waiting for moonrise
a heron creeps the tideline
pulling a promise

David Trudel © 2014

someone else’s rainbow

raining now, hunching into the wind

sea air spilling fresh

winds pulling ruined towers around horizons

white against grey, grey against blue, blue against indigo

shored meadows dressed in purple and yellow

on mottled rocks

an otter surfaces nearby

prize clutched defiantly sliding around a corner

clouds part enough to flash some sky

we are standing at the end of someone else’s rainbow

hunching into the wind

watching cumulus reservoirs slow rolling overhead

underfoot a treasury of the overlooked

while someone wishes

hunching into the wind

 

 

David Trudel   © 2014

 

 

stellar

there was a moment when

I had to admit

I’d fallen into your orbit

it was too late

to save me

gravity pulled

I was

captured

 

 

David Trudel   © 2014

 

 

drip

it was like drip

drip

 

drip

 

pulling tree essence

good intentions

into

down there

 

it was like respirations

of the Pacific

travelled in and out

 

drip

 

concentrated into

purity

water of forever

healed into clear drops

 

washed absolution

reconnected to a fresh return

of my own fluidity

eroding rock walls

 

drip

drip

drip

 

not a virtue

but necessary

as rain washes upper stories

into lower

drop by drop

changed by intentions

like I want to reach the sky

 

I express gratitude

causing molecular reconfiguration

I send a wave of prayers

into forever

 

I feel the forest upswell

meet water, wondered into magic

from formless transform

to magnificent

in time for just now

thinking

a wave has me tumbled

or a wave has tumbled

through this forest

to drown me

 

 

David Trudel  © 2014

 

 

 

 

 

Fuck You Saint Valentine

one day I’ll run through the mall

shouting Fuck You Saint Valentine

patron saint of the beautiful, the privileged

you’re a tease, a fiction

spreading hope, packaged passion

 

Fuck You Hallmark cards

perpetuating a myth of receptive possibilities

promoting expectations

one phrase at a time

 

Fuck You Harlequin Romances

happy endings all tidied up

measured passion

not the snarls of our lives

 

Fuck You Hollywood

avalanche of romantic comedies

soundtracks swollen with strings

when all some of us hear is the croak

of Tom Waits at two in the morning

 

Fuck You Saint Valentine

glossing over the childrens’ labour

sweetly boxed

 

Fuck You mall wanderlings

I’m tired of happy passion

animated Barbie and Ken dolls

buying underwear for each other

 

Saint Rita!

patron saint of loneliness

of forgotten causes

a saint for the chronically alone

a saint without P.R.

 

So Fuck You Saint Valentine

I’m over your sweet promises

I’ll plead my case to Saint Rita

on her feast day I’ll take myself out to lunch

and I won’t be disappointed

 

 

David Trudel    © 2014

 

 

 

 

ambiguous

some days are like that

 

what?

 

ambiguous

 

not quite a total fucking disaster

but not bad either

 

gotcha, says he

 

it’s the middle of winter

but when the sun shines

even a grey day

shows some colour

like a redwinged blackbird

on a fenceline

 

tenuous as hell

 

when its raining and cold

it all gets to be

ambiguous

like that

 

 

David Trudel       © 2014

 

 

sunset

this day there was a choir

singing

as we approached the beach

for real

in a circle

entoning celestial voices against

moist slurps percussively

arriving

 

there was a rock

to shelter against

in the brilliant light

of cadenced winter

 

there was your face

reflecting the wind

the crows paid no attention

as they chortled their way across tideline buffets

 

manicured dogs careen along this margin

we disregard the others

absorbed

in a dialogue that dances into

yesterday

until we enter the present

capturing moments

with precision and obliqueness

 

entering into a realm where colours shift

with each tilt of the head

where land slips beneath the waves

and rocks turn into sand

beneath our feet

 

as dusk purples distant mountains

gulls cry

I look at you

thinking

that sometimes sunsets have supporting roles

 

 

David Trudel  ©  2014

 

 

patience

patience is a lonely virtue

worn thin as hand me downs

in a too large family

in a too old house

but patience is what’s required

for trust to develop

for the comfort of familiarity

waiting for acceptance

like letting birds settle

while you wait for the path to open

while you wait for the way forward

patience is a lonely virtue

requiring surreptitious repetition

gentling alarms with quiet strokes

patience is persistent non-pursuit

patience is acceptance of illusions

allowing mirages to be photo-shopped into tomorrow

waiting for that calm moment

that waits like a forest clearing 

that waits like a perfect moment

worthy of an eternity of frustration

patience is the appreciation of a possibility

and the acceptance of its loss

patience is letting now catch up with tomorrow

while the wind whistles

and cries

patience is learning to ignore the immediate

knowing that some prizes are worth the wait

David Trudel    ©  2013

end of the world

if it was the end of the world

would you hold my hand

and pull me into you

if it was the end of the world

would you kiss me

like the fate of eternity depended on

our lips

if it was the end of the world

would you hold my head in your hands

while we hold our gazes

while we hold the end off

for a moment longer

until the end of the world

becomes inconsequential

until the end of the world

is you

me

holding on

to each other

until the end of the world

is discovery

until the end of the world

no longer matters

 

David Trudel      ©   2013

deliberation

it all happens

deliberately

even random shots

caroming off bumpers

have some impulse

driven into them

by some driver

someone with a pointed stick

ready to

make a decision

regardless

so when you look at me

sideways

lips pursed

I know what mine is

regardless

and I begin to be deliberate

in the deliberation

of my anarchistic freedom

into some kind of surrender

a giving up of control

just as I realize I never had it

really

because

this has always been a shared delusion

and once shared

I

am
shy

 

 

David Trudel    © 2013