The Ghosts of Jay MillAr Read Online Free

so high, each of our own energy, the roll of the land, the bump of the wagon, the sky touching…
    it is so nice to look there
    and find yourself, and know you were once full of who you were, or could be,
and in such looking you are still youthful, who you are. all day long
in the stupid heat, until the day was cool to the touch
and the hay was in our lungs, heavy with sweat and diesel fuel under the rich
evening skies I would care to remember in later years and write about in
poems, big dumb poems that would try to capture in the language
a kind of wind that opens up the sky. 20
    (Our minds glass eyes and mist, youthful, on fire with being…)
    poetry would eventually become a means to branch into the past by plundering
the present, the future moment shifting in and out of the wind, leaves less violent
than a sneeze and just as satisfying, it’s the same thing that left me
wondering for days just how many times i could write about leaves without
    boring the reader to death.
    i will naturally want to equate this with those Sunday afternoons about the house.
they were all of light, even in the dark cool house they were
bright and clear, never did i want to sleep so much, you can still see what
they’re like by looking at the sky when the light white clouds hold the sunlight
in a cup. all of clear breezes, nothing to do. nothing, the making of poetry.
we were going about our business, what sweet schoolkid lives, clear and twisting,
O, so, lazy, secrets were hidden away in lost photo albums, once the fire
burns away these lives, what memories could be lost forever?
    it was our duty to watch the windows do whatever.
    we were thinking… what thoughts… asleep or otherwise.
windows were a lot like television back then, only somewhat slower, there
was less information but it appeared on a wider scale, more dots per square inch,
melt, vibrate, sit or shatter, open them up to the cool wind, feel, these
were things we learned in the cool house where people live, we live there, days
days and days, still do. in our head, walk right up and fall asleep, it
was before i walked out to the back lot to watch the flakes of snow
miss the branches to fall upon my belly, i was still pushing the mower
across each square inch of the landscape near the house, here, the
incense continually seeks only to remind me of autumn.
imagine between the summer and the winter what changes.       what changes.
leaves and lawns and wind, is this what i…
    in the afternoon
    after school we would fall asleep in order to record my dreams
in a small yellow notebook, we were walking the lanes of a highway, we were
all one being, i remember, and inside each of us we were happy, on the road,
each of us in our own lane, peaceful curves along the soft rubber-like pavement.
each footstep was the pure bliss of a hopeless grin, a motion, a leaf
or mote of dust caught in the sunny cross-fire of a breeze, we were
moving at the speed of rabbits or of elk, and were perfectly
capable of switching to other lanes, but only if we wished for such a
thing to happen, we were all completely in control, there was no reason to
disturb this world as it had been presented to us. gentle as it was.
    there were many beautiful photo opportunities.
    and i couldn’t wake up, aware that i was shaking slightly that i was
asleep and dreaming, totally awake, aware that i was. i was everything
of that dream, everything of that room, everything of that landscape
i was to find myself in at this moment.               it was a fine cocoon of…
i admit i was a little terrified, for i had never experienced paralysis like that, looking at
myself now from the doorway in the sun, from the outside or the future,
i see this memory curled up in a brown-golden leaf, a figure lying
on the bed like that, what youth, so feeble, so full of noise, this is the past
and the future meeting in the dull landscape of Ontario: