This is my village. My farm. My woods. My beach.

My world... from ages 1-18.

Down there, there are dyke lands and corn fields and perfect apple orchards, there are gigantic high tides and Newfoundland dogs and men grown to heights trees used to reach, there are doors in the ocean and mad Baptist preachers and the ruin of a thousand perfectly good lives, there are recovering bald eagles and sandpiper mass mind and blue herons breaking all of our laws, there are cuckolded astronomers hiding out in observatories and bootleggers in cars seen on the Dukes, heck, there's even a Cape for a great Indian hero and the footprints of the first creatures on land. 

It's the kind of place you go to live forever. 

The English called it Avalon.

The French, Arcadia.

Seems as though every race that ever entered this place felt it was a dream come true - Micmac, Norse, French, New Englanders, even the Scots.

I returned home, to this place, when I was 28. I'd been on the road for ten years. I'd learned a lot. Experienced a lot.

And I was tired.

Donno what drove me to it, but upon returning, I started writing poems.

They're a beginner's poems, sure.

And they barely even scratch the surface of life in this... Avalon.

I know they certainly don't scratch the depths.

So let's just call this...3 bites at the apple.

Q

Avonport Not Hyannis Port

John F. Kennedy, yep,

 that's his name -

 "Just like the President."

 Truck-driver with two kids -

 Gerald and Ginny.

Living on the top floor

 of the old abandoned

 chicken-house.

 Busted stairs, no chairs,

 bare bulbs and rusted wire,

 with a hole in the wall

 as big as the colour console T.V.

 (with remote control).

Piss-soaked mattresses slump

 on the floor of woodchips

 and chickenshit -

 while pale eggs

 of drooling incest

                                     crack

                                    open

 in nests of straw-coloured hair.

Our Kennedy clan,

 with two small assassinations

 of its very own.

Camus The Canuck 

      I found a dead boy on the beach today.

      One eye open, thin blond hair, about thirteen years old.

     He was naked, smooth-skinned, with a bluish-pink colour.

      There were bags of ice under his eyes,

    where he'd cried himself to sleep in the cold.

      And even though you could see the small hairs

     around his pubic region,

      he was unshy.

     In fact, he was frozen so solid

     that when I hit him with a piece of driftwood

     he broke open like a clam.

Cracked right in two.

     I found an amethyst in his hip socket,

     very pink next to his liver,

     I think it was.

     He was a non-drinker.

     He must have wandered outdoors, sleepwalking,

     or maybe he needed to take a pee.

     It was only 50 feet or so, across his snowy lawn,

     and then just a quick tumble down the icy bank.

     To die, from his head on a log, or from exposure, maybe.

His little pink pecker sure looked funny I thought.

 Erect like that.

 Like maybe if I left him out there, some animal would come along

 and chew it off.

If that boy was here to see it, I bet he'd laugh something fierce,

 knowing that the animal was doing

                                                                        a dirty thing.

Harvested

All our dogs are dead

 and it's November,

                                       again.

Old age, a busted spleen and porcupine quills

 left pairs of barncat eyes

 to flash their message

                                                        of indifference,

unmolested.

Harrows, ploughs and the old Cockshutt combine

 lie in damp indentations,

 collecting rust,

 the way they once

 collected poverty.

Three brothers, three families, three dogs -

                                                                                                       together

raised 21 doctors,

 lovers,

 teachers,

 and mothers -

while seven times

         seven times

seven

                                                                  seasons were memorised.

and I went out walking through the back orchard that night the hurricane hit and when

it would gust up you could hear the apples falling off the trees and the sound of them

dropping onto the wet grass was like every picker in the Valley emptying their canvas

bags at the same time and all those millions of ripe apples whomping onto the bottom of

one big bin;

and my Newfoundland dog Babe being put to sleep because he got into a porcupine

he never thought anything could ever hurt him he was so big and I tried to tell him but

he just kept acting like a bear not a dog and when we tried to pull the quills out his

nose just came to pieces but he still never bit,  and only one of the men had the heart

to take him back to the pond and shoot him and that was Dad;

and out on the dike building the hayload seven tiers straight up while the 6'7" men lifted

whole bales on the end of their forks easy, with their baler twine belts that we laughed at

and it must've been 200 degrees out I wished I'd been driving the tractor instead because

it's cooler but I couldn't work the clutch;

and us boys out at Midnight in the woods trying to round up those stray Holstein calves

that must've got spooked and busted down the fence,  and you're running wide open

through the trees trying to head them back with your arms up in front of you like karate

to keep the branches from whipping your face but the briars were ripping our pyjama bottoms

like nothing and you can't see anything in the moonlight but you can sure hear those calves

BLATTING;

and the pole barn burning you could even see the cattle's metal watering bowl melt and

after a while all that was left of the steers was just big black lumps in one corner and we

all knew which kids started it with matches and they both knew they were going to get a

beating,  and we all saw Dad standing in the yard and crying.

This farm flows

through our blood,

 an immunisation

 against the urban.

Its earth clings to our soles

 as we walk the shopping malls

                    of this great land.

I remember...

                                  what the world will never know again.

                                                                Let that be said.

       And the barncats of November

                                            smile

        because all our dogs are dead.

P.S. These days, I live over here, at Posterous.