David Fraser

Writer, Poet, Spoken Word Performer, Publisher, Editor

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Border Collies

The border collies are knackered now, all day chasing grumpy sheep.
They slink behind the rocks, peek heads up, avoid the work.
They do not know the blood that seeps through the muck of runoff.
It flows into the glen.
These dogs are young, born to the obsession of their craft.
They do not know the burning but'n'bens, thatched roofs ablaze,
bodies fueling fire.
They know the present only.
Not the past.
Not the baggage of this history.
Not the highland cattle's red fur scorched and curled.

There are muddy hooves that jut into the air. There are gutted bellies.
Sheep in rotting piles. A stench. There is raw-rooted anger.
There are men and women torn and numb.

Sheep dogs, still in the here and now, raise their heads above the crags.
They know they need to work, bend the sheep with come-bye's and away's.
Steady. Steady. Not like revenge.
Take your time. Take your time, until the last lambs are safely down,
clumped together, moving in a mass toward their pens.
The dog's tongues flop from their mouths. They're knackered.
Eyes alert. Just a stare to move the herd.
These dogs know not the moments of betrayal. Slaughter points on maps.
The clearances.
They know a day's good work, a job well done, some food.
They know quiet corners with openings where they can watch their sheep.

Previously published in Tears, The Same Music, Poems form Ocean Wilderness, editied by Patrick Lane, Leaf Press, Nov. 2009,
Monday's Poem Leaf Press April 2010,
WordWorks Federation of BC Writers 2010,
Poemata, Canadian Poetry Association July 2010

Bette Dancing

Bette had a way of dancing
when she got into rye.
She'd start up in the middle of the cabin
all by herself. She'd feel the beat
move to Lenny Welch
the spinning of the forty-five,
Since I Fell For You.
She'd sway, hold her hand
a little high and to the side
like Auntie Mame
without a cigarette,
invite us all to dance
coax us to our feet, picked me
the shy one, dragged me up,
moved me about the floor
where in a swollen beat of time
I lost all inhibitions, felt the music
take me out of the prison I was in.
Then Malaquena, its haunting Andalusian
notes twisted the room into distorted shapes
where I could conquer windmills,
fight dragons, fall in love with Dulcinea
with every pure plucked string.

Previously published in The Tower Journal Aug. 2009 Sept. Issue

These Bones

Beneath the house are buried bones
little children of the self that could have been
just beneath the uneven concrete floor,
beside the workbench where the hammer sits, where the leather belt hangs limply from a hook.

The bones are brittle now, lost their flesh,
worms have worked a magic over time and
no one knows about these bones,
not the hand that held the hammer,
not the fingerprint still evidence upon the belt.
These bones are silent now.
They only haunt the self that lost them long ago.

Previously published in The Toronto Quarterly Aug. 2009

Do You Know Where Fawn Lilies Grow?

Let us begin with moss,
feathered, stair-step, bearded brush,
move toward crusty lichens,
these fungal algae love affairs,
liverwort so like a lizard's skin,
cowlick's curse.
Move toward the salal's
leathered leaves, past
the rhododendron's grotto
arch of branches into where maybe
fawn lilies grow,
this place of everything,
this pool where predators and prey
converge.
Among these wooly limbs,
the tracks will tell the tales at
this stream's drip dripping
place that eludes the sun,
a confluence of cedar mixed with fir,
wild carrot, marsh marigold,
salmonberry leaves just peeking out of sleep,
flat-needled balsam at the edge,
myrtle where the light seeps in,
ranuncula its creeping pace
so sinister yet bearing briefly buttercups,
holly deposited by birds.

Do you know where fawn lilies grow,
speckled leaves awaiting flower?

Culled Douglas Fir, rotting
Dust-lichen cedar stumps
in among the cynamocka,
huckleberry, leafy camouflage where
a bush tit, is tit, tit titting me.
A wait, its quick twist and turn,
a flash of tail among
the fallen sword fern fronds,
but no reply.
An ancient alder,
broken branches,
sea mammal eyes,
cedar limbs, a caged tunnel to
a grove of Douglas Fir,
rat-tail cones a mat beneath.
Why me, this curse again when
I am searching for
fawn lilies, where they grow?
Why me inside this other
place of everything.

The carcass of another deer,
grim, teeth in jaws apart
smile at me.
Smooth black hooves, fur legs,
a splayed kill feast of it,
a white-tipped ear
no tail,
a sack of guts, creeping
things employed between the toes,
loose fur for future nests.

Why me, this curse.
I want so much the music of the stream,
I want the instruments so spread out down its course
I want the tracks that tell me deer have come,
I want to find where fawn lilies grow.

Previously published in How Light Needs to Bend, edited by Patrick Lane, Leaf Press Nov. 2008
No Way Easy, Ascent Aspirations Publishing, 2010

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