The salmon peaks, the river reeks,
Like a million potties.
A little one is having fun
Poking sticks in bodies.

The coho, pink, and sockeye stink
And if your eyes are tearing,
It may be ‘cause the fish are fuzz
Or you find their fuzz endearing.

Oh beach, so cold against my tired weight,
Uphold me now, for just a while to rest.
I’ve not yet swum the length and here abate,
Much as thy shore uncovering my breast.
Oh promises! that lie within me dear,
Cry not, that my great girth may lie alone
And lying, not abandon all to fear
Just twenty miles short our bed of stone.

Oh earth, what portions of thy face I know.
I’ve traced thy weary lines as my true love,
Love tossed upon a beach where shallows grow,
One eye toward thee and one eye above.
It must a burden be for those who live
Beyond this shore and farther past this lake
Where now I’ll turn with all my life to give
Lest the Lord, withal, my soul shall take.

Oh Lord, now unencumber thy poor fish,
For long hast thou protected me from harm,
With miles to go, to go upon a wish
And not to die unheld about thine arm.
My chore is great, the shore is unrelenting,
My strength that grew within me dies.
My purpose now dissenting,
I touch a wave and kiss my last goodbyes,
I touch a wave and kiss
                                     my last
                                               goodbye.

SOME TECHNICAL ANALYSIS OF THE POEM
Shakespeare wrote his love sonnets in iambic pentameter, which has a certain beat of a soft syllable followed by a hard one five times in one line, like this:

_ / _ / _ / _ / _ /, as in;

“Oh-beach/so-cold/a-gainst/my-ti/red-weight.”

It was meant to resemble the beating of a heart, “thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump”, which he felt suited those poems of passion. So I felt it would also serve a passion-filled purpose in a poem of these sad events unfolding on our shores, these struggling animals having lived so long and survived so much, now passing away with the smell of their home strong in their nostrils, their bellies full of eggs. Throughout this poem is the sound of a beating heart, the sound of life, until near the end when beats are suddenly rapid, then skipped, and whole lines are unrhythmed, starting with;

“My-chore/is-great/the-shore/is-un/re-lent-ing” where the intensity rises with the last three syllables charging, followed by a line that has only four, not five, in it’s meter, and the next line with only three and a half.

The purpose of neat, formal rhythm is established and then broken to maximum effect, just as Shakespeare did.

Also, the use of old English language in the poem is not just further ode to the Shakespearean era, but rather is written to resemble a prayer, the form of conversation I felt a fish would have if it could speak in these final moments regardless of the direction of it’s speech, all of it’s discourse taking on the solemnity of finality.

SOME COMMENTARY

The poem explores the happy passion of life and the sad passion of death and it is about the sovereignty of God over both. While we may look around and see important reasons why we think we ought to keep living, in the end it is God who determines ought, and the poem examines how the ought of death has little to do with circumstances now or in our great history. This makes death so unpredictable to us, and unanticipated by our protagonist in this poem who spends her struggle examining her life now flashing before her. There is a foreboding that God has appointed her hour as now, and that hour will seem to her full of so much reason to live. The poem explores the reasons why death is sad in the human experience, and why it is poignant throughout our lives. The protagonist in this story, a female salmon making her run to the river, is awash in the sensation of life both inside her and outside, what she sees, what she feels, until she makes a confession that life, that knowing, is more than sensation. It has to do with submitting to what God reveals.

All this in the context of those poor salmon who went through so much, so far, for so long to come within a few miles of their spawning home to die here on the shore of Little Shuswap Lake in Chase, unheralded by the media upstream, unsung by the songs and poetry and full their unfulfilled promises. There are few symbols more accurate, more real in their representation of the experience of our own human life and death.

The sensations start with the beach, which is not colder than the water, but rock and sand and clay pass heat much faster than water. Like when we wake up in the morning and step off the carpet onto the tile of the bathroom, which conducts heat away from our skin much faster and feels colder, even though the tile and carpet are the same temperature. But she only speaks about her new sensations.

The poem suddenly becomes intimate when she makes the point of mentioning to the beach that, ahem, her breast is exposed. This would be a novel experience in her existence and she duly notes the offence; it seems she must suffer a loss of her innocence for a chance to rest. Already things have become sad for her.

She turns her conversation to her eggs, as if to comfort them;
Oh promises! that lie within me dear, Cry not,

I had originally written Oh promises! that lie within me here, but rewrote it to the more tender Oh promises! that lie within me dear.

One reason she speaks to her eggs so motherly is not just to comfort them for their own tender sake, but because for her to be so mindful of them in this time of duress would be too much for her to bear that my great girth may lie alone And lying, not abandon all to fear. More sadness, that being alone is easier to bear than knowing she has the tender company of her promises.

Next, the scope of her speech broadens beyond her beach to the earth, what portions of thy face I know. Much the way a lover knows the face of the beloved, she knows the far reaches of her range. She’s loved her home, and she has loved her life I’ve traced thy weary lines as my true love, which is now, in stark contrast Love tossed upon a beach where shallows grow,. In October the waters of Little Shuswap lake are slowly receding and will reach their low point just before spring thaw, and it increases her anxiety, reminding us she is not naturally supposed to be here at all, never mind in such weak estate.

In her monologue to the earth, she makes her first mention of the afterlife One eye toward thee and one eye above. All salmon on our beach lie this way, looking down with one eye planted close into the earth, and one gazing looking up into the distant heaven.

I thought it was a tender thing for the dying fish to consider at this point how much heavier she seemed when partly out of water, and to give thoughts to how heavy life must be for those who live even farther from the beach, as if distance from water equals greatness of burden, as if water equals life itself. Water means a discreet covering, a lightness of being, and life itself. Lack of water means shame, burden, death. Through her empathy, she reveals a more ominous tone.

She wants to return to her selfless and glorious journey, to spawn new life and then die Where now I’ll turn with all my life to give Subjecting herself to the will of her Creator, she employs familiar words in the line Lest the Lord, withal, my soul shall take. from a childrens bedtime prayer:

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
And if I die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Innocence and the awareness of death in a single expression.

Knowing she is in trouble, she finally turns her prayer the broadest scale. Having come from thoughts of “Oh beach,” now she turns Oh Lord, now unencumber thy poor fish, and makes her petition for divine intervention With miles to go, to go upon a wish she holds on to her great hope, the one that sustained for all those miles since the ocean. Our attention, like hers, is brought suddenly to her dire condition My chore is great, the shore is unrelenting, and the routine rhythm is broken with a palpitation that creates unease in the poem. For the first time, the beat slows, like her heart, from five to four in the line that starts with “strength” and ends with “dies”

My-strength/that-grew/with-in/me-dies.

She is abandoned by her great hope My purpose now dissenting, and with that she has no more reason to live as she senses one final wave over her gills across her mouth I touch a wave and kiss my last goodbyes..

What is poignant about the photo I took today, down at our little beach in Chase, is that this particular fish is not only still full of her eggs, but her breast is also showing and her fin sticks straight up as if to wave in the direction of the Adams River, her spawning grounds, just miles more from here.

Christian bells and yonder swells

And Chase! Race the bells to glory.

being

in a car

a tight, small space

not long since the big bang

and he could not get out.

The world fears

being

in a war,

a tight, small space

not long since the big bang

and it could not get out.

A heart fears

being

in a love,

a tight, small space

not long since the big bang

and it could not get out.

Better to just amble along through the uncinched distance always out,

all

  ways

      out.

Dawn will skim the dock and dill
Atmospher’d by worn out night
Flop against my house and spill
Content on my arborite.

An alcoholic part of day
Splitting ‘twixt the dark and light
The hemispheres that fill the way
To eternal wrong or right
That ceaseless draw a fattening line
That imitates a ray of light
That illuminates the brine
That visitates my arborite.

It’s a nihilist part of day
That cannot raise a kite
Nor a wave in yonder bay
Yawning fog along the bight
That misted up my awning
That is purposed to aright
That scintillating spawning
That now dons my arborite.

A warring part of day
Advancing on the dark
Dividing force along its way
Around my humble bark,
My little ship that will fight
That swimming yellow shark
That launches all that firelight
That spirals in a flaming arc
That carpet-bombs my arborite.

Some coffee grounds turn caramel
When from my bag they spill
In the golden morn that fell
Across my window sill
And came to rest, after all,
After all the blight,
To settle down as dawn to fall
On my arborite.

Oct 2009.

that soft rounded sigh of shadows

sliding slowly up the slopes

behind well-warmed cedars

westerly gazing,

closes.

Vale on vale the auburn hills

Droop their sunburned grass that spills

Low and dark and damp beyond

The dale, sliding ’round the pond

Obsidian and pepper’d green

With pads still damp whence toads had been

And swam away when shadows fell

Upon the blonded heights that bell

Downward to my village, ‘ere I write

The poetry that spawns a night

Of poems of a summer dying

Low upon the pads still drying

‘Neath the auburn hills.

EDIT: I changed the lines:

Low and dark and damp and cool

Sliding ‘longside ’round the pool

to

Low and dark and damp beyond

The dale, sliding ’round the pond

and then changed

Valley on valley the auburn hills

to

Vale on vale the auburn hills

Overall, there seems to be more poetic effect now, running longer through the poem.

Ink testing, testing, testing, 1 2 3 4.

Ink test. This is only a test to see

if I’ve filled the pen properly or

maybe the ink dried out too much

and there’s still crud.

Things seem to be flowing ok.

I suppose now I can go

and actually write something

worthwhile, like why I stopped

writing so long for the ink to turn

solid in the chamber.

Ten minutes I let the hot tap run

to bleed the ink out.

Seemed like

a lifetime.

A snowflake in obsidian jewel,

Sparkling with angelic fuel,

Piercing all of midnight’s rule.

Still the heaven-borne eye,

Witness to all the worlds gone by,

Peering as a pin-point spy,

A pointillist in inken sky.

Pointing, seeing, staying, bright,

Hung in heavens highest height,

Wuthering solar winds at night,

To quiet, to cool me tonight.

Yawn toward me storied one,

Ancient when my world, begun,

Lost its way around the sun,

Before it learned to walk or run.

Goodnight pointillistic fool,

I also run beyond that rule,

Sparkling with angelic fuel,

A star afar, quiet, cool.

Rip my words, strip my soul,

Rake my heart to vapoured coal,

But soft and tender thread

Words of blessing to her bed,

For your glory keep her whole.


Dungeon me and rob me of my last,

Swear your condemnation of my past,

But only breathe upon her brow

The breath of heaven on her now,

Slay me while yet you hold her fast.

……

Sew the words that weave my thoughts
With winding, binding sophistry.
O ancient linguist, sage of letters,
Encapsulate and rapture me!
O that I could soar the way
Your words fly up whene’er you pray.
I see and think and know and feel
Your swelling grace about my heel
That wraps and ties like written laces
Holding fast to mortal places.
O author of unbounded jots!
Sew the words that weave my thoughts.

A small finger rolls a little wheel turning

On his car, in his hand, by his head.

The afternoon yawns with his green apple breath

In the hush, in his room, on his bed.

Slowing eyes blink at quick plastic tinkles.

Nothing taught, nothing learned, nothing doing.

My son, his toy car, soft blanket wrinkles;

Life at rest, life at peace, life renewing.

Invited, I lie and watch the day sigh

On how my little boy reaps

a little time.

And while I rhyme

He sleeps.

a candle lighting words that shook

the day when men were young.

A day and age when yellowed page

was brilliant white and brightly sung

on tides untether’d to shores unweather’d,

lapping lands in foreign tongue.

The words that utter waves that stutter

across the years of miles,

they float to me in poetry

tempestuous with trials.

Trying times, impassioned rhymes

from that day unto this;

friendly wounds, hostile swoons,

still betraying with a kiss.

  While the universe is yawning

  still the wicked world’s spawning,

Yet in a corner’d nick of time

a candle lights the words that rhyme

with the day when men were young.

y relaharse alado de,

nadar en,

el mar.

Mar a cleto, azul en azul

Medio, el humo en espiral

Como escalera a cieto, gandul,

Cieto sobreme, cieto cercama, actual

Mi vacacion.

Shall see pink elephants fly on high

Up to a sky

round like an eye

and yellowish like a custard pie.

“Oh see,” I’ll say, “what say that we

Just soar like the elephants up to a tree?”

Then flee

Like bees

To the custard sea.

Yes, custard up and custard down.

Splashing, soaring, sailing ‘round

With a pinkish hue

like me, like you,

now look at us, we’re elephants too!

We laugh and leap and then you run

Toward more elephantine fun

Up to one

we call the sun.

Custard filling in a bun!

And then, when we have had our fill,

We turn again toward that hill

And spill

pink will

like dreams until

I die in hopes that I

Shall see pink elephants fly on high.

As for me I’m goin’ home
And stockin’ up on ham
And leavin’ chicken soup to Satan
‘Cause even he avoids the spam.

So a tear flows down her voice,

Like silk she pours on a shiver

So shall my soul rejoice

To hear, to see, to feel

Enobling, angelic touch,

Confessions so genteel

That pound my heart too much.

Her dew can fall like leaven

That flows through Wales in a sliver,

Gowned in the grace of heaven,

A flower floats on the river.

For love bequeathed

As singly did my heart abide.

How long, untethered,

My wings unfeathered

In vain did stretch and stride.

Now you, unknown,

A love has flown

Within, around, aside.

but, upon my windowsill,

meditates,

anticipates,

if it will

fly

outward as condition or as inward definition,

articulating what it means to free

what it was

what I am

to be.

Home, home in a poem,

Harboured by grains of Yeats, and Shelley, Wordsworth, and Tennyson

Who circumnavigate my room in homage

To men whose passions

No tongue could utter.

Safe, safe in the place

Where all unfathom’d zeal

Pours through trembling fingers

From a chest bursting to tell of things

That make men shudder.

Great, great men,

Whose shoulders I am shy to climb

Lest my eyes should see the things they saw,

Crest my daily cares, infatuate my heart,

Vanquish and enrapture me.

Rush, rush to words,

Books of my numberless dreams

Nurslings of immortality!

They flash upon that inward eye

And I would

that I could utter

the thoughts that arise in me.*

*each italicized line taken verbatim from Yeats, Shelley, Wordsworth, and Tennyson respectively, respectfully.

Books on high, shelf on shelf,

Lamplit over leather chairs,

The poets pen, self on self,

Set to what the poet dares,

Words that write themselves.

It’s not a poem, it’s a break

between words, words known by every man

who reads and knows he knows the words,

the very words, even the Laureate must use

like his games across from Grandmasters

using the same chess pieces every time he loses to finally learn

the moves are made between the moves.

The poetry is between the words.

The king lifts up his inken sceptre

In agony of secret art,

That dragon, deep and long, has kept her,

Mortal words that rip apart,

Words that write themselves.

Echoes of a dungeon’d hope

Rise to bear his shreds,

Letters unto letters groped

Between poetic threads,

Words that write themselves.

He writes the words that write themselves

For every one to know it,

The king of gaps has moved his pen

To write, and be a poet.

sifting,

sifting.

Thy meaning, gotten, goes and, gone,

lifting.

lifting,

My soul is lifting,

Oh, talent! spare my spending heart
From grabbed intents and wrested prose.
Bid unstarted words not part.
Stay. Sail in me

on sighs unstuttered

to depths unuttered

of poetry that no one knows.

sifting,

sifting.

Thy meaning, grasped, goes and, gone,

lifting.

lifting,

My soul is lifting,

Oh, talent! spare my spending heart
From grabbed intents and wrested prose.
Bid unstarted words not part,
Stay. Sail in me

on sighs unstuttered

to depths unuttered

of poetry that no one knows.

Pentameter, haiku, and sonnet!
Thy poem sizing,

sizing,

sizing.

A ship dry docked with words upon it.

rising.

rising,

Thy water rising,

Oh, gift! now give as I receive.
Break the damming lock and spew,
Flood. Baptize and leave

on waves that stutter

from depths now utter

of poetry that no one knew.

And be a cyclist, state of the art.

It’s echoing word will forever be heard

Deep within the cycling heart.

There’s a great demand in this promise land

That the ten-speed never be stowed.

The spirit’s alive and tit’s will to survive

Will keep the cyclist on the road.

He will never regret all the pain and sweat

And the time that he’s put in,

Cause there’s a lot of folk who will laugh and joke

Until they know he’s racing to win.

Here, between the poem and the pen,
Poised,
                            pressed,
                                                                 pinned,
Here, between the beginning and the end,
                           I rise,
                                                                 recite,
rest.
All in all, I am always in between.

Like something in the sun that warms my shoe.

A tickling in the universe for poems not yet written

The way that words in calico will do.

Everything is words that are becoming

Everything the Word declares to be.

Like poet, like duty, like summing

Words that string together like a shoelace

That tickle the little calico in me.

Heavy verses flow.

‘Til joy, then tell me where

Do pursed poems go?

Did Wordsworth word from lowly heart?

Or Tennyson from pain?

Can Poets’ Corner bear the weight

Where poets hearts are lain?

No, for low in heaven’s mist

Impassioned verses run

On heavy horse, passion-kissed

By a crimson sun.

Poor melancholic spirits, rise!

Your ancient poems free

A stallion, the heavy heart that dies,

that pounds the earth,

In cornered souls like me.

through a glass of water

that spins the grain,

bows the sinew,

bulges the board beneath

like an oak kaleidoscope.

But the brown doesn’t spin nor bow nor bulge.

I only know it’s brown

because they told me so.