folio : Barry McKinnon (1944-2023)
For Barry McKinnon
No Distance
The beat & flutter, quiet among the
band
The drummer asks time to hold no
distance
The trick is to play as one
To aim for focus: maybe, that’s the
point
in this mudscape the smuck of a
boot
reminds the poet of the farm the
woods
where there is no year zero, and the
voices
are sparrows, horny angels, for in the
forest
the death fugue sings the life fugue
The Death Fugue sings The Life Fugue
Old Man Winter laughs at the light,
the mind’s Libido
Blindness focusses
the poet’s inner plight
For to find oneself in the desert
with a coin or a little ice
placed over the mind’s eye
is enough
to fool the Miser
Hey, Virgil,
now’s the time
to
close the distance
between the teeth on the comb
the dog hair and the snow
your bare back on the backseat
between the blue tor of dawn
cigarette & musk,
the indistinguishable whistle
from the CN train
that which wails
with lamentations of beautiful women
calling us home
Heart & Time
Heartsease in the Gorse entrance
enchants the bar divers
who offer to drink the moat
& to cross the table
& to swim the distance
& to make poetry matter most
Does poetry matter most?
For whom does poetry matter most?
One swam to the desert
some swam to drown
some swam way up river
more than a few went
queerly down
squint, but the horizon
does not point one in a direction
the horizon only calls one forward
Poet, you knew
the distance,
we drank
away the time
you
knew the beat
root
hog or die
you saw what they wanted
you
knew the price
even when you were heartbroken
even when you looked blind
You tried to close the distance
You refused to make it rhyme
You played it softly
between your heart and time
Broadside
Side 1
We had afternoon light
energies
& a godlike thirst for poems
Our senses, the body, beat with
telescopic tragedy
& and we made jubilee
talking ourselves into
poetic memory
I have seen beautiful women
turn to hags and write with such beauty
ah, fuck it
I have seen friends
turn into devils, possessed
and write drivel
yet
there is room in poetry for Everyone,
God
damn it
I have seen great poems go unread
so often, the books that hold them
glow as if breathed on by some spirit
under my desk
I have seen love come from a keg
like pansies or poesies
and go like friends
Side 2
The Poem’s love appears in the blue
hour
in an dogged desire for friendship
& Beauty, we were ready
we were here for Love
the love I sing for
the love I dismiss
or the love I hide from
in the cold breath
of morning
a love that burns in the tealights on
the table at the Cork
& in the phosphorescent lamps
in the late afternoon, the ones that turn
on
at about the same time
we poets would meet
Graham Pearce lives in Prince George and teaches Creative Writing, Composition, and Literature at the College of New Caledonia.