My Last Ten Poems as a Single Poem

the poem is greater than the sum of its parts

My apologies for the repetition, but I’d like to present my last ten poems one last time as a single poem-in-ten-parts, for everyone … because, I think it gains significantly when read in a single go and I hope more of you will give that a try. Taken as a set, I believe it is among my best work to date (despite the usual deficiencies).

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How to Move to Canada

1.
The family of all things,
as Mary Oliver put it,
is where we struggle to find our place.
When I think of my father's love
and the legacy of love he left,
I see myself standing there.

Then I think of my mother
and her grief in the wake of him
disappearing across the distant
horizon where the river
empties itself into the ocean
and the sun sets for us all.

But then I think of this dawn,
this sunrise on the river where
I stand among the wild geese and ducks
who seem to acknowledge my place
in a new way this morning, moving
around me with ancient love

and welcoming me even
as they send me on my way to
where every movement is a standing
still in the family of things
and where I will claim my proper place
to give love and receive it.


2. 
Sunrise separates the night
from the day. And on this day
I'm driving away from the gray
with lightning and hail at my
back and the music of
the mysterious mountains

before me, the imprint of
the constantly changing dance
of light and dark and meaning and
chaos playing out like a
piano scroll made of 
dark pavement and painted lines

and rumble strips keeping me
in line. I repent of my
too harsh judgments of friends and loved
ones in this election year
even as I turn my
back on them to drive away.

I wish them well as I hold
my lover's hand and smile at
the golden glowing horizon
calmly racing towards me 
at the speed of music,
changing, changing, changing, changed.


3.
Sunrise off the interstate
syncopates our Montana
sojourn waking up in Billings
to the music of regrets
merging into a melody
of love’s momentous consolation 

in the family of things, 
in shared memories and plans,
in the motel breakfast buffet,
in the foibles of friendship
and the knowing what not to say
when politics and friendship collide.

At the Wyoming state line
meadowlarks begin to sing
in earnest with cricket chorus,
and the smell of wild flowers —
despite horrific history —
triggers a beatific vision

of yin and yang united
like the rolling hills and sky 
carrying us past Sheridan
through a landscape rife with ghosts
to get the car washed in Gillette
on the way to the Devils Tower.


4.
From Devils Tower in Wyoming
to the Black Hills of South Dakota,
arriving on the set
of the old west Deadwood
and tracing the footsteps of Wild Bill
and Seth Bullock to await the dawn

over the presidential district,
we walk the gulch and gawk at fellow
gawkers hearkening back
to the 1800s
and keenly felt in the inner truth
of the present madness afflicting

these United States and all of us
teetering on the edges of our
own souls' devils' towers'
pinacles where flowers
grow unseen and from where we rappel
back down assisted by the frayed ropes

of a broken-down democracy,
hoping that in the sunrise of love
we might find our way past
Mount Rushmore and on to
Birchbark Books in Minneapolis
where stories, poems, and truth reside.


5.
Four Future Afterthoughts Foretold from the Past

   1. Nourishment
Out in front of Birchbark Books,
my beloved and I having
driven across from Seattle —
a literary pilgrimage —
we press pause on The Night Watchman
and pay homage to Louise.

   2. Treading Carefully
At nearby Kenwood Park, we walk
past a playground noisy with girls
and tread carefully around
dangers left by bad dog owners,
everyone observing Juneteenth
calmly despite blue jays screeching.

   3. Careful Affection
We find a picnic table —
a solid symbol of the
solidity of our marriage —
and sit a while, I writing,
she reading yet another book
while stretching her good and bad leg.

   4. Attention to Detail
Slowly and steadily we go
back to the car to resume our
journey toward Montreal
where we will unpack my things
with care in a couple of days
and turn the page of a new book.


6.
The Sleepy Hollow Motel,
between the thumb and forefinger
of westernmost Gitche Gumee,
is where my love and I lie
in the innocence of love
and the guilt of humankind.

We’ve dined on peanut butter
and bread and the last few ounces 
of the Monkey’s Shoulder we brought
with us from Washington State
(a gift from a Spokane friend,
now transformed to emptiness).

And now, after making love,
we sink into the innocence
of sleep, with thoughts of Bob Dylan’s
childhood home in the hills of
old Duluth, regretting not
visiting the typewriters

of the Hunker Bunker and
Mr and Mrs Peterson 
on the other side of the bridge.
We wish them well and travel
on in innocence and guilt
to seek the next horizon.


7.
The border guards raised their eyebrows
at the amount of stuff we were
hauling into Canada
from the land of the insane
to the south. So we had to
get out and make an accounting.

A friendly interrogation
ensued, since the mutual love
between our two lands persists
despite ongoing questions
about obliviousness
and drunken driving of the ship

of state. My love and I answered
their questions satisfactorily
and continued on our way
persisting in our own love
mutually arrived at
years ago and now reaching a

turning point of stability
between north and south, the compass
of mutual attraction
ceasing to spin as madly
now as in the past, but still
pointing us to one another.


8.
How to Move to Canada
is the title of a book
snagged from a Free Little Library
and packed up with the thousand things
jammed into my ailing Highlander
and squeezed through the needle's eye

of Sault Ste. Marie, mon amour
in the passenger seat and
navigating along the northern
shore of Lake Huron through Sturgeon
Falls, with a stop for lunch and to see 
her lovely tante et oncle.

I am neither a rich man
nor a camel, but I do
have a heart full of love and many
bright ideas floating in my head,
not to mention an advanced degree
or two and a fairly clean

criminal record and bill
of health to help make my case,
gently and humbly, to the office 
of immigration as the sun
rises at its northernmost point on
the Montreal horizon.


9.
"Decrease combined with sincerity"
is what this morning's I Ching reading
suggests I meditate upon.
Canada the mountain above,
America the lake below,
Myself the evaporation of

liquid water into drifting clouds
heavy with the bounty of the rain
to be transubstantiated
into the gifts of grapes and wine
and, flowing with the river, love
pouring into the simplicity

of the vast and mysterious sea.
Not hesitating to help when help
is needed — but with sensitive
awareness — is an element
of this release of assertion.
But to do so with one's dignity

preserved — a stranger in a strange land —
is also paramount when one's home
is no longer separate but joined
at the culmination of a 
long journey together that ends
precisely at a new beginning.


10.
Four Past Foretellings Retrieved from the Future

   1. Innocence (The Unexpected)
At each turning of the road
we catch glimpses of these future
memories of the passing past
filled with wonder and surprise
at the one shining moment
that encompasses us all.

   2. Influence (Wooing)
The persistence of influence —
your wooing of me, my wooing
of you — is our journey to
the vanishing point of love,
the inner summer solstice
of our being with each other.

   3. Decrease
A vision at the border
arises from the one side
meeting with the other like
a match striking and decreasing
itself in a sparkling flare,
dying only to increase.

   4. The Receptive
Nature in contrast to spirit,
darkness in contrast to the light,
gentleness in contrast to force —
not in opposition but joined
in the eternal song and dance
that has brought us to this moment.

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