To a poet
each unique snowflake
might scream
“I am a cliche”
I am a cliche.
But to a tree
the snow is a gentle
finger-press
shushing what was about
to be a chilly complaint.
To the rest of us
snow is the kind of fairy dust
that makes you see sound
forcing us to become
synthetes
the snow is a white silence
and each of our sniffles an
obstruction
We cannot speak the same
in snowfall forests
the trees have been shushed
and we are forced to watch our words
we walk with our mouths open
to leave a trail of billow breath
and perhaps
to catch a bit of silence on our tongues.
I become a library
in my
sudden bursts of shyness
All of my thoughts
all of those pages bound together
edgy one by one
on their own they are as sharp as
a finger pointing to a part of the map that
falls off the page
But softness becomes them
bound and lost in each other:
A closed book can’t give anyone a paper cut.
When I am shy I am a collection
of everything I am
And there is no lexicon for silence
Sometimes it’s hard to know
where to begin in a library, I
know that. I know that there is
Such voluptuousness in the shy
Such a hardcover wall
Such a virgin spine
uncracked,
and remarkably unmarked
in the shy.
A boy stared at the moon
The whole moon: her
soft-spots her
pregnant-pauses her
impermeable vagueness
and the way her
flush yelled out through
a thousand clouds
A boy wondered about
the pit of her collarbone
and the weight of her thigh
the white warmth of
a thick thrill suspended
the long fingers she must have
and he tried to count the
bruises seeping over light
and yes even her ears
would have a softness
to them, he knew it.
He wondered how long
she had hung there
how she had hung there alone
and how often she let herself
be noticed
How often she showed herself to mortals.
A boy sat at a bus stop
with a thousand answers
letting himself be seen
by the moon
And to everyone else
he was a boy at a bus stop
with a hood on his head
and a shadow on his face.
The boy who was seen by the moon.
Nothing moves like you think it will. Nothing
Besides your mind, will understand the tracks
You painted for it. A swallow is going to dive
As unexpectedly as a nervous
Adam’s Apple does when you ask the Adam
A hard question. That girl isn’t going to look
Up at the right time, and that boy wasn’t
Going to have enough nerve even if she
Did look. Look! She did look up! What’s this? He
Is step stuttering towards her, pinky
Shaking with the weight of the toity tea
He’s about to buy her, her foot tapping
Her number out in Morse code, Every
Thing moves in spite of your mind. Every
I want a poet’s house
Filled with poet things
I want enormous windows
And a door that opens often
I want a moat of experience
And a drawbridge driveway left down
I want several pens in every room
And paper in every pocket.
You’ll find scrawling on the
back of receipts (that I will
write in parking lots) and
grocery lists (or on the side
of the road) and maybe on
my hands (if I am desperate)
which you will hold later
(when we’re close on the couch)
Some days you’ll find me crosslegged
in a puddle (on a railing, in a tree, in front of the fridge
or maybe on out bed) with a muddied paper
on my lap
and a pen
between my teeth.
You will smile (sometimes,
depending on the weather)
and sit with me (unless
I’m in the puddle and you’re
still wearing your nice pants)
and (almost always) the
mere sight of you (or
your smile, or the uneven hem of those pants,
or the goosebumps
on
your
neck,
or the place your farfaraway gaze is reaching for…)
will remind me of the ending.
I’ll always kiss you and thank you
You’ll ask why (every time, you silly goose)
And I’ll show you
And you’ll understand
(every time, you wonderful man)
I want a poet’s house.
right now. She stands alone in the kitchen of a youth hostel, thinking about the strange man she met today, how he reminded her of someone from home.
Where is home for her? Judging by the accent in her “damnit” she forgot to pick up vegetable oil, it is certainly not here.
She laughs aloud at something, looks up, there’s no one to tell. She goes back to her onions.
She is going to try a new spice in her stir-fry tonight.
There’s a girl sitting in the top floor of a student house right now. Reading a book for her Contemporary Canadian Literature class - studying the art of her own country. A book that cost $20. For a class that she spent $600 of her tuition on.
A flight from Toronto to Copenhagen would’ve cost her $433. And that youth hostel costs less than the book.
This girl could’ve been there to ask about the strange man. She could’ve shared some of her vegetable oil, and laughed when the onion lady laughed.
She could’ve learned something important about the way the world works by being there with that lady chopping onions in Denmark.
Instead, she’s going to go to bed in an hour without talking to anyone. And the lady in Denmark is going to be teaching the world by stories to the next weathered traveler who is hungry for supper.
Deem something
Beautiful
And it is.
You invent something
By believing it’s there.
You invent something
And it is
Beautiful.
Dream something.
