Barn

I – Barn Door

There is a lilac fiend hiding in the bush, behind the house.

An indigo cloud washes away traces of mud from its face;

its ghostly scent, ash-like,

pervades corners that speak of rotten planks, mildew filling up

the deserted trough,

and a rusted rake leaning against the barn's wall.

It's a wet, late spring that makes its way

across Lake Ontario through freezing rain,

barely unravelling snow from tree tops.

Not a pinhead fits in between rain drops.

A crow's flight casts a shadow on the ground,

as the lilac fiend shifts again, stirring petals,

its spirit crushed

in the hinges of

the barn door.

II- The Stone Egg by Niagara Falls

Oblong, quartz crux of a cart wheel -

dustbin in which the glitter of the night extends,

dismissed by a turbulence of wings.

Eggshell, they have whispered, of a larger

stone egg: a pyrite vein of despair,

transparent under the curtain of the dawn.

A yolk of rock in which the echo of the falls dies off.

III - Summer Kitchen

Smell of fried fish, mingling with the scent of acacia

and honeysuckle rose:

a puffy festivity forms

above, among dispersed clouds.

The evening's ajar, behind the summer kitchen

where dinner-time stills

on a planet of air,

chips and fish almost ready to fly

into the incipient white blue light.

The amidon moon glows

at the edge of a dark line.

IV - Barn Hour, Leaf Shelter

Barn hour - an oscillating emptiness

inside strata of green:

a hub -

light green, bulbous and unfettered in the late spring

among the maze of twigs and sprouting vine tendrils.

Late spring waking from the slumber of an early summer:

dark green pulverized at the point of leaf shelters,

smoky blue caterpillar fringes,

oleander funnels scattered - in white.

A fused umbrage that shapes a bird's song

in between dust intersections.

V - Hubs

Veneer, dust,

long, spurious threads of

claret winds

lilac perfume lost in medals of rain

smeared on tree trunks

desiccated, each one a hub,

a molded shape of a lost tree stump.

VI - Arena

An old hockey stick

inside the barn.

The moon is luscious in bottle green,

fragments, striations of

bayberry darkness turning

heads in an eclipse stance.

An empty arena

in which I hang remnants of

fir tree cones,

cordons off the distant whistling of a train.

Muffled sounds: dark ray of

sunshine filled to the brim -

the trip behind a cloud, where stars are remnants

of a shooting puck.

This poem was originally published in the literary magazine Big Pond Rumours - Winter 2018 edition.