Two Poems: In the Capital City of Autumn

Education

The geese flying over the yard this morning
sound like the faulty school bell of the middle years
of my life. I don’t think I’ll go to first block.
My lunch of olive pits and lemon rinds can wait.
Inside me, always, the kid who can’t see
the hopscotch squares for his tears.
But outside, too often, the polisher of apples
for power. The dog licks my dangled hand.
I think it’s affection – it’s probably salt
from the wiping clean of the boards of the world.
With the children gone, the house is a croft
burnt with the invisible fire of my longing
for their childhoods. School bell, church bell,
fire drill of the biological urgencies
that place us in the stony arms of banks.
If I could, I would do the long division
beyond these lengths we’re given
but I’m falling behind in every class
except the one in the room that smells
of ripe blackberries and the grass
the grave keeper keeps, hearing the bell
in the bone of the pilots who fly the sky to its darker season.

Found Poem of Strait of Georgia Insults

You’re a Dull Oregon grape you black-bellied plover of a long-billed dowitcher. You lugworm you screwshell. What a walleye pollock of a Kelp-encrusting Bryozoan. Yeah, you heard me, you Suborbicular kellyclam Twelve-tentacled parasitic anemone. Your scaup’s always been Lesser you three-spine stickleback Spring-headed sea squirt. That’s right, you Hairy chiton, I said it. Don’t give me any of your Green falsejingle, you Fat gaper. Who do you think you are, the Lord dwarf-venus himself? You’re nothing but a Flap-tip piddock with an Aggregated nipple sponge. Come on, you Pile worm you Dubious dorid you squat lobster. You want a piece of me? Agh, you’re all Hollow green nori you yellowleg pandalid. I wouldn’t waste my time on a solitary tunicate like you. Yeah, so’s your mother you Oblique yoldia. Goddamned mud shrimp. Surf scoter. Sea-clown triopha. Gribble. Sea noodle. Dunce cap limpet. Bladderclam. Whelk.

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Tim Bowling is the author of twenty-four works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. He is the recipient of numerous honours, including two Edmonton Artists’ Trust Fund Awards, five Alberta Book Awards, a Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal, two Writers’ Trust of Canada nominations, two Governor General’s Award nominations and a Guggenheim Fellowship in recognition of his entire body of work.

Photo of Tim Bowling by Jacqueline Baker

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