Baby, Ignored

The baby lies on the delivery slab, moments old.

White vernix paste marbles the infant's skin.

The stuff smells sweet, like holiday shortbread,

a trick up the wild sleeve of nature

to encourage mothers to lick their newborns clean.

But this mother has left the building.

She pushed the baby out without passion,

releasing it into the void of abandonment,

worth no more to her than the toileted regurgitation

of a drunken binge.

She would flush it, if she could.

Push the handle and watch a season of derision

swirl away and disappear.

People walk by like the baby is already dead.

The silence is oppressive.

Even the child knows better than to fuss.

It watches the funereal procession

of powerless people who honestly don't give a shit

waddle by with their eyes averted,

thinking of their thing, the big thing, 

the thing that will make their pockets fat

as the meconium pooling in their cranial cavities

strangles their reduced capacity for love

and their long-lost ability to believe.

In the face of such harrowing neglect

the baby pisses on itself and dies,

final hubris lost on those who clean up the mess.

Poetry in Algonquin: Thanksgiving 2011

Dark water and sunshine in the beaver meadow,
marsh grasses whistling on the October breeze.

Black woods, gnarled roots, dead things, smell of rot.
Brilliant youth, beloved and bright, dappled in sunshine and forever.
"Look at me! he shouts, his voice like music, and how can you not?

White pines, home of the beaver, Tom Thomson's ghost smiles from the pond,
mighty moose, somewhere, wandering at will.
"Boomdiddyahdah," in my head, on a loop, Girl Guides in a canoe,
skinny dipping, when it was still okay to be naked under a yellow moon.

"All the diamonds in this world
that mean anything to me,
Are conjured up by wind and sunlight
sparkling on the sea."
– Bruce Cockburn

Apple doll in the sunshine, heart light, happy.

Polka dot stepping stones for tiny creatures of the pond, bullfrogs croak their ballet.
"You're gonna drown, you're gonna drown, you're gonna drown," but the green frogs
connect the dots, slower now, slower still, their skin cold as death.

The leaves are almost done, hilltop maples are bare, only orange oak and True Grit poplars
paint Algonquin hills. Look close, though, bend down, and colour bursts from the earth.
David versus the Goliath of weather, wind and time.

Patriotism sings now, it's the distant hills that call out,
symphonies of splendour. Foolish pride swells my heart, a beer commercial on my tongue.
I. Am. Canadian.

John Wayne, Glen Campbell, Little Blackie, Little Sister, moving through the gold poplars.
It's my favourite part of that classic movie, it's my favourite part of this walk,
my men walk ahead, footsteps shifting in the sand.
I take the photo, I take a breath.
And hold.