pemberton winter poems (a bit after the fact!)

my lust painted you with virtues,
i hoped to rub them from your skin
onto my skin.

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we cast our bodies and minds like nets into the great ocean of life because we are hungry for the fish of experience.

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in motion

dawn-time bus ride,
bumping and weaving out of the pemberton valley,
bleary-eyed commuters all face forward,
i sit sideways and joyously see the sky turn bright behind the mountains,
pink glaciers across a frozen lake,
and we're almost there,
i remember how i love to move,
to be moved.

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work on monday

how can i express the immediacy,
the directness,
the guilelessness of that moment?
stepping out the front door,
not so early, but it's late winter and so dawn is moving slow,
i'm walking with a straight back because it's fresh and not too cold,
the light is so soft that even the petrocan can be forgiven its ugliness,
this little town is still rocking in its mountain cradle
but the birds!
the birds fill this morning with the keenness of their desire,
desire for life,
desire to say yes to everything,
desire for its own sake and nothing more,
i love them for their ecstatic voices and their wings and their promises of spring,
and i envy them their hollow bones.