The next poem is pretty obviously an attempt
to say in a poem what's going on in a painter,
I was watching a friend of mine who
is a painter and the husband of the girl I went with
up until last year curiously.
I won't go into that.
Anyway Vancouver is a very landscapy place too much so
at times as anybody who's read Tish over the last year or so
can attest.
Vancouver two, this line, so, they're,
shore and a dab of blue patch of sky above mountains.
Do the sun sliding down snow slopes to the sea,
I don't take a collection until--
it's a nice thought though.
I'll start.
This line so, there, shore and a dab of blue patch of sky
above mountains
Do the sun sliding down snow slopes to the sea
Can you imagine?
Snow in April
However, triangles of light for boats
braving the inlet trying the first wind of the year
There, blocks of brown, gray, dark green buildings
backed up from the ocean
Put the paint on thick for spring,
some pink for cherry blossoms, red for blood
flowing through everyone clouds and rolling back
to the outer islands
Put in yellow my favorite color please for nothing
Put in the all outdoors the forest fires of summer,
the farm floods, frogs on the grass,
pigeons, pigeons, pigeons, pigeons flapping the air
Put in the air paint with both hands brushes full of color
Paint the great return of holy cathedral mountain,
sunlight burning down warm and brilliant all the sea
silly day.
In case I read any more poems about Vancouver
I'd like to just give you a short indication of what
goes on in Vancouver, it's a series
of harbors that cut in and bring all kinds of boats
from Japan and Seattle.
And then there's mountains that rise right up
right from the shore and they go way up high,
and people ski on top of them and do ski diving down
at the bottom of them.
And then there's a big valley that goes in about 100 miles
and then there's more mountains inside,
and the whole city is full of seagulls and water skiers.