​Bees are buzzing around my head
Some of the flowers are yellow, some
Are cobalt blue, the tree trunks
Are trying to stand up straight—umm,

That’ll do. Someone’s singing--
So it goes—someone’s delivering
A lecture—at five in the morning,
Everything’s soaked with dew, I’m shivering,

There’s a path through the grass,
It says “Walk,” I walk, then
“Live,” I live, the broad leaves
Of the fern puff out their oxygen,

And everything you say is green
The bird songs chink the air,
And maple trees are dropping seeds
And daws dart everywhere.

​So the trees lack the energy to grow.
The chlorophyll is sluggish. Then
The rats multiply, they swarm
Across the forest floor, gen-

Erations after generations, and
They breed disease, the sleeping
Illness, the will to death, 
And that transmutes, creeping

Across the forest floor, infecting
The air and songbirds with anger
And with pride, envy, hate,
And more, all draped in languor.

The river gives its might
To the aquifer, and the river
Banks are steep, brown and slick.
When the aquifer doesn’t shiver

In its thirsty black corridors
But flows robust, the river
Races, tumbles, flows elegantly,
The sunbeams on its ripples quiver,

The trout hurl their slim, muscled
Bodies, straining upstream,
The dragonfly dart, a tributary
Floats the eggs of the bream.

Everything is clear, nothing
Is weighted down, no leaf,
No stamen cries for attention,
No fallen, sealed pine cone is chief

Among the others. Sap
Crystallizes crazy white,
In the afternoon everything
After the rain. The flight

Of the damselflies, the wren
Chirping, the screech
Of the crow, a gust releases
A shower from the leaves of the beech,

It inspires the hammering of a red-headed
Woodpecker. When the flesh is weak,
A person drags artificial colors,
Drenched photos, each a freak, 

His spirit swells, his pores black,
His forehead wrinkled and puffed,
His eyes are blank of any memory
Of sunshine, he has sloughed

Away bright colors, songbirds
And wildcats roaming the north
Woods, the subtle and tender
Grasses, pale lichen, forgotten. Henceforth,

The plague spreads from a tree
To a forest. Poor, dejected
Hills, stuffing themselves 
Because they feel so disrespected,

Flinging up false trees, false
Bugs and birds, protrusions
Granite streaked green and rust.
Thank goodness, beside these bleak delusions

The sap still slowly seeps in
The maple tree. Still, the sad
Sigh of the first rough winds, 
A wind that blew from Bagdad,

That wound its way from the Pleiades,
Requires a wind that will blow
Through the cirrus clouds, that 
Will make the star fields glow,

That will ruffle the tail of the crow,
That will stagger the light till
The field and the river yield
Their fruit and the grain flows from the mill.

​The foundation of satisfaction
Is, with your mind, the love
Of truth, with your life,
The love of honesty, of

Beauty with your feelings, of
Goodness with your deeds,
These are the necklace’s
Seashell beads.

​When you’re doing something whole,
In thought or in deed,
Be happy with what you have,
It is the universe and the seed,

Do not chase after anything else,
Because the entire world
Folds together before you
In that detail, furled.

​The ocelot eats the bat, inside,
It flies and sheds dreams,
The dreams are anger, lust and joy,
The ocelot thinks, its eye gleams,

Its thinking becomes what it is,
Its muscles beneath its fur,
When the bat has ceased to exist,
In its spring, its race, its blur.

Or the hawk and rat, or the opossum
And mouse, or the sky and unending
Canopy of trees, or the night 
That creeps upon the sky, extending

Blue into black and brilliant white
Eyes. Mostly, the morpho butterfly,
Its flight, its vision, its senses
Its wisdom and wings, which mystify,

​Is one, a flashing necklace,
Glinting wings, a silent bright,
Its dreams, its thoughts, evocations,
Depend upon its flight.

​An engine pulls the train to Saskatoon. 
You can feel a steady throbbing.
The trainmaster, the engineer, 
The conductor, the brakeman, hobnobbing,

Control the speed, the pressure on
The grades, and fix the shifting loads,
The “safe, prompt movement of the train”
That an overheated axle bearing erodes,

Even if the engineer
Thinks to arrive with speed and fame
With the blaze of yellow in the east,
The hotboxes might smoke and flame.

The sun is blazing, it erupts in flame
That took a million years to emerge
It sweeps aside the morning mist,
And leaves the dew upon the verge,

Along the growling train, the steaming
Wheels, everything is in a trance,
The engine and the sun are fed
By Power that feeds all circumstance.