of cold passion.

Starry night. With halos
about the moon, pale and languid, big as crimson,
far as wind driven flax.

The orange pallor, pale
with liquid swoon and ability
to churn itself about the
night sky or flood in endless
beams our poorer spectacle below.
19, 20

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FOR TOM THOMSON

I have thrust my fists
up to ice in the
galactic mire of lake,
lured my minnow wriggler
eyes as bait to ensnare
inroads, lake bed wreaths,
across the windchill spine of
brooding heart.

I am on the essence of the North
where latitudes of cold spontaneity
remind me the nameless lakes
part not easily with their secrets.

A man's bones go easily to rot
in the frigid perspiration
called primeval ooze,
precambrian sweat,
the tertiary stage syphilitic crawl
of advancing ice.

All those terms your detractors, analyzers,
devotees coin to define you: the Boreal,
taiga, subarctic steppes, white hell,
recoil under the onslaught, the lustrate message straining
up alkaline clear.

Water is your blood.
A vast hoarding, most of this
planet's fresh drink
is flushed through your
bowels, with kidneys
separating the renic
qualities as snow and
sleet, the night side of
your character.

Tom, son of Thomson fame,
his little canoe immeshed
as scrubbed floorboards now,
a giant winnowing such scattered
firewood over a slow crop of
putrefying muck; perhaps
I see your eyes
as sturdy bubbles
popping from legions
of green liquid
to carouse with your
firm memory.
21, 22

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THE WOODSMAN

Barely annoying the woods,
his cabin like our woodpile
home now for chipmunks and birds,
isolated by the lily pads -
he eschewed all comfort.

The view barely cognizant,
the prospect of the Massasauga rattler
and an occasional broken tin
sharp at the edges
was like water's drift
audible, not yet seen.

Toying with the cove,
past island jetties
& blueberry groves
inside little giant's tomb;
this man became ingratiated with lake treasure,
his clearing a triumphant blast.
He affixed his mark -
blazoning human habitation
on a lonely spot.
23

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EAST OF OSWEGO

Ticonderoga to La