little scatterings of ashes...

rose-hip-sun, by the n. saskatchewan... jan.29/07?

(poem bits that find it too stuffy in the writing book...)

wantlessness

i)

when did i learn to stop
wanting?

woke up from dreams
of this, of clinging
like the last berry to a branch
& then

there was nothing left.

just a winter sunrise frozen,
reddish blur of a tongue
to the silver metal horizon.

kisses like cranberry pulses
clot in the woods, pulsars silent
in still snowless constellations;

a magpie flies by my window,
crisp soft flutter like
the shaking of a pillowcase,
all the longing falling away.

ii)

where do you stash
all that yearning,
trailing behind you
like a smoky tail?

trade it in for a
november cocoon
of ache & warmth,

leave it in a spruce midden,
for a squirrel to line its
winter nesting-place?

or sever the fibrous longings,
shake it out like tendrils
of rivergrass caught in a bootlace,

weave it in with
the roving in some mittens
knit it in between the thoughts,
each stitch of wantlessness

(then give it away
to someone who longs too much
for something they will never know)


iii)

when did i learn
that i’m never free
of wanting?

that it moves
like small circular
sorrows, cycles like water

down the river with the
the bone-brittle ice-lilies,
a seasonal funeral

when the snow starts falling,
the river holds its breath
& runes of frost appear

on my window &
i start to decipher a
jagged yearning,

aura blossoming slowly,
edging its way back in
to my head

with the meltwater,
slushy back alleys
in springtime coming

the creaking break-up,
rush in the gutter, see-saw
of the love-bird call

& the soft snow gives
under my boots, feels
a little too much like
my heart