Caught in common places is
What madness is it that hurls me
Wakes the lonely echoes round
From the ancient heart of the deep
Shimmers in the pale sky
Using the wind, pretends to catch fire
Though my mind knows
The world is made forever
Dear lines that map the nation
Or so you suspected, alone in your house
The road, like poem progresses
Slammed into a universe of spiralled pearl
Something is eating away at me
An endless song about going down
Like a magnet of blood sealed from sun
To rest on my dark pools its breathless enveloping
Your fair innocence to my guilt
Lay down the shape about someone’s insides
I suspect there’s a secret society, the opalescent model
Judiciously brightening skies, helping losers to sail away
Through particular landscapes, beat to hell
The scrabble of minute claws, they broke on the palate
Where we tried to live as the splendid wolf
Supped the sacrament of death and we love it
By my own embers, so I am aware of it only
Over sand I move silently, spared pain and unnecessary grief
Dawn winds whisper between the hedges and the town
Thick-perfumed and luxurious
Immortal beauty in her breathless flight
I told her rather cruelly, dangling from the swing
Just to rest and forget, slumber with lure of an out-lived mirth
The collective dream slept into knowledge
The close watching of abrupt birth
How brief their day beneath our five year moon
This is a cold country and there is nothing here
The lessons of pain; a code we have not learned to decipher
Spin towards the horizon using the wind to set course
A cradle of lines dreamed in fear, drooped in prosperous curves
I pray the world believe me, life is caught inside our cheated hearts
How long was he standing there, all thunder-winged, trying to be brave
Cradled is he, half-naked and grimed; our little sphere is crying for her father
That raw desire was a wound of might, the kind who wore a bruised suit
Torn jagged open, a relationship with light is necessary
We miss the messages written in places
Necessary to reserve a secret vice
When I am dead, the pint-sized coffin
Shall fly over me, the miniature jaws open
The shout of triumph in their throat
It follows rules of even rows, hand of faith upon my fears
Bear with me, bear with me
Give my emotions an animal’s name
Tuck it all up, I’ve done their desire
To symmetry and rhyme, these fleet halcyon days
Keep our steps in balance, comfort cloak us.
S.E.Ingraham
Poets Cited and their works used (all of them Canadian)
Candas Jane Dorsey* :celestial events, tear, chain reaction, you among the orchids, Visibility, right this way, till you come face to face and recognize you
Irving Layton: I Would for your Sake be Gentle
Susanna Moodie: The Dying Hunter to His Dog
L.M.Montgomery: A Request
Margaret Atwood: In the Secular Night
Alice Major: Symmetries of dilation
Susan Musgrave: Things That Keep and Do Not Change, The Moment, The Laughter in the Kitchen
Alden Nowlan: For Claudine Because I Love Her
Bliss Carmen: Earth Voices, A Mountain Gateway, Garden Shadows, Tent of Noon
Isabella Valancy Crawford: Songs for Soldiers
Gwendolyn McEwen: Memoirs of a Mad Cook
Michael Ondaatje: Bear Hug
P.K.Page: Your Hand Once...
F.R.Scott: North Stream
A.J.M.Smith: For Healing
John Newlove: That’s the Way Everything Is
Ralph Gustafson: The Trail under Mount Michael
Marjorie Pickthall: Marching Men, The Lamp of Poor Souls
Charles G.D. Roberts: Cambrai and Marne
Leonard Cohen: I Left a Woman Waiting
Robert W. Service: The Song of the Wage-Slave
Al Purdy: Separation
Phyllis Webb: Eschatology of Spring
Shirley A. Serviss: Learning to Read
Earle Birney: My Love is Young
*I like to mention that I've had the privilege of learning from Candas Jane Dorsey during a novel writing course through the University of Alberta. Not only is she a formidable poet (with many books of poetry published –Leaving Marks, Results of the Ring Toss, Orion Rising, to name a few), she is also an accomplished novelist (Black Wine, A Paradigm of Earth). She is truly one of Canada’s unsung heroes.
I read with a group here in Edmonton (the Stroll of Poets) that both Alice Major and Shirley Serviss belong to (Major and I have served on the same boards actually, and Serviss has introduced me to a unique poetic volunteering experience at a hospital here, "Artist on the Wards". Having access to one's heroes so early in the game is inspiring beyond belief as might be imagined...
