room birds ride
around the walls pink is
picking up white cotton
is high diamonds rose and
why one of these days
the picture may be painted
melons sent flying hearts
and stars harm nothing you
care about more than today
27
signature pink, leap
bodily the helix enough
doubled erotic or singing to
say I am energy make
certain my best feints dab
your ever, this is me
An Island
An island for Easter an Easter island
in the pacific Pacific
of the Inside Passage
grounding the dream and dreaming the ground
with the Sunshine Crew
that’s daffodils
and a shack on the water whatever the dream hands out
whatever we can bring
what
ever
these spring nights no-one can sleep days set to roll over
showing long flanks and a bright mammalian eye
Other imaginations fired easily and here we are
headed straight into history
other stories breathing spaces
between the quotidian hauls and the junk we saved
a walk out to the plane at infinity
or a face turned south smiling meridian coordinates
at the sun oh merry days
great circles roll over our heads and we’re breathing even so
the fish can’t tell if it’s
air like water
or water like air
nosing in among the sailing islands
whose hills roll in the gentle swell of the Gulf of
Georgia you sent us a west wind and Florence saying
welcome to Roseland here comes the water
back up the bay through the fruit trees
coming into leaf
walnuts apples veranda pear around the corner
mad with blossom and
the high diver who danced courtship on dynamo wings
all weekend
long
in the orchard
which blew its own scents and those
of the rock breaker
elusive unlikely unreal
to us
in the green cinnamon evening
Canoe sun showers arbutus dropping those honey flowers
into the sea
bird of the other laugh circling above them
and out on the point
cabins breathe in the trees
with the help of that redesigning wind
the pictures we wanted to paint badly
will be tacked up
robin’s egg tender with the yellow blown out
hearts and stars and squalls
rattling through a silver-pen narrative
the strait can do to a count of minutes (fast passages
or ricepaper wash
white sheets and open doors
on closed eyelids (the dream) (the curve
of a dyed egg
a hemisphere
or a line of longitude
my ache for yours
trading in the dim cabins of possibility
for the wingspread facts
of the dream
and so
the whales came in like the naturals they were
throwing off rowboats of improbability
they travelled west with the sailing islands
the world turned some more
and both archipelagos
came up for air
gulf and pool
and eye of the wind palagi blue
grey
green
gulps
of Pacific lilac and the wild red currant
around the headlands
flowers on the water
or
signs of the pace we set
The dark pointer has an Easter face and northwest light
is flooding that outflung arm
of the sea sun gone over the edge
or beyond the hills of the bay
she called him the Sentinel
