Seven from Sangan River Meditations.

Seven from Sangan River Meditations

   (i)

   Our cat is up the tree again; I hear her cry
   over the lonely tattering of prayer flags worn
   to transparency by the wind. I try tempting
   her down with heart minced the way
   she likes it, still warm from the gutted
   body of the deer. I build a bridge
   from our roof to the end of her branch
   so she can pad across and I can rescue her.

   But no, it's as if she clings to the high
   dying hemlock because she has
   something she wants me to see.
   Later, with the moon rising I climb back
   onto our roof with my flashlight, her eyes,
   two shiny plum pits summoning me. She
   is happy now that I have come just to sit
   patiently and watch from this height
   the river empty into the sea.

   (ii)

   The first alder leaves on the road after
   last night's wind, those still clinging
   to the trees blowing silver. If you ask me
   again what I want it is to make
   peace with the part of me that insists
   I exist, like the scratching of our old cat
   at the back door when the north wind blows.

   (iii)

   We eluded beauty and went
   right to the truth, evaded happiness
   and went for the weeping. I loved you
   with the tenderness we save
   for something that will ruin our lives.
   Never mind the lies, the promises
   you couldn't keep. They are small
   mysteries, like the blowing milkweed silk.

   (iv)

   Small flocks of twitchy sandpipers
   scoot out on the tide; a pheasant
   stutters from the ditch into the trees.
   All my life, right and wrong
   tangled. A falcon stoops
   in a steep glide.

   (v)

   After the first snowfall I find
   a winter wren frozen on the forest path.

   Who could have imagined it:
   even the birds are freezing.

   As I push through earth locked in sorrow,
   in ice, find a hollow between rocks
   where her body will lie, a winter wren lights
   on the handle of my shovel.

   (vi)

   The day we set out to dig
   our old cat's grave under the looming
   hoary cedars, the dark came down
   early, blowing snow clouds
   over the hills. I thought the going
   doesn't get any easier. We are
   the broken heart of this world.

   (vii)

   Perhaps this is all
   I have left to do

   to bow, at the least,
   to the plum blossoms
   in all those ancient

   love poems loosely
   translated from the Chinese.

Susan Musgrave has been nominated and received awards in five different genres--poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, children's writing--and for her work as an editor. She teaches at the University of British Columbia in the Optional Residency Creative Writing MFA Programme and conducts workshops in libraries, prisons, high schools and psychiatric wards across the country. Her latest book, You're in Canada Now ... A Memoir of Sorts, was published by Thistledown in the fall of 2005. Musgrave has recently read No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy, What It Means to Be Human by Marilyn Bowering, Ravens in Winter by Bernd Heinrich (with thanks to Graeme Gibson who recommended it) and The Blue Hour of the Day: Selected Poems by Lorna Crozier.