The Ghosts of Jay MillAr Read Free Page B

nowhere at all 15 : summer has come to an end again. stand back, slow down, all of this is what we have longed for as memory speeds up into the top of our skull to slice at the crisp they find there, and it’s all the same thing, we have been here before doing this very thing, as though the very multitude of flannel were a slow leak reservoir heaven of warmth to bathe every inch of your mind, the heat is suddenly mindfuck’t again: and it’s over. and it’s over as autumn shoots each leaf through their memory so ancient they all turn to colour and dust 16 … we miss things constantly; think behind each thing, look around still blocked from the sunlit voice of abstraction itself, left with what we began with in our minds to begin with and discover nostalgia here in the present i was once a small creature in my Sunday best and the light fell just so, as did my feet, walking, there in the present, 17 the squirrels, the sun, the leaves and the small birds sputtering across rooftops, the books under my arm. i have been here before, a caravan, riding at dawn, looking through the wood and preparing for winter, the bear, the rabbit, the deer, the chipmunk, remembering paths we took, our subtle repetitions,the smooth essence of memory 18 and looking through the stupid window can make us believe there really is a world out there, as opposed to in here, where all our different minds, all our past incarnations fuse into sunlight.
    Sneezing Out There Rips My Head
19
    wide open.
    the rush of the trees in the wind, being the essence of trees
    is what allows myself the end of the wind that will never arrive
    in the present, i just don’t want to meet it out there tonight.
    one can listen to the sound and know the secret lives of trees, their passage
    in this, a time of small gods who sing with the wind and of it.
    constantly i feel this mounting and then the lethargy… all the time…
    O how I could spit like the wind tonight, venom, all the stupid rush of reason,
godly sounds, the wishes, the grunts, the mischief, Love… i have found love
squelches at these days repeating their habits endlessly, yet it is the
lethargy i have trouble with in the midst of such kafuffle. makes
me wish it were Sunday afternoon instead of Wednesday night, when spirits
aren’t all grown up with nowhere to hide from the many disappointments
where we are. i look forward to being contained by the mounting of love,
    as it continues listening to the trees as they never end despite
    my own sad reflections of living, trees in the darkness reach
    out what branches, branches i have never seen until
    we are ready to embark into the wind.
    we are ready to embark into
    always it’s against where we are in the present and now the breeze
    against my arms pincushion and cool, so lovely i could almost cry to
    imagine…
    all those days of summer might return, driving through the small towns of South Western Ontario: Watford, Thamesville, Chatham, Tilbury, Belle River; i always love to see the skies there through the tiny intersections as they fall gently to touch the earth, there were many photo opportunities.
    driving through the intersection of each town, passing earthclad tattered beings blowing in the wind, how i love them so… how they are made up as if from the elements themselves, breathing what air. i could almost become one of them i love to see them crossing the street, their own way of space and speech, every stupid thing i’ve ever done nags against this landscape, which is, of course, my Mind, my unlikeliness of ever succeeding, the big brash and hopeless city where i live, i might be impressed (in fact i am) by how my own memories begin in a rural landscape, years ago, working farms near Lucan Ontario shoveling horseshit from the stalls of rich horses with my brother Darren, the stench of piss and flies, loading up the wagons of hay with Darren and Steve, piling row after row of sweetgreen hay, each wagon piled