The Afterlife of Trees (Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series) (Volume 11)

Brian Bartlett's poems, both pithy and expansive, bridge nature and human society, humour and elegy. Ranging from Buster Keaton films to a miniature Taj Mahal, from a celebration of sloths to an ironic look at the new millennium, from an urban garden to a ferry at sea, these poems tell stories and sing, question and praise. CONTENTS A BOX FOR SMALL BIRTHS Listening on the Back Steps How Acupuncture Is Like Poetry Lost Footnote from an Essay on Rhythm Shuffles Two for the Winds Under the Old Roof The Colours at McCormack's Beach Sloth Surprises The Afterlife of Trees A Toss of Cones A Lake Named After My Ancestors The Basement that Became a Garden Gardening Until Dark 1 four cats among the flowers 2 curses on garden thieves 3 whippersnipper rant 4 rat by a peony bush 5 Charlie's voice Graveyard Haiku Tree Trilogy HAWTHORNDEN IMPROVISATIONS Hawthornden Improvisations A WORLD OF COUNTING Work at Twenty-One Three Windows After the Age of Parties Every Lion Until Now A Glosa for Joshua Sick for the New Millennium Diner in a Storm Three Tales of Halifax Atlas, We Laughed Foot-doctor for the Homeless The Sonographer TALKING TO THE BIRDS Talking to the Birds 1 to a red-eyed vireo 2 to a northern gannet 3 to an albino red-tailed hawk 4 to a great blue heron 5 to a goldfinch 6 to an osprey 7 to a brown-tailed shrike 8 to a sooty shearwater Acknowledgments From 'The Afterlife of Trees': Neither sheep nor cows crisscross our lives as much./Trees dangle apples and nuts for the hungry, throw/shade down for lovers, mark sites for the lost, /and first and last are/utterly themselves, /fuller and finer than any letter or number, /any 7 or T. Their fragmentary afterlife goes on/in a guitar's body and a hockey stick, in the beaked faces/up a totem pole and the stake through a vampire's heart, /in a fragrant cheese-board, a Welsh love-spoon, /a sweat-stained axe handle, a giant green dragonfly suspended from the ceiling with twine, /in the spellbinding shapechanging/behind a glass woodstove-door ..