in miniature. Now anyone can look
through the delicate bones.

In the nest, put leaves from the wild
roses, petals from blue asters,
dry grass.

This has nothing to do with finding,
keeping. It has to do with what a nest holds
and doesn't hold.

Carry each one you love: the living heart,
the lungs and liver, the wild sweetness of the blood.

Carry the bones.

Carry the fire in the bones.

Spanish

Moonlight. This milkiness along your thigh, your arm.
Such royal skin. At midnight, you're translated

into tenderness. Say this in Spanish. Cariņo. Repeat
the word that means the whole black sky, and the word

for a gorgeous net of fishes. Silvery, leaping. Imagine
the Mediterranean, a coastal village. Let yourself

go. Say Granada. Barcelona. Under the hushed vowel
of moon, the darkness whispers that you're beautiful,

and even if you don't believe it, trust the way night fingers
your throat, telling you what it likes best, and how, and

for how long. Say it again. Say how you want Cassiopeia's
radiance under your tongue, how you want the stars undone.

Winter

I

Wind moves through a hall of trees, vanishes
through the swinging doors.

What goes on in the heart - the coming
and going of the blood -
happens in a simple darkness. The black stream

glimmers, whisky-coloured,
in the shallows. At the beginning, a flame
burns the throat.

Each tree has a festive hat,
slightly askew. I break off a branch,
smell it, lie down on the softened path,

raising my arms, lowering them.
             A feathery cold passes
between cedars.

Standing, I glance at the shape
I made lying down. Body that is no longer body
but the skin of a wish. How do we get up,

walk out of ourselves?

Now the wind picks up a glittering
handful, a powdering
of bone. It lifts, floats,
before blowing away through the spruce.

II

A few delicate traces crossing
papery whiteness, where the path descends
to the stream. Here, translated

for those who don't know the words -
prints of a snowshoe hare.

The stream rushes under the railway bridge,
loses itself in gloom. Further on,
a stripe of radiance, then
the shadow - darkly opaque - repeats.

If we're cracked open,
it's only because something wants out. Light pools
past the bridge, eddies and slips
between wafers of ice

in the middle. Moon's lid stays open
through the deep silences
of blue. Such hunger.

I see it, once more, when I wake.
On my palm, a thin mark
where it seared the skin.

III

In evening, sky is ablaze with orchestra
pinks, pale tints of yellow.
End of winter.

Ice still covers the harbour. And now, the dancers:
five deer. Frightened by dogs, they glide
behind a frieze of alders. Beyond the point -

one, two, three - they cluster backstage.
One drops its head, another moves close to a doe,
ears pricked. They're quiet,

watching. A solitary fawn
leaps. Tucked into air, it pauses

between a clutch of birches.
Down come the hooves
perfectly. Blue-white ice is inscribed
with a pattern of flight. Look,

one last wish.