Selected Poems Book

This selection includes poems from Valentines to the Wide World, A Time of Bees, To See, To Take, Bedtime Stories, New Poems from Merciful Disguises, Letters from a Father, and Other Poems, Near Changes, Firefall...

From Valentines to the Wide World 1959...

Over the gray, massed blunder of her face
light hung crudely and apologetic sight
crossed in a hurry. Asking very little,
her eyes were patiently placed there.
Dress loved nothing and wandered away
wherever possible, needing its own character.

Used to the stories, we wise children
made pleasant pictures of her when alive, till
someone who knew told us it was never so.

Next, wisely waited to see the hidden dancer,
the expected flare leaping through that fog
of flesh, but no one ever did.
In a last wisdom, conceived of a moment
love lit her like a star and the star burned out.
Interested friends said this has never happened.
- Woman Waiting, pg. 8

From A Time of Bees 1964...

I
Every evening
in this old valley
a bird, a little bird,
says thanks
like a sleepy hen
for red
berries.

II
The farmer sits in the sun
and sends nine kids out to work in all directions
The baby sits on his lap, the toddler leans on his knee.
We have to buy some fishing worms, les vers.
"Vingt-cinq vers, s'il vous plaît."
A tow-head boy runs for the can of worms. "Fait chaud aujourd'hui."
How pleasant it is.
The sun shines on the thin farm.
The lazy farmer beams at his busy children.
We make the dog howl for the baby.
Ecoute," the farmer tells his child,
"il parle.
Ecoute,
il parle."

III
The dog changes
here in the open, in wild country.
He wanders with chipmunks,
he saw a moose,
birds beset him,
the skunks under the cabin makes his hair go up.
He spreads his toes to walk the dock
over gaps in the boards
and looks at the lake with calculation.
He is another animal.

IV
I am afraid to swim in this water,
it is so thick with life.
One stranger after another
comes out of it. Right by the boat
there rose at dusk the otter,
dark and slick, as if covered with ointment.
I said, "My God, an alligator!"
And the pike comes up, his vacant golden eye
staring away from the hook.
Perhaps there are eels down under,
looking up at the skating bugs.
In Quebec there is no alligator,
but I see many a stranger.

V
The rocky beaches
are covered with blueberries.
I thought they were blue flowers at first.
Now we use them in pie and pancake,
but still they look like flowers.
Hazy blue,
their smoke rubs off with one touch of the finger.
Under the smear
a deeper blue appears,
as rich and dark as anything we earn.
And so this country feeds our hungers.

VI
The loon is yodeling.
My favourite waterfowl, sleek and swarthy,
a master duck,
he will swim under half the lake
before he comes up with his catch, flapping and swallowing.
But strong as he is, brave as he is,
he is lonesome bird.
He and his mate must touch each other
all day long across the water
with their cries:
"Here. Here I am. And you? You?"
"Yes, I am here. And you? You? You? You? You?"
- Quebec Suite, for Robert Wykes, Composer, pg. 35-37

From To See, To Take 1970...

The legal children of a literary man
remember his ugly words to their mother.
He made them keep quiet and kissed them later.
He made them stop fighting and finish their supper.
His stink in the bathroom sickened their noses.
He left them with sitters in lonesome houses.
He mounted their mother and made them wear braces.
He fattened on fame and raised them thin.

But the secret sons of the same man
spring up like weeds from the seed of his word.
They eat from his hand and it is not hard.
They unravel his sweater and swing from his beard.
They smell in their sleep his ferns and roses.
They hunt the fox on his giant horses.
They slap their mother, repeating his phrases,
and swell in his sight and suck him thin.
- Relationships, pg. 86

From Bedtime Stories 1972...

So early into a big bed stowed out of sight,
chlid that I was, wide awake from the day, the day
of chiding and loneliness, unspent energy
in muscles and bone ("growing pains"), the day's light
still promising from the window, would toss and yell,
"Grandma, Grandpa! Please come and sit by me.
Tell me a story! Tell me another story!"
All that was missed, radio, books, preschool,
hours of TV, music, long good-nights said,
the thrilling, calling, right-after-supper play
of the other kids in their far-off pom-pom-pullaway,
would come in the voice of an old woman by the bed.
- Bedtime Stories, pg. 95

From New Poems from Merciful Disguises 1973...

One person present steps on his pedal of speech
and, like a faulty drinking foundation, it spurts
all over the room in facts and puns and jokes,
on books, on people, on politics, on sports,

on everything. Two or three others, gathered
to chat, must bear his unending monologue
between their impatient heads like a giant buzz
of a giant fly, or magnanimous bullfrog

croaking for all the frogs in the world. Amid
the screech of traffic or in a hubbub crowd
he climbs the decibels toward some glorious view.
I think he only loves himself out loud.
- The Talker, pg. 117

From Letters from a Father, and Other Poems 1982...

They had the Boston Bull before I was born,
and Mother liked her far more than she liked me.
We both had a trick. When Mother shaved one forefinger
with the other and said, "Shame, sha-a-me!" Peewee
would growl and snap most amusingly right on cue.
I, when shamed in the same manner, would cry.
I see my error now, but what good does it do?
- Growing Up Askew, pg. 137

From Near Changes 1990...

From a new peony,
my last anthem,
a squirrel in glee
broke the budded stem.
I thought, Where is joy
without fresh bloom,
that old hearts' ploy
to mask the tomb?

Then a volunteer
stalk sprung from sour
bird-drop this year
burst in frantic flower.

The world's perverse,
but it could be worse.
- Sonnet for Minimalist, pg. 185

From Firefall 1993...

Within
the stout
a thin
wants out,

bu ta chlid
in the gray's
reconciled,
wants to stay,

so happy
to bicker
and win,

to be
in that thicker
skin.
- Insiders, pg. 207