Ken Massicotte ~ Five Poems

The Only Ones Left in the World
First Months

..
It was win­ter and snow­ing hard. I was dri­ving to get the oil changed but came to a church. I went inside but at the Eucharist felt too alone and had to leave. I’d left the car run­ning, and the pine mir­ror, which I’d refin­ished years ago, had bro­ken. The top was jagged and glyph­ic like a shard.

..
A cor­morant came to me in a large room, open to the sky, high above the town. The adobe brick, still warm, and the air pink and gold­en in the dusty vista. It was majes­tic but I knew it was wrong — the hunter with its open wings dry­ing in the final rays of sun.

..
A small white van drove by and ran over my hand. I had a rock but didn’t throw it and I didn’t yell. It was a desert­ed rur­al area. The van went up the road and stopped at a stop sign. The dri­ver got out with a long rifle and start­ed shoot­ing at my wife and me. We had to crouch down and scur­ry to cover.

..
I was with two young Japanese women but one of them was going grey. She was clean­ing the thick planks of a weath­ered deck, marred by black rain. I was des­per­ate and ask­ing if we were the only ones left in the world.

Acclimation

..
I was run­ning along the flat rooftops of a city, jump­ing like a cat between build­ings. I came to the end and had to drop down about 30 ft. I need­ed to let go of the sil­ver blan­ket and use my hands.

..
Large black garbage bags were rolling in on a white-blue ocean, but as they neared the shore they turned into stat­ues – pol­ished ebony Buddhas, their faces sat­u­rat­ed with sadness.

..
In a mead­ow by the sea, the breeze was fresh and soft. I was claim­ing I could scale a wood­en fence, 15 or 20 feet, and climb down the oth­er side. But the fence stood on the edge of a cliff, the drop to the sea pre­cip­i­tous. When out by myself I found a coil of rope. A warder accused me of want­i­ng to escape and locked me in a room, but I knew I could pre­tend I was too afraid to leave.

..
I was walk­ing on a long steep road through green rolling hills, then fly­ing miles above the earth. I could see a vast dark for­est and an oil-black riv­er. The spo­radic lights of a dying city where I’d once lived. The blue tears in the China Sea. And draw­ing me to the south­west­ern sky, the jew­els in the hunter’s belt — fatal por­tal to the swirling mass of gas and inter­stel­lar dust. The pink glow of hydro­gen fuel­ing stars like beads on a string. The arms and spurs like rag­ing rivers feed­ing the infi­nite­ly dense black heart.

~

The Woman On The Underground

it could have been street art
a woman on the Underground
stepped onto the train crying
del­i­cate in cropped leather jacket
Chelsea boots, a vin­tage scarf
stop after stop with no refrain

fifty meters deep
tears stream­ing down
in the loud, packed train
a sun­ny week­end morning
small, beyond us in her grief

a lit­tle girl looked up and kept look­ing back
her eyes wet with worry
as she watched not knowing;
her lit­tle broth­er tried a ner­vous laugh
no one knew what to do

watch­ing each oth­er watch­ing her –
eyes dart­ing like trapped birds –
like an orches­tra, tuned to her sorrow
we couldn’t begin – her grief
too naked, too great, too plain.

when we left my love touched her arm
and whis­pered some­thing I couldn’t hear;
she nod­ded and accept­ed this kindness
and we walked away, as every­one would,
hop­ing she had some­one waiting.

~

Like Harold Fry

He had learned that it was the small­ness of peo­ple that filled him with won­der and ten­der­ness, and the lone­li­ness of that too.
     Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

He would walk like Harold Fry
on a mis­sion though noth­ing grand
down the back road out of town
like the guilty before him
pun­ished by rain and gods
ford rivers, see the moon rise
cold under tall black pine.

He’d take noth­ing, just the faith
he nev­er real­ly had
that he would find a copse
or stream in an elder forest
where he could disappear
alone or with others,
like penitents.

He would leave a note, no
some verse to explain
how he hid like rep­tiles hid
prayed he would die in his den
woke to the mem­o­ry of sharp teeth
and fleet­ing human faces
he’d scan for threat.

How he’d lived in cold rooms,
become a teacher, sang in a quartet,
won first prize in the local paper –
a morn­ing shot of a red fox
lumi­nous in a sud­den shaft of sun
lop­ing across the wet green lawn
beyond the wall of the black stone abbey.

~

Old and Before Fire

His lone­li­ness was pure and exquisite
like a sin­gle rifle shot at dawn.
Bitter like the final flare from a raft at sea.
It shamed like desert blood rain,
shift­ed like a snake in river­side grass.

It was the room he lived in –
the fridge motor churn­ing cold,
the fear of roach­es when he hit the light.
It was where he wait­ed in house arrest
dri­ven by bouts of shal­low breath.
The space bear­ing down
as he held the frightened
Dobermans against his chest,
and calmed their rac­ing hearts.

It was a deep moun­tain lake
sur­round­ed by tall fir,
black but for noon when the sun hit,
cold but for June and the wan­ton solstice.
You couldn’t see it from the path,
it was miles from any road
and the places peo­ple lived….

Urgent like blind hands, like cave bats,
old and before fire.

~

Hungry as Marble

She came in rags and feathers
from the copse behind the cottage

from the gar­den by the river
the cove down the wet stone steps.

She must have slept there overnight
she was from my past but I did­n’t long for her

and now my love was pre­tend­ing to be old
walk­ing hunched like she need­ed a cane.

She came to our cot­tage, to the open door
I watched her climb in the hon­eyed light

weight­less on the wood­en rungs
her nip­ples scar­let like for­est berries.

The torn suit and van dyke
pubes­cent on her pale face

tilt­ing sad­ness like a Noh mask
curv­ing like a cres­cent moon

hun­gry as marble
for all the suf­fer­ing we could bear.

~

Ken Massicotte lives in Hamilton, Ontario. He has pub­lished in sev­er­al jour­nals — Wilderness House, Gray Sparrow, Poetry Quarterly, Ginosko, Crack the Spine, Matador, Sleet, Grain, Rat’s Ass Review.