Vancouver
(from Mount Seymour)

water worshippers
this is your church
where all the fallen footsteps
lurch like drunken giants
to their final frozen prayer
this is your mountain altar
in the still cathedral air

secret sinners
this is your tabernac
upon this broken bristle
of the wild hog's back
the fleas shall sing and whistle
to a final frenzied bow
this is the butchered udder
of your former sacred cow

speed and acid trippers
this is your hit
where all the punctured junkies
slit like jack-o-lanterns
in their final fractured mirth
ride the milk-white moon-cows
as they jump the sleeping earth

---

Poem for the Ancient Trees

I am young and
want to live
to be old
but I don't want to
outlive these trees--
this forest.
When my last song is
gone
I want these same trees
to be singing on--
newer green songs
for generations to come
so let me be old
let me grow to be ancient
to come as an elder
before these same temple-green sentinels
with my aged limbs
and still know a wonder that will outlast
me
O I want long love
long life
Give me 150 years
of luck
But don't let me outlive these trees

---

A Tree Will Take the Heat For You

A tree will take
the heat for you
when a stone
cannot be found
When the sun is bearing
down
in a great hot force
that staggers you
A tree will take the heat.

A tree will take
the rain for you
and hand it 'round
in a green riverbed
of living leaves so
high above you
you can hardly see those
drips and drops of
blue shining through

O a tree will take
the heat
on the hottest
summer's day
it casts a cool
singing shade that
is almost liquid
when you walk
through it
a l,000 feet
beneath
the lowest
leaf

a tree will take
the wind for you
bending into it
from far away
so all you hear is rustling -
the creak of wooden limbs

a tree will hold the soil
holding the birds
in creature music
all around and
cool like you
in the shelter and
shade
that mangoe trees
and banyans make

A tree will stand by you
in all kinds of weather
and even when
you're lonely
A tree will hold
the earth still
in its green grip
so that you
can climb up into
its arms
and stay there
all night long
if you like
taking in the starlight
the moonlight as you dream
of a time
so long ago
when you were wild and free
in the arms
of a tree

---

The Kiss is Just Missed

The kiss I just missed giving you wound up later on another
mouth, but by then it had become a little cold and cruel. It
wanted to be just burned off in sunbursts and cleansed of its
longing. It imparted only melancholy. Where it goes now I don't
know. Probably to be used and used on other mouths. Each time
worn down a little more like a coin to its true longing. Perhaps
it will reach you then from some impartial lover-- from some
dispassionate goodbye-- like a stem cut from its rose.

The kiss that didn't make it to your mouth made it instead to
Toronto, for I could not be rid of it in Palo Alto. It stained my
lips even in Mendocino. In a Triumph Spitfire I could not by
singing out the window leave a long burning stream of it hissing
in the blue air. It has become an irreconcilable wound now. A
grand comparer. It lands on lips in a regular autumn but it will
never be severed from its mouth. I wash it in water-- it is
there. I wash it in wine-- still it is there. Drunken then,
singing your name, mouthing it hot and burning into my mind it
has shown me its red edges, its arms and legs that didn't go
round. It has talked to me sadly of clothes, of beds it didn't
lie down in. What a weeper! It has dragged me under rain.
Indelible. Indelible. Wants to go finally to the graveyard of old
kisses, each one with its denied rose strolling ghostly over.
Each one with its sunset nova quenched in amber on its headstone.
O each of its stopped explosions driven down to juice in some
white withering berry there.

---

Since You Left

"Since I left you there seems to be so much more between us."--
in a letter from my ex-wife.

Since you left there are more mountains between us. More wheatfields and winters. More fried people running out of forests, more frazzled antelopes writhing in pain. Since you left there are more car accidents between us. I could infect cities with my wonder at your absence and all the roads would curl into question marks and point towards each other in a useless period of pure distilled perplexity. They would put up road signs saying Why? and many wise scholars would stand by them all day saying Because. Because we are obedient. Because we have followed the roads to the ever present period and are now ending all our months with circular unanswerable confusions. Because there is a vast ignorance larger than my mouth and I can't get it out of me-- I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't exist. I should be half a tiger. A semi-butterfly. I should be a spider without legs but you are there and I am here and like infinity it boggles me.

Since you left, astronauts have danced on the moon and there are more footprints between us. More closed doors and sick Indians. More pipelines and Canadians. Big hooting ones with flags and borderlines. I would have to go over many jingoists to get to you. Since you left several foetal mayors have been aborted on Main Street and there is more semen between us. I am sending you a picture of the doctor at work now on one of our streets trying to remove a suicide from it. He's saying, "He's malignant! He's huge under there-- already bloated into sewers and subways."

Since you left there are more black doves in oil slicks between us. More levity and false laughter. More orchards and suns and stars. I have made a round ring of helium and send it to you now without regret. Catch it as you would a quoit. One on each appendage. O I would come to you. I would come to you but everywhere I turn there is this old lady in my way trying to scrub the shadow of a Z off the sidewalk. I say, "Hey look, it is just part of the word Zoo you know, why not wait for night and begin again in the morning," but No. She just moves onto the O's and throws me a little bit of meat. If I ever get to you I will have to be jumping and hungry. I will have to be very happy. If I ever get to you at all it will be like a scissor getting over to the other edge of paper. Two slices will fall away from everything and with a strange sliced face like a kiss I will say HI. And perform several miracles while you're not looking.