Open Water

Following on the Goose vortices

One well worn Golden Eagle

A trembling scythe wheeling

An uncertain approach broken off

Mallards not concerned Swans sleeping

The Goose make room but soon too

The wind brings wet snow down the sound

Crows surround the Eagle sitting soaking

Tail immersed watching looking

A riled and dirty Swan approaches

An impending rumble

Or Eagle remains nonplussed

The Swans mute can't call a bluff

The February Day

Each foot step is filled in

Snow pretending to be a flow

Fingers and toes

Frozen drifts accumulate interest

A rabbit and a cardinal know

on making ice

the air trapped between layers

oval and lenticular below jagged

crystalline minutes timing

a slow drain a liquid pulling

the glacier here is erratic

as the meter is wild

so too is the hand

on making ice

the ice is forming nicely

feet all a glide arms held up

high and wide and all smiles

right now a pebbled surface

sufficient for say curling

what is needed is a zambeaver

with a little hat and a big cigar

plying a smooth flat trail

in the cold one is prone to dream

out of the periphery of thorn trees 

floats down the overture 

pyoter ilyich tchaikovksy

what a name but then i remember

how he just ripped off that other

little lion wolfgang amadeus  mozart

who wrote the ball first 

divertimento nr ten f-dur 

kv two hundred fourty seven

and then I slip and slide 

and go back inside

find my seat by the fire

beans

Me?  Oh I'm just cooking beans.

Beans. Beans. Beans.

Isn't that what Plato said?  

Plato said Beans are the Key

To a Wonderful Life? 

No. Plato said I'm Just 

Cooking Beans

The scholars misinterpret

everything but the beans

 

cold starts

a peak festooned berm miniature cascades

and then the yard silent and bright

hard at first then into crumbles

spilling into shoes filling wetting socks

frigid feet fuss before the stove

holding the door for the fire

light needs to breathe to live

warmth doesn't have to wait 

before the glass seated heated

radiant beams feeling knees

on the back of south bay

the edges of the river recede in this wind

rocks bared like teeth the bite of an island

breathing in the aching cold

we lace up and take a face off

obscene and dirty mitts

the ice is cloud colooured

tapping sticks for somewhere to drown

eyes blind to the inevitable

skating til my lungs taste of blood

the flight

the disturbed vision of the owl searching for

a one branch among the pine trunks 

blue leaking sap stark black

the snow white the brown turned head

who sees me here all on my own

taking careful steps to the ice ledge

feeling the cold boiling each breath

one of us is mostly vapour

one of us neatly coalesced 

taking off taking time to find certainty

owl asleep

and another atom strikes me

in the eye and out the ear

into the night and as silent

a high ceiling sealed in cirrus signs

inviscid transparent a hasty blind

patterns fool with curves and lines

who is true and knows their mind

so well as an owl perched peers

down on an extent black waste mired

still would differentiate a mouse and deer

those recognized are admired

each a schema or constituent  

rising from an organ clear

set away in asleep would we

chop chop

breaking splinters between fingers

filaments ripped undefined grain

curliest oak straight cuts interrupt

a fine swing makes the steel sing

an atmosphere piled here in tumult

then neatly then reduced into thin air