The poetry engine

... is like that of my faithful old Jetta: even if unused for two weeks in the most bitter Montreal January cold, once you've cleared it of a foot-or-so of snow and put the key in, and turn, the engine roars back to life smoothly, ready for action.




Such are the things

Among the things that wake and open
under the fingers of high spring rain, count:
the belly of the cat, as she sleeps away the Sunday
morning on her back, the soft vulnerable fur
uncovered; the pages of the poetry book which,
though their paleness concedes a small allotment to black
type, still enclose both silence and meaning;
the leaves, black and potent, in the teapot.

Also—the dream-horse and its cart, possibility:
the hours open to them like a road, like a stable,
like the place you only know you were going to once
you get there. And, beyond, this: the years, their dip
and curve, their puzzle-face like cloud shadows and light
playing on a wooded hillside. And even after that: the clean,
cool taste of rain on the lips, the salty familiarity
of your mouth, and time neatly folded like a handkerchief,
put to sleep in a wooden chest where the mice may, or may
not—who can tell ?—enter.

Such are the things—honeysuckle, oak leaves—that
rise up and bloom in the Sunday spring rain.