The Oyster

A FREE Sampler of poems/teachings/writings from the work of

Julio Donato Cianci

including the text of 37 readings by him on his CD, Donato’s Stuff, and some from
Climbing that Mountain and subsequent books.

Two Red Birds Publishing

http://www.donatopoetry.com

All rights reserved.
Reproduction, or distribution or use of material in this book
for resale may be done only with the permission of the publisher.

Donato Cianci
Two Red Birds Publishing,

donato @donatopoetry.com
www.donatopoetry.com

First Printing September, 2000, 2nd Printing January, 2010
ebook scroll edition 2012

Contents

From, I Would Be the Buffalo’s Guest, 1992 p. 6 ff
From, A Man is a Sacred Journey, A Woman is a Sacred Fire, 1995 p. 10 ff
From, the Goldstone Diaries, 1997 p. 14 ff
From, Being in a Man’s Skin, vol. 1, 2, 1998 p. 22 ff
From, Me, Made Like Coyote, 1998 p. 31 ff
From, Climbing That Mountain, 1999 p. 40 ff
From, The Wedding Line and other books p. 49 ff

p.1

Allurement

Watching two cats
Leopards
One growls and softly leaps.
Two become one
Teeth in the neck
Loins covering thrusting

Sudden disjunction

No so fast
Lets do it this way
I hear my voice say
As I too
Roll in the dust
At my back this solid rock.
Cloaked in my softness
I feel buttocks swell
Arms outstretched provoking union
Caressing myself against the earth
Yearning to be played by you
Like a harp
Or a wild mountain guitar

So we roll over and over
Making one out of two
Creating the axis mundi
Drowning like those cats in heat
In the sun-spilt juices
Of dripping locust flowers in June.

p.2

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Granite

I know that granite is worthwhile
Not that involutions in the stone
By craftsman 'A' are mine to condone
But simply that
Granite
Black feldspar, mica, quartz
Crystallized by a mountain out of sorts
With an amorphous brew in its bowel
Is for instance a permanent file
Of old sounds, old tastes, and young memories;
Sea-rattle, where the round rocks beat;
A shoulder for a moss shawl;
A catch basin for rain water
For sunlight, and arthritic hands gay tales;
A boy's thirst quencher, and a skyjack's ladder.
Old granite, peeling off a mountain
Shakes my dust into a world tour
And then
Marks the journey's end
Immutably.

Fall 1957

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Snare

A snare is a circle of grass
Lying, waiting
My intelligence stored in it
Deadly to Rabbit.

Whose intelligence sets me
As I lie waiting
In the dreaming dark
Waiting for day
And what I might do
Mindlessly?

p.3

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BuffaloÕs Guest

I would be the green grass
Gathered so diligent made hay
By Marmot in her rocky mountain lodge
Laid out to dry on her doorstep
High over the land brushed by day

I would be cold lake water
Whipped to frenzy
Under Loons display of ardor
Singing their operatic duet
Showing us a good way to go
How celebration and living are one

I would be the quiet whimpering
Of Old Wolf as he dreams
That clear calling to moon spirit
He so often made with his choir
Now become his final song in his last sleep

I would be the Buffalo's guest

Great snorting shaggy craggy bodies
Looming
All around me
The air dense with rank odour
So thick my nostrils
Drool with it
Snorting the green
Through delicious lips
Cooking the gift of meat
On the dried ashes of their bodies' fires
Wrapped in the bloody robe
Against the bitter cold.

Ah Yah! Ah Yah! Ho!

I would be a path of beaten dirt
Beneath their drumming leather legs
Their stamping restless sleep
Their moongazing
Star-walking
Milk-nuzzling lover's mouths of calves.

Ah Yah!
I am the dark!
Ah Yah!
I greet the day!
Ah Yah!
Buffalo!
I would return in millions Yo!

I would be your guest again
Riot across the plain
Smashing men's fences down
Enduring the rain
Teaching the rivers my name.

1989

p. 4/5

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At the Play
Watching
Feeling moved or not
Sitting by my lover feeling close
Delighting in her reactions with my own

Writing the play
Trying to persuade others
To have it performed

Being asked to write the play
Arguing with others who will pay or not
What should it say
Why?

Maybe asked to be in the play
Directed how to be
Maybe asking being persuasive
Trying to be in it
Being in it
Delighting or agonizing
Whether there will be applause or not
Who besides I will get the most?

Noticing that as time goes by
Applause dies out for me
For us all

Being the principal Actor the Writer the Director
Bearing shame or blame or fame
Being a bit player or less
Much less to blame
Easier to be ignored
Left out altogether

Producing the play
Making it happen anyway
Whatever play can be produced
By me with whomever will be in it
For whatever audience as long as it lasts
Feasting and celebrating after every performance

p.6
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These Stones

Just like these stones
I carry in my body the history I am
From my beginnings
Broken away from the family rock
I have been washed along the beach of my life
Sometimes calmly
Sometimes with tearing violence
Jumbled amidst a thousand such beings
I have worn off my rough and broken edges
Found beneath my surface
Some gifts of beauty to display

Finally picked up in the hand of God
As I pick up this wave-worn smooth black beauty
I know myself as drum-maker, Pipe-carrier
Travelling Deer, my name
An ordinary man of the rock clan
Whose story can be told
My story I bring to the Creator
Returning the gift
The way the rocks on this beach
From the One Rock of this land
Return their sand to the sea

p. 7

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All the World's a Stage

Visiting Luke the Pipemaker with Dennis
Showing him the Pipe I had carved from the stone
He had gifted me
Listening to him
I felt the urge to gift him
With my Owl wing smudge fan
Long with me a precious numinous object in my worship
When I told Luke and Dennis
About the Spirit Pipe visiting our family Sweat
Dennis said it was a message for someone in the Sweat
Someone there not yet a Pipe carrier
Has just become one
I am startled into recognizing my son Michael
Age 11 but a lot older in his ways
He is certainly ready

Luke told me to envision that Pipe
Send the drawing of it
Michael too will get his Pipe from Luke
Is not this a drama?

When I'm with my friends of the First Nations
I am constantly made aware
Of the drama in which I walk
Of the drama which I write and play
So I know myself an equal
Among all Earth's players
The dance of lightning
The peaceful songs of sundown
The chants of sunrise
Confronting the story
Told by clouds and rain and other life
With my own part in this play

p. 8

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Someone Special

You are special to me
What do these words mean?
Why am I so attracted to them?
Why desiring to speak them to you?
Why thrilling to hear them
Said by you?

Thinking of you this way
I hear "sacred"
This place by the river
A rock or an old tree
A place we united in communion
Deep peace
The Sweat lodge and its Fire ceremony
That unmarked spot
The centre of all the world's seas
Where whales come once a thousand years
To learn new songs from the Cosmos

Each of us knows and names
Our own sacred places
These are special to us
When we share a sacred space
This is our special time
Each of us is gifted by the Manitou
With our own sacred work
Seeking it or doing it
We travel
A sacred journey on this world

So you are special to me
And I to you
Because like pieces broken off
The One Rock and now travelling
We carry within the words of the Manitou
Spoken only to you and I
Like the secret name of God
They name us sacred too

p.9
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My Journey

This is my journey
I don’t name it a tourney
More like sailing along
Alone right or wrong
Dodging, discovering,
Using the weather
Seeking one verse or another
For my life’s daily song
Seeking the scenes I’d paint
On Her royal bowl
The scenes I can toll
From the depths of my soul
This is my journey
It’s where I belong

p.10

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The SAGA of “The EAGLE”

(Edmund Arthur Goldstone, Loyal Eagle)

“love’s not an answer, love is the way”

He came into this world
As we all do of course
Pushed out, struggled out, by a mother
Torn between joy and remorse

A man’s world of disease
Yet with hope for heart’s ease

A woman’s world of pondering
Occasional dancing
Attempts at romancing
Maybe one thought of wandering

The young boy was bullied
His manhood was sullied
By gross acts with his penis
Turning away from the Venus

He’s smart, the old farmer said
Tell him once and he’s got it
Every kind of new knowledge
He eagerly sought it

He always knew answers
To most of their questions
But never an answer
To the shame and the lust

Never the answer
To dust speaking to dust
Or how make a living
When himself he’d not trust.

...plus another 67 verses.....

p.11
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Man Alone

Sometimes a man is so frozen up
So gray
So heart-clutched and foot-staggered
He knows only to call himself a man
Because someone did yesterday.

Yet if he can carry his wounded heart
Out under the night sky
Into the field of silver
He might slowly begin to dance there
Being all alone
Alone under all the vast universe of starlight
The eyes of spectral deer

He would know at last his name
Know that alone is all there is

It is enough.

p.12
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Rock Climbing by Night

I’m like a man climbing a rock face alone
-at night-
I must do it
There’s no seeing the way down
Only able to feel the way up by handholds
No telling how far to the front page
If there is one, there’s no guarantee
It will be worth reaching
One needs faith and grit
This is an exercise in faith and grit
It’s not even an exercise in getting to the front page
Maybe, it’s also an exercise
In identifying
A few wild strawberries in the dark
Trying to eat them one-handed.

p.13

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Doing Together

What will we do together
After all the upheaval is over?
You will bring me stories
Your stories of new life
New explorations
Bodies fires aroused by strangeness
The hint of danger
Exploring new territories
Peace of finally coming home

I will bring you something of pain
Maybe something of work too
But surely something of pain

I have set myself the task
Of learning to love it
What it might birth
This angst in my chest
So familiar
So many times past
I woke suddenly
To find the Other gone
Opening what I called
A gaping wound in my chest
Raking my heart

So many times past
Remaking my heart
Finally I have learned
How to love
The magic it will bring
My fear-filled heart

p.14

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For Her

Wish I could just let your shadow lay
Woman who has gone away

The shadow’s on my mind I know
But somehow it still seems to throw
Itself as cliche says it’s wont to do
Cast it is on every day
Something of what witches brew
So I’ll wear it like a perfumed shawl
The Lady’s favour her distant call
A memory haunting like an unsaid rhyme
Gives my every taste a touch of wine.

p.15

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Quiet

I’d like for a time
To stay at the sign
Of the Inn named Quiet
Peace and quiet to find
Therein to dine
On sweet love’s diet
Let it not be a riot
Of body and mind blowing passion
Let it just be that we
Make love gentle, sleep peaceful
Under the eave
Of the Inn named Quiet.

p.16

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The Dragon Comet

Recently, I dreamed I was somewhat entangled with an octopus,
creature of the deep, cephalopod (head-footed),
metaphors for the deep of the unconscious and the use of logos for movement and activity.
Along came a medium size elephant and ate the octopus! As I watched it chomping and chewing, I said, “
of course, nobody knows this, but the proper food, the true basic food of elephants, is the octopus.”
Here is a metaphor of how the Self uses all
of life’s entanglements from the unconscious as its fundamental and best nourishment.
All my entanglements, all my loving and excitement, all my desperate attempts to escape emotional pain, are all the proper food of my soul.

The Dragon Comet

This spring the comet came
Not one of us has stayed the same
We first dimly aware of only a rumour
Something that flew more
Long ago, out of time
Something which flames in the sky
A word without rhyme
A flight of some preyer
Come here from its’ lair
Something fearful,
Something of wonder
Will it break us break us
What will it make us?

In deep space stirs again
The She dragon of old
Now swiftly coming
Strange wolf running
Bringing us now and right now
Reminding us “Now” is her name
Maybe this solid space-wild
Thing we see
Maybe this flaring sky-belted
Ice-storm will be
Sweeping us into our long feared chaos
Horse borne Huns come to slay us
Explode our planet, smash her seas
Thundering thundering tidal bore
Sweeping all all we
Were all before.

Yet do I see her
Shining evanescently
Her radiant luminescent hair
All beauty’s essence just out there
Just out my reach

Making me ask
What have you come to teach?
What means this longing?
Making me ask
What means belonging?
What could I be dreaming?
What will I be seeming
To do
While the elephant’s feeding?

I watch her seeding
Our place in the Universe
We in her radiance
We in her magic dance
Gleaning her liturgy
She’s gifted us her only verse
A poem of love’s pure energy.

p.17

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Aldo

Aldo is a bear king
Beseiged by an enemy
Maybe deaf to the songs of the al-thing
So he sings alone by the sea
I hear his summoning drone
Imagine his vibrations shifting
Some deep-buried ancestral bone

I am a man like him
He is my father my son
I am aware of something left undone
I walk constantly lifting, turning over stone
Seeking that place wherein
My ancestor buried a bone
Which I must sing to the surface

Carve on it my runes
Bury it deep maybe under dunes
Containing the weeping sea
Awaiting songs of resurrection
Sung by my progeny.

p.18

Aldo’s long time friend Domenic told me a dream he’d had in which he and Aldo
were in the same small Italian town in Calabria. Aldo invited him to a nearby trattoria for some lunch.
Domenic un-derstood that they were from the same village, had grown up together in that place.
This was the dream. The reality was that they had been born and lived in different villages.

The truth this dream has revealed to me, is that Aldo and I are not merely deep friends, we are “from the same village”,
fratelli dello stesso villagio, as if we were siblings of that culture. This is how we loved each other.
Aldo has just died of a brain tumour at his age 49.

p.19

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The Poet’s Life

Damned if I do or if I don’t
The curse is never to be normal
Always interrupt what’s formal
Often say I do, but won’t
Because of some wandering pulse
Of interest like a firefly’s beam
Flicking light on some new scene

My soul like bladder-wrack and dulse
When she’s live she’s mostly under water
Others see her beached and dying
Ink on dead wood pages drying
“Muse for sale” but no one bought her

My life is lived between the worlds
Terror one day, joy the next
No place for magic man to rest
No rudder, yet my sail’s unfurled
I must go where fate’s wind sends me

I hope my poet’s life has taught her
She’s the Goddess’ beloved daughter
I’ll never break though she does bend me!
How I must love her
How I’ll never seek another.

Oh how I love my Lisa love
How I delight to please her!

p.20

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Purpose

So the question of Purpose

Mine or yours
Comes to this

We wander in the fields
Sometimes of bliss
Sometimes in desire steeled

The pattern of our daily doings
An ancient riddle

Will we but repeat
Every cycle known to us?

Or will we push
Until the chaos comes
Die in that
Or live unchained
Or live unframed?

All unknowing, I push you, or myself, into bitchiness and upset,
then take what comes, to make my life anew.

p.21

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Singing

People want me
To make a living
Yet I’m being driven, compelled
To write this stuff, to sing

A half-century ago
When I was twelve
I loved then to sing

In class one day
We were all singing
Me too, full of joy
Like blackbird springing
Teacher stepped quietly over
Her hand on my shoulder
Don, better not sing
Your voice’s breaking
Disturbs the rest of us

So does Blackbird's
You damned bitch!!
I yell at her now
Mind miles and years away

I’ve never been able
To make a living, singing
Yet it’s all
I’ve ever been asked to do

p.22

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Passion

I passionately want
To leave words whispering
In people’s heads
For centuries

To plant the seeds of blooms
Of fascination and of fear
Of delight and lusts
Of concupiscent deer

We hear
but do not know

What do I hear
That I do not know I hear?
What causes me to look away
When the path is clear?
What have I long forgotten feared
That chooses me this day?

p.23

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Handfuls For My Lady

If I could bring handfuls
I would
And spread them out in front of you
My Lady
Just for your honour
For your pleasure
To let, to give you
To let you see
How you this lovely place
Knows to be
The strewn fresh liveliness
Yellow yellow daffodils
And blazing tulips
Roses lips hungering
For your delicious kiss

I, embodied, lingering
Just for this.

p.24

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My Plight

I want to write one poem
About man’s plight
That will change our experience
Yours and mine
Make the world right
For us as animals

So that we as animals
Going from our day to days
Will always
Feel we might
Just around the corner
Recover Eden

If the word “plight”
Could bring the feeling
Of sunrise, sun day, sunset, night

Say what you want, you might get it.

p.25

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Men of the Hollow

We are the men who come down
Into the hollow
Where the ground is lower
Where earth has made a bowl to hold us
Gather a circle around
The sacred fire, the sacred centre
We journey here, the man’s journey
The journey of the so-called hero who seeks
His way and hears his own heart
In the company of others

Following our way
We come to the fire
The Great Mother, the centre of life
She who is the Sacred Fire

Having known only what to do
Here we know at last
Who we are
We speak our names, our truth
We are all the emotions together
A Great Sea rolling
We are the community of men
In being on this earth
Telling our stories
Singing our songs
Among each other
Before we sleep.

p.26

Made Like Coyote

I am as carefully made as Coyote
Why don’t I know that?
Why don’t I walk this land
As confidently as Coyote?

A canoe
A coyote
A human

We all came to be here
The same way
Careful refinement
Small adjustments and approximations
Over millenia of trials
The unseen Shaper
In the continuous presence
Of Mystery

So I must go on
As I was made
Design myself continuously
By small acts and gestures
Daily altering my surroundings
Myself
By the takings in and lettings out

Seeking protection from all others
In rationality and magic
Seeking to find that cloak
The final protective cover
Against all that would ravage
My tender skin
The cloak of the land
She decorates Herself
Lends me
So I would go in fealty
So I would be as comfortable as Coyote
Anywhere he goes
In all weathers

p.27

Strands

These strands all come together
The passion for a history
To know who we are

Who we are separate and with
Feeling the beauty aching
Of spruce trees and willow
Artful shapes of branches
Bent and dancing
Astonishing the wind
To know the right arrangement
Of things that come into beauty
What makes this beautiful
That not
What makes everything beautiful
Numinous
Frozen shadow of black pine
Photographed by iridescent
Erotic lakes
Held forever in that moment
Before

Wolf has been here
His tracks in the light snow
Pressed deep his weight
The lady dancing around
Beside as they moving go
Photographed by the land
Choreographed by wet sand
As if this and all the others
Were still
Within me
I carry my history

See that Wolf again
Flash lit in my car’s light
Bows his head
Turns away his face
As I strike past
A lightning flash in his world
A remembering in mine

p.28

Did We?

Speaking to Linda
Who says “We have done it to them, big time!”
Meaning the Whites versus the First Nations people

Wondering, done what, to whom, exactly who
Is the doer here.

If I ask my First Nations friend
What were you like
Before we came
Can I believe his answer?
What is the standard
For credibility in matters of belief?
I think
When he answers me this question
He tells me no more
Than I already know about myself

What do I know anyway?
Werner says make declarations or requests
Everything else is crap
Wading in a swamp of discourse
With no sure ground
Except by accident

Sometimes
We sail through
The only passage
In the Great Barrier reef
Not even aware
She is there
Not knowing how near

We have escaped grounding
Escaped being pounded
To pieces by the ceaseless waves
She decorates herself

How her dancing gown
Might have become our shroud

The blissful peace we found
In that lagoon beyond
We call our fate
Our star-struck encounter
If we but knew
How much we are of accident
How little by our own design
We should be less self-blaming
When we hit the rocks
Get smashed
The waves roll over us
And all our careful plans

p.29

p.30

She

She is guarded by a bleak dog
Cereberus
I cannot call nor make
Myself known
I fear hurting her alone
Though she would gladly speak of us
Gladly learn what I would say

Just simple things of every day
Brother for sister
What could love more?
Walking on a rocky shore
Tide pools and sea-wrack beguiling us
Surrounded as we wander thus
By their languages of poetry and songs
What to us belongs

Every word we think
Thoughts we drink
The eldest wine we made

Oh no! I’ll not let this
Time fade.

I have had to work incredibly hard on myself,
all kinds of mantras and jogging and writing, in order to make manageable
the fierce pangs of jealousy that have seized my body at the knowledge
of my one time lovers in some one else’s arms and laughter.
I feel incredibly blessed, to know that this is possible,
that I have come close to mastery of this passion in me.

p.31

On Living Together

On living together
On living together

On living together

On what we share or don’t

On whether we can ever
Find stuff to do together
Peacefully, happily

That is other than ceremonial

On making
Everything be ceremonial
Our daily ordinary lives
The big events
The dissolution
And the dying

On whether in chaos
We can find peace
Without emerging
From that chaos.

p.32

Mirroring Chaos

She leaves
Then so do I

Rain and hail
Smash the flowers
I run out naked
Smashed and dancing
In it too

p.33

Wet Cold Songs

I cannot sing my song
In snow
Cannot but be upset
At what is here
Below
Soaking in the wet
I feel a dulling fear
As of a kind of debt
I maybe owe
Hostage to inaction I must
Forgo
The drum of beauty I would play

Bound by the drizzling damp
The melting snow
I must stay
Feeling alone, unbidden, uninvited
Cold
A tramp
Too tired
Even to light
My lamp

p.34

Waiting The Rain

Waiting the rain
Waiting the wind
Contained in heat
When rain comes
I will then sleep
Cool rain cool sleep

p.35

Canoeing in the Gardens

These are hanging gardens
These water carved rocks
Pines at the back
The stockade walls
The Huron long ago
Used those pines too
Babylon never had such
An imagination against which
I could stare for hours
Losing myself completely
In that futile attempt to penetrate
To a completion
Of the mystery of understanding
Of the pure significance
Of the sculptured rock
The frescoes of painted lichen

The small trees, grasses, brush
Growing from carefully placed
Cracks in the sheer facade
Marking our unfathomed water pathway
Populated by birds and small creatures
Naked here
As everything else
Decorated only for the effect
Manitou wants to create
Not ever for wandering eyes
Just for the erotic pleasure of it

I too would like to stand naked
A David
In front of passing crowds
Who would stare at me
In fascination trying to penetrate
My story to finally comprehend
How we are all one
In this moment of contemplation
At this moment of our orgasm
At this moment of our death

p.36

Cassandra

Maybe it’s just this place
Plugs into my gloom spot
My paranoia of the dark
The basement with ghosts
I forced into it by Mother
Who would not come too
Until I saw the Devil
And then she did come
To acknowledge the Rat
Jumping at the dim window

Trouble
Often came sudden
Unlooked for

Or maybe
Was only realized slowly
So slowly so slow...ly
My hope of restoration
To the home I remembered
Was gone
Before I noticed

Being lost in the bush
The trail I remembered
Gone as if never would
Come again

When She left me
Or I lost Her in dreams
The togethering pleasure
Once was
Become searching anxiety

p.37

The Creed

The creed is:

Everyone Canadian is bound to explore and struggle with
the need to reconcile the culture they were born into, with the Red Road
and that way of walking on this planet.

The context for our education, acquisition of culture and skills should be:

1. to participate consciously in bringing order out of the chaos which we inhabit.

2. the understanding that we come from the rock.

3. That our life processes and spiritual priorities be in harmony
with our physical roots on this planet.

We are, at our most basic, a rock with imagination..
.and all our understanding of ourselves and our surroundings and our possibilities
must be conscious of that dual reality...or we will never be all we can be.
This is our definition of sanity and health.

p.38

Death Ritual

Eagle feasts on Snake
On Salmon

Beautiful creatures
They were not made
For his pleasure only
Nevertheless their sacrifice
Is a power element
In the ritual of Life

We use Eagle’s feathers
To carry us into
The Spirit world
Of healing and of ecstasy
Even while yet we walk here

So my part in that Ritual
Of life we call Death
Is not to end
A discarded bag of shit and pus
But to be the feast of the Holy
Sacrament

I must die contributing
My body to the living
For their life
As Christ declared
This is my flesh
Eat
This is my blood
Drink
Not a martyr
But a willing
Partner in the Dance

p.39

Exploration

Having explored every part
Of your body
With my tongue
The language I have spoken
Is that no part of us
Fears me nor you
So our feasting on each other
Becomes together like Eagles
Free falling from the ardent sky
Their mating ecstasy.

p.40

Hawk Too

Mulling all this stuff
Nothing but Breughel
Everywhere I go

I see small hawk sitting
On high branch
Edge of the Spring thicket
No leaves yet
Sky gray, questing rain
Coming
Whole fields open
Before him a tantric pause
Awaiting their embrace

p.41

n Me

Somewhere in me
Is a crying angry child
Locked into a cage
No way for me
To come to him
Yet somehow from deep within
There from that crypt of rage
He takes me over
Runs my body as if
It were his own
Beating my frail flesh
Against the rocks of this world
Me watching through bars
As if it were I in that cage
Helpless to soothe his crying
Helpless to save us
Watching him in fear
As he hurls
Our paddles overboard
While our canoe flings us
Into those rapids of our destruction
Together.

p.42

Magic Woman

I dreamed I was a woman fabulously dressed
gliding on air through the stone city...

You have in you a flowing
Magic woman floating on air
Like Mary Poppins in drag
Magenta cloak with silver and blue threads
She flows through stone
Could make this one seem
To cry or laugh or be encouraging
This magic-making woman
Drifting thistledown along
Your inner space is drifting
Through every stone you hold
Every wave-washed rough-cut rock
You contemplate.

p.43

Men’s Stories

Of the pleasures
Of expanding one’s soul,
Of less fear in exploring
Possibilities of life

Of struggles to break free
Of bonds of guilt and fear
In relationships, to sail
On the river
Of love more often.

Of the keen pleasures of sharp knife carving
Of a mind building figures
So beautiful it would
Take a Michelangelo to get it

Of reading these black marks on snow
We could taste the sunset
Feel our bodies bathed in the last red glow

Of the failure of the hunt
The fear of crying babies
Forlorn women watching and
Waiting for the return

Of the stubborn determination
The exhilaration of climbing
Reaching the front page
And the altar we may find
There to perform our ceremony
Before we must descend
Into the rising night

p.44

Naked

I like to go naked
Through the natural world
Cedar and tall grasses
Rough pines and poplar
With Chickadee and Raven
Trout sculling slowly
Black streams flowing over
Dark ooze thigh deep
Before my feet
Find their solid way

My naked sex vulnerable
Before these Beings
Naked too
Here is the only place
On this planet
I may be accepted
Just as I am
Because I am willing
To go unarmoured
Because they have no judgments

p.45

Pride

We stand in awe and pride
Before great stone cathedrals
Hunting castles giant-built walls
The work of men
Admired in halls
We call the corridors of power

Never of women
Their work is not displayed
Nor stood in front of
To be admired

Nor of those men
Going naked
With but a stone knife
And getting all they need
For life

p.46

Raven Knows

Smart black bird
Me
Choosing stocks to buy
Broker saying
You have an instinct
For this
Raven goes where he should
Before he knows that
Me
When I left here
Went there
Blown on a wind
Inescapable desire

We go in flocks
In Pairs
Alone
No territory ours
Yet we know
All the passwords

Even yours...

p.47

Thanksgiving

I am thanksgiving for you
At this time this season
I remember these days
When we have come together
After a long time parted
And been so happy
Playing together
Under the blue sky
In yellow leaves fallen
The black and the red
Of Autumn skies
When mist rises
Off the lake in morning
Still water’s water shroud
Hillsides full of trees
Wearing their brilliant robes
Not yet fallen to be
The many-coloured undergarment
Still Winter’s cool snow cover

Maybe we seem single-coloured
Like that snow to others
And now you and I know
We do wear incredible
Brilliant vestments
Always changing under
What we may show

p.48

Blacksmith

When I was young I hung around
Saturdays after the ride to town
Behind the trotting horses
Rattling buggy named Bennett
At the blacksmith shop Henry Hope
His greasy blackened thick leathered apron
Arms muscles rippling horses thighs
He grappled those hooves to himself
Ingesting their power
Hammered on their shoes
Conducting ringing steel symphonies
In sweat and scents of burning bone
I turning the handle of his fire
Coke hissing blue/green flames
Hard iron going red then white
Among the black
Colours of the goddess
He’d always find a way
To help me with my small endeavours
Can’t skate, ankles turn over?
Here’s some straps to hold ‘em up
Can’t buy kidney pads for your lacrosse?
Here’s a girdle made of harness felt
Leather straps sewn on by his own
Hands as deft and kind
Strong as that leather
Now whenever I hear
“Our father, who art in heaven”
I think with a rush
Of that blacksmith man
Scion of the old god Haephestus
Making his art in heaven
His anvil ringing in the thunder
Calling encouragement and simple answers
Yes of course there will be rain and storms
And I have got from him such a boat
The flood for me
Need never come again.

July 22

p.49

Men’s Group

Some want to horse around
Sometimes just hang out
Shoot baskets or whatever
A few want always
To be in sacred space
When we meet
Seriously probe the depths
Of our psychic mines
Past of shame or difficulty
Present irritations and griefs
Notice the patterns of joy or
Anxieties spread butter
On the sandwich of our group
Concern

All this talk of issues and
Interventions flowing around
The islands of our drumming
Our sweat ceremony
Meals we eat together
Greetings and partings
Hugs each to each and
Group songs
That song we all share
In the back of our throats
Only the Inuit women
Among us know to make real
The hunt or other ceremony
We will make this day

July 22

p.50

So Much Love

I have so much love in me
Where to put it?
Should I grow lots of orchids
Would they die when I’m away

I cannot sit and gaze at my honey
Forever
She gets restless
She likes my adoration
She also fears the possible
The way it could mean
Her loss of herself
To herself

My books are beautiful
I will make more
I want to put my tipi
In a sacred grove
Do my pipe
Sleep quiet by the fire
After starlight
Some drum songs

I would if I could
Embrace the world
Be like a jelly fish
Listening to whales
Green water plashed with sunlight
Bringing me bathing me in
Celestial music for my erotic massage

Mar 23

The message for today is
If you want your arrow
To hit the target
You must aim up
Over it

p.51

Society

The supermarket displays huge bags
Of water conditioner chemicals
Half their rows of shelves of stuff
Are not food but knicknacks
And pet supplies

At Port Week-end deep in the bush
The lake is disturbed by leisure craft
By cottagers kids wake-boarding
Not even wind and rain whipping
The surface into dancing foam
Brings any fear of ancient gods
Back to those cottagers placid
Shopping eyes

Once we camped here
Fished for food and trade
With those who made stone knives

Now we come
Only to rest and play
To get away from the illusion
Of hard work and careful calculation
Needed to sustain the illusion
That trading our daily life energy
For paper promises and being unafraid
Of gods in stone or weather
Is a better way to live

When our paper promises burn
What story will we have
To keep us
To keep us from preying on each other?
Stay tuned.....

July 16

p.52

Sailing at Night

If you sail with Her
Alone at night and
She starts crying in fear
The noise of fireworks
Cracking sails

Let yourself be caught
Stopped
By an underwater reef
Stay there holding
Her in your arms
Until your guilt her fear
And the fire light
Are absorbed in the soft dark

July 2

p.53