THE RED HEART
THE MAN WHOSE PATH WAS ON FIRE
James
Reaney
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SATURNA ISLAND AS VIET NAM
i
The sheep trails are trials,
fateful to strangers, a kind of a puzzling.
They lead to the cliffs, & the cliffs
to the sea. On the way back
they seem to disappear behind you
& in front, as though imperfectly
etched in the woods.
With nowhere to go,
you forget where the road was.
Somewhere in here, the deer are lost,
and a party searches for them.
That strange language
which both hides and reveals:
Search and destroy.
The deer are full of fear.
Somewhere in the mind there are heaps of dead ones,
piled up. Smiled. No,
never seen a deer do that. Farther in,
they gather quietly but awkwardly
to a mental feast.
Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
Bullets, looping towards their hearts.
ii
The cliffs are of black-grey rock, shaped
by the rocking water. Loosened, they would be
like livers and lungs. Breathless.
As if once hung
in the bodies of the living.
iii
The deer
can't climb trees.
I keep forgetting that.
It, whatever that is, behooves them, to stay on the ground. Strange
manner of motion, half-flying, half-running,
like sunlight through half-broken cloud,
they twist through the twisted black branches,
escaping.
A voleur, is it one who flies,
or one who steals?
Into the mind at night.
They seem to wander freely in the darkness,
but there is no way of knowing for sure.
They can be locked in light,
looked upon
and shot.
iv
accumulate,
How came you late?
I lost the trail, late
at night. I ate
some cheese,
& drank some wine,
& didn't say please.
By that time, it was way too late
v
The trees are what you see
when you go down a hill, or up—
not the top of the next one.
It's either you or the forest
gets lost. Whichever,
there is no choice. It's one or the other,
you simply can't tell which.
The other is what you don't know.
One is a guess.
vi
The ghosts are guests.
You have a hard time getting to sleep,
because the trees are talking.
You fall asleep, or in love,
you fall, & the trees are what you hear.
The party is lost, so you don't hear it. The trees
sound like a river. Of blood, but your friends are silent,
won't for a minute speak of it,
believing it as simple a thing as greed.
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