Birds, Metals, Stones and Rain. Russell Thornton

the oldest place

      we have named. The song it sings is learning

      itself, beginning and ending with Earth.

      More names than we can know are rushing through,

      and within the names the rock is opening.

      Burrard Inlet Ships

      At a window overlooking water—container ships

      and bulk carrier ships lying at anchor

      framed in front of us. They’re always there,

      I hear a voice say. As if the ships were the same ships

      that sat there twenty-four or forty-eight hours ago.

      As if, in the middle of the night, the ships did not

      arrive and drop anchor at exact latitudes and longitudes.

      And tugboats did not come and bring the ships to dock,

      and other ships not arrive and take the first ships’ places—

      in the middle of the night. As if the ships were not

      emptied of what they brought here and loaded up again

      while the ships’ sailors took their hours’ shore leave

      to go to a bank, visit a doctor, talk with a priest,

      buy a blouse or bracelet for a woman back home.

      As if, between sundown and dawn, the ships did not depart.

      And every two or three days, a new ship and new crew

      did not sit at each terminal wharf. As if it was not

      now a new ship visible outside the window.

      All night, out on the water, the ships’ horns send out

      sound signals for their arrivals and departures,

      and all night, in inlet-filling fog, the ships’ horns

      send out long blasts, long repeating notes—accompaniment

      to the circuit of sleep in the houses along the shore.

      New ships and crews come, new products are brought

      from faraway locales, and new loads of coal, sulphur,

      lumber and wheat are taken to faraway locales.

      All night, when gulls come up from the inlet

      through cloud and rain, gull after gull takes up

      the same insane-sounding cry of unfathomable

      emergency in a wilderness of water, and circles with the same

      single message that seems wound and unwound

      as on a wire anchored somewhere unknown to any gull

      in the inlet circling and circling through its tides.

      All night, the outsized ships come and go—all night.

      As if they were not, each of them, the same ship powering

      over the glowing deep blue water-globe. As if the voice

      at this window had not been with me all along,

      waiting inside my hearing. As if it was not

      the voice of one more myself than I can know.

      As if this one’s home had not always been here

      where he could see an anchor-place and hear gulls.

      Nest of the Swan’s Bones

      She will build a nest of the swan’s bones...

       —Robinson Jeffers, “Shiva”

      High in the blue air above the dumpster in the back lane,

      between the mountains and the tidal flats,

      on the thermals and updrafts a summer hawk does slow turns.

      The crows pick at the waste on the asphalt.

      The men push jingling shopping carts. Or stand and mimic life

      in a prison yard. The wild white swan is dead. Where I caught

      trout as a child, no trout swim now. The drives

      and crescents gouge ravines, make creeks disappear. Where wild

      baby fish run, they run the gauntlet of penned fish. They are eaten alive,

      their eyes popping out as sea lice feed inside their heads.

      The hawk dances. Circles, dances. Its shadow flits

      unnoticed across men, spreads over a rodent or bird

      it dives to, inserts claws into, and clamps large feet on, stomping it

      as if beating time. It splays flesh and flies

      away with it into sunlight. The hawk takes up an owl’s hoot

      and a sparrow’s last chirp, a heron’s bill-snap and a smelt’s silence

      into its disinterested scream. The swan

      glides in beauty in the hawk’s sight, and fills all the hawk sees

      with brilliant, blinding whiteness. Moment by moment,

      the men go back and forth. They search out anything they can trade

      for a full bottle or syringe or pipe. In my room with the lit-up screen,

      I lie and dream my dream. I feel it must also be God’s,

      this dream of the person of persons. Where the dream comes through,

      it punctures me, and I breathe dark air. The air thuds

      into pockets like a plummeted elevator. O monster home. O

      specialty wine outlet. O auto mall. The wild white swan

      is dead. The hawk hunts and kills the swan for love. It will build a new

      nest of the swan’s bones. It will keep this nest unseen.

      I am a person. I soil the cage in which my heart flings

      and flings itself against the bars. I try to own

      the view of every murderer, and yet I try to sing

      the way out through the hawk’s claw-holes to the repose

      in the nest of fire at the tip of the hawk’s wing.

      The Man Who Sleeps in Cemeteries

      Refuse recyclable paper yard-bags. Refuse gloves.

      Collect yard trimmings the way you know how—

      I’ll do likewise. My friend, don’t hurt your head.

      Afternoons, slide down the avenue. At every intersection,

      karate kick crosswalk buttons. Show up mornings

      a very macho character, a little threatening. Show up

      fawning, a little flirtatious. Talking religion, bitches.

      Going on about your lady—in the mirror, lipsticked.

      Gang boy in Colombia. Gang man. You left that life.

      Yes, they found you in Miami. They killed your wife,

      your two kids, they threw you off a balcony. Now lay

      down your head. With strands of yourself off in the trees,

      running quiet and clear in the quick creek water.