Vancouver Island Poems

First of all, Happy Summer Solstice!

Vancouver Island is a haven for artists. Certainly it has its share of writers, painters and other creative workers scattered along its length and on the nearby Gulf Islands.

On my first forays to “The Rock,” I left with scribbled notes — some complete poems and snippets of verse that would evolve.

The poems dwell on the nature of the creative impulse, with the final verse below asking the ultimate question about our compulsion to define the world modified by our interaction — I create therefore I am.

The first two verses were written on my first visit to the Island, in 1972; the final two on a trip west from the Meadow, in 1974. At least two of them were conceived on top of the Malahat, a high point of land north of Victoria, above Finlayson Arm, and the title of the literary journal published by the University of Victoria

Vancouver Island Poem

Driving over the Malahat
we stopped to look down
on the living water
winding between brown hills

I became a young boy
climbing into secret worlds
reaching out to touch the water
putting my hands on mystery
painted landscapes on glass
clouds floating on my eyes

At every gas station
I looked in rest room mirrors.

Transaction

Tonight on the mountain a dark cloud of trees
floats above mist at the roadside.
Snowflakes attack the machinery of my skin
The trees pin me against a metal sky
so dark I burn

In a city below
a skull empties itself in a used car lot
A trade is arranged, a voice buried under concrete
The salesman nods

A grey envelope folds over a blank contract
Night licks and seals wounded edges

I move forever in the white silence.

Invocation

I would hold you and suckle
― man or child ―
My hand holds the sceptre
You speak through the veil

An eagle hovers before a grey mist
on the hill

By the canyon ruin
water speaks through sand

I am sulphur or I would bite;
the strange child straddles the shield
Speak through me ― a sword’s hilt ―
a gentler wind whispers
you are mine

Zero Plus

Forgive me
that I must explain
the immutable
and essential meaning
of the blue clouds
(pens are broken
on the hard landscape)
Forgive me
this blessed curse
Where I stand
here
at the beginning
of technology

Tagged as: literature, the meadow, vancouver island