Barely annoying the woods,
his cabin like our woodpile
home now for chipmunks and birds,
isolated by the lily pads -
he eschewed all comfort.

The view barely cognizant,
the prospect of the Massasauga rattler
and an occasional broken tin
sharp at the edges
was like water's drift
audible, not yet seen.

Toying with the cove,
past island jetties
& blueberry groves
inside little giant's tomb;
this man became ingratiated with lake treasure,
his clearing a triumphant blast.
He affixed his mark -
blazoning human habitation
on a lonely spot.

[23]

Ticonderoga to Lake George,
the classic invasion route
up the Richelieu valley
past Plattsburg,
Verdun,
à Montréal
across the North Shore
reroute again

to savour Albany;
last of the trading posts east of Oswego
before New York
protective sanctuary
lodgings,
free from the scalping knife
barrens and
the horrors Fenimore Cooper described.

Apple crisp, fall damp the air
with an unbroken stretch of forest
and Adirondack mountains,
there, delicate slip
of fair womanhood
bliss, she lies, gentle as the finger lakes
clothed in autumn crimson.

[24]

Spring heralds the summer with lilacs perched from that door.

In snows, a swarm of bushes lie black and apparently
rootless as the town's iron-gate bridge collapses under the
centre part of the main road.

Little enclaves of activity pass as stores,
mere centrefolds across busy highway arteries this time
of year.

I am a grey fleck in my dark wool coat near the perimeter
of a winding fence.

The casual observer gives me half a chance to be seen in
the deathless white, opaque coloured moonstone so still
against the field's shores.

A plaster river, her sides inserted with isle-dotted chunks,
hands across a winter solstice tribal dance.

Ostensibly, I poke the land from stylized limbo,
a chalky substance disturbed with every movement's cough.

And if I were to fall, lie down, and cry,
the agonized winter's frantic sun
would bury me with shadows,
give forth dark branches to my freedom.
In the growing dark, I ponder white and infinity.
The hectic pace of the distant highway absorbs
less and less my hope.
In private cold, my face burns a tallow white,
toes flake in frostbite or erode every sensation.

Stars in the dark canopy above are cryptic mourners and
people frigid sorrow.

Black is my colour as I ebb steadily toward their heights.

By morning, when the first wisp of straw or dry leaf
catches light near this stringent fence, an occasional
passerby with the presence of mind shall comment how
lifeless fields are in the clutch of brittle snow.

[25]

The polar stars drip in blood . . .
Orion's mythical crystal white
with clarity of forest and
low expanse of sky;
wooden barques, incandescent,
row peals of silver light
sowing each slough of wave,
spider hues drip upon wetness
forlorn with tug and rein.

[27]

Did time on the Hegelian
spirit, Freudian id,
the totemic response to
the unknowable
where each phenomenon of nature
became dream time itself,
the electric crackle
of God's Voice-
movement from shadowy spectre to
tight-lipped showmanship
the learned empathy
of tires careening around
their throttled load.

[28]

A rail fence is more than that on a country dawn
moving by lots over hill & stone;
it barely pauses in the small of the field's lap,
then is caught in grey positioning as
light unfurls the sky.

All is a matter of perfect blistering -
dauber wasps are seen to heave the moistened wood
in chunks to mossy furrows, benign
in their firm embrace upon alabaster trees.
There, crusts of heavy nails, marked
like fortresses, droop in their rusty mail.
Mostly ants, in open canter, move
in as upon an urn & lance far more
than jagged wire the breath of stillest air.

[29]

I remember the world like a picture.
The habitat of trees and sense impressions,
the cover of leaves as fall spurred its way
thru corridors of plasma forest & sarsen stone.

Most of all, I saw illuminated clearly
the brash self poke of logic that came
massively when sunlight stirred, lilted
its early head erasing the world thru
sand crusts of colour.

The cabin floor, a cold dawn infinity,
was a chilblain on frosty morning shadows -
the old cupboards staring like flowers
through a break in the leaves
watched till the latches & hinges were worlds
in frozen power, dark rust as thoughts
meandering like age.

The stamped down clay, the well worn earthen crust
that met the door on opening showed
the erring calender all its interminable
days that waited, like madmen, to remind one of oceanic
time.

And, on wakening, the careless passage
of life across speckled windows saw a terrain of light -
tiny works in agility, the forest
looming bright as meridians
off ladders bristling with homuncular forms.
Door of caring, the gentle trail
left as a universe to announce
the brittle thrust and restive eves
of daytime shadow.

[30]

The leaves lie hidden as spades about their home.
Brief movement of a kitten, then silence
till the car's engine drones.
Close by, a pioneer cemetery sits near a secondary wood.

Queer is the effect of sun on a tinted roof;
bluebells with poppies,
cowslip and tiny