IN
In Perth Ontario tonight the willows are drying
the new born pearl of the moon with their hair.
A small town in the dark is feeling smaller
in the enormity of the universe
that reveals its mystic intimacies
and then just as sublimely ignores it.
An East Indian family
is arranging the all night fluorescent lotus
of Mac’s Milk at four in the morning
the way I’ve seen ants
supervise the budding of white peonies.
Fuzzy’s ghost is scrutinizing
the sidewalk and parking lot
outside the Imperial Inn
looking for lost wallets
cash drugs earrings and watches.
He once amazed me before he died
with what he’d found after the bars close
and I could tell by the intelligence and passion
he infused into the search
and the revelation of how good he was at it
and how lucrative and lucid it was
to be a scavenger
that he was incorrigibly nocturnal
and this was his enlightenment path.
A long train whistle like a bawling calf
stuck in starmud down by the
where the loosestrife and goldenrod
fight it out over the wetlands
like complementary colours.
The smell of autumn stars on the wind.
The brittle petals of beer bottles smashed on Devil’s Rock.
I rejoice under my breath
in the bleakness of my solitude
as I make my way through the arsenal
of wooden pikes
and the masts of toppled birch
shipwrecked along the shores of the river
scouting out the best places to paint and stargaze
because it always makes me feel
one step closer to the absence of God.
Eyes gleam in the darkness
like arresting flavours of light.
Racoons muskrats and feral cats.
We have no business with each other
but we’re aware that the other’s there.
We freeze in a moment of mutual apprehension
and then get on with it.
The seeking and the need.
This emptiness that refuses to be full
in the midst of so much it could hunger for.
PATRICK WHITE
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