Guelph, Ontario

Dog Days
On the hill this frail parish leans.
Four lanes of weary houses
Clutching vacant slices
Of fractured, parched soil
Disappointed thistles
Ants dusting sun-scoured silence
Weed corpses praying
To the cracked frame church
Clawed white paint
Windows bleak
As empty sky.
Erupting from the church
Crowds of oblivious, jovial tourists
Ablaze in fuschia, orange and magenta
Agitate and dance around the priest
With vacation merriment.
Stirring dust storms
Of exuberance.
The [...]

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Cambridge, Ontario

Legend 14

Ever, you are a mother
born of damp earth
and bush.
I come to you,
your ache and season.
Your disease.
But I am history,
a broken buffalo
felled and given.
I dream of weight
and the hair coat
of the bison
its mouth
a bowl of rain.
Come, Mother
gather your child
in your wrap and pelt.
My soul moans
like a truck
drunk on gasoline.
Its tires high
on tobacco
and the sweet grass
of [...]

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Thorold, Ontario

Why We Write
Earth, water, light,
things that are green -
themes of infinity
‘A Tree of Life’ rooted
in the rich hummus
of time
branched upward
into moist
morning sky, yet
these leaves have tasted
the drought-dust of winds
sighing, sand
blasting, stones arranged
on it’s rocky plain.
But there are signs
of rain’s velvet touch,
of a voice
in the echo
of a drip, of torrent-
drawing shapes
in the mud, rivulets
written in sand
as [...]

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