The Last House Read online

  Otherwise there’s nothing left. The frog leaps

  from the moon into space. Into my head.

  The old dwarf helps me erect a scaffold

  on a beach at dawn. When all’s gone and said

  the body releases what it wants, or

  what it can’t hold. The body releases.

  The street light blazes. I’m sick of winter.

  The long walk home is so feverish that

  a brand new language leaps from my head to

  the ground. The dwarf smiles, won’t lift a finger.

  He’s been where we were not to go and must

  go where we’re not to go. The frog leaps from

  the ground to the moon, but the dwarf keeps me

  company – he knows about the dark and

  sudden burning of a sun and how to

  have nothing and leave nothing behind. Frog

  leaps into space, into my head, onto

  the ground. In grace, already committed

  to outer night, shame lost, friends lost. In moon-

  light the dwarf, joined by others, half human,

  helps me erect a scaffold on the beach.

  It’s dawn, the winter air silver. Every

  livid interrupted beauty’s easy

  to see, yet not to name. My chest hurts. It’s

  nothing but the start of a cold day, one

  hand on the tame head of a piebald beast.

  Utter

  Blown an alternator and in tow to Duncan,

  past lake and green forests, only a few light clouds

  in so-blue sky, a family of four puzzled

  by calamity. I called the tow truck. This is

  my dad’s camper. My son’s the son of someone else.

  The hottest day of the year we cross the highway

  from Canadian Tire and my dog hangs his tongue

  all the way to Burger King where the kid’s meal includes

  a tiny naked girl whose uniform appears

  only when she’s plunged in ice water. Outside the

  library I wait under a tree with Géza

  while Lorraine takes Ash inside to find sloops, cannons,

  siege machines, and shut my eyes and see down into

  the column of my body where water rises –

  two three four five six seven – safe looking down, dry

  yet, at the swirl in the bole, the cave door below

  to let the flood should time announce a change, or light,

  don’t forget light, though here is dark as dark can be,

  summer dark, dark as death, and no sky so far and

  no other flourishes, just we who know only

  earth and the blackness of earth, tang in our nostrils,

  as we wait to see if the water will rise and

  drown us or leak away and leave us high and dry,

  trapped in our skin and limbs with new problems such as

  how to get out, how get down, how get through, and what

  to do next. Better watch the eye of the vortex,

  fancy word for spin, not get dizzy, and perhaps

  then we’ll sleep and wake to new events, like Mama

  bringing our breakfast or a sunrise to beat all –

  eight nine ten. And I do wake to mother and son,

  cranky and bored, the library a bust, the dog

  hungry, dragonflies everywhere.

  This Perfect

  round gold rock in the gut. The smallest spider stops

  on its way across the table, red not gold, and

  gone when I look again having taken my eyes

  off it for the few moments it takes to pencil

  a note the doing of which will fix us both in

  time to be recovered later by others should

  the spider scrawl be copied into a form sweet

  and sturdy enough to warrant publication

  such publication dependent on a reader

  recognizing or being surprised by spider

  who has long since quit the table and possibly

  abandoned the world altogether and left no

  further evidence of existence behind and

  another reader to agree though perhaps not

  finding the symbol quite as fresh or telling as

  the first reader but fair enough okay okay

  so long story short the Arachnid Trilogy

  sees the light of many printings and the movie

  arouses brief interest the sequel bombs and

  all that’s left is “Who killed the spider?” and kids who

  marshal on pillows red spider action figures

  who vanish with the light as soon as we begin

  to teach the phenomenal mechanical world

  which is our business and has nothing to do with

  round gold rock in the gut, herald of something small.

  Hit Brightness with Brightness

  What does my heart know of yours?

  If you plan an ambush check the exits.

  In a tight spot be polite. Remember

  your hidden knife. Keep your distance.

  Go to sleep three hours after sunset

  and be up an hour before dawn.

  Practice until you can shoot a head

  of wheat out a bottle in the wind.

  The beginning of a fight’s a farewell:

  if you win you lose. And if you lose?

  Keep to the middle of the road. Pay

  attention to shadows and sunlight.

  When you take a prisoner always

  stay behind him. Never show fear.

  Ask the sword saint to cut pain.

  What does your heart know of mine?

  Georgia Strait

  The boatman says he sees

  my life is better now.

  I walk home up the hill,

  one two three four five crack,

  sleep through the day, return

  as sun dips low – one sail

  white on the water – roll

  through Active Pass and slow

  slow to Vancouver, slow

  through dusk to night that brings

  a lean girl to the bus

  to arch her long pale neck.

  Inked stones. A red sports

  car plunges into Blenz

  at Broadway and Granville.

  Small cappuccino, five

  pebbles. Old words call new

  words, not copies. Rain on

  my leather back. Children

  will be born. Far away

  I was born, you were born.

  One two three four five crack.

  Sorcerer

  At last I lie down

  on my back in the narrow

  wooden boat, paddle

  the underground river – ink

  handprints visible

  over the claw marks of cave

  bears who once had dens

  in these Pyrenees foothills

  east of Lourdes – and drift

  past a factory chimney,

  mother and father

  arguing in the shadows,

  to a dry stone floor,

  sanctuary wall, where rears

  the nightmare long hidden

  above a herd of bison,

  a race of reindeer,

  snowy owls out of scale.

  Lately, when shaving,

  I have noted cervid ears,

  the bumps of new horns,

  the same staring eyes. Flowers

  curl at his feet, sharp

  thorns stencil his white forehead.

  The Axe of Change

  Facilis descensus Averno,

  what Sybil said to Aeneas

  I say to you, O my pretty

  telluric commandos!

  I’m swimming on September air,

  before the Uzi, before the M-16,

  standing in the upstairs

  bedroom reading a poem.

  Effervescent. A blue floor.

  Webby sil
ls. I exercise stability,

  long for sunlight, longed

  for but ungrasped. You

  incomprehensible culture.

  Beware the axe of change.

  You are too many too fast

  to see what’s in your way.

  Return is tough, the stairs

  have caved in, only

  the mad would attempt the

  attic’s shaft of moonlight.

  Ancestors

  Her refugee family, small

  dark men and bosomy women,

  invites me aboard their pickup

  among the crates and kitchenware

  and we gutbucket through the crowds

  of carts and barrows to escape.

  Not new, this moment, dash of pepper,

  hot like her eyes, black sausage,

  bread, black bangs jagged across her

  white forehead. This time, these killings.

  Murder is part of a larger

  map I once saw in a shop, yet

  she’s a chocolate, a surprise

  cake, black cat, night.

  “I have always been here,” she says,

  “famous revolutionary

  girl waiting for you.” We hold hands

  in back of the truck. Her finger

  is bleeding. “You are mine,” she says.

  Planes drown the next words.

  Her eyes flash sky, last sun. Mama

  and Grandpapa exchange a glance.

  Her dad battles the road, the wheel.

  Invention of Flight

  Surrey farmland passes the windows,

  the original garden slated

  for new housing, while commuters nod

  in September sunshine and highway

  knows it will end at the sea. Hawk sleeps

  on a fence post, web salvers glisten

  in the stubble, the golf course swallows

  the stone-built farm, and I’ve just woken,

  heart high in the gut the way we ride

  this bus through it all. Because it yields.

  At Ladner Exchange women run dogs

  on the old trap circuit. Indian

  summer is full of blessings, honest

  blessings a hair’s-breadth from here. Did I

  note the source? A man in a red shirt

  is racing toward golden trees, so

  I open my pack, unfold blue-lined

  foolscap, not sure why this view of fields,

  these lines, over and over, while waves

  crack pebbles south side of the causeway

  and a spooked blue heron plays jaw harp:

  When the well is deep the rope is long.

  A fierce day at the mountain retreat.

  One thing finishes; one thing begins.

  Energy under unseen beauty.

  Lightness calls up lightness. Frail bucket,

  empty; vital fish beyond the earth.

  The Stars

  for Lorraine

  Rain clatters on the roof as we sleep-talk,

  phones tucked under each bed, March in both rooms,

  the month before April, windows open

  to ghostly air. We marry with the new

  moon, long known, how we cross the stone beach, climb

  the cliff to eagles and raven and chill

  wind with pocket pebbles to bury, sticks

  to burn, silver rings to bind us, and I

  let in your fox brown eyes and see what works

  in you that works in me, and know what kills

  you killed me too, till the candles stir with

  breath as sweet as spring and we perch face to

  face on the cliff edge, blue sail on my right,

  your left, small boat light in the surf, nothing

  less to carry our bodies already

  smoke to the sky, ash to the sea, loved ones

  west and east, our kingdoms in peril, tribes

  burned out of stone forts. It is useless to

  choose a direction: current must find us.

  At last we swim away from each other

  to make the storm less jealous; old stars freeze

  the water, earthquakes calve an island, and

  another me adores another you

  inland.

  VI

  Chorale

  street lamps light nothing

  till one blazes his shadow

  on the frozen ground

  nothing inside him

  but that girl’s silk skin & home

  he has abandoned

  a perfect moment

  his breath clouding a pear branch

  red buds under ice

  animals gather

  in the clearing we made sun

  warms them till they sleep

  your mother’s poodle

  staggers in circles he’s old

  & will not live long

  your mother says sleep

  is hard to come by she left

  the house in a dream

  the day her husband’s

  heart quit it felt like uphill

  she croons don’t run rings

  baby don’t run rings

  the gas fire hisses beneath

  your father’s blue geese

  we walk the path round

  the lake echo the old dog

  our lives rough wild things

  the monk brings warm clothes

  plucks seven straws from a broom

  give these to the child

  I make a taper

  while my son sings explosions

  for the winter fire

  in heaven we track

  satellites circling the world

  birds with no season

  at dawn deer gather

  around us in the clearing

  to graze the ashes

  black shoes at the door

  the ceremony gets hot

  I open one eye

  woken by a voice

  outside my door the rasp

  of coarse sandpaper

  stern men hunch over

  benches in twilight finishing

  things I once began

  red shining dust hangs

  hotter than eucalyptus

  in the roof shadow

  the wood cedar from

  the smell of it we do think

  we meet who we want

  to meet when it’s time

  & always at night near dawn

  in spring before birds

  my forty-seventh

  birthday Dad breaks into song

  …the dark sacred night

  I run my bike out

  at dawn stumble on timbers

  the well-house gave up

  my dog & I rush

  the salt fog & the mountain

  for one glimpse of sea

  a spire of white smoke

  from the clearing where the monk

  is building a shrine

  Géza (5/2/1994 – 12/18/2005)

  Every living thing will die, but I was

  not ready, though you told me with

  your eyes and body on that last long walk

  through the dark when you realized the distance,

  Vancouver to Steveston, and stood still, full

  of invisible words, and spoke, then put

  your head down, trotted by my side over

  the bridge, past cars and cars till December sun

  rose and lit blueberry fields for us

  in Richmond, alders yellow in the distance

  above a red twig sea. I loved you

  then as I loved the world, for you

  were in the world and I was by your side,

  and all else was to come or in the past.

  The emperor of the South Sea was called Shu (Brief), the emperor of the North Sea was called Hu (Sudden), and the emperor of the central region was called Huntun (Chaos). Shu and Hu from time to time came together for a meeting in the territory of Huntun, and Huntun treated them very
generously. Shu and Hu discussed how they could repay his kindness. “All men,” they said, “have seven openings so they can see, hear, eat, and breathe. But Huntun alone doesn’t have any. Let’s try boring him some!” Every day they bored another hole, and on the seventh day, Huntun died.