Friday, May 3, 2024

Karl Jirgens : Three poems

 

 

 

Pas de Deux
a Haibun for Alanna Bondar

We pulse at different frequencies. Wavelengths open. Sound travels at varying speeds through water, air. Your body enters, vibrates within an ocean of depths, surfaces.
Regard the liquid sky at night.
At times, I hear your voice travel over this lake.
At times, we match frequencies, resonances, sing greetings over distances, a sonic exchange, a reciprocal arrangement between water, stars… connected dots. Night’s moon-sliver, stellar groupings dance above Superior, this inland sea. Aurora Borealis, enters a pas de deux of sky, water. Electrically charged particles freed from the sun’s grip collide with oxygen, nitrogen, an adagio of light. A comet’s pirouette, brings this missive, “Match the frequency of your desire, and you will grasp it.” A liquid dance. We are elemental, two-thirds water, a curving glissade, flying through space. Gravitational waves. Temporal fluctuations. Suddenly, you, beside me, as you were that day. The universe expands with an allegro Sautée, thought’s speed. Light emitted from galaxies beyond our event-horizon remains invisible, awaiting revelation. After the universe’s expansion stops, the sky-drum will pause, in a momentary balance, and with one beat space-time will revisit its origin. Time will flow backwards. We’ll meet again.
Ours is an instant in this pas de deux. Water bounces sound. You and I are strands of rain-blown hair, arpeggio flights, stardust memories, singing resonances, a rose at dawn, a single breath in the mind’s ear. Morning. Lakeside. Your breath shapes cold air above Superior’s shore. Recollection skips stones over water. Light bends. Pasts are fictions, memory is liquid, you, that day, spill from memory’s edge. Then the dance concludes.
Look. Hear. At dusk or dawn, moon, stars, planets appear larger, higher than they really are. Light remains visible beyond our horizons.

                     light bends memory
                     when we breathe the morning air
                     through our rain-blown hair

 

 

 

The &MAN
for Iain Baxter&

And he stands in water up to his waist
and he’s holding an ampersand
and it’s a sunny day
and he’s wearing a ball-cap with an & on it
and he’s considered Canada’s 1st conceptual artist
and he’s got an Order of Canada (CC) & OOnt & OBC & FRSC
and he’s called the Marshall McLuhan of the visual arts
and he founded N.E. Thing Company in the 60s
and he trade-marked the & in 2009
and he lives with his wife & collaborator Louise Chance Baxter&
and we’re collaborating on a book about S&wich town
and you don’t need a memor&um to know
his success is not r&nom
it’s maybe slightly off-h&
some think it sc&alous
but nearly all agree his art is gr&
and sets a new st&ard
and his influence will exp&
while offering gr&iloquent profundities
with much ab&on
as fate has m&ated.
From a majority st&point
he’s a key panj&rum

 

 

Silences
for Collette

She asked, “What’s the quietest thing?”
I hedged. She crocheted;
A flower unfolding?
A taste of freedom?
Grass flexing in a gentle breeze?
An infant’s first breath? A soul’s final exit?
Spirit steps walking over autumn leaves?
Waves seen through a telescope?
Long-distance before you drop a coin into the slot?
Butterflies in a sunlit field?
Unspoken words?
Your lover’s pulse in the chambers of the heart?
Spring ice melting on open water?
Snowflakes settling on the outskirts of a quiet forest?
Pine smell on a soft breeze?
Sun warming an open field?
Sub-marine movements of fish?
The vacuum of space?
Wind-blown sand collecting in dunes?
The moment between in-breath and out?
Eyes reading words?
The eleventh hour?
The moment you hang up?
Perhaps time’s fingers sifting sand,
or, thoughts gathering wool…?

 

 

 

 

Karl Jirgens, Prof. Emeritus, former English Dept. Head (U Windsor), and Chair of the Creative Writing Program (U Windsor), is author of five books (Coach House, Mercury, ECW, Porcupine’s Quill), and is published globally (most recently in Japan). Jirgens founded, edited, published Rampike (an international journal of art, writing, and theory) digitally archived at U Windsor. Jirgens edited two books (on painter Jack Bush, and poet Christopher Dewdney), plus, an issue of Open Letter magazine with Beatriz Hausner. His latest book of short fiction, The Razor’s Edge, was a Finalist for the Forward Prize and earned a Bronze medal for the ELIT awards. See: www.jirgens.org  He recently guest-edited an issue of HA&L magazine. His poetry was selected for the anthology Best Canadian Poetry, 2023.