Edmonton stands
Like a shimmer in the distance
Distilled from an amber trance
Of nostalgia inhabiting the deepest places of the heart
Returned by a miracle of chronological device
Intuited by the synchronicity of life with art
Life with former Life, Life with preliminary element of Being
Which may self-subsume, a Miracle perhaps
So fleeting in the dance of life
Regenerating truths from higher planes
And sweeter places
Undiluted by the Ethelenian lens
More intrinsic in the palpability of an archaic freshness
When things were simpler, Life freer
And the byways more wild in the glorious scape of day
More translucently vivid in the surreal tones of night
It came, like a whisper of sunshine in a snow-storm
A wisp of celestial light in an age of ice
‘They sought to elicit the stuffness of things
Only to forfeit the magic of life”
But the promised tapestry did not surface
An abstruse curiosity, a perplexity of the jaded mind
Then as a golden run of time returning
Streaming into the bewitching grace of this inspired hour
Imbuing the present with cyclical power
To trace the spiral of each moment and stage with each
Non-linear connections branch forth into trysts with destiny
Into spells of
contemplative bliss
Into conjured grace of Transcendent Heaven palpabilized
As a special zone or dawn of time
Herein on the earthly plane
No longer to tread on pain swept under the carpet
Nor to feign joy in the rote and rite of things
But the purer Happiness of living love and truth
Beauty and pleasure
Of coming into sentiment most apt to the hour
And grace of Elation in the splendid attaining
Goddess, may these buds of renewed life bring
Splendour and glory in their consummate power
Of living into fruition this latter spring.
There were astronomical beatitudes to Outram Park
Alma Fonse, cradle, nursery and home in alma mater
Was our primordial museum of insular delights
Such were the simple, rough-hewn treasures of yon geometric ark
The royal blue car with axle fit for child, motorless in canter
The sky-blue desklet with blackboard uplifted to innocent light
The green pillars of the lower windows in the most intimate of chambers
Gazing askance upon a pure and pristine world
Gazing aloft to the immensity of the heavens
Formless splendour of the cosmic dance
Enhance, Entrance
If Space is round, why shouldn’t Time be round?
Proving the fact of time-travel newfound
And in the transmutation of Goddess’ Grace
We find again in the sanctuary of paradise place
An eternal longing in the stillness of the golden afternoon
A prescient numinous glory distilled in the mirror of the soul
Sycamores in the enveloping hills roll in a kind of splendour
Unmet by the refined enchantment of Celia’s elegantine in scarlet flower
Have I mortgaged my soul to fear?
Have I denied and suppressed all Play
In the spirit of arduous Workaday?
Is the Rose worth its thorns?
I almost made a Faustian pact with fame this week
Only to recoil in the premise of fallible repute
The caprice of judge and jury in mortifying streak
Dealt such a blow as would fell an oak by its roots
I hurl a beach ball in the magic arc
Which delves in the glory of windows on parallel worlds
The spray of Albany, mist-laden in Antarctic pale
Still entrenched in the pursuit of the leviathan whale
Spewing forth fragrance atop the hill of eminence
The snow-laden street under an enchanted twilit purple
The still, shrill, silent music of the falling snow
In old Strathcona’s nocturnal contemplation of the quintessence of Canuck autumn
In the burlesques of a merry-go-round summer
With giant clowns on the edifices of genial and decrepit ruins
We dallied on fresh summer grass and loitered
In the quest for mysterious new tomes on Goddess and Heaven
As the vistas from the University of Alberta flew past
In that enchanted land of winter glory amidst the artful and solemn pines
To wait upon a Yuletide feast by the upper rim of the North Saskatchewan River Canyon
Back to brim in Easter by beachcombing
Watching and waiting for the salt-spray to enchant
New horizons from Phang-Nga’s idyllic bay of torpid green
To the utterly smooth and glorious sheen
Of the Pacific Ocean rolling in
To where giant leatherback turtles nest
In the stolen light of a furtive camera flash
We basked in the unprecedented glory of the Milky Way above
Vast and richly-radiant with the lustrous light of an infinity of stars
Returning to the Geological Museum laden with the finds
Fresh from the caverns towering in majestic bliss on the North Borneo shore
Nestling in the drawing-rooms of English etiquette
And the embroidered lattices of French décor
We find again the tops we used to spin
The skittles we used to bowl
The little reminders of kindred wealth of soul
To sensibility unyielding of nascent pride to win
Laurels from the Muse in intimate and sportive word-play
Embracing the light of a lovelier, purer day
When all we seek springs freshest from within.
