Watching a Blue Heron fishing:
tight as a quiet banjo string,
spring-loaded and neck cocked,
ready to fire that piercing beak,
eyes, head, neck down, stabbing
into the dim depths where prey swims.
Out it all comes with a head waggle,
the hapless fish tossed around,
a scaly cartridge being chambered,
fired into a bellyful of fated neighbours.

Then he does it again.
And again.
And again.

Accepted for Bluestem, November, 2010 To listen to the poem go to http://www.bluestemmagazine.com/?p=291#

Beside the duck pond, along
the shit-slicked sidewalk,
she speaks to everyone she meets,
keen to talk about what the ducks eat
or how that baby in a stroller
resembles her teenaged niece,
the one with purple hair.


The heavy rag-coat and battered shoes,
the shopping bag filled with birdseed ,
a faded red velvet hat with a fairy pin,
her eager talk are what she brings
to these damp park paths.


A few other strollers recognize her,
give her brief, tight smiles.
as she plods home with the empty bag.

Accepted for Island Writer, December, 2010

 
Old age brings cliff hanger choices.

If I stay sitting down a minute too long,

I may not be able to get up at all,

thinks Charles, his walking poles

casually leaned against a garden wall.

 

Every day, the balance shifts slightly.

He’s patrolled this neighbourhood

for 30 years and today he dully thinks

of cutting it short, and resting a while.

Cloud shadows pass as he slowly sinks.

 

Death has become a charming woman,

cultured and sensual and knows him well.

She invites surrender at every choice,

coos Tch! It’s so hard to pick up the poles.

His heartbeats rise beneath her voice.

 

Struggling back up onto his feet

poles shuddering under his weight,

he sets off again, now relieved to flee

that lulling voice that slips into his ears:

I wait for the day when you come to me.

 
Accepted for Driftwood Review, September, 2010


  Annie’s Last Letter

 Dora, this year we’d both be 92.

But you were blessed by Death,

who swept you away like an eager suitor,

leaving me bereft of all my old friends,

gals who lived through hard prairie times,

worked during the War, wrote to men

who would come home broken, or not at all.

 

Still, we thought life was bound to get better.

Sure as hell couldn’t get worse than the dirty 30’s.

Jack was my man for five kids and twenty years.

Then left with the Baptist minister’s wife,

moved west so he could sail the ocean

instead of ploughing “these failing wind-stricken plains!”

Bobbie died in a car crash. Edward went mental

and Oma Jean ran off with Orlin Funk to Toronto.

 

After most everyone had moved or died,

I headed off to Edmonton where Tula lives.

Figured an angry daughter was better

than an empty parlour and a dead phone.

But my bad case of pining got worse.

Nobody my age in the building.

I trembled to think of riding the bus.

Dora, I just sank into that black water:

an old cow foundering in a deep creek.

 

Last month a bad fall broke my hip,

sent me to the hospital for a 6 hour wait

so a teenaged doctor could poke at me.

I told him I’d had enough of this life

and he called a Chinese psychiatrist

who said I was depressed, suicidal,

and tried to lock me away in there

dosed with cheerful drugs and brutal nurses.

Two weeks later I walked out, nurses all aflutter.

Talk about feathers flying in the henhouse!

Trying to push me back, white me out.

Tula came, took me to her place to rest.

 

 

When I said I was all done, so no food or water,

family showed up fast as crows on a carcass.

They brought their casseroles, read the Bible to me,

said they and the grandkids really needed me.

Finally they gave up and dug into the casseroles.

I sat in the living room watching game shows.

I thought of the old apple tree we used to have,

that just quit growing, quit producing apples,

while suckers stretched up around it

as if to say: Your day is done old timer. Make room!

 

Eating or even drinking has no appeal.

No scripture or flattery goes through my hard hide.

People avow they care, their moist eyes downcast,

standing around me, hands in their pockets.

Too bad they’re helpless. Welcome to my life.

All I care about is slipping away, empty and dry,

neat and clean and no trouble to anybody,

empty as a summer rain barrel, dark and parched.

 

Dora, sorrow chewed me down over these 91 years,

ate my looks, my soul, and my get up and go.

I used to pray, then finally guessed God was busy,

answering prayers from churchgoers and saints.

There never seemed to be any getting ahead

of that wave of despair that washed over my days.

 

If God gave me anything, it was a timely mortality,

finally seeing the peace in the Reaper’s face.

My poor bewildered gaggle of descendants

may take a warning from this slow departure:

A day may come when they, too, will welcome death.

 
The Book Lover

 

Catching myself

in the sudden updraft

of a warm passion---

think heated air exhaling

from a city subway---lost

 in an urgent search through

colourful ads for new books,

an old feeling resembles

desperately hunting

for the perfect lover,

 who will absorb you

into her sultry jungle,

then float you up

into shafts of dappled light

the sky just in sight above,

the daily world far below.

 

Breaking a faintly fetid sweat,

I search each vibrant cover,

eyes narrowed like a white hunter,

a seeker of exotic transport

in a book that may never exist.