Three Poems by Bruce McRae

by Bruce McRae

Star Guide

The Insomniac's Guide to the Stars,

its numberless blank spaces

and the smear of gravity

for those who don't like reading.

A vast assortment of corners

where the sleepless go for brief respite.

A variety of darknesses

for the discerning nighthawk.

It's dark. It's night.

But a light is burning

like a restive mind,

the last person on Earth

sleepwalking across the universe.

It's a banquet in a season of scarcity,

stars like cats' eyes and cinders,

my personal downfall in full swing.

It's a map of midnight and how to get there,

with new names for old constellations,

new gods and demigods,

the sleepless one tugging on a curtain,

planets where his eyes should be,

comets foreshadowing death

and the way uncertain.

Literature

One noted author places a cow

in every story he's ever written,

never too obvious, often unsaid,

the implication of a cow, its nature assured

with various phrases and gestures,

suggesting a cow's presence via an absence

which can't be explained away,

even after several close readings.

There may be a barn or woodshed,

and it's usually the thick of winter,

an old woman with a wooden pail,

her breaths trailing clouds of thought bubbles.

She's crossing a farmyard, an icy blue morning,

and you can be sure it's another century.

The Volga, perhaps, is flooding its banks,

a grumble of cannon fire burring the distance.

At other times the cow is openly stated

and will be figured into the plot, eventually,

like Chekov's gun over the mantelpiece.

There may be only a casual mention,

such as 'a cow, a bullhorn, a pomegranate',

Bossy then lost among the pages,

a walk-on role in the drafts of literature

and she happily jawing a cud,

thoroughly unaware of her importance,

of her position in the pantheon of artistry.

Of course other animals are written in,

other characters, the author famous for good reason,

his plot lines, his powers of persuasion,

so that we can see the cow, real or imagined.

Its ribs showing through in difficult times,

we feel genuine pity for fictional sufferance.

Or a Prussian general is dining at the London Ritz,

carriages on Piccadilly frosted with rain,

the steak he knives to be exceedingly rare.

Who'll be dead by autumn, tuberculosis,

the meal, the moment, not to be remembered,

the reader thickened with poor translations,

the cow appearing in a number of languages,

in many nations, many eras, the author, if questioned,

shrugging slightly then writing till dawn.

Love's Rose

In the throes of gravity.

In the hollows of my bed,

reaching for the lamp of morning,

autumn shaking out its bag of wind,

building its newspaper palaces . . .

When I'm put in mind

of a woman I'd once met,

smoking death's last cigarette

and smiling like a crooked path.

Thunderstruck, I have to say

she had a smile like a locked gate

in the rain or an alleyway after midnight.

When she smiled the clocks stopped

and everything seemed possible.

A smile like the grave of a son.

Like a shut door or sunlit inlet.

Love's rose for a mouth, this woman,

whose name is long forgotten,

smiled at me like a dog about to bite

the hand of a passing stranger.

A party in my derelict youth,

I was both entranced and appalled,

without a thought her smile might taunt me

in this ridiculous future I inhabit,

the present moment informed by the past

and a smile so difficult to come by.