A Handful of Seeds

My father teared at movies.
His hobby, though,
was taking life.

He told me once, excitedly,
convincing me to try it,
having gently pulled me into a corner
where no one could hear,
that it wasn't the hunt,
or the challenge, or the meat.
It was the killing.
To take a life from this world
just because you could.

He broke his leg one September,
so couldn't scour the hills
for savage creatures.
Instead, confounded,
he whittled a branch atthe edge of the forest,
his long cast pointing at the trees.

The autumn wind
fluttered through the clinging leaves
as they slowly
lost
grip.

And gradually, tenderly,
conversely,
he befriended the birds.

He sat for days
with a handful of seeds,
waiting.
And in time, though skittish with caution,
they came. First to the table beside him,
which was only a muffled drum roll away
from the safety of the branches,
and then, edging forward with tiny hops,
eyeing his cupped hand,
suddenly crouching, ready to fly
at the subtlest of movement.
Light feathered bodies
dainty with hollow bones,
hovering like spectators in a gallery,
wrists clasped behind backs,
scrutinizing this study of stillness,
of patience, of silence;
their shining black eyes
solemnly judging.

My father,
like the graveyard statue of a saint,
grinning at birds,
in sunlight as crisp as stone.

Later, his leg having healed,
he plucked his rifle from the corner again,
eager to tame the wild
that had come unleashed unto the world
in his absence.

Still, when I think of him,
it is this image that rises first.
A monument, honouring what he was,
but couldn't be.

Mouse

(From 'Five Perspectives of a Church')

With her second litter of the year nursing
it was the teeming hunger that led her
too far astray from her usual rounds
Which is where she found it
block of endlessly delicious poison
filling her cheeks to a stretch
She didn't realize the mistake as much
as she did the drunkenness, the
wobbling nave she found herself under
for the very first time, usually
keeping to the dowdy edges of lint balls
and dust, skirting the hardwood trim
in only the deepest candle flicker of night
But now there seemed to be stained-glass
light everywhere above, a scraggly hunch of fur
breathing faster than a panicked pulse
swimmingly lost in the holy wooden open
Her burgundy blood thinning to water
she feels herself spreading, blurring, dividing, as if
beside herself, there were another, equal
presence there, easing her gently to her side

How to Make a Cake from Scratch

First you will need to take out your recipe,
as well as every recipe you've ever been given
and burn them. It is critical you disregard
anything anyone has ever told you about making
cake. A jerry can of gasoline and match facilitate.

The ingredients are complex. They will change
when you wish they would not. Avoid gathering
all your favourite tastes and textures. If you do so
the overall flavour will be bland and lack colour.
A zest of lemon in some form or another is best.

Your oven will need stoking, so you must leave
the comfort of your home, and go to the place that you
have been advised never to go. It is a place where the wood
is hard, the soil precarious, the air volatile. Go there.
Stand thin at its centre. Now close your eyes. And begin.