Sunday, June 21, 2015

New Poetry

A new collection of my poetry will be coming out in September 2015, titled Hermit Thrush (Quattro Press). A launch date in Ottawa will be announced by email. Here are a couple poems from it (Enjoy):

Poets of Old China

Gentle eccentrics,
they wore brocade robes in the city,
rags in the mountains,
bureaucrat hermit bureaucrat
again, hermit again,
in and out of exile,
riding donkeys up and down the peaks
from retreat to capital and back

In forest or court
they grew mad for language,
every stream a tongue
never still,
every mountain
a lovely woman’s spread wide open
heart –
old masters weaving
with the sigh of wind in leaves,
stunned by the view,
drunk on ink.


Running in from the Garden

“… Bloshford was operated on for hernia by a French doctor
who left a pair of gardening gloves inside him …”
– Monsieur, Lawrence Durrell

Leave a lotus inside me
pale blossom, white hot
like a trembling moon
in a swamp
on a still summer night

Leave a copy of the Odyssey inside me,
something to read on my travels,
blood flowing beneath sails,
pages turning in the wind

Leave a sleeping woman
inside me,
when I turn she turns with me,
when I wake, she wakes

Leave a poem inside me, don’t tell me
whose, make it a surprise but make it good

Leave an egg inside me, or a seed,
or a child,
something that grows and changes
and reaches out

Leave an atomic clock
inside me,
a second heart,
a mirror pointed at the sky.