Working out on Gavin's woodpile

Safe within the harmony of kin

Visions begin to crowd my eyes

Like a meteor shower in the autumn skies

And the soil beneath me seems to moan

With a sound like the wind through a hollow bone

And my mind fills with figures like Lappish runes of power1...



And log slams on rough-hewn log

And a voice from somewhere scolds a barking dog.



I remember a bleak-eyed prisoner

In the Stoney Mountain life-suspension home

You drink and fight and damage someone

And they throw you away for some years of boredom

One year done and five more to go --

No job waiting so no parole

And over and over they tell you that you're nothing...



and I toss another log on Gavin's woodpile

and wonder at the lamp-warm window's welcome smile.



I remember crackling embers

Coloured windows shining through the rain

Like the coloured slicks on The English River2

Death in the marrow and death in the liver

And some government gambler with his mouth full of steak

Saying, "If you can't eat the fish, fish in some other lake.

To watch a people die -- it is no new thing."



And the stack of wood grows higher and higher

And a helpless rage seems to set my brain on fire.



And everywhere the free space fills

Like a punctured diving suit and i'm

Paralyzed in the face of it all

Cursed with the curse of these modern times



Distant mountains, blue and liquid,

Luminous like a thickening of sky

Flash in my mind like a stairway to life --

A train whistle cuts through the scene like a knife

Three hawks wheel in a dazzling sky --

A slow motion jet makes them look like a lie

And I'm left to conclude there's no human answer near...

-acapo