Poems & Commentary
The Children of the Stone
The Children of the Stone
do not weep quietly to themselves.
Their noise is as vanquishing
as the silence of bullets.
Their fears are hollow-tipped
and brazen. At sun up, they
sneak like paupers come to mourn;
gathering food from the lines.
They do not speak as a word
is a deadly thing. They are thin
so as to twist themselves between
prison bars.
The Children of the Stone
cross themselves gently in the night
for they are of the earth.
Sarajevo 1993
The White Wall Review
A piece about a village and its inhabitants under seige. Each morning the soldiers would arrive. The children would pelt the invaders with stones, then run away. Vonnegut might have called it a modern Children's Crusade. 1,500 children killed, 15,000 wounded.
*
It is late at night
when you receive me
Beyond anger and prayer
I creep under the light
which crosses before our bed
I draw off my jacket, my shirt, my
shoes, my socks
My watch on the night table
And I find a note left on my pillow
my tired hands and half shut eyes
And in your best half awake writing
you’ve told me
my friends
call way too late
Toronto 2006
Abbotsford Station
The World When We Were New
The world before us
must have been a very different place
I remember us
at the beginning
wherever that was
whatever that was meant to be
I walk through the house
as if to smell you
like the mute
left with but one sense
In due time, you always said
and you recount stories of mended hearts
and people who have moved past their
own frailty
but how can you understand the dream;
the second life we life
I think of the world when we were new
and I want to touch you
for all the times you made love
to someone other than me.
Toronto 2006
Abbotsford Station
I don’t think we ever spoke of love. We spoke of its mystery, its music, its laugh and its tears, but we never bent down to examine it closely enough. I still think of her. It’s one of the few memories which survived our relationship.
Admittedly this is a carefully fabricated lie at the behest of my editor. (Damn you, Cara! Damn you to hell!) I never crept around her. I adored her as if a perfect picture not to be desecrated by the class clown. She slept so still she never felt my head against her chest counting each slow heartbeat, (years later I came to realize that was the sound love makes) counting down our time together.