Things

The things that keep the stars in place
and gravity downward
those that keep birds singing
instead of barking
and those little things
that make flowers open
on warm spring days -

These are the things
holding my mind
and pumping my blood
and longing for things
that make the other things
make sense.

Only in Vancouver

Only in Vancouver
do we get away with
Canadian "Winter"
that feels like a Manitoba spring
and an Alberta fall.

The days may
be pastel gray
and wipe the colour of the sky
to the colour of grey goose feathers
smudged in oil pastel blobs,
but I find I quite like
the gentleness of midday
screened in cloud.

And only here do people
take their umbrellas
to shelter from the flying drops
of snow
that touch
the ground and seep
into roots, keeping green
the grass.

I love the sea salt air
blowing and raining,
the drips
that gently soothe
my tired ears
to sleep.

On those days

When my days hand me uphills and stumbles
when my nights shake me awake at 2am
and when ticking time refuses to wait,
I look as far as eyes can reach
along the line of the shore, the mountains,
and out to the people walking against the wind,
each step taken in the belief that forward
is worth the struggle.

There might come a day when it is not enough;
when hard is hard no matter how you push at it,
mold it, try to find a way around it,
every moment feeling like the mental is the physical
and vice versa, not mattering whether
it was a metaphorical or real door
that was slammed in your face,
because the gust of rejection and the bang of finality
feel the same either way.

And on these days I want you to remember
that your slammed door is someone else's crumbling home
that your scraped knee is someone else's crippled life
that your tears are someone else's tsunami
and that all will move on, forward, as it always does -
and that so much feels better with someone there
to pull you onward, push you past immobility
and into tomorrow.

Filling spaces

The day I meet the certainty
of a future laced with peace
is the day I will put my feet to ground
in the satisfaction of knowing that roots
will grow if they are given half the chance
and two drops of hope.

I left too many houses to know
what it might have been like to have a home
and there were too many empty spaces
of things my parents couldn't fill
to feel like I was raised to the end
of childhood rather than
adopting adulthood long
before knowing what it was.

Perhaps that calm that was having you
around to talk to was when
my faith in lasting things broke
like glass blown too thin
and gently squeezed
to shards of sand.

I didn't mean to fill the space
with grasping for what could not be -
but as always it seems to me
that empty-cornered hearts
were made for me
when people say "from the bottom of"
a bottomless breathlessness
that just needs a little patching,
a little love.