Read No Ordinary Waters: Canoe Poems from a Strange Mind Page 1


No Ordinary Waters:

  Canoe Poems from a Strange Mind

  By Lenny Everson

  rev 1

  For Dianne, my paddle-partner

  Copyright Lenny Everson 2011

  This free ebook may be copied, distributed, reposted, reprinted and shared, provided it appears in its entirety without alteration, and the reader is not charged to access it.

  Cover picture by Dianne Everson

  ****

  Chapter 1

  Strange Craft Observed

  They came, it is said, in finely-made craft

  To the old stone circle, the old place

  Witnesses said they seemed to conform to the standard

  Body type of such aliens.

  It was broad daylight.

  That, too seems to be a common factor in these visits.

  As was their custom they made noise continuously,

  While some walked in circles.

  Bluejay assumed they were marking territory

  But this seems unlikely, now, as does the theory

  About mating dances.

  Mostly, they ate packaged alien food - they seem unable

  To process local foods, except berries and fish.

  (Squirrel is grateful for that.)

  Witnesses say they dismembered and ate four fish.

  Oddly, they kept only the

  Muscle tissue

  Using a fire to partially digest it

  Before eating it.

  We are told they departed as they came,

  Noisy beings in silent craft

  Leaving only trampled grasses and

  A lingering odor of strangeness.

  ****

  Cosmic Shoes

  Lower your hood

  Search the skies

  For intent

  And old brown eyes

  Moses wandered

  Goats, tents

  Without the eyes

  What made sense?

  Unless it's true

  Someone sees

  Why the birds

  And fallen trees?

  Morning campsite

  Tents, canoes

  Clouds are dust

  From cosmic shoes

  ****

  Chapter 2

  Canoes Like Rocks

  The first thing you need to know about canoes is they like rocks

  I mean it. They like rocks.

  Sharp ridges, blunt stones, dirty-rotten sub-surface sunkers, drop-dead cliffsides and coldgreen granite blocks

  They like rocks

  Canoes can’t be trusted except well away from the bumps and grinds

  That’s why you bring a paddle

  The stupid things make a beelined deadeyed path to any rock it finds

  A shallow river is a nonstop thousandstroke battle

  You can never let them run, drift, or skitter along

  A moment-by-moment need is the gentle persuasion of a pry or a reach

  You must understand this. Maybe they have itchy backsides;

  A canoe can find the only rock on a five-mile sand beach

  Like whales to the shore, men to their myths, ivy to the elm

  They’re pilgrims to the nearest attainable knocks

  In an eddy they challenge your rights to the helm

  Canoes

  like

  rocks

  ****

  The Canoe is a Dark Form by the Shore

  My bones chill

  At evening dark

  As shadows crawl

  Across the park

  Darkness brings

  New rules, laws

  Enforced by stealth

  And ivory claws

  In the night's

  Endless deep

  We hide by fire

  And escape in sleep

  But in the tent

  We shift, in dream

  Half aware

  Of a primal scream

  ****

  Chapter 3

  Dust

  The magic days are over

  Our gypsy tents are gone

  Campsite and misty lakes

  Are silent in the dawn

  All friends of mine are gone to sleep

  Or lost in distant dreams

  The world is not, it never was

  More than what it seems

  The magic days are over

  The firepits lined with rust

  And questions asked when I was born

  Are answered, now, with dust.

  ****

  Against the Fall of Night

  The measured heart

  Of the planet beats

  Time is a tide

  That never retreats

  On Buzzard Lake

  In the curling noon

  The world turns

  Too late, too soon

  I am a son

  Of the very last day

  Carefully I threw

  It all away

  You, a daughter

  Of worn brown rock

  Casually drowning

  Grandfather clock

  The lake is shameless

  In wind and light

  We paddle against

  The fall of night

  ****

  Chapter 4

  Dandelion

  On favored ground, the aspens grow

  Strangling out the weeds below

  The exist, or die, as best they can

  Without the benefit of plan

  Seeds from dandelion blow

  Caught by fickle winds, I know

  But I choose my place to spend the night

  Logic shows which ground is right

  I’m on my way to Triangle Lake

  Well aware of the route I take

  I’ve counted every gram and can

  For I - well - I’m a thorough man

  Oh, I think, when I’ve done my route

  If someone were to puzzle it out

  This September excursion would seem, at best

  Another seed, not yet at rest

  ****

  I am Darkness, Passing By

  Life is full of rocks,

  And paddling for truth, I

  For I have loved water more

  Than hard-packed road

  And every river takes

  Me closer to a destination

  I cannot name

  Bays more than parking lots

  And rivers more than trees

  There is not in this world a thing

  More nearly alive than water

  The river is a wind

  Thick and full of bassbirds

  Cruising slowly

  In this atmosphere

  I am a dark cloud

  To the fish

  ****

  Chapter 5

  Sparks Like Stars in the Night

  From space, you’d see the ragged line of dusk

  Sweep Pacific islands into dark

  And in the midnight blackness, too small to see

  My campfire makes a tiny, warming spark

  The flame leaps up, blinding me a bit

  The trees grown still, the branches silhouette

  The canopy of slowly turning stars

  And catch the moon within a sliding net

  The dawn’s over Africa, still hours away

  Beyond the beached canoe, two loons complain

  They pause to let Andromeda clear the hill

  And carelessly disturb the velvet lake again

  This September night, below the speckled dark

  Of seas of stars and endless deeps of sky

  I poke the fire and listen to the lake
r />
  And sparks drift upward, and galaxies slide by

  ****

  Had Jesus Canoed

  Had Jesus canoed

  This northern lake

  What strange routes

  Would history take

  Had he owned

  A red canoe

  Every pope

  Would have one, too

  Paddling pilgrims

  Would come to gawk

  At Michelangelo's God

  Painted on rock

  Cathedral walls

  Would be green, and sway

  With sunlight blessing

  All who pray

  ****

  Chapter 6

  My River

  All that I have ever done

  Is lost in endless river run

  And all that I would ever be

  Moves, stubbornly, to the sea

  When I’ve had too much of if and when

  And the nattering of people who ought to know

  I look for the peace of turn and flow

  And move with the river, my river, again

  When too many choices surround my brain

  Touching the currents redeems my mind

  Straightens my kinks where the smooth waters wind

  And I launch a canoe on my river again

  I gather treasures from the old canoe

  Some well-known shores, one favorite tree

  So the river becomes a part of me

  But I am part of this river, too

  All that I have ever done

  Is lost in endless river run

  All that I would ever be

  Is part of my river’s mystery

  ****

  Some Weekends

  Perhaps the snaking bowline

  Slithered off the docks

  Perhaps the Sunday morning

  Was plagued with slippery rocks

  The camera decided

  To photograph the fishes

  They celebrated the arrival

  Of all our sooty dishes

  Now the growing thunderheads

  Turned the waters dim

  Two camped-out blots of fly-food

  Learned again to swim

  Finally came catastrophe

  In the tumbling of the sky

  With the rolling blackness

  Mama nature whispered, "Goodbye!"

  ****

  Chapter 7

  Forgive Me

  Forgive me, I was born

  Where cries of loon are torn

  From the dark heart of the lakes

  Onshore, crows fly black

  Calling for sacrifices, but I lack

  The certainty that data makes

  Forgive me, I have been

  Only what I seemed

  Hell-bent

  In a dew-wet tent

  I've let out howls

  That shook the owls

  When they found out what I meant

  Pour coffee on the ground

  Pull the canoe around

  Stir the ashes into dust

  I do what I must

  Forgive me, for I am I

  ****

  Surely I Am No Ordinary Man

  These are no ordinary waters,

  They are wild, they all

  Shelter fish

  These are no ordinary rivers, underneath

  Are mysteries of bass, wisdoms of carp

  And lots of places to hide

  These are no ordinary lakes, inside

  Such boundaries are ebbs and flows

  Of smell and pulse and cold, cold deeps

  These are no ordinary creeks

  Every one dances with life and never

  Is the same ten feet downstream

  These are no ordinary waters, look

  Deep into any and when the movement slows

  I see

  Me

  ****

  Chapter 8

  When the Ripples Settle

  Why this day

  And where has it gone

  When the ripples settle

  And the moon comes over

  The hogback hill?

  Why a blue canoe

  Scattering brown carp in a small river

  Small as the vein

  The prodigal sun

  Burning overhead

  My hand cold with water

  Running down the paddle

  And why is the marsh

  Empty of redwings

  The woven nests

  Swaying

  In the wind

  From the north

  The river goes clear in fall

  Goldenrod goldenroad the hills

  Rolls of hay freckle the fields

  Why this day

  And where has it gone

  When the ripples settle

  And the moon comes over

  The hogback hill?

  ****

  When They Ask

  When they ask, “Did he truly live?”

  Say I canoed rivers

  To the edge of my dreams

  Say I knew what the morning was

  The light through the woods

  The dew heavy on the tent

  Say I came to each river bend

  With anticipation

  Almost greed

  Someday, when they ask, “Did he truly live?”

  Say, “There were a few rivers

  A few routes in June

  That made his life a poem.”

  ****

  Chapter 9

  Where Pines Touch The Stars

  On the ridges, the old pines are touching the stars

  Sifting the galaxies, tickling Mars

  Long after fire-out, at the edge of the lake

  I watch the path their silhouettes take

  Late at night, the small talk grows thin

  The campfire is doused, and the dark washes in

  I find a sheltered place down by the shore

  To watch the old pines scrape the cosmos once more

  Down here, in new forest, in the slow growth of wood

  Our tents crowd where the shanties once stood

  In the change of the seasons, in the movement of sky

  The old pines watch the decades slide by

  The waves slap steadily on the island’s rock

  The tents are full of shuffling and talk

  The canoes are mounds of silence and dark

  An owl hoots softly, somewhere in the park

  Long after fire-out, at the edge of the lake

  My eyes trace the lines that silhouettes make

  Sifting the galaxies, tickling Mars

  After midnight, out here, where pines touch the stars.

  ****

  Eulogy

  My last weekend is over

  My last campfire is cold

  But spared, a least, a few portages

  On the trail of growing old

  Sometime when the canoes are beached

  And shadows walk the lake

  Remember me for the life I lived

  The routes I chose to take

  I was born to run those rivers

  That turned towards my dreams

  Too often forcing passage down

  Narrow, log-blocked streams

  In a land where rivers run

  Toward the far-off sea

  I found love and shared a passage

  With some who cared for me

  Stir the campfire proudly

  Beside the rocky shore

  Remember a man who loved the waters

  A poet who is no more

  Recite, perhaps a line or two

  Against the falling dark

  Make them a part of the winds of night

  Like each dancing, fading spark

  My maps are packed away, now

  The canoes, still and dry

  Oh, keep this world beautiful

  For travelers such as I.

  *** END ***

  If you r
eally like any specific lines, let me know.

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