3

Landmarks. One of them of course is beneath
the horizon, west or south, however you put it.

*

The mountains behind the North Shore. The Lions.

We see two rocks, & call them Lions,
the heads & manes bare in summer;
in winter the snow on their sides
suggests the whole bodies, couchant,

& we think of them like dogs – even like bears –
hold them blameless.

*

To see the sun through the murk of ideologies –
pollution over the city, flows from west to east –
is a haze indistinguishable from memory.

In the valley of the shadow of death –
& then it doesn’t seem like a valley –
it’s a street – in Britain a high street –
Fourth Avenue, on a height with a higher
hill to the west – a finger of the Arbutus Ridge –
& looking west to University Hill,
the sun at the equinoxes, spring & fall
sets due west (or close to it)
& dazzles the eye – in late afternoon –
cuts through the ideologies that say
I’m meant for something else – some fixity –
(reflection on reflection – in the windows
of Book Warehouse) –

go down with this sun the voice says,
as it sinks below the haze –

*

Mountain ash out the window – another form of life.
Then it disappears from these lines. This life.

*

Spider & fly. The spider runs so fast it makes you scared
it’s intelligent, but it’s just getting away. Fast. The fly
doesn’t quite circle, it buzzes in kind of rounded squares,
& it won’t go out the window because the air outside
is warm – keeps it in the room – with the spider.
Here they are both on the sill.

*

Landmarks. The mountains, the inlet, the trees.
The sun. The soul with their names. Seeks
to be entangled with them – oh, not the names,
the others – says she does, anima. But in truth –
no, in illusion, illusion upon illusion, transparent
like glass doors – plays a private game
with words – they’re her words – like a doll’s tea set –
she doesn’t want to be any part of the dollies.
She thinks she’s grown up.

She doesn’t want to be any part of the world.
Outside the playroom, outside the house.

When she admits that, the trees & the mountains
turn menacing. When she insists on that distance,
they recede – go along with the distance –
they become gestalt therapists, they only half-listen,
they say,
“It’s your story.”
When she relents
& flows out into them, they accept her, lighten up.
The tree, at least, moves in the wind. The mountain
is purple at the edge, where the sun hits it.

She wants to go to a Rest Home for Phenomena.

*

The big chestnut tree down the street
(2nd Ave. & Stephens),
the pavement strewn with glossy brown chestnuts –
It’s a commonplace
we’re out of touch – out of sync? – with –
with what I could imagine I’d be carried along with –
(sketchily) –
so I step over,
or around, each one, on my way to the 2 or 22,
to get to Cap College

*

The clock ticks – I don’t care about nature -
If I have only one happy moment & a kind of
sketch of the external – shape of being radiating
outward from this one of all others, now absent,
but they are the context, they are where the care is,
for them & for me – that I am – most of it let go –
the tree & the pavement & the rain noted, but
most of it not, then what is missing?