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Wallace Du Temple Poem
The cruise ship charged
Whistleless at my sail boat
In a narrow channel
Between Islands
Of The Salish Sea.
I was powerless with sails up
Tacking against a current
Knotted against me.
The water boiled.
I recoiled
In dread
I could see them
Cosmetic lazy travellers
Lounging unconcerned
Tending to their looks
As the mass
Of their moving Carnival
Careened
At my destruction.
Two glaucous winged seagulls
Preening feathers were
Unconcerned
As the submerging emerging hulking
Tree trunk and roots
Surged at me
Copyright © Wallace Du Temple | Year Posted 2016
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Wallace Du Temple Poem
Land Is A Loom
I sailed the fiord like inlets between Powell River and Drury Inlet.
The land itself spoke from mountains, torents, islet
From bird song and bear splashing fishers
From rutting moose and cougars sharp incisors.
The place has a scale that needs no advisers
But in our bodies felt, sensed in our story talking.
The Chinese spoke of sensing place by the four dignities
Of Standing and Lying and Sitting and Walking.
Indigenous peoples of the passage added Paddling by degrees
For the Haida and Salish sang their paddles to taboos
To the rhythm of the drum in their crested clan canoes
Trunks transformed indwelling people who swim like trees.
First Nations marked this land, made drawings above sacred screes
As they walked together, to gather, share and thank with spirit sapplings.
So Dao-pilgrims in the blue sacred mountains of Japan rang their ramblings
And conjoined with the soul of their place.
Now the loggers’ chainsaws were silent as men who had sinned -
Motoring now for of wind not a trace -
I could see stories from the slopes, hear tales in the wind.
Modern hieroglyphs spoke from clearcuts convex and concaves
Slopes of burgandy and orange bark shaves
Atop the hills, beige and silver drying snags
In the gullies, the brilliant pink of fire weed tags
A tapestry of times in work.
A museum of lives that lurk.
Once the logging camps floated close to the head of inlets.
Now rusting red donkeys and cables no longer creak,
Nor do standing spar trees sway near feller notched trunks,
Nor do grappler yarders shriek as men bag booms and
Dump bundles in bull pens.
The names bespeak the work.
Bull buckers, rigging slingers, cat skinners, boom men and whistle punks.
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Ashore to pee with my my dog I saw a ball of crushed bones in scat
Later we heard the evocative howl of a wolf
And my pooch and I go alongwith the song
Conjoining with the animal call
In a natural world fearsome, sacred and shared.
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Old bunk houses have tumbled, crumbling fish canneries no longer reek.
Vietnam Draft dodgers and Canucks that followed the loggers forever borrowed
The hoisting winches, engines, cutlery, fuel, grease and generators.
While white shells rattled down the ebbing sea.
Listing float homes still grumble when hauled on hard.
Somber silhouettes of teetering totems no longer whisper in westerlies
Near undulating kelp beds of Mamalilkula.
Petroglyphs talk in pictures veiled by vines.
History is a tapestry
And land is the loom.
Every rock, headland, and blissful fearsome bay
Has a silence that speaks when I hear it.
Has a roar of death from peaking storms when I see it.
Beings and things can be heard and seen that
Enter and pass through me to evaporate like mist
From a rain dropped forest fist
And are composted into soil.
Where mountains heavily wade into the sea
To resemble yes the tremble and dissemble
Of the continental shelf.
Where still waters of deception
Hide the tsunamis surging stealth.
Inside the veins of Mother Earth the magmas flow
Beneath fijords where crystalized glaziers glow.
Here sailed I, my dog and catboat
Of ‘Bill Garden’ build
The H. Daniel Hayes
In mountain water stilled
In a golden glory of my remaining days.
In Cascadia the images sang and thrilled
Mamalilikula, Kwak’wala, Namu, Klemtu
The Inlets Jervis, Toba, Bute, and Loughborough.
I then I chose to rip from out my mind
Ugly sounds and vulgar images, that could recall
Unhuman stories of Nagasaki, and Bophal.
Copyright © Wallace Du Temple | Year Posted 2016
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Wallace Du Temple Poem
Spider’s Rigging
“I had resolved on a voyage around the world, and as the wind
on the morning of April 24, 1895 was fair, at noon I weighed
anchor, set sail, and filled away from Boston, where the Spray
had been moored snugly all winter. A thrilling pulse beat
high in me. My step was light on deck in the crisp air. I felt
there could be no turning back, and that I was engaging in an
adventure the meaning of which I thoroughly understood.”
I sat on the poop deck of ‘Joshua’ , a gaff-rigged replica of Slocam’s
Spray
Built by Captain Bill Harpster
Reading these lines from Joshua Slocam’s
‘Circumnavigation of the Globe’.
Sunrise in the Salish Sea, on hook and reclining in a deck chair
I had nothing to do but look at the old tyme rigging
And codger up old salt sayings
Words evocative of the sailor’s sea
Mizzen-top-bowlines, cross-jack-braces, peak halliards and spanker
booms
Flying-jig-martingales, bull-ropes, marlinspikes, belaying pins and
bollards.
Dreamily I word wander in poetic mariner jargon .
I picture the whale ship ‘Pequod’, commanded by Captain Ahab,
While below deck still in his berth slumbers salty Captain Bill
One-legged like Ahab whose Moby Dick was his Vietnam War.
Then my eyes spot a dot in the rigging repaired by Bill yesterday
A fuzzy speckled spider is at work
It makes ‘mock’ speed spins between shrouds and ratlines
Of the rope rung ladder to the masthead.
At first I don’t see the rigging threads Spinning from its’ spherical gut But they must be there in air Because the spider is moving purposefully in space
Heading geometrically between way points
Joining all to a centre where crocheted filaments become emergent
gold
In the rising sun.
Did he have to learn it? Become an apprentice? Will he step back and
ask
Is that good enough?
Next she suddenly jumps forward and catches hold of a filament.
Not finished yet the sailor engineer hauls in some slack and
Fixes silk threads firmly to the rigging.
Next she goes to the centre of her galactic star
Opens a gland bottle of tar
Applies a coagulating, viscid fluid from the centre out
And makes a glittering sticky thread from centre to head.
Now it waits for the next flying steak
While I await for a slumbering Bill to awake.
Copyright © Wallace Du Temple | Year Posted 2016
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Wallace Du Temple Poem
Inuksuk Hunter
Seen, and unseen, white in, stars out
Snow slices air.
Seal Mukluks shuffling, toes in seal hair
Electrons knife into ice, tangentially chill
From aurora’s greenish lights dancing a whistle’s will.
The Inuit
hunter
Clothed inside out, and outside in by caribou hollow hair
Feels belly sweat trickle, get sucked in by air
From steady dog team gait
Across the tectonic tundra plate
Of Mother’s molten gut.
Shafting silver frost, stalagmites up
To startles
In sparkles.
His eyes stare through slits of bone
Crossing frigid fault lines of stone.
He listens to language of snow and of gale
Senses ancestral tongue speaking from drifting trail.
The snow squeaks of density, depth and of place.
Homeward bound in swirling might
As frozen asteroids in cosmic flight
Crater his pupils in lunar impact
Nothing but blue pained light
Seen before the end of sight
In a day of night.
Copyright © Wallace Du Temple | Year Posted 2016
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Wallace Du Temple Poem
Pantoum about Ernie Petersen,
Trader At Rose Prairie
Fur Trader
The buyer and trapper jawed trade
“What’s fur fetching at the Winnipeg auction?”
At Rose Prairie the deals was made
At the wood burning stove with caution
“What’s fur fetching at the Winnipeg auction?”
Cold winter makes pelt with heft.
The buyer fingers a beaver with caution.
“You’ve got four winters of debts still left.”
Cold winter makes pelt with heft
He checks account ledgers for bills overdo.
At jawing for credit the trapper was deft
“I needs credit for more than just stew.”
The buyer checks account ledgers for bills overdo.
The trapper needs wire, bullets, sugar, sour dough.
Doesn’t think of account ledgers or bills overdo
For a night with Maxime he’s in need of some dough.
The trapper needs wire, bullets, sugar, sour dough.
The buyer pours the brewed coffee and stokes the wood stove.
Says synthetic fur drove the auction real low.
Celebrities protested before the fur market dove.
He pours the brewed coffee and stokes the wood stove.
They chat about beaver, lynx and grey fox.
He tops up the mugs from the whisky alcove.
Talks of kids, dogs, and women and child lost to pox.
They chat about beaver, lynx and grey fox.
They share season from cabins, and tales of trap line.
They share bannock and bacon and butter from box
Of seasons they talk when barter was fine.
They share season from cabins and tales of trap line.
The buyer gives trapper snuff dark and sweet
Closes the deal with a ball of tough twine.
Then he sharpens a knife to serve some moose meet.
The buyer and trapper jawed trade.
Copyright © Wallace Du Temple | Year Posted 2016
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Wallace Du Temple Poem
My Dog Paxton
Where cedars rust the road
And maples mat the margin
I walk with dogs.
Pluto, Sasha and, old Paxton,
Dead the last and he the lead
Wherever we go by trails of scent.
Bossy he, the border collie cross.
Faces the wind that rustles the leaves
Paces reflections that ripple the puddles
Black and white, there be no cuddles
For him, the alpha dog of sturdy jaw
No scratching of his head, that’s his law.
He will mouth the arm firmly of he who tries.
He is a dead dog that never lies.
Pluto and Sasha seek attention
Look to me, to give direction
Always begging for affection.
Paxton has no demands but to leave him alone
He offers me the friendship of a crystal gazing stone
Where I can sometimes see myself.
He always keeps his sovereignty,
He never stoops to become my servant.
The friendship and mystery of a full moon
With a reserved intimacy
And no exaggerations:
He licks neither my knees nor hand
And chooses which words to understand.
He never invades my clothes with his snout
Or rolls into bed like the others
His confident eyes show a sweet caring for me
A loyalty reserved only for a friend,
In a silent life never demanding.
When he died I planted a cedar tree over his bones
And from that tree we start our walks
Even now, where the cedars rust the road.
Copyright © Wallace Du Temple | Year Posted 2016
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Wallace Du Temple Poem
Grace Harbour
First into Grace Harbour
Me in classic sailboat
At anchor alone
In Desolation Sound
Where silence reveals the place
And the world is bigger
Because I can hear its’ vastness
It’s Bioacoustic diversity
Seals surface, gulls dive, water ripples.
A breeze in a cedar whispers
The buzz of a bumblebee.
The distant whistle of an eagle trembles in air
And falling droplets of rain taste of spruce.
The very place sparkles in silent sound and my soul is still
No need to block out
The combat zone of flashing messages.
From CNN and Fox.
But stillness of silence
Is reflected in blue water
and framed by oyster encrusted rocks,
While green and orange algae talk
Tidal pools and purple sea stars walk
And I can hear the world as music.
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War, bombs and shrapnel.
Roaring yachts arrive like Hummers or tanks from Kandahar
Stacked high with gadgets, guns hanged,
Travelling as a pack of waking house-mobiles
To conquer wilderness with bars, showers, propane barbecues
Gas generators, deep freezers, and boom-boxes
All sorts of folks; models in bikinis with pedigree dogs.
Fashion ladies in silk that launch revving zodiacs
To carry standard poodles for an urgent pee.
Then ‘A Tea Cup Yorkshire terrier’ yelps
At a Jack Russell that barks at a Chihuahua
As a Dachshund and Afghan Hound take offense
In frenzied jealousy.
Big hipped humans scream ashore in tenders.
Acoustic awareness numbed
The get-away-from-it-allers that bring it all always, partied.
As night fell they turned the generators off
“I haven’t seen any wildlife”, said one,
“There was more to feed at the zoo”
Said the other boomer
“Yea, where’s the loon.”
Fixed ideas of progress consume.
Then our mother moon
In full dress exposed an array of limpets
Of many sizes and shapes all clinging to obvious rocks
Exchanging freedom for the security
Of a defensive shell of fixed ideas
And automated reflexes.
It is useless to talk kindly to a limpet
One must detach it by main force.
Copyright © Wallace Du Temple | Year Posted 2016
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Wallace Du Temple Poem
You tuft-eared Lynx
Once wild and free in home habitat
You became a specimen of science
Specimen BC-03-M-02
Captured near Kamloops Canada
Caged and sent to Colorado
To sire babies and enrich gene pools.
But once released they couldn’t keep you!
You yearned for home and family
Felt an urge to trek homeward-bound
You started a cross-border marathon
A travel odyssey of 2000 kilometres!
Leaping through sunsets and sunrises,
Clawing to alpine views
You snatched your padded paws
From speeding Michelins.
I think you were a marathon hero like Terry Fox
Whose Marathon of Hope raised money
To find a cure for cancer.
Your run was a Marathon of Hope for Habitat
To secure a home for wildlife,
Safe from human desecration
You both perished short of your dreams
Struck down by cell suburbs
Replicating to the loss of habitat and limb.
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Breaking news,
Bamff National Park,
Tag identified,
Rode kill
BC-03-M-02
Copyright © Wallace Du Temple | Year Posted 2016
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Wallace Du Temple Poem
This poem was inspired by the interviews by Earl K. Pollon and S. S. Matheson conducted with native Sekanni peoples who were negatively effected by the flooding of their communal homelands by the building of the W.A.C. Bennett Dam. “This Was Our Valley” tells that story of injustice. 640 square miles of riverfront and hunting territory would be flooded to form Williston Lake. The Sekanni peoples were driven from their ancestral homeland in northeastern British Columbia, Canada and dispersed.
The Shopping Cart Injustice
People, place and spirit
All were our relations
Biopeds, quadrupeds, winged or finned -
River language told us so.
Fishing rocks spoke the run
Where the riffles and the rapids talked.
Ancestors, dead and alive, told living stories where
Running the river banks, the children played.
The land was a book written in forms.
We made our mark with love, community
Fishing weirs, aspen dugout canoes,
Hunting trails, camps and sacred sites.
Always traders, we traded furs with
White settlers when they arrived
On the rivers Parsnip, Finlay and Peace at
Finlay Forks, Fort Grahame, Fort McLeod.
We added pack trains, teams of pack horses
River freighters, flat bottom ‘longboats’
For supplies and for mail delivery.
It seemed that we could live together.
Then one day a government agent said
That shopping carts were coming
They would flood our world
Water rising everywhere
Shopping carts with electric can openers
Full, fast to check out,
Shopping carts with electric hair blowers,
Full, faster to check out,
Shopping carts with electric air conditioners,
Full, fastest to check out
Shopping carts with electric stoves.
Check out, check out, check out.
They would make our rivers into a lake
We would move or drown.
Our elders did not believe it.
That was the only consultations!
Soon Saskatoon berries all under water
Next, the banks sloughed back to graveyards
Next, cliffs crumbled, and banks fell into rising lake
Houses of the villages slipped and floated
Coffins, bones and bodies strewed the shore
Where tangled trees, debris and more
Eddied with flotsam in the wind.
We wept for our ancestors!
We weep for our children.
We had to flee the destruction
Caused by tree grinders, D-9 bull dozers
The dam construction.
Now they want to take more
Another dam for more shopping carts.
Please stop Site ‘C’.
Copyright © Wallace Du Temple | Year Posted 2016
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Wallace Du Temple Poem
My Evenings With a Mouse
Once I shared my evenings with a mouse
By cliff face tall in tiny house
By Fraser river flow, near Chilliwack
By a truckers’ café I had my shack
One room, kitchen nook, and can,
Not enough for a married man.
Away from home five days a week.
I thought I was alone, but then - I
Found scat near breadbox tin
Found shavings near, and shredded socks.
And then a visitor let out a squeak
Bulging eyes and bristled nose
It stood upright, chin touched toes.
Were we lonely, would we find compassion?
Next four days I served supper to companion
Crumbs, pork, pasta and milk
Before I headed home to lingerie in silk.
Set out meat, cheese, fries, bread leftovers
Made it good for rodent stay-overs.
Returned, I found the timorous creature
Had met a most dastardly departure
It had looked for a watering hole.
Now it floated, dead and toilet-bloated
It seemed crude just to flush it away
So I carried it out for burial on a silver tray.
Copyright © Wallace Du Temple | Year Posted 2016
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