campfire notebook.

On the table, messy tangle
of threads that cannot be read –  
you took the decoder book,
left us with three pounds of mush
the colour of canned mushrooms
on gleaming stainless steel.
I feel I should kneel
at this altar of altered state;
this afternoon, your final oratory.
What stories will you share here?
I strain to hear yarns whispered:
You loved the first steps in a fresh snow.
Your eyes creased like ginger crinkles
when you saw your grandchildren. 
You once changed a tire in rain
and it changed your life – your wife,
your partner in kitchen waltzes 
when that song came on the radio. 
The one who gave us this gift
of your final conversation today. 
I pause and listen, before 
I sever threads of your sweater.

cloud fibres carded,
stretched over sky blue canvas –
the colour of jeans, bleached
from the haze of a 1989 summer day.
those were the days, weren’t they?

those were the days that go the way
only delicious dreams can dissolve on waking.
no – like how candy crystals soften 
to stain lips grape,
to match cherry shoulders,
and the blueberry stars bursting 
from our sugar sack pants. 
the “extra fine” cotton 
(gifted, from a dad’s punishing days on the docks 
shoveling sweetener under the shimmering molten heat)
now renewed into uniforms 
fit for those precious few weeks 
that spool with possibility between school years. 

we became tie-dyed-in-the-wool explorers,
building new empires in crushed rock and mud, 
bartering at the pop shoppe for more sweets to quench our neon thirst 
that remained unslaked by water from the hose 
or single fans spreading stale air around your bedroom.

and now?
I look up to white streaks on denim and yearn to see castles to conquer again.
I close my eyes to conjure you through the humid reverie.
but it’s like we’re wrapped in waxed paper; 
there are barely shapes that suggest 
a smile, 
a smear of popsicle,
a silhouette of sugar pants
worn until they were cirrus clouds.

those were the days.

Knitted toque pulled close,
she shoves her hands deep
into the pockets of her coat;
buried like bulbs put to sleep.

Outside is still an underpainting:
roughed-in rectangles and off-white streaks,
The intent is there, but details are lacking –
at least, for a few more weeks.

She lets out a breath, more gust than breezy,
that she didn’t know she was holding.
Saying goodbye was never easy,
even when she knew it was coming.

Another data point for the regression line:
eager to wolf soil of essential food, 
the polished beast stalks from the sunshine.   

“He used to plant these by the pine,” 
she sighed, spying the fresh cut lupins, bedewed.
Another data point for the regression line.

Violet and rouge burst forth from tender spine – 
but while she smiles, it has shifted the mood. 
The polished beast stalks from the sunshine.  

Most of her stories seemed benign – 
only shares flashes before they are skewed. 
Another data point for the regression line.   

Or how he smiled, baring incisor, canine,
while fair blooms embed in new soil – never subdued.
The polished beast stalks from the sunshine. 

Each time since I spy their colour along the coastline, 
I pause; her fear has found new dirt to intrude. 
The polished beast stalks from the sunshine:
another data point for the regression line

a
spark
that spreads: 
a wildfire grazes;
gentle licks of light, unchecked.
fingers of flame that caress their tender necks –
and frozen in place, they try to oblige the first blushes of blaze:“They just want to warm you up – guard you from future chills” – but their love’s too much, so the only option is to drown.