A Canadian's Poem (2)

O! canada!
30 some million
supremely

arrogant souls
who know best
what is best
for the rest of us

all 7,000+ million or so.
o i know

interest rates,
the tax regime,
health care costs
come first-

are we ready to admit
our riches are embarrassment

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poem by Doug Bentley
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A Canadian's Poem(1)

and what, after all,
was so wrong
with simple rhyme

and quaint folk
ballads of love?

have poets often
not been first
burst to spot

shape still forming from ground

dipped diamond-tipped pens
in pools of time

stirring up
currents of insights

that grew, in course

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poem by Doug Bentley
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Her Majesty

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II: Royalty
through and through and through;
blue blood thoroughbred; 25-K golden Bough
of the Mystic Tree of Tea Tephi
Realm; Commander of the British Scone;
Crown icon of the 20th century, she's
a lady bound by merciless destiny
to a lifetime of servitude and duty
who, with platinum locks sparkling
and diamond eyes twinkling
has looked on truth askance and strangely*
but come away from that with a humility
which, simply, takes all breath away.

And there's no reason to even mention
her dignity: it's stamped in every atom,
timelessly, that her royal fingers touch.

Now, as we look back to that instant
long, long ago when Our Majesty's

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poem by Doug Bentley
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Mystic Journey: Earth 1

the moon is an immortal soul which breathes life
into the earth, and life, in its ebb and flow
waxes and wanes with breaths of seasons. to know
the moon's mind is to understand life on earth.

into the first full moon of the auspicious
Year of the Rooster you disappeared, into the
living dead of unconscious winter. the relentless
snow stretched like skin over lakes and fields

buried cold, bony ground in bright veil of ice.
ice was everywhere. the arteries of rivers
clotted, frozen air stuck in silver trees. sap
stored below ground, nature cocooned coma,

the lifeless world was timeless too the day they
packed thorsby* church. pale clouds crowded
like heavy canvas sack the bloodless sky,
dull gray sunlight drained from blank pupil.

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poem by Doug Bentley
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Mystic Journey: Gravity 2

through science's grainy spectacles
the cosmos collapses into probabilities,
but Man, one of the highest improbables,
is beyond observed observers' observing.

even that final, mysterious transformation
of mass into Light, and then Intelligence,
mathematical alchemy of quantum gravity,
can't convert all into a Kosmos conscious

of Itself, a Being whose constitution,
the Tree of Life, is an Intelligence free
balanced at all times, at all points.
science is silent on matters that matter

most. too, when keats wrote 'Beauty
is truth, truth beauty, '* he might later
have added that both of them are good.
from alpha to omega, conscious ascents

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poem by Doug Bentley
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Go

as i danced i saw four birds, way up high,
each from a distant corner of the sky,
spiral together. from their wings
threads of gold appeared.
their flights wove them into a net.

i watched them for a time, wondering at their art.
when they were done, each flew off in a separate direction.
the net they wove glided slowly, through the air, to my feet.
i stepped within it. it lifted me, ever so gently.
higher and higher i rose. when i looked down, through my feet,
the whole earth appeared. but not the earth we know.

if all precious gems known to Man were pieced together
in one perfect ball they could not match the transcendent hues
which streamed from that globe. its glow came from within,
not without. i was mesmerized by its beauty.
but rosy clouds soon covered it from view.
the clouds became a sandy shore. the sky a waveless sea.

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poem by Doug Bentley
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Mystic Journey: Earth 2

spring is pure potential. there's no
calculating how tall a tree will be,
how far its branches will stretch, how
each fork will unfold, how many

healthy leaves we will see. but
by summer we can measure the result.
pure potential has become actual.
contours of the trunk well-defined,

strength of the root system is visible.
through time the roots are intertwined
with other systems, and from then on
there's no dividing it from other trees.

the forest is a single, inseparable web.
but autumn will split two families.
despite the intermingling of their sap
one will become a shrivelled skeleton

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poem by Doug Bentley
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Mystic Journey: Air 1

safely through the tropic of cancer, the Amazing
Grace docked here but a moment. with black moth
puffs of diesel smoke from proud stacks painting
bold springtime sky it boldly steamed forth

into the star-soaked south china sea, manifest
destination Elsewhere. farther south into
summer, west in day it was blown, to a tempest
of tsunami seas. there, tropical typhoons threw

up sheet lightning strafed thunder blasted
wind. razor rain sliced down in death curtains.
like a blind outstretched bat with wings
of leather filling terror sky it parted

him from his past. a shadowed scene
scanned in rear-view mirror, the metal fog
of his memory vanished. he was disintegrating.
alive he was, but only as alive as a lone note

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poem by Doug Bentley
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Mystic Journey: Fire 2

now we find this time on the cusp of day
most enchanting, and pause as dusk rings
the earth in fire, watching the spectral play
of clouds. gray linen cumulus threaten

an angry outburst, but settle for a sullen
squall. caught in the hysterics of a cirrus
clash in stratus, the blue spirit is fleeing
to higher realms of dying day. (miraculous

seven color rainbows tumble into and over
the cumulus cloud below, crowning their tops
with a music of moods from violet laughter
to gamma rage.) finally, attention does focus

on the prelude to purple night. the flame,
whose quick descent signals opening curtain
on an infinite stage of stars, is exiting.
tomorrow an encore, but never the same!

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poem by Doug Bentley
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Mystic Journey: Gravity 1

seen through hubble's scope* the orion
nebula resembles a bloody moth sticking
to incandescent lamp. thousands of solar
systems wide from wing-tip to tip it hides

motionless, held in the frozen aloneness
of deep space. hives of galaxies, fuzzy
fireflies caught in the endless nocturnal
background of amateur entomologist's photo,

complete the frame. time records an instant
of time that takes place only this moment.
are we too upturned butterflies, undersides
of formaldehyde wings exposed to erosion

by elements, cocooned coffins of decaying
flesh? nothing before, nothing after?
birth and death but end points on a finite
line? or are birth and death opposing

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poem by Doug Bentley
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