Waiting for the White Bears  

We have been sleeping out in the open.
The stars are clean,
sharp as ice, the snow
around us, unmarked,
except for our footprints
that lead forward
from your cabin of cedar and bark.

I am coming to know you
by your silences
and the soft patterns of your speech.
Your voice stumbles over words
as if you are just learning them
or have not spoken them in some time.
We have arrived at the river
that holds your memory.

We are waiting for the white bears.
Last night you told me
you saw them as you journeyed
to the north end of the river
for a bucket of ice
to melt over the fire;
two in a midnight pool
of fresh snow.

They were tearing at the trees
at the left bank of the river,
searching for food
beneath the wet-green underbark
and, like giant myths,
the moon held them up to you.

I have seen nothing of them and wonder if they can be real;
I have seen no tracks in the snow,
have not heard their voices
calling in the dark
yet I want to believe they are there.

We have waited for midnight
so we can see the bears together.
Now it is time and we rise to the cold.
You stoke the fire
and sparks drift up
in red pinpoints of light.
We walk slowly down to the river.
Loss and fear lie around us.
Your hand in mine is warm and strong;
something wanting to be found.

I want to see the bears
shamble across the snow,
shaggy and certain on shadowy ground
under this sky, heavy with stars.

At dawn
you say we will take some supplies
and venture deeper into the forest
to the cave of icicles
where you are certain the bears dwell.

I still have not seen them
yet I believe I heard their voices
climb out of the wind last night
as we stood in the dead of the forest.
They were calling just out of reach.

We gather our belongings.
Turn our faces to the rocks and hills.
I am traveling alone with you in this country
though I do not know its name.

from The Language of Water by Ekstasis Editions.

  The Beekeeper's Daughter  

                                    in memory of Sylvia Plath

Her father's words droned into her ear
on the tails on those bees,
whirling like tornadoes, saturating the sky
with their dark premonitions,
or floating down easy as Maywater,
their wings spread to settle
into the center, the passion red
heart of the clover's lit blossom.

When she was a child
her father took a bee from a honey jar,
folded it into his closed fist,
and pressed it next to her ear.

It was then she heard the bee's raging;
his bumble yellow hum.

Seduced by the bees' dark swarm
she kept her own colony.  Like an Abbess
she walked through the meadow, between the hives,
dressed all in white, as for a wedding,
her veil religiously in place,
and the melody of the bees' madness
rose up from her well of memory.

Their anger turned inward.  Turned upon her.
They stung her sleep and clawed away her days
while she furtively spilled her living blood
warm upon her pages.

Published in Descant

When I had dialed the wrong number
of days in my blue dispenser of estrogen,
progesterone, a little spirit, small as a poppy
seed, entered my earth womb,
sprung from her dream
of opium.  My nights were stolen
from me, my days swollen
with fear, kicking against my ribcage,
the tick tock hiccups, my anxiety riding
roller coaster hell.  And then, she slowly
began to devour me, rearranging my flesh
into tidy pillows, carving my breasts
into honey hives, my bladder, a Hoover
dam, my spine a continental shelf,
floating in amniotic waters,
while I, a stranger, heavily laden
as a suitcase, travelled
through the foreign port of my own body.

I told myself, I am not ready for this.
Yet my mind, wool gathering, needled up
each thread of guilt, knitted fantasies
of a face, a name, a child pushing
on a swing, up through the never-ending
sky, fingers curled around a kitten,
stroking her ears, a string of giggles,
and eyes, innocent as Eve’s and delicate as
bone china, the pale blue of unspeakable
sorrow saying: “Let me in.  Let me in.”

How can I tell her
like some quack spiritualist?  “You must
understand. It is not like killing. For I have heard
the soul does not enter the body
till the seventh month. And I have even heard
the soul enters the body with the first
breath. It is not like killing.”

And she will say to me:  “Then have me
and give me up.”

Give her up and wonder all my life
about her eyes, her face, her voice…
are they like mine, or his, or both of ours?
Give her up and my remaining days
will find her lodged inside me like a silver hook,
pulling me back to her nightly
as I dream the untouchable softness
of her skin, the sweet grass smell of her,
the name I could have given her
echoing in the long chambers of my ears
as I am hauled unhappily
through my life like baggage,
for eventually I would have to see and know.
I cannot give her up.

If this little spirit could know or understand
the soul never dies, and if she cannot learn
her lessons with me, then it
will be with someone else.  If I could satisfy her
that this is true, and myself also,
then perhaps I could begin this bloody plan
I contemplate on moon-drenched nights
if there if there are no stars to condemn me
and no sky to remind me
up there
she waits for me.

from ROCKSALT: The B.C. Contemporty Anthology


 The Ice Princess  

She lies in a hospital bed

surrounded by packs of ice,

a hole in the heart

where the fish come up to breathe,

and eat around the extremities.

 

They swim back through her skin

as she sleeps under levels of cold.

Each pulse, slowing the life thread

until her brain has cooled

beyond damage of the surgeon.

Instrument in hand,

he stitches around the hole

like a fisherman casting hooks

that catch in the ice

and the fish go down

in swarms of colored neon.

They school of the bottom below.

 

When she awakens

from ice ages of night treks

over mountains of snow,

leaving fresh footprints

that have softened

to powder blue in the hours

she has breathed the mist

of dream,

she rests, swaddled

in cotton sheets.

 

The fish have returned to the sea

and the surgeon has mended her

with silver wire

and needles of blood.

The purple scar between her breasts

the only mark of entry.

To be published in Dandelion