Wild Roses on Corfu

for Dani

Among white morning-glories
these offer open palms,
a greeting I remember.
Their petals do not await my gesture,
but shake out gentle breezes from the air.

When I return to Alberta,
wild roses will again acknowledge
my perspiring face and arms;
but this time when my skin is cooled
I will remember the wild roses
on Corfu.

© Doug Elves

These poems appear in Love Song on the North Saskatchewan which is available from The Author, price $5.00

(e-poem)

Figure Skater

The blades of the figure skater
glide like gulls over sea swells:
low with a slow, rare wingbeat.

They turn in a wind of watching eyes,
then leap, cupping an updraft,
and leave behind the crowd's quick heartbeat.

© Doug Elves

(e-poem)

The Black Swans of Gorky Park

The black swans of Gorky Park seem still:
no ripples ring them.
Their feathers swallow sunlight,
letting fall no drop of green or blue reflection.
Their backs, piled high with folded wings,
are dark sails trimmed to billow:
were there motive, they would move.

Children sit nearby transfixed
or lie, chest to lawn and chin to palm,
vigilant for motion.

From the children's narrow vantage the water is a mirror,
buoying swans on inverted clouds, upended trees
and compatriots hanging headlong from the other shore.

Parents watch, but from their standing vantage
they perceive the water's depth:
to them the mystery of webbed feet
is only half obscured.

All are silent yet intent:
young ones prostrate with expectation;
old ones waiting, waiting;
and the black swans of Gorky Park floating,
their long, high necks curving into midnight question marks.

© Doug Elves

(e-poem)

First Glimpse of the Parthenon

Seen by chance from tenemented avenues
below the Acropolis rock,
this idea carved in marble springs to mind sparkling
in the sun.

It remains, surviving the closing of eyes
through a hundred generations,
is by now a template for the eyes,
yet still startles every glance.

French cathedrals lift like eagles from the ground.
Houses cantilevered over brooks
are as stately in suspension as the very words:
Frank Lloyd Wright.
But nothing is like this.

Here there are no banquet halls,
no ovens, beds, toilets,
not even waiting rooms.
To covet this promises no ease or status:
it is not property.

I clutch at greed
by refusing to pilfer here,
by agreeing not to pocket any fragment;
for my spectacular theft
is what I carry away
each time I close my eyes,
having seen the Parthenon
again for the very first time.

© Doug Elves