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AN OYONDER THING

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DEAD DROP

Poems Left Surreptitiously for Unsuspecting Strangers

The poems in this gallimaufry were originally individually printed as ephemeral broadsides and postcards which were hidden in plain sight in discrete locations for serendipitous discovery. To what end is up to the imagination of the finder. Each contained the explainer DEAR READER: having found yourself in possession of this humble object, we sincerely hope you appreciate it while you can, and pass it on, in due course, to others who might also find it of interest. Thank you.

Some of you may have found your way here through the various means we tried to lure you, and we thank you for your willingness to do so. For those who have not experience the "drops" we encourage you to go HERE to see what all this is about.

The author, Robert MacDonald, is a grizzled typographer and designer, when not artist and writer. He can be reached, but not often, via something called the Internet. He refuses accolades, shuns celebrity, all the while nursing his wounds in the strange wilds of the Okanagan, Canada.

The collection, the cover of which is shown above, was published in a limited edition of 25 copies, for gratuitous distribution, plus a few extra for friends and bibliophiles, Spring 2021, in Kelowna BC Canada, with gratitude to Mike Schwartzentruber whose editorial eye graced it. Digital copies are available by email as above. The poems follow.

UNDER

In the long time before present
time, some thing lived in the dark
place that has always been
below everywhere to others.

The under world.
Say no more.

All of us up here should treasure
that for as long as we get to be
upright, so the real mystery
is always there below for us.

The under world.
Say its name.

In the short time we live now
above we are making it difficult
for the under world to live in the full
wonder of under.

The under world.
Say its wonder.

We know that when the wonder
no longer holds us together
the frail bodies we used and abused
will gather dust in dark under.

The under world.
Say it’s not over.

Let us together determine how
we can make both under and
above learn to share the wonder
of living together in both worlds.

The under world.
Live its secrets.

for Don Elzer, Shaman, Wildcraft Forest,
Monashee Wilderness, British Columbia
August, 2012

BETTER THE BLIND TURN AWAY FROM THE LIGHT

They sit together in sagging stuffed chairs
stained by circumstances beyond memory

eating from trays once might have been decorative
imagining a love once might have been productive

unseen damage of superficiality surely explains.

There are others in the hot room chasing memories
might not be what they appear or pretend to be

as usual they are dark or the dark owns them
there is a light in the hallway some others are

standing out there waiting to hear the sounds.

Think about how hard to imagine better outcomes
death after all life is hard for most of them

they’re generally not good at it making promises
pretending they control the conversation

nevertheless they end up with so few rewards.

Maybe darkness offers some other insight into
choices made by passion and compassion

turned their heads and hearts towards the grifts
that shone like fake jewels in the hallways

outside rooms that populated their disappearance.

SHAME

Willing to be understanding
but incapable of withstanding

his blunt brutality
she held him at arms length

until he broke one of hers
with his mass and a length of wood

he pounded her distain
into submission

which he took for permission
and proceeded to go as far down into

the darkness as he dared
until there was no more her there.

A LITTLE HELP

If you couldn’t help
lift the heavy end

it won’t matter
when you’re gone.

It’s not just that you
spoil the stained days to

shake the nights
with sweaty cringing.

Forget the wild
currents that pull

into the clear
the breaking child.

The stillness you
imagine is just that

thinking else
leads you astray.

You’re in trouble
the moment breathing

is not the only
way to move air.

We see twilight
trudge brittle sidewalks

into dank sewers
down into drink.

for Milton Acorn, Grossman's Tavern,
Toronto Ontario, 1982

THE LOCAL

Welcome, friend, to a great quiet place
To be yourself of an afternoon, to share
What there is of light, to drown sorrows
In the rich music of shared enjoyment.

Welcome, stranger, to the last best place
For cheerful chatter, mild swings in mood,
Simple gifts that greet each and often drift
Into moments of unlikely friendship.

Welcome, pilgrim, to road end, destination,
Where the moment is lived in high hopes,
The answer is soon given without question,
The gamblers all win, the prize is peace.

Welcome, reader, to a story about to end.
The best things in life are simple, not secret,
And take shape as ordinary people convene
To live good lives that need no explanation.

for all the places of ill repute
that nurtured wandering souls,
and spirited their troubles away

WHERE THE LONG GRIFT

Leaves will change size and shape in the last
days, they say, wither in the toxic winds, change
colour later, just as the final few of us are beyond
better gone, fading into the firelight horizon.

Birds will land soon, or last, next to the graves
of our ancestors, who will finally be encouraged
to breathe. They will no longer have to regret
their unwise role in our eventual disappearance.

Bison will chomp the wild uplands grass, ignore
the bilge stench of leaking idle wellheads, rank
stink of money, the anxious grasping wallet-eyes
of speculators, grifters, hiding their cheap angst.

Ships will drift offshore, empty, their cargos
long abandoned by merchants, never salvaged by
hate or happenstance. Where next of no real
consequence, not needed, loved by none.

Bankers will wish their money had somehow
made any difference. Their temptation dreams
of compounding interest in disasters, eagerly
pretending that might might finally make right.

Stars will, far aloft, blink and beacon us home.
Make wonder possible, they say, send messages
back to the lonely, the poor, and light a passage
into light, find any light left, and plead for pity.

God will provide, and we will always find hope
in the gifts, the marks made in the soil, seeds
our elders provided to keep us close, careful to
shelter the earth that provisions our passages.

OLDEN, BREATHING

Someone found bones of ancient ancestors on
the lakeshore, and now we know our destiny.

It’ll take time to get rid of our bought stuff
to get back to the business of living out right.

First thing, all those square, stupid buildings
have got to go, they interrupt the view, not least.

Once that’s done, then we need to make good
with animals, should they invite us back into

The conversation: “Hey, owls, how’s it going?
What’s new in the forest, anything you need?”

Let’s all practice nature elecution for a while
see how it suits our kids, with their problems.

Won’t take long for animals to get comfortable
then we can deal with the conflicting attitudes

Of the trees, and the rest of the vegetative world.
The ocean and the air, the breathing things.

There’s lots of work to be done, but we have
folks who’ve practiced for a really long time.

Going to be serious, and then it’ll be awesome.
Circle together, all love living. Don’t you think?

The moon will come out over the glades and
we’ll dance naked on the beach into the dawn.

Let’s pound the sticks on the ground, welcome
the insects, worms, snails, mollusks to the party.

Someone found bones of our ancestors, and they
couldn’t have known we were ready for that.

We knew there was something missing, but who
could have guessed it would be old bones.

Let's breath wisdom every day, speak wisdom
to the glorious past, make a brilliant future.

COUNTING THE COST

Don’t be alarmed by the slipping cliff
There are people down there clearing the way
For the strangers in town for a conference
On how to survive the climate apocalypse

When the headlands finally slide into the sea
There will be too many people who won’t know
What to do with all the groceries and bedpans floating
Back and forth with the tides

Don’t be in too big a hurry to move back
To the subduction zone as there won’t be much
Left to cling to plus it would be better to
Keep a healthy distance from the bodies

HAPPINESS

A Life Raft

Try to smile without having
anything to smile about.
If it works, you’re happy and
need to pause for a moment to
enjoy the wonder of that moment.

Your neighbours are beginning to
be curious about your antics.
Like your waking before dawn
to take a victory lap around
your old high school track.

Like the time you volunteered
date night to watch their kids.
When they returned home you
were dressed in a tissue paper
costume of a wizard, neanderthal.

Like letters to your dead parents
and long lost friends, lovers.
Making speeches at the local council
praising the public art
telling stories of imaginary past times.

It’s hard to explain how delightfully
awful your singing voice is.
That has never stopped you from
joining in at church, scratching
the joined voices, reaching fantastic.

Even harder to appreciate is your
passion for soiled bar coasters.
We follow you into seedy lounges
to drink Irish with strangers
dance with grace and precision.

There are places in the hard heart
forgiveness fears to explore.
We know you’ve been there
others offer to carry that
pain instead of you, for pity’s sake.

Thankfully, it’s unlikely that anyone
will prove capable of that.
Instead, the opposite prevails
the wide open signals every
one come on back to the emptiness.

Imagine the fantastic, keep the light
on the porch shining for
every and all family to come home
for forever dinner, for joy
without fear, for favour of need.

COUNTING THE DAYS

A prayer
for parents everywhere

It doesn’t matter
Let them touch the magic
They the children who dream

It doesn’t matter
Let them speak their minds
They the gift we leave behind

It doesn’t matter
Let them pray, and play, and ponder
They the memories to treasure

It doesn’t matter
Let them wander outside the fence
They the flowers weep for

It doesn’t matter
Let them lean, let them elaborate
They the journey into the future

It doesn’t matter
Let them go, above and beyond
They the love once and forever

TAKE IT ON HOME

“Age and treachery will
overcome youth and skill.“
– Fausto Coppi

The easy days are over, ancestor voices
shake elders among us, because apparently
we‘ve outlived our usefulness to strivers.

The news concurs, insists strident postures,
advises caution, old folks are venturing out
past suburbs, watch for warning signals.

Music, once filling community halls with
wonder, beat, thunder, now sinks to solace,
funereal throb looms over grief rooms.

The bands makes best of classics, motown,
folk, fiddle, seeking thin syncopation while
feet feel pain, limbs, livers demand grit.

The audience nods into warm glasses, sinks
into flimsy chairs that no longer fit their
thickening chassis, nod into nightmares.

Life may not yet too late to stand and dance,
to effortlessly move together under spells of
movement, beat memory, understanding.

Rhythm overtop it all. Voices now arise,
tell plaintive stories of love felt, enlivened,
scorned, consummated, ripped asunder.

Sometimes life too often squeezed into
tight circles of pain, disability, collapse
no use of sacrifice, wait, stand to deliver.

Music lives in bones, pounds out daylight
or nightshine, lifts rooftops, wails insights,
descends into pathos. Start dancing.

THE PARK IN THE DARK

for Salinger,
with love and squalor

Standing on a corner, waiting for a car to pass, late summer
evening, on a sidewalk in London, across from a gated park
in a Victorian square, well-appointed houses, hints of mist.
He almost forty, alone, far from his familiar, predictable life,
a visitor from another continent, going nowhere in particular.

Behind him sudden voices raised in disappointment.
He turns to look, curious. There, slightly up and to the left,
a window open to a bright room, an elegant chandellier,
two shadows visible, cast on the ceiling like pantomines.

A woman walks to the window and looks down at him,
her face sallow and aglow, young and old at the same time,
visibly wet with tears. He began to turn away, embarrassed by
her naked emotion and wet eyes, but stops when her hand
tentatively reaches out towards him in a hithering gesture,
her fingers touching the window.

For no reason that he understood, then or ever would, he
tipped the fingers of his right hand to his forehead, then to his
lips, and then threw a kiss toward her as though it was a bird
he was setting free, sending to her. She smiled for a second,
a shadow passed over her eyes, she turned from the
window and was as as suddenly gone as she had appeared.

He spent the rest of the night wandering through mist-swept
streets, troubled by what he have seen, polishing the details
in his imagination.

The next night, he was drawn like a magnet to the same spot
at the same time, expecting something to happen which would
help him make sense of his compulsion with the details of what
he had seen, felt, and imagined.

The window was closed, curtains half open, room dark beyond.
Somehow, he knew she is in that room, waiting for him.
He debates going to the door and knocking, but before he can,
it opens and she comes out into the street, walks straight up
to him, her eyes locked on his the whole time, unflinching.

“Be with me,” is all she says, and turns, a swish of clothing.
They move slowly off, side by side, down the sidewalk,
through a gate, into a dimly lit garden, along a cinder path,
the city slowly disappearing behind them, until they reach a bench
far down, set back beneath tall looming trees. Distant lights spark
in the rustling leaves, windows, streetlamps, headlights.

They sit in mute silence for a long time.
He can hear her gentle breathing, feel more than see
the dark bulk of her body as it settles in. Only the dim outline
of her face is visible against the green foliage and her dark hair.

She is almost beautiful, marred only by the deep hurtlines
around her eyes and lips. Something terrible has happened
to this woman, and he wants to know what it is, even though
he suspects it will trouble him. He looks for her hands,
thinking to touch them, but she has tucked them into her coat.

It is many minutes before she starts talking, but when
she does it comes out in a flood, the words swirling around
the forest and his ears, and reaching into his heart.
Before she is finished he is in tears, hears himself sobbing.

It was terrible, the story she tells. The story of her life, loves
and hates, hurts and disappointments, pain,
and regrets, her many regrets. As he listens, he also realizes
that it is also his own story, the details different,
but the results the same. But, unlike her, he has not been
marked on the surface, only somewhere hidden inside.

She has not been able to hide the consequences of her
destruction, her descent into a darkness she can barely describe.
It is not an uncommon story, someone gone astray on
their passage through life, unconscious or stupid or arrogant or
blind or uncomfortable in their body and mind, using others and
themselves badly, raging against fate, willful and damaging,
dissolute, desperate, degenerate, and dangerous, reaching
bottom in a murky blizzard of anger and helplessness,
plagued by drugs, riven by terror, lost to hope.

That anyone survive such a rough passage is more than
an accident, or miracle. Like the dawn starting to rise overhead
as she finished her story, he realized that in spite of twenty years
doing the wrong thing, being in the wrong place, making
the wrong choices, she was here now, sitting beside him,
he having not moved while she talked, both just letting the words
stream out of her into the surrounding air, letting go of
demons that have for so long possessed her.

She was also, in those moments, telling herself, for the first time,
that the dark days and nights were over, that her body and mind
were deeply and permanently scarred, that her terror was fleeting,
that her memories of those days would always be there,
just below the surface, but that a different future was now possible,
that it was not too late to begin her real journey, to choose
a different path, and reach a new home.

He had begun to imagine, as she shared her awful journey,
that there was some purpose in his being there, some
intentional transfer of consequence from one damaged soul to
another, some confluence of destinies.

But he realized just then, as she came to the end, that she would
never hear his voice, that they would never touch,
that she would not look at him, that they would part at that bench
in the park, that she would go back to the dark room alone
to start her life over, and that he would travel back
to his world alone and be forever haunted by her words,
and that they would never meet again.

And so it was.

Don't Laugh Alone

Take the first road up into hills
to antelope grasslands.

Watch ambergris shadows
in fading twilight.

The rocks keep asking tourists
to listen to blueberries.

Night sky is waiting to descend
but citizens are stirring.

The traffic is keeping jaywalkers
from changing channels.

When no one is home yet
lights keep blinking code.

In suburbs curtains are parting
to reveal hot meatloaf.

Watch waterslides try to ride
cowboys off into sunset.

Children are not safe from red
wheelbarrows breathing.

Lift the lid on the threat of
drinking through sunset.

There is no sprinkler water
light has time to rescue.

Settling down for nightcaps is
never without reward.

Give Us Our Human Break

A prayer,
for Thomas Merton

Let there be life instead of the constant urgency,
like the delicious intersection of one on another,
let the remembering be made better by comparing,
the crisp air, the warm ever-intoxicating breath.

Life among the weak and wounded reminds us all
of dreams, of better days, of hope – all maybe denied,
the limbs of willows hanging, brushing burnt faces,
warm afternoon heat, insects rising, viper nests.

Family among the fallen, desperate for that hope,
too often old, too soon stricken, eyes wide open,
addled and absent, minds without air, air forever,
hardy once, now hardly hearing the bellwhethers.

Signs, and signals, clearly visible, heading home.
Don’t stop for help, don’t pretend to acknowledge,
drive into the dark, careless of every consequence,
look for light, look, keep looking for the light.

Let there be abundent life instead of this,
huddle with family, harbour dangerous memories,
insects breathing in fearful ears, we thinking
the next world cruel as this, but forgiving.

Forgive us, forgive us all for our weakness,
forgive our pleasure in pain, our quest for riches,
our need for reward and wonder, our imperfection.
Let us play it close, friends, let us pray.

FIND THE WAY

“Many men go fishing all of their lives
without knowing that it is not fish
they are after.”
– Henry David Thoreau

The way is simple
the road points to it
the horizon hides it
and you are on it

Don't be distracted
while on the way
keep your eye on it
it will be there for you

When the way becomes
too hard to travel
too far to get to
you've wandered

The way is wonderful
the air awesome
the food delicious
and you are welcome

Seek the way
in every thing
every where you go
and you'll be glad

Show others the way
when you're out about
when you gather
they'll soon join you

Every day is the way
in every circumstance
in every activity
you'll notice it there

The way is the way
in the small things
and the deep inside
you'll feel it breathing

WHEN IN DOUBT

It doesn't matter what matters don't matter,
because we either get it right, or it gets us.

And, surely, having been gotten, we're soon gone.

The answers are simple, obvious even, but require
a measure of measurement, a tolerance,
not likely in the present condition.

We sent shallow boats out to see the sea and find
something of ourselves to share and care for
but found only treasure, trinkets, toys.

The long journeys of such discovery are near ending.

The birds are falling from the sky, and the sea
is hot where it touches the ice cliffs.

The libraries are filling up with words and signs,
but there is no one to translate the signals.

Probably we're obsolete, or expired, and the insects
will have a better idea of how to get along.

Let's hope their kind will be kinder, and make
those matters that matter actually matter
again, like way past time matterings.

It won't be long before we start to see and feel
their eager eyes, angry teeth, hot breath.

Pray carefully for the silence, then embrace the horror.

Let's hope we're better at extinction, look out to see
the sea, some light before descent, see darkness,
a final horizon, winking back at us.

COME, TOGETHER

We notice how few trump the many
And wonder why our heads hurt

Look around there's no excuse
Some among many get theirs first

Cannot be without forgiveness let's tilt
Against cheap lustre and tilthy luck

Yes brothers and sisters find a way
Give grace and express gratitude

Hail to the chief among peasants
Promice to dump the dumb instrument

The back end of nothing is none
Us all is more than enough heft

To lift us all back upright and together
We all make a plan to make better

Night of iniquity
November 3rd, 2016

CASE CLOSED

Because the bartender
friend to frequenters

had an episode of ennui
which resulted in him

replacing all the liquor
with rosewater which
destroyed the mood
bankruptsy ensued

which left no opportunity
to spend the midday

conflating with strangers
pretending to know

something about gambling
and whiling enough

time to wait until the
cops get to the apartment

to find the body
in the kitchen with

strange bullets buried
in heart of the trickster

we no longer had time for
before we got buried

out in the hot sun
the desert screaming

lottery tickets for sale at
the concession speech

of the banker who flew
in from out of town.

Las Vegas, Nevada, 2007

UNEARTH

There is word they’re
coming to unearth
some dead bones, cast aspersions
on the reputations
of ancestors who could not
keep proper records
of their life of services,
their faith in almighty
their having never strayed
from the path into
strange, ugly, unusual, other
worldly territory.

...

What can they possibly
expect to uncover
from dust and decay,
what mysteries hope to
understand, what secrets
reveal from long dead

memories, what trinkets
to find tucked into
folds of the funky, faded
garments of ancestors
who roamed the verdant
grasslands of long ago.

for Jeanette Armstrong, Enowkin Centre
Penticton, British Columbia, 1992