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Marianne Paul


falling in love at eighty

she loses herself to the sky a silver foil balloon
ribbon dangling like string from the bird’s beak in spring
love crazily in the air so that even the crow acts
like a bluebird            and the crone the schoolgirl
and not even the birds can explain this frenzy
the mad sweet obsession in their flight
urge filling the hollow at the core of winged bones
jumpiness felt in the feathers and held in the dark
of perfectly rounded eyes 
​

Watching Her

Another day, another world, another time, she is dark-skinned and olive, Mediterranean.
 
Now, she is bland, a yellow-paste, like the back side of wallpaper.
 
She blends into her landscape, the topography of the bed sheets, part of a different terrain now.
 
I feel far off, as if the span between where I am and where she is, between life and this other region, grows larger.
 
She is becoming a distant horizon, and I am afraid she will disappear.
 
∞
 
She pulls away from the present, moves into the future, picks up speed exponentially.
 
Nears the event horizon of the black hole, the point where there is no return, no turning back.
 
One of us is a stranger in a strange land. At first I think it is she, but now I’m not so sure.
 
I am the foreigner here, the displaced, the rootless.

pericardium

the heart is a muscle nestled between the lungs
slightly to the left of the chest centre
keeps us off-
            balance
protected by the sternum at the front
spinal column at the back
physically, that is
for how do you protect the heart?
build your walls of breastbone
i suppose
 
a cage of calcium, then a membrane shell
the heart’s outer layer thick-skinned
and tough to pierce, the pericardium
 
four chambers of the heart
four, the number of perfection
four cardinal directions
four directions of the cross
the balance is deceptive, there is always a weaker
always a stronger
 
the septum separates
the left side                 from the right
as if the heart cannot bear itself
its own cross to bear
 
the thickest walls, the left ventricle
pumps blood to poetic places
arterioles and arteries
veins and venules and capillaries
the thinnest walls, the right atrium
is the place of vulnerability;
a gladdened heart
makes this sound: lub-a-dup lub-a-dup
the saddened heart clicks, snaps, whooshes
murmurs
sighs

Even the Warrior Whimpers in his Sleep

Comatose gods inhale exhale universes
breathe in breathe out nightmares and
sweet dreams

white lilies open like the lotus
kayak slips through silent water
sun darts in silver minnows

sleeping Vishnu back-floats
calm and eternal amongst the blossoms
it is not what it seems

images can be deceiving and there is motion
in the motionless       even the warrior
whimpers in his sleep

bird on wire dangles live mouse
crocuses push through mats of slick rotting leaves
spider in camouflage skitters down beige wall

old woman with straw broom sweeps sidewalk clean
young girls stir up the dirt turn rope
double-dutch

all things come apart
the button loses its sweater
principle of entropy this losing of oneself

the artist records the falling away
paints self-portraits of senility until her face
is empty

Grizzly Maze

(This poem is inspired by the documentary, Grizzly Man, about videographer and animal activist Timothy Treadwell, killed by a bear after living a decade in the Alaskan wilderness in the area known as the Grizzly Maze)

Berate the gods to end the drought so the salmon
can run and the bear can eat but don’t think

the rain is a response to your prayers    and you
have moved mountains, let alone heaven
 
or the grizzly thanks you        bears and
gods are dispassionate, ask Job

solitude is seductive and so is the edge
of life           no one to talk to

but the bear
lumbering large and slow behind you

like backdrop amongst the arctic grasses
but you are the backdrop

so tread well           be content with the company
of foxes that romp at your feet and

tame you for the stroke of your hand
steal your cap and scent for their den

the bear will leave the cap and take your scent
think nothing more of it (the former you)

although time still ticks on the arm
discarded along

the grizzly maze a grisly find       
we each have a bear we stalk through the Alaska

of ourselves our grizzly maze   
we think the bear stalks us, such ego

to suppose the grizzly cares
remember this

as the bear swims the Alaskan waters
its massive head like the iceberg

and you stand in the frigid water up to your thighs bent         over
skin exposed reach fingers for the bear whisper sweet nonsense

words to appease the grizzly as it slides past you for         shore
now close enough to touch its back and you can’t resist

​                            
​                         ♢


Picture

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.Go to page 2 of Marianne Paul's poetry

River Haunting

Two blue herons atop deadwood
grave markers in a flooded
cemetery

an apparition sails across the sky
a great white heron off-course and far
from home

above and below the waterline ghosts in a mirror
trees and the phantom
of trees
     
tinted sepia like an old photo
a carp appears by my paddle blade
then vanishes        never was

Bedridden

Flat on her back
she looks up at me
moves
in a manner that defies
aging
defies the gravity
of her situation too
bedridden
as she is
feet thick and bent awkwardly
at the ankle unable to support
her body     brittle
and already broken
mended in ways that jut
through the skin     a bruise
yellowing on her forehead
like ripening fruit
she grins and flicks her hips with a
lightness of another
time
the years slide
into each other
defying linear progression
and the old lady
is a young woman who doesn’t for a second
doubt         
her feet     dances
in variety shows entertaining the troops
her sister twirling the baton
tossing it into the air
always catching it never faltering
leading the parade
when the war is finally over

They can’t take that away from me
she croons on the stage of her own bed
reminisces of the trip to Spain
she took with my father
when he was alive and she was young
grins and dances under the bed sheets
with that easy grace
of Gene Kelly Ginger Rogers Fred Astaire
Buddy Ebsen          of her own father too
a vaudeville man tap tap tapping
across the stage

What are you thinking, i ask later
having lifted her into the car
buckled her into the seat beside me
we drive along the St. Lawrence River
where she grew up         where she
swam all the way across
to the USA
a favourite story
when i was little and dreamed
of such feats myself and the States
was a distant shore          i marvelled
that she could swim there
hero-worshipped her
in that way of young daughters
she stares off
and i wonder if she has slipped
into the places of senility
so i ask her the question
to gauge where she is
not really expecting
an answer

I was thinking, she says slowly
measured words - measured thought,
how the river never changes
although everything around it does
i was thinking about the shoreline
how it bends how it curves


The Melt

The grackles
with their spotted star clusters
across the night sky of feather
running and bobbing and pecking
at whatever the sun has unveiled
under the hot gaze of snow melt  --
the chickadee sidling up to the sparrow
and a pair of cardinals dipping
tree to tree and joined wing to wing
by an invisible string
bird quantum physics
the whole bird world connected
the squirrels, too
plumping up on maple keys
fattening in plain sight
giddy with the sudden sun
and rising temperature

This Day on the Water

i.
A stem grows out of a gnarled trunk at the river’s edge
an island onto itself the trunk encircled by water
but it is the flower atop the stem
that catches my attention
brightest object in the sky of bulrushes
a brilliant yellow ball
must be an orchid
petals so exotic and bright
i set course for the flower
set my bow towards the sun
paddle closer
the flower is a dandelion
nothing more nothing less
and there is beauty in the ordinary

ii.
Red-wing blackbirds rise as a single sky
settle into the bulrushes further down the river
the wind is a baby’s cry thin and lonely
i wonder if a baby Moses drifts
through the maze of reeds in a basket
think of the women who set the baby afloat
think of the women who found the baby afloat
two equal acts of love    
i stroke my way along the shoreline
feel the presence of history’s women
crouching among the reeds slipping silently
through the waters with me

Obsession

My connection to you is like imprinting
at birth

the first thing a bird sees is its mother
and there is nothing to be done

the neural net is knit
whether the mother is even the mother

does not matter        reason cannot reason
away the connection

you are pressed into me
like a hand pressed into wet mud

fingers spread wide
palm flat
​
Go to page 2 of Marianne Paul's poetry

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