Working out on Gavin's woodpile
Safe within the harmony of kin
Visions begin to crowd my eyes
Like a meteor shower in the autumn skies
And the soil beneath me seems to moan
With a sound like the wind through a hollow bone
And my mind fills with figures like Lappish runes of power1...
And log slams on rough-hewn log
And a voice from somewhere scolds a barking dog.
I remember a bleak-eyed prisoner
In the Stoney Mountain life-suspension home
You drink and fight and damage someone
And they throw you away for some years of boredom
One year done and five more to go --
No job waiting so no parole
And over and over they tell you that you're nothing...
and I toss another log on Gavin's woodpile
and wonder at the lamp-warm window's welcome smile.
I remember crackling embers
Coloured windows shining through the rain
Like the coloured slicks on The English River2
d**h in the marrow and d**h in the liver
And some government gambler with his mouth full of steak
Saying, "If you can't eat the fish, fish in some other lake.
To watch a people die -- it is no new thing."
And the stack of wood grows higher and higher
And a helpless rage seems to set my brain on fire.
And everywhere the free space fills
Like a punctured diving suit and i'm
Paralyzed in the face of it all
Cursed with the curse of these modern times
Distant mountains, blue and liquid,
Luminous like a thickening of sky
Flash in my mind like a stairway to life --
A train whistle cuts through the scene like a knife
Three hawks wheel in a dazzling sky --
A slow motion jet makes them look like a lie
And I'm left to conclude there's no human answer near...
But there's a narrow path to a life to come
That explodes into sight with the power of the sun
A mist rises as the sun goes down
And the light that's left forms a kind of crown
The earth is bread, the sun is wine
It's a sign of a hope that's ours for all time.