Junkyard Dogs
around the blue cherry picker
boxed in by rust-eaten Cadillac
side panels, knotty fibreglass
from boat hulls, trash bags
and blunt lumberjack’s tools
a machine of indeterminate use
with the John Deer colour scheme
two junkyard dogs circle
riveted in a perfect tandem
like the Rottweiler wheels
of a snarling black pickup –
holes in and under the fence
aren’t thruways to freedom
they’re for habit and hard training
to form translucent seals atop –
the stub tails can’t wag
can’t blow askew the paw prints
in the sawdust, which every footfall
follows, calloused pad adheres to
like tracery –
after the morning showers
came unseasonal sun, and
beating down on damp lumber
it lends to the air the perfume
of a sauna freshly steamed
not heady enough, however
to come between the sentries
and the notes of the enemy
(our crowded bus)
whose departure grants a piss
on the only tree next to the fence
its rhubarb-coloured foliage
glinting all over from the rain –
executed, again
in admirable
if tragic
synchronicity.
a women in fluorescents
spot-cleans the weeping
willow branches speckled
by the apricot-coloured paint
applied to the just-paved
road, steaming in parts
roller some way back
moved newly aside
in a gesture of completion –
persimmon-coloured cones
gathered into one
like a Russian doll, solar-
powered safety signs starting
now to juice up as the nascent
sun fans through a heavy drape
of rainless cloud, shut down
wheeled away to waiting trailers.
portaloos collected by a man
with a face that’s close
to beautiful, almost young –
one might only glance at him
to see the husk of boy
and a gait that’s been done in
by all that heavy lifting
and his actual age, betrayed
by how incongruous
the baseball cap looks, peak
the colour of kiwi skin, back
the colour of kiwi flesh, clasp
like kiwi corduroy gone rancid –
so small is the spray bottle
filled with a bluish fluid
and the microfiber cloth
like those for glasses lenses
so tender is the hand
with which she wipes
the woman looks to be
removing grime from the faces
of her children, who have
like these odd overhangs
strayed too far from home
picked up stains in the crossfire
of life’s hazy battlegrounds –
tomorrow –
motorists are advised –
lanes five and six
will open to full traffic.
rattlesnakes and
black widows
replace the bears and whiskeyjacks –
what looks like ice is newly landed
dust, a settlement allowed
by the arid, windless hills
so as to deceive the snow-stunned
visitors from out west to the Okanagan
some for the wine, others the fruit
but most just passing through.
the stayers tell of hardship –
bitter divorce
paralysis from stroke
deaths of lovers
deaths of young –
one woman, forty-two with a grandson
is taking him to Salmon Arm
to see the folks who once were her in-laws –
another, seventy-three and transient
has holes in her Gap chinos
glass on her sapphire eyes
a whiplashed conversational style
inflected with despair –
manufactured homes
crown scrubby rises
a departure
from the Whistler cabins
with tigerlily gardens
worth anything
from one million to five –
coyotes here
eat all the outdoor cats
on ochre flatlands
not unlike those in Australia
somewhere between
The Rockies
and The Sea
to Sky Corridor.
In this triangle of flesh I’ve made
the hairs on my arms
conform to the clouds in colour
and shape, such that they seem to unspool
into the sky busied by Canada Geese, and
kaleidoscopic dust from the wildflowers
or that it spools back into me –
arms about my head
a timber jetty bed
shut eyelids aglow
like dual nightlights
lulls of every kind coast over
carouse with thoughts
like water with damaged wires
of stratospheric voltage
of the keenest inertia
and flame-like contingency
short-circuiting some, freeing others
while my body lies neglected
a barge with no helmsman –
maybe I can hear the wake of lasers
racing to scattered buoys across the lake
maybe I can hear the provincial flag
of British Columbia, instrument and maestro
as one in temperate winds on the island
maybe I can hear a tidal wave, a fall
from the forehead of the Chief down to the highway
until the spool comes in
and I can hear nothing
except the hiss of water
transubstantiated by hot coals
for the sun on my wet body
and it on the wooden planks
has perfumed the air
with sauna.
crevassed cascades run white
with rocks or else are frozen
but not a single tree
has died or fallen infirm in this forest
of the tallest pines, broken
only by the road
for as far as my eyes can see.
gargantuan wholeness
to the mountains and their pelt
shadowed underneath like plush
green pile caressed to one side
by the fingers of a child at play –
bless it all
with sacred sunlight, and
bless me, that fragment of the whole
which is darkest.
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