FIRE PIT

in the first light of winter morning,

drawn still, faint, tight in York Harbour,

I woke reluctantly to take the garbage out,

and face once more the weekly contest

with cunning crows, spied through sheer

curtains, ready to hurl curses and threats,

not glad, when they plunge like kamikaze

pilots, focused solely on the target,

my Glad green garbage bags

last week the crows took advantage

of my need to pee and successfully

attacked, and I had to tramp out

in the cool bitterness again to pick up

the garbage, now strewn along

the shoulder of the highway,

and found scraps of poems, drafts

I scribbled during the week, littered

here and there, crumpled reminders

that like many editors, the crows were

obviously not impressed with my poems

a little later Lana and I, known in town

as the joggers, apparently the only ones,

ran around the harbour, waved to Dave

the mayor who is always here and there,

seems everywhere, full of laughs and stories

and plans, and saw Glenda open her store

where she bakes bread and cookies like

old-fashioned moms once baked, before

Tim Horton’s and Dominion Superstore,

and a golden Lab leaped out of his yard

and chased us with raucous barks, clearly

glad for companions on this idle morning

I passed much of the day with poetry,

others and mine, letting words seep into

my body like night frost in morning stone,

and in the late November afternoon,

Lana and I cleaned out an old fire pit

in the backyard near the cliff hanging

over the ocean, found the pit by poking

around in the tall grass and tangled

alders, discovered a buried ring of rocks,

and like archaeologists conjured images

of a past, at least a few years old,

recalled traces of the people who lived

here before us, people we know nothing

about, just as the people who move in

next year will know nothing about us,

except in the traces we leave, likely

indecipherable, since who will ever

know we cleared the fire pit because

Aaron and Anna and Nicholas are coming

from Vancouver soon, and we will gather

on the eve of Christmas for a wiener roast

like we have often convened at Garry Point

on the Gulf of Georgia, faraway, our lives

written in the rhythms of reiteration

and while no crows have yet scrutinized

these scraps scribed in the quotidian, they

are a quotient of words I leave so others who

come after us will find a bracelet of beachstones

reclaimed by Lana and me in a November

afternoon, where in late December snowlight

and firelight, we roasted hot dogs with our

children, more traces of our presence, the places

where together we have tarried a little while