Working out on Gavin's woodpile
   safe within the harmony of kin
   visions begin to crowd my eyes
   like a meteor shower in the autumn skies
   and the soil beneath me seems to moan
   with a sound like the wind through a hollow bone
   and my mind fills with figures like Lappish runes of power...
   and log slams on rough-hewn log
   and a voice from somewhere scolds a barking dog.
  
   i remember a bleak-eyed prisoner
   in the Stoney Mountain life-suspension home
   you drink and fight and damage someone
   and they throw you away for some years of boredom
   one year done and five more to go --
   no job waiting so no parole
   and over and over they tell you that you're nothing...
   and i toss another log on Gavin's woodpile
   and wonder at the lamp-warm window's welcome smile.
  
   i remember crackling embers
   coloured windows shining through the rain
   like the coloured slicks on the English River
   death in the marrow and death in the liver
   and some government gambler with his mouth full of steak
   saying "if you can't eat the fish, fish in some other lake.
   To watch a people die -- it is no new thing."
   and the stack of wood grows higher and higher
   and a helpless rage seems to set my brain on fire.
  
   and everywhere the free space fills
   like a punctured diving suit and i'm
   paralyzed in the face of it all
   cursed with the curse of these modern times
  
   distant mountains, blue and liquid,
   luminous like a thickening of sky
   flash in my mind like a stairway to life --
   a train whistle cuts through the scene like a knife
   three hawks wheel in a dazzling sky --
   a slow motion jet makes them look like a lie
   and i'm left to conclude there's no human answer near...
   but there's a narrow path to a life to come
   that explodes into sight with the power of the sun.
  
   a mist rises as the sun goes down
   and the light that's left forms a kind of crown
   the earth is bread, the sun is wine
   it's a sign of a hope that's ours for all time.