Blog - Wednesday Poems

Image:  Bluebird, acrylic on canvas board,10” x 10”  (mounted on wood panel)

Well, we’ve just passed the fall equinox, which to me calls for an autumn poem. So I chose Adieu (from my book Suddenly, So Much; Exile Editions) for this week’s post. It’s another poem with a bird reference at the beginning, in a line I borrowed from Patrick Lane (1939 – 2019), one of my all-time favourite poets.  His line (in italics) which opens my poem is taken from Little Birds, in his book Too Spare,Too Fierce (Harbour).

The other reason this poem resonates with me just now, is that a few weeks ago, I went on a tour of our beautiful Pender Island cemetery. It was led by a representative of our local museum, who gave us an overview about the graveyard, then walked us to a couple of areas where early settlers rest – and told fascinating stories about their lives, the legacies they left for us. I will be honoured to lie in that field when my time comes
 

Adieu



There is not much time.  The birds sing of winter
though the leaves light up the air with their dying.
Sumachs scorch their fingers, burn at the end to hail
heaven where poplars

drizzle down from their great green heights to the ground
wearing gold, a last fling with the brilliant
chill.  Is this praise or defiance; is it God
or the coffin

that leaves us trembling when we drift away
from the gravestones and the unknown: — how long do we have;
are the dead we mourn part of the song or are they
simply gone


It will be a green burial for me, so no coffin.  And at the end I am sure I will be thinking of Dorothy Livesay’s marvellous epigram:  “I shall lie like this when I am dead / but with one more secret in my head.”