A Girl by Ezra Pound

The tree has entered my hands,

The sap has ascended my arms,
The tree has grown in my breast-
Downward,
The branches grow out of me, like arms.

Tree you are,

Moss you are,
You are violets with wind above them.
A child - so high - you are,
And all this is folly to the world.
O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman
1
O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

2
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up-for you the flag is flung-for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths-for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.

3
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
 I Am the People, the Mob
BY CAR L S ANDBURG

I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass.

Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and
clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me
and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons and
Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for much plowing.
Terrible storms pass over me. I forget. The best of me is sucked out
and wasted. I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and makes me
work and give up what I have. And I forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red drops for history
to remember. Then—I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the People, use the
lessons of yesterday and no longer forget who robbed me last year,
who played me for a fool—then there will be no speaker in all the
world say the name: “The People,” with any fleck of a sneer in his
voice or any far-off smile of derision.
The mob—the crowd—the mass—will arrive then.
Fear of Snakes

Lorna Crozier
The snake can separate itself
from its shadow, move on ribbons of light,
taste the air, the morning and the evening,
the darkness at the heart of things. I remember
when my fear of snakes left for good,
it fell behind me like an old skin. In Swift Current
the boys found a huge snake and chased me
down the alleys, Larry Moen carrying it like a green torch,
the others yelling, Drop it down her back, my terror
of its sliding in the runnel of my spine (Larry,
the one who touched the inside of my legs on the swing,
an older boy we knew we shouldn’t get close to
with our little dresses, our soft skin), my brother
saying Let her go, and I crouched behind the caraganas,
watched Larry nail the snake to a telephone pole.
It twisted on twin points of light, unable to crawl
out of its pain, its mouth opening, the red
tongue tasting its own terror, I loved it then,
that snake. The boys standing there with their stupid hands
dangling from their wrists, the beautiful green
mouth opening, a terrible dark O
no one could hear.
 Sometimes a Voice (1)

Don McKay
Sometimes a voice — have you heard this? —

wants not to be voice any longer, wants something

whispering between the words, some

rumour of its former life. Sometimes, even

in the midst of making sense or conversation, it will

hearken back to breath, or even farther,

to the wind, and recognize itself

as troubled air, a flight path still

looking for its bird.

I’m thinking of us up there

shingling the boathouse roof. That job is all

off balance — squat, hammer, body skewed

against the incline, heft the bundle,

daub the tar, squat. Talking,

as we have always talked, about not living

past the age of thirty with its

labyrinthine perils: getting hooked,

steady job, kids, business suit. Fuck that. The roof

sloped upward like a take-off ramp

waiting for Evel Knievel, pointing into open sky. Beyond it

twenty feet or so of concrete wharf before

the blue-black water of the lake. Danny said

that he could make it, easy. We said

never. He said case of beer, put up

or shut up. We said

asshole. Frank said first he should go get our beer

because he wasn’t going to get it paralysed or dead.

Everybody got up, taking this excuse

to stretch and smoke and pace the roof

from eaves to peak, discussing gravity

and Steve McQueen, who never used a stunt man, Danny’s

life expectancy, and whether that should be a case

of Export or O’Keefe’s. We knew what this was —

ongoing argument to fray

the tedium of work akin to filter vs. plain,

stick shift vs. automatic, condom vs.

pulling out in time. We flicked our butts toward the lake

and got back to the job. And then, amid the squat,

hammer, heft, no one saw him go. Suddenly he

wasn’t there, just his boots

with his hammer stuck inside one like a heavy-headed

flower. Back then it was bizarre that,

after all that banter, he should be so silent,

so inward with it just to

run off into sky. Later I thought,

cool. Still later I think it makes sense his voice should

sink back into breath and breath

devote itself to taking in whatever air

might have to say on that short flight between the roof

and the rest of his natural life.

 Wolf Lake

Elizabeth Bachinsky
It was down that road he brought me, still

in the trunk of his car. I won’t say it felt right,

but it did feel expected. The way you know

your blood can spring like a hydrant.

That September, the horseflies were murder

in the valley. I’d come home to visit the family,

get in a couple of weeks of free food, hooked up

with a guy I’d known when I was a kid and things

went bad. When he cut me, I remember

looking down, my blood surprising as paper

snakes leaping from a tin. He danced me

around his basement apartment, dumped me

on the chesterfield, sat down beside me, and lit

a smoke. He seemed a black bear in the gloam,

shoulders rounded under his clothes,

so I tried to remember everything I knew

about black bears: whistle while you walk… carry bells…

if you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you…

play dead. Everything slowed. I’ll tell you a secret.

It’s hard to kill a girl. You’ve got to cut her bad

and you’ve got to cut her right, and the boy had done neither,

Pain rose along the side of my body, like light.

I lay very still while he smoked beside me: this boy

I’d camped with every summer since we were twelve,

the lake so quiet you could hear the sound

of a heron skim the water at dusk, or the sound

of a boy’s breathing. I came-to in the trunk of his car,

gravel kicking up against the frame, dust coming in

through the cracks. It was dark. I was thirsty.

I couldn’t move my hands or legs,

The pain was still around. I think I was tied.

We drove that way for a long time before

the Chrysler finally slowed, then stopped. Sound

of gravel crunching under tires. I could smell the lake,

a place where, as kids, we’d come to swim

and know we’d never be seen. Logs grew

up from that lakebed. All those black bones

rising from black water. I remember,

we’d always smelled of lake water and of sex

by the end of the day, and there was a tape of Patsy

Cline we always liked to sing to on our way out —

which is what I thought we’d be doing that September

afternoon. That, or smoking up in his garage.

You know, you hear about the Body

all the time: They found the Body…

the Body was found… and then you are one.

Someone once told me the place had been

a valley, before the dam, before the town.

But that was a long time ago. When the engine stopped,

I heard the silver sound of keys in the lock

and then I was up on his shoulders, tasting blood.

I think he said my name. I think he walked

toward the woods.