Water Fall
We rent a car, make for the highway
Yes, you can bring her with you.
I mask reality behind the wheel, smile
Unnatural to me as moose-clipped roads
I navigate the home of your vague relative
Silence broods space like a vacuum
Inhaling the conversations we planned.
I hear stifled voices drift the staircase
And your mother? Remember…?
Family blood, thick as glacial ice
Carrying conversation in Morse code
Your aunt or second cousin, no matter
Tea cups, whisky glasses offered
While I crash through the mosquito door.
We drive a map-work of reluctant roads
This is cousin Phil’s place.
I, a lone audience of back seat leather
Passing obstacle family homes, the dogs
Camera anticipation stumbles the side-door
We together are in throes of continental drift
My brain, a vibration of seismic activity.
Your face bends my picture sideways
Come, let’s take your photo.
We stumble down the rock-torn path
Down to the miner’s bridge, down again
Below the bridge on moss clung boulders
I yield my hands to the water-falling air
Trembling spread-eagled legs to wing fingertips.
The water speaks many secrets of many years
(Calling, they are calling)
I can no longer hear any other.
But a deeper voice clings about my rifting edges
A whispering under the bridge which takes my soul
Down this swollen river with a grace washed kiss
Carried on the rain-surge of a thousand winters.
Torrents climb my senses to the Richter scale.
We rent a car, make for the highway
Yes, you can bring her with you.
I mask reality behind the wheel, smile
Unnatural to me as moose-clipped roads
I navigate the home of your vague relative
Silence broods space like a vacuum
Inhaling the conversations we planned.
I hear stifled voices drift the staircase
And your mother? Remember…?
Family blood, thick as glacial ice
Carrying conversation in Morse code
Your aunt or second cousin, no matter
Tea cups, whisky glasses offered
While I crash through the mosquito door.
We drive a map-work of reluctant roads
This is cousin Phil’s place.
I, a lone audience of back seat leather
Passing obstacle family homes, the dogs
Camera anticipation stumbles the side-door
We together are in throes of continental drift
My brain, a vibration of seismic activity.
Your face bends my picture sideways
Come, let’s take your photo.
We stumble down the rock-torn path
Down to the miner’s bridge, down again
Below the bridge on moss clung boulders
I yield my hands to the water-falling air
Trembling spread-eagled legs to wing fingertips.
The water speaks many secrets of many years
(Calling, they are calling)
I can no longer hear any other.
But a deeper voice clings about my rifting edges
A whispering under the bridge which takes my soul
Down this swollen river with a grace washed kiss
Carried on the rain-surge of a thousand winters.
Torrents climb my senses to the Richter scale.