Oil Sculpture 

Impudent gull,

nomadic overlord

of the pulsing sea,

was it only yesterday

you dive-bombed

like a silver arrow,

scooping up scavenger

delicacies in your

yellow beak?

 

Your snowy plumage

and spray-crested wings

captured the sun's rays,

danced celebration on the

shore's foaming frontier,

challenged the blue

domain of sky.

 

Tentacles of darkness

still your bugle cry.

The gods of Brittany

have deserted you.

Gushing black gold,

the foundering tanker,

AMOCO CADIZ,

spills her crude

into the throbbing,

oceanic web of life.

 

The currents choke.

Oxygen bubbles harden

into ebony slicks.

The ocean sanctuary

is a sludge sewer,

midnight quicksand.

 

Gone the lobster,

crab and shrimp.

Gone the snails

and oyster-beds.

Gone salt-water colonies

of multi-colored fish,

ancestral harvest

of bird and fisherman.

 

The winnowing shoreline

is encrusted with tar

and the shrouded stink

of death.

 

Poor laughing  gull,

you laugh no more.

The crude oil

eats your flesh

like acid.

A black tide

has engulfed you.

 

With blinded eyes

and bursting heart,

you lift

your oil-soaked body

into the sunlit air

one eternal moment,

 

then drop back

into the eclipse.

You struggle, sink

and drown,

uncomprehending,

 

         in a man-made,

         flag-of-convenience,

         polluted planet.

 

 

 

From: Piece Work (Borealis Press, 1979)

 

---

 

Aunt Annie

 

I still remember

my Aunt Annie

peering over the citadel

of her reading glasses

crocheting

a wooly acreage

of psychedelic afghan

warm and furry.

 

Her long, crimson

nails clicked

in castinet unison

and the curved index

finger of her right hand

darted in and out

with hornet dexterity

drawing the fragile fibre

into sunlit patterns.

 

Ashes of falling stars

defined an aery descent

from her smiling mouth

to capacious lap

and I marvelled how

each cigarette

stayed miraculously

glued to her lower lip.

 

Spendthrift

of love and dialectics

she talked incessantly

filtering the wit

inherited from her cousin

the writer, Sholem Aleichem.

into a staccato brew

of percolating humor.

  

Ha!she exploded

in raucous laughter

and her big breasts

rocked companionably

on multi layers

of aproned stomach

over which the magnificent

patterned afghan grew

and prospered into

a gush of green and

yellow buttercup squares.

 

I remember her hands

blue-veined maps

with vermillion tips

wildly gesticulating

a side-splitting story

or family heirloom joke.

 

Swinging tides of humor

rocked the kitchen

where the odor

of freshly baked chalah

in its tawny cocoon

hung like a golden canopy

of fragrance in the air.

 

Her hands were

mightily conversational

animated gadflies

scorning the folly

of the world

lighting king-size Pall Malls

in an endless fiery chain.

 

Spirited small talk

jetted like adrenalin

her language was porous

with legend

and the razor-edged cough

marked time.....

 

She was an overflowing woman

an earth-mother, a plethora

of compassion and vitality

a lexicon of life

with the aromatic sweetness

and sparkle of full-bodied

Passover wine.

 

The last time I saw

my Aunt Annie

she lay in a coffin

in Miami, her quicksilver

hands strangely stiff

and uncommunicative

clawed and curved inward

vainly trying to grasp

the teeming, mortal pulse.

 

Coronary thrombosis

had stilled forever

her blazing tongue

contorted her fingers

like dead roots of trees

gnarled and withered

directionless

in the empty air.

 

- but I remember the joy

the giving, the fulness

wild orchids of song

and the blossoming flesh.

 

 

 

from Piece Work (Borealis Press,Ottawa, Ontario)