A Woman Clothed in Words Read Online Free

dust clings to the mesh
    those scales are dust
    that nacred your wings
    •
    at daybreak I think I hear you fall
    you must be clinging hollow and light
    to the flowering shrubrose
    that grows beneath my window
    •
    I turn the latch
    stretch out my head
    through the open sash
    •
    my sons call up to me from the garden
    •
    they have seen you dead
    in a cat’s claws

Untitled (in memory of my father)
    this is a cold city some
    weeks away from spring
    there is a foot of packed
    snow glazing our streets
    and gardens rotting ice
    burns blue and grey
    into the bright air
    within the house the day
    is held up by wires and
    double glass
    •
    when summer comes
    I will lie on the earth and think
    of you pulling hollow stems
    sweet to the taste
    and broad green blades
    which, as you would say,
    are only fit for whistling
    •
    indoors
    I am stretched on the rug
    touching its wiry threads as
    one touches a field of grass
    and down between nimbi of
    harsh fluff I push my fingers
    disturbing in the dust
    a world of strange creatures
    smaller than needle pricks
    there they rage mating
    and devouring – tearing at each other
    in the powdery and glossy dark
    •
    I tell you there are cities within cities
    each one with its closed room
    where a giantess, a daughter
    of yours, lies weeping and mourning
    breasting with her weight
    a curious and bloody kingdom
    •
    but Father, in that other country
    where there are no great bears
    or wolves, I know myself as
    an innocent fox sporting with cubs
    in a meadow of weed flowers
    and shaded by the wide and leafing tree
    that certainly grew from your sinews
    from the strong roots of your hair

Another Poem About My Father
    last year I had this recurring dream
    I dreamt it seven times
    •
    then my father died
    •
    in the dream I had a phone call
    from the CPR express office
    to please come down and pick
    up a package I don’t know
    what the hurry was when
    I arrived I had to stand
    on the platform waiting for the train
    for what seemed hours
    at last it slowly drew into Saskatoon
    the square baggage car opened
    and there was the freight – my father
    asleep in his old plush chair
    •
    his thatch of hair
    tousled like badly bundled reeds
    he puffed and grunted a little
    in his sleep, he wore
    his frayed tweed jacket
    its lapels
    snowed with the usual cigar ash
    •
    I could not speak
    put out my hand
    to brush away the whitish flakes
    and burned my finger
    on a glowing spark

    ~~~

    when I was seven I asked him
    whether the living
    could send letters upward
    to the dead
    “you are thinking of kites”
    he said
    “bird kites or paper kites?”
    I enquired watching a hawk
    in the sky, thinking of the
    correspondence I had lately started
    with my uncle Thomas who
    admitted to being “a grand
    old man of 43” and who therefore
    could not be long for this world
    •
    my father’s eyes followed mine
    to the bird spiralling upwards
    in the rainy heavens

Untitled
    the year I was twelve
    two archeologist friends of my mother
    (how thin and enthusiastic they were)
    came with spades and trowels
    and dug near the great oak
    at the corner of the paddock
    where a small spring rose
    •
    and soon uncovered
    beneath the heavy turf
    the votive well of a Celtic
    goddess called SAINT CWYLL
    the dedicatory altar was broken
    the well’s water contained:
    a child’s skull
    three small stone heads
    and offerings of coins and shells
    •
    Father took the skull
    and buried it
    between the feet of the oak
    where the roots twist into the ground

    ~~~

    my brother said:
    “in the war Father was a hero”
    we were both surprised at that,
    thought of him always giving ground
    beneath the onslaughts of our mother
    a vague but fierce woman
    very emphatic in her speech

    ~~~

    and so he begot
    child after child
    (aunts blamed him for this
    as though our mother
    had nothing to do with it)
    and he grew poorer burdened
    with our education
    and the upkeep of the old house
    beside the river Ain
    •
    but we did not