Meta μετά – a consciously self-referential story that often takes place down a rabbit hole.

So many songs and poems have been written
on a Sunday afternoon, so
just to be original, I think I’ll go and make
another cup of instant coffee.
“How odd of God to choose
the Jews…”

For a dollar twenty-five beneath the crown
in Guelph, Ontario they are mine.
Lewis and Costain are finished.
There they lie like dusty childhood trinkets
sullied by the egocentric eye
that used them so unmercifully
to fill the spaces lost in time.

France is gone.
The telephone is silent
but the house is filled with ghosts
of ringing phones and great beginnings
of what might have been
if I hadn’t left it just to walk
in crunchy snow with leaky boots.

Mountain time is ticking in the bedroom
locked inside the eastern clock
with Leon Uris close behind.
A smiling Jewish kid sends me letters
filled with love and science labs
and Hermann Hesse and once,
a watercolour filled with hearts,
one defiled with X.
“You know I fucking hate you.
You haunt the halls at 2 a.m.
and I think your sister wants me.”

I grab another cigarette
and tell him not to visit.

Chains can be like houses
depending on their purpose—
whether keeping all outsiders well away
from what’s within
or to gather all together in
communal harmony —
and on it hangs the Holy Catholic Cross
of Jesus Christ,
a rather heavy question to be wearing
round my neck
on a Sunday afternoon.

I think I’ll go and make
another cup of instant coffee
and wait
for Lee to come with the piano.

Outside the machine, the bleeding hearts trace
the lifeline across the palm of my hand.
Are they dancing or do I make it so?
I am seven-years-old, not again but

once,

on my way from school

in a yellow gingham dress edged in lavender.

“Danny likes you,” calls a boy behind me.
It can’t be true. My heart feels different.
Like a butterfly in a spring garden,
it dances in the locket of my soul.

Once,

near the gateway now

in a yellow gingham dress edged in lavender,

the bleeding hearts cross my palm and I shout
across the space between us, “He does not!”
Inside my spirit, hope sings. I feel love
for a boy with freckles and reckless joy.

Inside the machine, I set the table
for a family that would sail away
without me. There is not much time to breathe.
“Stay off the dock,” my mother says. “Today
a boy was drowned. His name was Danny.”

Once,

across the threshold

in a yellow gingham dress edged in lavender,

the sound of knives and forks became a song
cutting through the evening. “I like you too,”
I whisper. “Did you know him then?” she asked.
The wings within my soul drew round him close.
“No.”

Outside the machine, the sun is brighter
Moments live here and they stay forever.
They cannot be painted or imagined.
The locket holds the bleeding hearts and love

Still dances along the palm of my hand.

The beach is swept by lavender shadows
that stroke the traces of memories left
by restless waves seeking sanctuary
in the sculptured rock. Silence is broken
by the bear cubs who wrestle playfully
with the children of tourists. They encroach
upon the sand, trailing refuse from town
unaware of the consequences, both.

You and I turn our gaze to the ocean
knowing, praying the mother will come soon.
There is no help, nothing for us to do.
The signs are there. History is written.
Her fur is dense and warm and smells of earth.
Her touch opens the passageway for rain.
Her breath tears open the gateway to fear.

The lavender shadow exposes truth.
The stars are lit upon the ocean’s sky,
tiny sparks of hope a thousand years gone,
as we step into the sea – the cool sea
dancing with light between the dark prisms
that whisper danger in the feasting hour.

From the depths she emerges between us,
gracefully feeling her way through the waves
and bearing us through the eons to come,
mother and daughter and father and son.
While on the shore the hordes arrange themselves
in the sand, buying spaces on dead trees,
eating fried potatoes dipped in red sauce
and rejoicing in the bathwater foam
left by a fevered sea, she slips from view.

She slips into the blue taking with her
a thousand years of starlight on her skin.
She slips along my fingers, immense, strong
beneath the surface, promising nothing
but hope for those who live in lavender
shadows, in tiny spaces on the shore,
waiting for the mother’s touch, breathlessly.