from Voice (1995), p. 10

 PRESENT TENSE

How young you are, he says to his grandmother
as he closes her eyes. He does it the proper
way, with his index fingers. The trick is to
shut both eyes at once so that no one can
tell which is first, which is last.

he imagines her playing in a small meadow
reserved for children and old horses, a
paddock where fleabane daisies come up to her
chin and northern gentians reach almost to
her knees. Some of the bells are blue some
the colour of wheat husks. And they never
really open, not quite.

But after all how ancient this woman is, how
withered the flower of her hair long gone to
Seed. It blows about in the ground wind like
fluff of dandelions, and her hands are
indelibly stained with their stem juice. (Five
times every summer, so the story goes,
dandelion seeds are blown about the world to
take root someplace they have never grown
before.)

As for her skeleton, so evident under the
pale leaf of the skin, it will darken, then
it will lighten and bleach to a yellowy
white. After that it will wait and wait under
the grass to be dug up and stared at and
measured and argued over. Perhaps it will
take many ages, but that’s what will happen
in the end.

Now it’s time to nail down the boards over
her bent body, over her spent old gopher
face.

Between blows of the hammer, the young man
murmurs what he remembers of the office O
bodice of earth, he chants softly, O apron of
sod, O kerchief of snow.

from The Word, The Voice, The Text (1990), p. 39

You Have a Switchblade

you have a switchblade
concealed in your forehead
at the flick of a thought
the flexible dagger is out
boring me between the eyes

I keep a knife behind my ear
and with its serrated edge
I trepan a coin of bone
from your temple
now we are at it
our brows locked together
an icy ache
glueing your eyes to mine

we tear them apart
with a scattering of eyelashes

mortally torn we two fall away from each other
our feet touching
our heads lying
in opposite directions

reprinted with permission.

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