The Ghosts of Jay MillAr Read online

  the unceremonial heaven of leaves,

  being down, pulls thusly, thusly

  and is soft, near the roots,

  i imagine the few of us, caught

  pressed flowers, holding on branches,

  we are so full of sorrow and beauty

  that much could be regret.

  we are filled with the cold

  air of two lovers

  and Glory.

  birds dart from second to second

  and we flutter, wait for what moment

  (breathe)

  what thoughts have we, what lives

  yes, we have thought fuck you

  in forest ways, and creatures

  drunk on their own ways, go on

  and hide with us, gather us up, as we

  grow old and vision fades until we are blind

  until we are those creatures

  as we turn with the earth, and how

  (breath)

  with wind and rain and sun and birds

  each a piece of weather, what thoughts

  our lives

  it’s fine to fall, fine to drift as thought

  it were memory you feed upon (wits)

  dumb radical cool breeze (behavior)

  falls through what if the greengrey air were black

  that is the city, where we wake, and

  storing up for winter, nuts, (undertow) bolts,

  sounds of busses and of cars, all the drift as though

  and the movement beyond, light birds (dead soldiers

  come to life) presumably the small ones, periodically

  outside, light panic rules air going on leave

  then one long string of (notes)

  are anyone who

  falls against their own breath

  feels us here

  listens carefully

  who knows will disappear

  are anyone who is going

  are speaking like they do

  anyone who is soft

  against their own skin

  like nests

  are watching

  care about

  only know such gifts

  what dark we have caught in branches (sleeves)

  all day, dark, and more here, dark

  piled up light as all those who sleep

  while we do not. forever asleep, dark

  ourselves (the text is black on us

  (we never write) and we never forget)

  any dream of the day in our lives, we

  (RIpPle)

  are what dark is in the light of (this

  ink) the trunk’s white skin, forever

  asleep, we are awake and piled high

  sink into the dream’s great earth

  ...................11

  these flakes fall

  cover

  Leaf Legend

  FOR EACH LEAF

  a star

  they are so

  here

  The Present Today is Built from the Past12

  Equinox ‘96

  stupid it is to run from the weather, the sun, the clouds, as falling leaves the air dry, all the brittle stars against those seasons that pass daily13 as though they were out to get you: remember it takes two to linger in conversation, the rest is just thought and it’s all the same thing, we take warmer blankets now, and dream more often, alive, meeting strange out of the way breathing, slower now, noticing the dream was just awake staring at the window14 a decrease in pressure, the heat easing off, so obvious to everyone, everything present to remind us that the world is not here with you in it. think about it and we will linger on edge, imagine, noting what there is, as abstractions we are left to ourselves, to preach, to meditate on what to consume and exhume, rolling along that slant again, of faces brown against the sky after the sun, tired, we who survived. light. trees. a window. 7:45 a.m.

  and we are nowhere at all15: summer has come to an end again. stand back, slow down, all of this is what we have longed for as memory speeds up into the top of our skull to slice at the crisp they find there, and it’s all the same thing, we have been here before doing this very thing, as though the very multitude of flannel were a slow leak reservoir heaven of warmth to bathe every inch of your mind, the heat is suddenly mindfuck’t again: and it’s over. and it’s over as autumn shoots each leaf through their memory so ancient they all turn to colour and dust16… we miss things constantly; think behind each thing, look around still blocked from the sunlit voice of abstraction itself, left with what we began with in our minds to begin with and discover nostalgia here in the present i was once a small creature in my Sunday best and the light fell just so, as did my feet, walking, there in the present,17 the squirrels, the sun, the leaves and the small birds sputtering across rooftops, the books under my arm. i have been here before, a caravan, riding at dawn, looking through the wood and preparing for winter, the bear, the rabbit, the deer, the chipmunk, remembering paths we took, our subtle repetitions, the smooth essence of memory18and looking through the stupid window can make us believe there really is a world out there, as opposed to in here, where all our different minds, all our past incarnations fuse into sunlight.

  Sneezing Out There Rips My Head19

  wide open.

  the rush of the trees in the wind, being the essence of trees

  is what allows myself the end of the wind that will never arrive

  in the present, i just don’t want to meet it out there tonight.

  one can listen to the sound and know the secret lives of trees, their passage

  in this, a time of small gods who sing with the wind and of it.

  constantly i feel this mounting and then the lethargy… all the time…

  O how I could spit like the wind tonight, venom, all the stupid rush of reason,

  godly sounds, the wishes, the grunts, the mischief, Love… i have found love

  squelches at these days repeating their habits endlessly, yet it is the

  lethargy i have trouble with in the midst of such kafuffle. makes

  me wish it were Sunday afternoon instead of Wednesday night, when spirits

  aren’t all grown up with nowhere to hide from the many disappointments

  where we are. i look forward to being contained by the mounting of love,

  as it continues listening to the trees as they never end despite

  my own sad reflections of living, trees in the darkness reach

  out what branches, branches i have never seen until

  we are ready to embark into the wind.

  we are ready to embark into

  always it’s against where we are in the present and now the breeze

  against my arms pincushion and cool, so lovely i could almost cry to

  imagine…

  all those days of summer might return, driving through the small towns of South Western Ontario: Watford, Thamesville, Chatham, Tilbury, Belle River; i always love to see the skies there through the tiny intersections as they fall gently to touch the earth, there were many photo opportunities.

  driving through the intersection of each town, passing earthclad tattered beings blowing in the wind, how i love them so… how they are made up as if from the elements themselves, breathing what air. i could almost become one of them i love to see them crossing the street, their own way of space and speech, every stupid thing i’ve ever done nags against this landscape, which is, of course, my Mind, my unlikeliness of ever succeeding, the big brash and hopeless city where i live, i might be impressed (in fact i am) by how my own memories begin in a rural landscape, years ago, working farms near Lucan Ontario shoveling horseshit from the stalls of rich horses with my brother Darren, the stench of piss and flies, loading up the wagons of hay with Darren and Steve, piling row after row of sweetgreen hay, each wagon piled 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 wer
e, 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: Memories

  so quick they do not happen, and yet these are what we, here, as the sun gives

  way to the cold nights, rely upon for warmth, i look at myself from the doorway

  in the sun and we are always dreaming about the various highways of my

  life, where i was, where it was we were taking ourselves, where we were

  between places and the sound

  of the wind and the radio, sitting in the back seat of the car with my

  brothers, as it was, we were destined to find ourselves day after day

  travelling back and forth across the landscape of that country during the

  summer, we were human thought crunching along the road, ready to stop at

  any time to look, moving at the speed of trees, our faces in the wind of the

  open window, reaching out with the stillness of the mind, that wind,

  it lifts up my heart that way by the gentle removal of one or two ribs,

  all these gaping holes where we have been, awake and dreaming, alive

  and dead, everything and nothing, home and away, the rock slides stand

  so still, what creates a pattern in the human mind.

  the back roads of South Western Ontario so deep within my back,

  rolling up and down my spine, the tiny mice, mushroom the size of

  my head, how many times have i been in the woods near Tilbury Ontario, noticing

  how the leaves have changed ever so slightly over the period of a month.

  how many times have i driven past the ostrich farm there, and past

  the small, flat graveyards and the slanting gas stations?

  Sunday afternoon mosquito buzz jazz monotone. Windsor Ontario

  would eventually become a heightening of my own consciousness, a long drive

  that allows old friends to find each other at the end of the country. The Bruce

  Peninsula under my knees, resin and rainwater, chipmunks and rattlesnakes.

  every species imaginable will eat out of your palm there, take what you

  give them, (thank you), the cliff we climbed up from Miller Lake grew smaller

  every time we returned, became less of an adventure, more of dreamfact, the birch

  trees would shrink over the years yet we could still peel the bark away

  in large, paper-like strips to start the fire, in a rowboat with my dad

  and the mist as the sun appears, it was about five a.m. I’m sure this

  is a place in Eastern Canada, though in my mind it has various qualities

  like that of a dream, wide awake, just as the sun opens up the fog a crack.

  dad rows the boat and my hand drags through the blackish salt water

  to the sounds of such strings. Point Peelee is here too, undoubtedly

  beneath the soles of my feet. Matt and i spent hours skipping stones into

  the flat grey surface of Lake Erie while Hazel gathered shells and rocks

  polished by time into her skirt, in the water where we meet ourselves by

  chance along the way, speaking to the various species of birds present

  there at seven in the morning watching no, feeling the wind rustling through

  the lush foliage. Western Canada somewhere not entirely transparent,

  ever, never ever there, each morning i would rise at five a.m. to check

  the trap lines, sometimes sitting and watching the pinkish clouds hover

  above the cool wet morning conifers and rockslides like old gods reborn and

  walking between the mountains, during the day i would race the ridiculous

  silver RVS up and down the hills on a borrowed bike, i could finally feel

  small in the midst of the world, so huge i could choke on the wind.

  hiking up the sides of mountain
s i would stop for a moment to look down through

  the lake to see the very centre of its cool gravity, you could sit there and

  concentrate openly listening to the ominous call of the pika

  hiding among the rocks, the very creature my father had studied for years in that

  landscape, yes, i say, raising my hand, i am present and looking around.

  and where am i?

  i find in the end but what am i to make of all my feelings? i might think of

  my first memory but it is ALL memory, all those highschool weekends on

  mushrooms with Matt, on mushrooms with Peter, on mushrooms with Chuck,

  walking the streets of London Ontario, at the cottage watching the lake just

  sitting there, shining in the forever setting summer sun and angling the air,

  we were all looking down the road, it seems, all the time,

  squinting to see ahead, as far as we could see. i would find myself

  years later down that road in a room with Hazel, Stefan, Rob,

  Joe, and Sue, all of us on mushrooms, even now, looking down these roads

  there is nothing there… nothing… looking at myself

  now from the doorway in the sun. it all becomes comforting.

  it all becomes the same thing while i am busy waiting out the while of each moment.

  what happens but what has happened? which branch should we sit on, looking

  at how far it recedes into the future? we were amazed

  at how far we had come, at how we had arrived, and still are. amazed,

  looking at the sun, or at the leaves falling peacefully in front of the Runnymede

  United Church, November 12,1996,11:42 pm or at the lawn in front of our house

  and the huge white mushrooms that have grown there all summer, this morning

  nothing but dull frozen lumps on the frozen ground, among the frozen dying leaves,

  when you look at the angles of fieldrows driving the highways of