by Don McKay

Here in the grip of Number Six,
with its dread parade of signs
and portents, its mix of guilt and grief,
it comes as catharsis
to turn our minds to simple Number Five,
as though turning from a dear parent’s drawn–out decline
to a disaster flick:
                               one immense asteroid,
one blast the size of one
million Hiroshimas as it explodes
into the Yucatan and shrouds the planet
in debris. No one
saw it coming. No Cassandrasaur
forecast destruction to her bored
fellow mega–reptiles. No dour Al Gores,
no love–locked Gaians. No climate
change dino–deniers sponsored by The Brothers
Koch. No one was complicit
or deliberately deaf. Even the nameless asteroid
was innocent as snow.

Before it hit, ammonites
Fibonaccied everywhere in amniotic seas.
Neo plankton went rococo. T–Rex,
though fierce, fit its context comme il faut
as Texans barbecuing ribs at rodeo.

After the impact,
it is said, an Albertosaurus in Alberta
had maybe two minutes. Perhaps her atoms
mixed with bits of asteroid’s Iridium, which —
after the whole mess settled, and sixty–five million years elapsed —
fingered the perp.

Don’t we all secretly adore apocalypse,
especially in movies, The Bible,
foreign cities, and the past? Pop culture
thinks so and the news
concurs. At any rate,
we must be grateful to the blessèd asteroid,
slayer of dinosaurs, facilitator
of our green and pleasant, if now pretty
iffy, biosphere.

by Don McKay

What is the sad bird singing?
“Something in the interrogative mood,”
says the piano, “some koan,” and the violin
with the slept–in–suit and smoky baritone
concurs. Outside, someone scratches
on a stone, writing out a point
or knapping in the style of Homo habilis, esteemed
inventor of instruments.
The five–note bird flies
in and out of opera, in
and out of flux, ferrying music
back to noise and noise,
spruced up, to a picnic in Algonquin Park.
Later, the cricket–ratchet creature.
Later, excoriating chords.
Was there a word for rock
ringing? We live between eroding raindrops
and accelerating clocks. The piano
lifts its lid to show its wire–and–hammer
heart.

by Daphne Marlatt

     Note: These poems are from a series called “flights” written
     about not only my childhood in Penang (& the feeling of
     being both here in Vancouver, & there) but also my dad’s
     early years there in the 30s based on letters he wrote home to
     his mother in England.

     No more now; writing is rather difficult to–night as we have a
     visitation of many small insects of various shapes & sizes. They
     keep falling down from the lamp overhead & my pen has to
     thread its way between their corpses.
    Penang, December 20th 1935

amber smudge wing smears
on yellowing letter stock signed
from Arthur blue ink blue
ink–thin line drawn
under

small wing blurs
amber hair–like, yours

on the back of your hand
under bachelors’ mess lamp

pen nib skirting
burned wings to wing
words cross–ocean

wealth uncountable
unpriced moth throe, firefly
blur

temple flowers, white, fragrant
through window unglassed
your light

attract

death to paper via
Indian Ocean, Suez, Medi–
terranean, mother Angleterre

this wing wealth then
a line drawn

No more

by Daphne Marlatt

     Note: These poems are from a series called “flights” written
     about not only my childhood in Penang (& the feeling of
     being both here in Vancouver, & there) but also my dad’s
     early years there in the 30s based on letters he wrote home to
     his mother in England.

oceans of clouds wet penetrant or penitent however we choose to see
what’s around or who’s walking suffused in pour underfoot or overhead
it’s wall–size Laiwan’s “fountain” origin frame some Summer Afternoon
shot five years after i arrived from monsoon rains knowing nothing of
West Coast clouds of history here
                                                          hot skin welcomes rain there

its ambulant glance a drumming overhead in yellowy light of oiled paper
his familiar face grins delight to grown child his memory revel this, this
is paying rain drops slide down kertas top its bamboo spokes radiate
old ways not his he learned on arrival where some time in the Thirties
he’d stay on

could not
                  given war, political shifts
                                                               economies’ changing hands
so Fifties departure to safer harbour here no origin point in time arising
earlier viaduct boats below on settler ground’s False Creek tidal flats
quick–quick industrialized it flows without essential quality eclipsed
in many oolong dregs of memory–float it’s demos skin soak drains brim
as too much coming down floods what was here