The Empty Tarmac of
a Long-Abandoned Airport:
23 Canoe Poems about Separation
By
Lenny Everson
rev
1
Copyright Lenny Everson 2011
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****
List of Poems
When the
Words Stopped
Don’t Wait Too Long
The Quarry
But He’s a
Good Boy Anyway
How do Souls Become Lost?
How
do People Become Separated?
Does
God Care?
Why is the Church Silent?
When is it Funny to be a
Slave?
Ashes
What Must We Never Let the World Forget?
By the
Red River
Taking a Trip to the Past
Cages for Women
Should a
Bed Have a Zipper?
Should a Bed Have a Zipper?
What Should We
Throw Away?
What is Wealth?
If I Have a New Home Can I Eat My
Ceriel on a TV Tray?
Unfinished Poem
Asking
for Better Hues
Bulletin Board
Here
is the Loose End
About the Poems
Dedication:
To all those for whom the future has become more important than the past.
****
When the Words Stopped
(When a relationship is in trouble, the words get fewer. When the words stop, someone’s packing a suitcase.)
When the words stopped
My world
became the empty tarmac
Of a long-abandoned airport
The hangars
leaning
A paper coffee cup from yesterday’s traffic
Blowing
by.
To be left in silence
Is a
violence of emptiness
A world without words
For me
Is
the sun going down
The gray dusk washing in.
I was born the biological entity
Of
companionship
Needing touch occasionally, and
Always
Kind
words.
When the words stopped
The cold
and distant stars
Took vengeance against
This woman
****
Don’t Wait Too Long
(Sometimes, the ticking clock affects a person’s dreams. it’s a sign – don’t wait.)
I didn’t know what to do when
That
indigo train came hurtling
Out of the darkness
Of my
dream
Again
I woke to the feel of iron
Pounding
granite. I guess
Somedays I am white, feet crushing granite
Someday I may be brown, becoming an eagle
The shaking was only my heart
Fran,
distant friend
Died last week.
Elizabeth, cousin,
Has
arthritis, real bad
I saw a Grosbeak in summer
Wrong
place, bird
You should be up north
In the silence of tamarack
Every now and again
I see that
train at night
Running down a maverick moose
On a lonely
track
Among the poplars
Always poplars
The moonlight on its
flanks
The train always dark
As the grave.
****
The Quarry
(Sometimes, the one you’ve lost is yourself.))
Soft and wide in the morning
the
nets go out
as fine as
spiderwebs
Hung from limb
tied to
tree
staked deep and looped round
solid granite rock
they
cover the road
where night meets day
Out of a night
of angel
flights
the quarry comes
to seek the daily
sunshine husk
And nights and lights
and Barbie
dolls
years and fears
pale pink walls
woven into
finest
mesh
It happens quite often like this
After the escape, the net
must be
woven again
finer yet
Last night I remembered a birthday
party
when I was twelve.
This was added
to tighten the mesh
In the morning light
with nets
drawn tight
once again
I wait for me.
****
But He’s a Good Boy, Anyway
(Off to find herself, she meets resistance to her quest.)
“Sit with me, mother
He
said
“Before you go off to gather ghosts
Before you try to
hide your pain
In miles
From us.”
“I’ve been still too long,” I
said
“Too many night, too many lifetimes
At a kitchen
table
Wondering who was wrong
And who had closed
So many old
doors in my life”
“How can you not imagine this will
not end
In a thirty-dollar motel room
Watching some all-night
news
A thousand miles further
From your only son?
Stay here.
With us.”
Yes, I thought, and
Too soon I
will be
Last summer’s waves
On last summer’s shores
Last
week’s sunlight
On a garden wall
Yesterday’s child
Dancing
in the rain
“There are too many cobwebs
upstairs,” I said, getting up
“There are too many moldy boxes
in dusty rooms
I’ll send you a postcard.”
****
How Do Souls Become Lost?
pan the scene:
empty pine chairs
chairs mark our lives
these look
bewildered
squandered ruined abandoned
when a person leaves a kitchen
chair
never to return
it's time to call an archeologist
****
How do People Get Separated?
Maybe the train whistle
Breaks
the night like
A hammer shatters glass
You wake up, sweating
Wondering
why
You didn’t buy a ticket
Too
Maybe you rush to the
window:
Outside only dark leaves
Tapping the pane
And a
vanishing sound.
****
Does God Care?
we had a brass bed:
they were
popular, then
and a wonderful quilt, bought
from
the Mennonite auction
if God cared
there would be
warnings
on brass beds
****
Why is the Church Silent?
I went to the same church
for my
unwedding
the place dark, no people
crowding the pews, wishing
me well
I dropped a bill into a can
blew
out somebody's candle
walked, old, into the street
****
When is it Funny to be a Slave?
"No," she said, the last
yellow
Leaves of poplars dancing
Around her feet,
"No."
I tried to tell her what I knew,
that
Laughter is made of strings.
"They've paved Florida,"
I told her instead
My hands in my pockets
"Can't pave warmth," she
said
Kicking the leaves,
"I'll sit on the beach
Watch
the kids flying their kites."
I lost a kite like that, once
The
string snapping
The kite soon gone
Me, wailing after it.
I don't believe it flies
Forever
But
the kite never listened
Either.
****
Ashes
I always fled flames
Till they
caught me, now I know
I really feared ashes
****
What Must We Never Let The World Forget?
“I could bring over some cookies,”
I said
“Go to hell,” she said.
“It might be better than
the silence, you know,” I said
“Go to hell,” she
said.
“Chocolate cookies,” I answered.
“Go to hell,”
she said.
So I did as she said, and we ate twenty-two cookies that afternoon.
****
By the Red River
A small red dragonfly
Sunning its
wings
On a willow trunk
By the river
Dozens of new shoots
From the
deftly-sawed stump
Some of us need roots in a
storm
Some need wings in the sunlight
If you try to have
both
You must lift the world
****
Taking a Trip to the Past
“Bad disease,” she told me
“You
walk around
With your head facing back
Do that, you’ll trip
Over the
future.
****
Cages for Women
I was frightened of men’s eyes,
but
I am tired of cages
This is a great planet, but it’s
full
Of women-cages.
Some have bars
Some have a
doorbell
Some are as silent as
A bedroom alone
I think
Men and women
Have not
had a good history together
Except for the men
I have found more freedom
Alone
in a small motel room
Than I ever knew as a
Shape
In men’s
eyes
****
Should a Bed have a Zipper?
a bed is a zipper
you just have
to watch carefully
to see whether, every night
you're coming a
little bit together
or a little further apart.
****
Should a Bed have a Zipper?
Oh, God, yes, a woman needs
A bed
with two lives, firmly separated
By a zipper. At least
One part the childhood bed
With
enough room for a teddy bear
A spread with a print of Sleeping
Beauty
The late morning sun through the lace curtains,
A
stuffed brown puppy fallen on the floor
And, on the wall, a
picture of a horse.
Zip, unzip, flip, change: the room transformed
She has her other bed, all
Red
satin, with enough room for a hairy
Snorting man, all hands and
laugh and groin.
A Picasso print on the wall
Black dress on the
floor, and
Six hours till breakfast.
When a woman approaches a bed
At
bedtime or any other time
You must be very careful to find
out
Which bed she wants to get into.
****
What Should We Throw Away?
Throw away your memories
If you
can
Surely, if you can
So she told me, and
She seemed to
know.
She said
You save them like fading wallpaper
on
The darkening walls of your soul.
Squint in the gloom;
you’ll find
The faded flowers are not quite true
The pears
cannot be eaten
The love letters were written by strangers
Even if the world outside is ochre
waste
Papering the windows with yesterdays laughter
Costs
you
Tomorrow’s light
****
What is Wealth?
When I was very young I once saw four angels.
They were sitting on branches, among
the leaves
Of the old oak on my uncle’s farm.
They said
nothing, did not smile. Large wings fanned
In the August heat.
I ran, of course
We were taught
to mistrust strangers.
Except for love, all the rest has been twenty-nine pieces of silver and dust on a dry wind and leaves falling on a silent woman.
****
If I Have A New Home, Can I Eat My Cereal on a TV Tray?
Oh, yes, yes.
You must.
Don’t
ask how I know. I won’t tell. Not yet.
Lawn chairs. Better yet, a shipping
crate. Please.
TV trays from garage sales.
Get new ones each
week. Fresh furniture, like paper towels.
Even curtains are chains
to the moment that you bought them and who you bought them with (use
sack cloth on the windows).
There are locks with no keys,
timestamped with the howling pain of old laughter. You don’t want
this. Trust me.
Did you know they don’t let you throw old
furniture into the canal and beds into the harbor? The Grimsby police
Sgt. Anderson will have a word with you, Dr. Beaton, too. He doesn’t
listen to reason.
Short leases. Destroy all your furniture before
you leave.
That’s the way the world runs. Pick only what you can
destroy. Leave in the night.
There’s not a hell of a lot I
learned.
That’s it. Burn these words after you’ve eaten them.
****
Unfinished Poem
Afternoon is an old woman
Shopping
for apples
Morning is a small child
Spoiled,
dropping rattles
I am a fish in currents too
strong
And far from the weeds.
****
Asking for Better Hues
We paint the images of photos
Upon
our aging faces
Time creeps up, taps our heels
With
bland eyes and crooked smile
It holds out a whitewashed hand
Asking for better hues
We hand
him the card.
He tests it with mossy teeth
“Not much credit
left!” he whispers, and
Laughing at the helpless stars
Scuttles
away for a day or two
We turn the pages of
Chatelaine
Trying not to notice
Scratching sounds
Behind
the chair.
****
Bulletin Board
Climbed that hill in the early
October frost
Would not have changed that day in the long grass,
but
Cried when I saw how frost curled the leaves of the
poplars
Spring and love compel each other
We women create our
men then try to shield them from the winter
Big mistake
Like
leaves, sliding down my face
Lloyd, former husband, twenty-three
years, four months
You’re looking for a last line. There isn’t
one
****
Here is the Loose End
Here is the loose end
Of
dreams
Here is the summer tinsel
Here we mitigate
Things
Oh,
you know.
Things
This brown bottle curate
Blesses me
I
planted a tree
I heat the clank and boom of
Falling August
leaves
I decorate this place with
My dreams
Tinsel, in
summer.
The labyrinth
Brought me
here
Talk to me
For the love of God
Talk to me
I laid a string
I was sure
But,
careless
I dropped the end
Now I can't go back
Through that
dark doorway.
****
About the Poems
The poems are mostly from two of my books, The Minor Odyssey of Lollie Heronfeathers Singer and Lollie Heronfeathers Singer in the Tavern of Lost Souls.
The Minor Odyssey of Lollie Heronfeathers Singer is a collection of poems about a middle-aged woman, divorced, who takes a trip to check out her aboriginal ancestry. It’s available as a book from Amazon.
In Lollie Heronfeathers Singer in the Tavern of Lost Souls, four poets meet at midnight in a dingy tavern once a month at the dark of the moon. Each month, they bring a poem to answer a question (sometimes a nonsense question). To get an electronic copy, email lennypoet@hotmail.ca.