McKay - Camber: selected poems, 1983-2000

BOOKS BY DON M c KAY POETRY
Air Occupies Space 1973
Long Sault 1975
Lependu 1978
Lightning Ball Bait 1980
Birding, or desire 1983
Sanding Down This Rocking Chair on a Windy Night 1987
Night Field 1991
Apparatus 1997
Another Gravity 2000
Camber: Selected Poems 1983-2000 2004
Strike/Slip 2006
Paradoxides 2012 ESSAYS
Vis vis: Fieldnotes on Poetry and Wilderness 2001
Deactivated West 100 2005 Copyright 2004 by Don McKay All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency is an infringement of the copyright law. L IBRARY AND A RCHIVES C ANADA C ATALOGUING IN P UBLICATION McKay, Don, 1942
Camber : selected poems, 1983-2000 / Don McKay. ISBN 978-0-7710-5765-6
eBook ISBN: 978-1-55199-667-7 I. Title. PS 8575.

K 28 A 6 2004 C 811.54 C 2003-906866-8 Published simultaneously in the United States of America by McClelland & Stewart Ltd., P.O. Box 1030, Plattsburgh, New York 12901 Library of Congress Control Number: 2004381225 We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporations Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
75 Sherbourne Street
Toronto, Ontario
M 5 A 2 P 9
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This title contains long lines of poetry. The line of characters below indicates approximately the longest line in the text: sharpening to something like the afterlife of music moving in an To most accurately reproduce the layout of the text on the printed page, you may choose to decrease the size of the text on your viewer and/or change the orientation of your screen until the above line of characters fits on a single line. This may not be possible on all e-reading devices.

Viewing this title at a higher than optimal text size or on a screen too small to accommodate the longest lines in the text will alter the reading experience and may cause single lines of some poems to display as multiple lines of text. If this occurs, the turn of the line will be marked with a shallow indent. Lifting off, letting go, seizing leave as thoughdeparture were the first act ever, steppinginto air as sigh, as outbreath, hum, commotion, whirr, its out of here, its shucked us likehigh school, like some stiffchrysalis it lets fall from invisibleunfolding wings. And already we are sayinglet there be, let there beliftoff, let there be loss, let there be thosesilver knives that swim in blood like sharpenedfingerlings, those tossed-offwarbler phrases that dissolve in air beforethe voice can manage to corral them, that exquisite thirstwhose satisfaction is another, larger thirst equipped with claws like question marks requiringanswers in the form of still another thirst andthough we recognize this evil as our own we alsorecognize the camber of its nothing as itlifts, as it glances, as it vanishes.

Distinguished from the twerp, which he resembles, by his off-speed concentration: shh: bursting with sneakiness he will tiptoe through our early morning drowse like the villain in an old cartoon, pick up binoculars, bird book, dog, orange, letting the fridge lips close behind him with a kiss. Everything, even the station-wagon, will be delicate with dew bindweed, spiderweb, sumac, Queen Annes lace: he slides among them as a wish, attempting to become a dogs nose of receptiveness.

Later on hell come back as the well-known bore and read his list (Song sparrows: 5 Brown thrashers: 2 Black-throated green warblers: 1) omitting all the secret data hatching on the far side of his mind:
that birds have sinuses throughout their bodies, and that their bones are flutes that soaring turkey vultures can detect depression and careless driving that every feather is a pen, but living,
flying

Concentrate upon her attributes: the accipiters short rounded wings, streaked breast, talons fine and slender as the x-ray of a babys hand. The eyes (yellow in this hatchling later deepening to orange then blood red) can spot a sparrow at four hundred metres and impose silence like an overwhelming noise to which you must not listen. Suddenly, if youre not careful, everything goes celluloid and slow and threatens to burn through and you must focus quickly on the simple metal band around her leg by which shes married to our need to know. What I remember about the Great Blue Heron that rose like its name over the marsh is touching and holding that small manyveined wrist upon the gunwale, to signal silently look The Great Blue Heron (the birdboned wrist). the slow rollover of evening, the spruce growing dense, gathering dark, standing in pools of departure. Take care Remember we are weaving a wreath of human hair to be left to the Huron County Museum with a short note saying who contributed and where they come from.

Shadows sadden. The details of your face escape like minnows. We become weight until the balance tips entirely and a bat breaks out like a butterflys subconscious flashing, dancing his own black rag.

Waking JESUS sudden riding a scream like a train braking metal on metal on metal teeth receiving signals from a dying star sparking off involuntarily in terror in all directions in the abstract incognito in my maidenform bra in an expanding universe in a wheres my syntax thrashing loose like a grab that like a look out like a live wire in a hurricane until until I finally tie it down: it is a pig scream a pig scream from the farm across the road that tears this throat of noise into the otherwise anonymous dark, a noise not oink or grunt but a passage blasted through constricted pipes, perhaps a preview of the pigs last noise. Gathering again toward sleep I sense earths claim on the pig. Pig grew, polyped out on the earth like a boil and broke away.

But earth heals all flesh back beginning with her pig, filling his throat with silt and sending subtle fingers for him like the meshing fibres in a wound like roots like grass growing on a grave like a snooze in the sun like fur-lined boots that seize the feet like his nostalgie de la boue like having another glass of booze like a necktie like a velvet noose like a nurse like sleep.

Another cup of coffee. Southern Ontario surrounds this kitchen like well-fed flesh. If I had a cigarette right now Id smoke it like an angry campfire burn it into the unblemished body of the night. Lonely is a knife whose handle fits the mind too well, its oldest and most hospitable friend. On Highway 22 a truck is howling for Sarnia or London.