Lines Composed in a Vancouver Skyscraper

It has taken me three yearsto come to this view.I know nowthat the bodyis a river, water flowing from a stonewhose bones and musclesand organs are flowing.I have watched their shapesin the molded Burrard Inlet,contained and onrushing, below bridgeafter bridge vertebra to the valley,a brown finger of water that stillpowers the mind, lying longin the trestle arms of this citywhose sentence is hard labour.

Eye level atop a churchacross the street, Mary the Virginstands modest and giant,her back turned to the fumingof ghetto where some eveningsthe brightest visionis the flash of a streetlampon a jogger's white Nikes.

At night, the red sirensspinning mute across the inletconverge like gentle pulsarsat some accident.An hour later, one pulls off,hovers at a distance.All is gesture and sign.

Along these streetsare the children of coal miners,who have watched the ground carefullyswallow their fathers, sometimeseven carefully digesting the trapped men, turningtheir bones back into lime, into coal.It is the oldest fear:that the earth may recall you.

Along the top of Grouse Mountainlies a stole of colourunnatural to sky. Twilight's blue collar.

But the mountains are a fishingvillage: steep, hearty, and solid.

At night, the lights and stars from thiswindow make the cityscapean Ethiopian bride. As cars boltaround a curve of streetlamps,their shadows flush with their formslike carefully guarded souls. And the inletchurning its wet whispery thighs,the inlet pouring blood darkunder the bridges, in the inletI find my astonished limbsand all the stateless gels within me,desperately carnal, mute, wholly flowing,unburdened toward a distant shore.