Pattullo Bridge

Fire shuts Pattullo (Pa-tu'-lo) Bridge. Vancouver Sun headline.


For seventy years the Pattullo delivers cars
across the Fraser between Surrey and New Westminster.
Seventy years of bootleggers, fishermen, accountants,
and marine biologists expect the Pattullo.

Years of potholes, chipped paint, blizzards,
high water, ice and arctic winds,
and the Pattullo delivers cars and shelters drifters.
And when the Pattullo endures fire and smoke

it's abandoned by the bootleggers, fishermen,
accountants, and marine biologists.
Not a pedestrian with two kids and a dog,
not a bicycle, not a drifter saves it

from the flame, and the Skytrain delivers bootleggers
across the Fraser between Surrey and New Westminster.

No Credit

James writes in a dirt-floor
tribe's tongue, a lesser crowd
that doesn’t publish, he jumps
off a bridge, when dragged out

of the river there are no citations
by his name, no prestigious
journal credits, no stirring articles
in the academic press,

he's dead nonetheless.

Nothing to Say

A dog is barking into the night,
I'm inside rattling the keyboard. No moon,
no intruder, no reason, we both have nothing

to say. A neighbor goes out and howls
at the dog, later we come to our senses
and the moon intrudes on a quiet street.

Only the bat has something to say,
and he mutters just to himself,
like a poet on a quiet street.

Timing

It's bright and sunny outside,
but cold,
like some people I know.
Judy thinks she’s at war
but this army isn't interested,

we stare at a wrinkly scheme
until it shows its core.
It's a time of no new thinking,
life reduced to simple,
an old wheezing bull

under a 'crow' cap,
it’s time to leave
and I have the right of way.
A life is winding down,
the light goes out

and I am part of the dark,
and the only thing to show for it
is a gravestone in the woods.
It's hard to find sympathy
when you're looking for it,

no subtle messages
when a storm rolls in,
blowing dry snow,
cold wind's angry dance.
It's like putting up an outhouse

and expecting people to find it,
looking for passion
but there's only obscenity,
timing has a lot to do
with the outcome.

Bottle Beach

A reluctant sun rises to an early fog,
in a few hours a high tide will push
shorebirds up on Bottle Beach, there'll be plover

and dowitcher, and with any luck a few curlew.
I pull on birding clothes and take the path
to the beach but the footbridge is washed out,

split timbers lie in the muck,
a feeding-flock mocks the crossing,
flies across and settles in the brush.

I mull over my thwarted plan, the scheme
slowly dissipates and nothing takes its place,
my thinker doesn't adjust, it's an early fog,

without a footbridge I'm no birder.
I take my birding clothes to the noodle shop,
like a reclusive thrush I find shadows

in the back, think the plover's plaintive whistle,
and lament my dwindling purpose.

Limits

I imagine that he in the tribe
sees a goose, catches it
and gives it to she in the tribe,
and they make babies,

and their passion honors the goose
ceremony that keeps the tribe,
and that is the limit.
In my tribe I see a goose

and compare it to other geese,
other species of geese,
the concept of species, jays,
wrens, woodpeckers, hummingbirds,

I explain this to she in the tribe,
and we make babies,
at least we go through the motions,
and we go through the emotions.

Caspian Tern

A bright spring pushes
against winter's residue,
on a rocky shore
a foot is tethered by fishing line.

A flood tide slides up the beach
like a snake looking for a sunny rock.
The flood washes sand
into a wing-full of feathers, washes over

an upturned eye, into a gaping beak.
Ebb tide stretches the fishing line out,
wedges a wing-full of feathers
between kelpy rocks.

Neighbor Dog

Each day the shifty neighbor dog waits,
I walk the mailbox, he bounds, wags his tail
like loose sheet metal in a wind storm,
then snarls and lunges against the fence.

Each day shifty shows his small mind
is never twisty, he always thinks the same,
always happy to show I'm odious.
I go back to tea and shifty barks

repulsive pulsive pulsive, the neighbors agree,
voices banging like sheet metal in a wind storm.

Flying

Sanderling skitter along the beach,
marine air is heavy with fermenting
kelp, thudding surf, a caspian tern's
craggy call. I turn my back

on ocean dust and drive a twisty road
to mountains where air thins and brittles,
varied thrush trills pierce
the doug-fir. I steer through a storm

that smells of heavy snow and down
the other side to sage and juniper,
and a crease straight gravel road
through twisty food and dusty wit,

and that's why I don't enjoy flying
like tuna in a can.

Hawk

Peter sips dark coffee
at a sidewalk table in the market,
watches bargain hunters flock around

the produce stands and fish mongers,
pecking at green beans like dowitchers

sorting the mud, pulling at dead fish
like black crows. Down the beach
a peregrine perches on remains

of a rotted piling, a ten-foot
tide is sliding in fast,

only a few patches of mud
are left open between log booms,
peregrine watches them like a hawk.