new moon

I want memories that germinate


I want
the caterpillar to stop eating the thick
leaf of the evening


I want to spread the shed years on us
as a mulch

longing:

a term for radical unwinding of the heart


in the dim unwritten folklore of the heart

sing to me softly


river has been running our forgotten dreams in one long
uncut movie

the only rule was not to know the rules
made elsewhere


ears tuned
to the heavy rumour of your future


now
you snag on my thought like a red kite
in a leafless tree

lapsing

blush by blush into my consciousness


echoes from that dreadful place, the blank page
that pool full of wonderful risk


we are not a simple people and we fear
the same simplicities we crave


this is a casting outward which
unwinds inside the chest

you must wait for wind


as though your poor heart hadn't enough to put up with, now it's exploded, like popcorn battering the lid with fluffy white fists


when you
say "you" with that inflection something stirs
inside the word, echo
infected with laugh

if it is
possible to translate poetry, then,
what isn't?


when the heart
turning the word "forever"
into plainsong
learns to purr


the agitated
hearts and hearticles of what
we cannot say there is at present

the interwoven deerpaths of desire


the small redundant phrases with which one voice
solaces another


is it the listening that loosens,
letting its knots go, or the voice,
sayng those great unsaying to itself until
ovation on the inside equals ovation out?

a time for this,
a time for that, a time to let them both escape into
whateverness, a time to cast
away stones, to stop
building and remembering and building artful
monuments upon the memories.
to leave.
to step off into darker darkness,
that no moon we call new.

Poetry excerpts from Don McKay ("Camber: Selected Poems")
Photography courtesy of TACF Youth Network Band & Co.