DANCING THE MUSE - Danial Neil

  Gord Downie  (1964-2017)   Memories lose form, dissolve like sugar and you can only cry We reach beyond our skin as if we can touch you We never shared a word but still we know you, and can feel the pain that clogs your throat Something grows inside you – that smothers what you have shown the world But you cannot be undone, obliterated, erased – your words, your vision are eternal Know that your soul is unassailable and will endure the endless seasons Stillness will be your voice as grace and love embody the driving chords The Hip – a man among them, a father, a lover How you gathered our country in your hands and held us like eager children We adore the one who falls down and loses his pride, but stands taller than the rest We never shared a word but still you speak to us, and we listen to the echoes of the Secret Path , a flame you lit for us Coke Machine Glow – there’s fragrance before t

             I miss the comfort in being sad Kurt Cobain I            Cars go by, spray from tires coursing the grey streets Red tail-lights bleeding, yellow line, stop sign An ordered world of shopping malls and parking stalls and coffee in the afternoon I shuffle in to settle all accounts of sadness I have with me a coiled notebook and pen, and some place that is a mystery to me, the creative vaults of craft Perhaps the sun will show itself and I will sit outside and watch the blackbirds strut before their shadows             I live in the deep pools of winter, a man groping in the well of sadness where all is up and obtainable, nothing below to fall into, no more steel-jawed traps for I have sprung them all. I say live because it is the aliveness of sadness, the energy of despair that reaches with an outstretched hand. It is the glimpsing of recovery that makes sadness bearable. Perhaps I will rise and touch the sky on this day, o

           This is my old blog that I can no longer add new posts after May 18, 2014 -  started a new one on April 4, 2017   http://danialneil.blogspot.ca/

You wait for them while the snow rots on the south slopes and the lake ice withdraws from the margins under a blue sky that holds their sweet rush home   And at last there they are on the same day that recedes into forever, slicing the turns of freedom and showing you their green backs in their flight over the decaying rafts to mock the early gulls   They come to the old bones of high trees over roof tops and boxes on poles, into the shadow of gables arcing through the warm days roused from their wintering   You know each one of them and their lyrics aloft and familiar, the revelry of places seen, a comfort like an old song sewn to your heart   And if you die before the fledglings burst into flight, know that they will always return with a piece of you, weaving your thoughts of them over the willows and reeds, affirming the promises of May      

Sakura for the tsunami in Japan 2011 see them against the blue sky, how they appear, sudden and full of an unspeakable glory they hold up a world now, their quiet beauty and sudden death, like the lovely sons and daughters falling like petals, pink clouds gathering on the lawns nothing lasts with such intensity