I Gave All My Love

to a shoreline far up-island:

a black bear sleeps in the tall grass; 

a grey haired woman wears a leather coat

follows wolves into the trees. 

Lately I've seen the water rise 

and Pessoa standing in the ebb tide.

I want every name to be abandoned.

I want our ankles to crack under us.

I never saw the front of the shaman's

head who led us to the clearing:

Totem; pale body in the sunlight

paint once pollen all gone (thinned 

by rain in the April storms); A ghost 

is quietly at the end of the trail.

Weather, weather, all altruism aside

I grew older than you then died

and now I am here haunting you.

The front lawn was last cut 

by a neighbour, tired of looking at it.

The ceiling will cave in at the end

of the decade. By that time I will 

have forgotten how to settle dust 

by watching it fall. I will be shooting 

owls from the side of a logging road

lit up in high beams and moonlight.