Writer, Journalist, Book Producer & Publisher
I took this photo from our upstairs bedroom window. The single line of footsteps evoked questions for me about who might have made them. It occurred to me that even if I knew that person’s name and destination most of my questions would remain unanswered!
The bird of paradise does not live
in lush green tropic forests,
doesn't stroke with flashing wings
a Caribbean sky.
But she might.
This species does not trill
her heartfelt, joyous anthems
from a leafy, palm-treed hillside
under a dazzling, foreign sun.
But she could.
This mystic creature you will find
in the shimmering, shushing fabric
in the irridescent patterns,
in the brilliant woven mists
of an imaginative mind...
Just waiting to be...
Freed.
For Diana
Dance, Feast, Laugh, Share
Hope, Dream, Sing, Dare…
Celebrate your dreams come true,
and the other selves that become you,
and the future self that must evolve,
because all is said, but all’s not solved.
Leap, Kick, Twist, Twirl,
Shout, Hoot, Whoop, Skirl…
Value life in all its stations,
in every form and permutation:
energy, matter, and spirit fused
in the conscious, willing, being you.
Marvel, Wonder, Seek, Explore,
Ponder, Question, Learn, Adore…
The everything we can define,
but never grasp in finite mind;
Our certainties forever framed—
Omniscience? It can’t be named.
Rally, Struggle, Persevere
Turn and face the things you fear
for they obscure what we hold dear…
Merry Christmas! And Happy New Year!
Today bleeds into our longest night,
much to the murdering crows’ delight.
specks of darkness on swishing wings
they announce the fact with their squabblings.
Emmisaries in jet black cowls,
companions to the hooting owls.
“Beware,” they gabble. “Take Fright! Take Fright!
Your time approaches, Take Flight! Take Flight!”
Oh! How I love this gathering flock
that portends what I am, and what I am not
Like puzzle pieces scrabbling thin air,
they congregate in raucus pairs,
stark ormanemts in naked trees
that jangle wonted harmonies.
“Beware,” they gabble. “Take Fright! Take Fright!
Your time approaches, Take Flight! Take Flight!”
T’is the season of madness and awful deeds,
of blathering speeches and insane creeds.
Of fascist swarmings in angry minds,
fanatical theories, and brutal designs,
of demons belching half-baked ‘facts’
and believers poised for bloody acts.
“Beware,” they gabble. “Take Fright! Take Fright!
Your time approaches, Take Flight! Take Flight!”
I am grateful for this ominous breed
flocked in the branches of my blasted tree…
Crows, the harbingers a future tense
that lacks all kindness, all humane sense.
They are puzzled pieces of a darkening despair,
black fabric rustling in our benighted air.
“Beware, they gabble, “Take Fright! Take Fright!
The time is come for your longest night!”
Photo and poem were composed after I spent half an hour reviving a dying wasp I found on one of the slats of our livingroom blinds. It is a living room, after all!
It’s the dawn
Of a new day
In an old era
In the same old way.
It’s the cycle renewed
Again and again without end
A ceaseless iteration
Of nation against nation
Of despair strangling hope
Shoots of hatred
Tendrils of fear
A choking underbrush
Infesting our gardens of Eden
Who was it said
We must kill, and kill, and kill
Until all are dead
Who would become invasive species?
Whose god roared that battle cry
Under the glaring sun
Denying even the possibility
of innocence
Declaring even the unborn
‘Enemies of our state’
Infected with murderous intent?
Vermin only fit to hate?
Bloodlines.
Worm like veins
Through our sacred soils
Rooting the detritus
That defines us.
Ancient scrolls
And chiseled texts
Implacable as tombstones.
Craig Spence,
August 18, 2024
OFF LEASH ZONE
Lead on! Lead on!
my old, best friend,
beyond the very end
of this leash we both
are tethered to.
Lead on! Lead on!
Even though we do not know,
and dare not say,
exactly where we’re going…
Even though there is no point
within the compass of our ancient souls
to suggest one way or another—
no brilliant star, no station of the sun
for us to fix upon.
Whichever way we face,
that becomes the direction of our knowing.
And yet you pant, and strain,
and snuffle, and sniff,
as if there were some secret
(just around the bend
or crouching under some bush)
that makes sense of it all.
Lead on! Lead on!
Beyond the very edge
of this—our flattened earth—
and be assured, for what it’s worth,
that I must surely follow,
and you are not alone.
Craig Spence
CraigSpenceWriter.ca
A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM
By Edgar Allan Poe
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
Oh! How I wish the letters
Of the word
Would dissolve
Into the very thing
How I would delight
In that incandescence,
That essence emerging
In my bleary dawn,
Like souls coalescing
Out of nothingness…
Engendered by the welling sun,
And the risen mist,
And the stilled air that I breathe.
Oh! How I would sigh
And beg the pending breeze
To hold off—just a moment more
And not disturb this glowing dream…
This fantasy that must always be
Precursor to despair.
Craig Spence
I’m so used
to looking at things,
not into them
that I’m startled when I witness
the space between our molecules of Being
and come to realize:
It’s not empty,
this infinite sky,
this eternal orbiting of day
into night / into dawn /
into the glare of high noon.
I wrote this morning
in my latest revision of a fiction:
She glanced away
then out the window
at the sunrise he’d witnessed earlier;
it had morphed into the blare of morning light
the gorgeous tints of dawn burned off
by the intense rays
of a risen sun.
Will this epiphany of the dazzling light
and its glorious host of questions
well once again at at the end of day?
Can the invisible be divisible?
Is it my plight to know?
How many times can we split
the atoms of our truths
before we discover the ultimate germs of
Infinity, Eternity, Omniscience, and Spirit?
Craig Spence