False Maps for Other Creatures

by Jay Millar

"[U]ndeniably fruitious and wild."
- Kemeny Babineau, The Danforth Review

False Maps for Other Creatures expands the taxonomy of insects, mushrooms and trees to inventive meditations on life and language. A fascinating and multi-layered journey across the geography of the imagination, False Maps for Other Creatures is the perfect book for those of us with no interest in the obvious.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 2005

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Passages

I

odd inscription -

the dead
old sheath of pickaxe
left for the fire

left unsettled
burned

how could you know
the future's history?

outside
snowflakes against the
stacked moon
sounds through the window
a long vowel filled with plots

fractures
half-remembered
and frozen

* * *

to think that the outstanding feature of their character
was their unfailing sympathy for the outcast and the underdog

* * *

is it evident
we make ourselves

how you speak

evidence

* * *

fossil

memory

crumble

as the last sequence
fire erases from the shale
exactly what it brings to the light

* * *

their puzzle remains
stillness stands in the
picture of a window

* * *

one must look through
time as landscape

instead of at the land
as an escape from how

over the years
things go awry

like leaves
after so much rain

* * *

as one is
spoken on the wind
spoken as birds
speak of the wind
in notes
dropping as they rise

green insists
within our seasons

what fades
brown white winter
in your bones

* * *

II

his head held back
with his eyes closed

paying attention in
that way he could

wood grain as motion
dead as Highway 2

view of the next hill
painted silver

in an eye
the perfect stillness

sky
broken

* * *

to say 'I look at it
differently now.'

a place where he lived
rode out of one day

and never came back
a place I wasn't

thinking about last week
as much as I am today

a place
I grew up

left and remember
from the odd angle

of the present
shades of grey

in the shadows of smallness
along a stretch of highway

happy on a bicycle
and all the memory I

choose to invent

* * *

III

who else
has gone

or else where
should some other be

will hands be
forever quicker
than the imagination

will our own deaths
repeat themselves
endlessly

only to reappear when
we need them to
release us

to rekindle
those moments
we have come
to know
so well

and imagine
not so well
to know

*

Green

I

I used to think
it cut through
to interrupt

the dying, and
dying was some
thing to interrupt

everything
balanced
by sky and

earth forced
so close and
easily far apart

muffled to cut
small lives
within ourselves

creatures who
remember the
mechanics of the hive

who witness
young shoots cut
the older growth

and make
their way
inside


II

you said
it should take
about half

an hour
to reach
the woods

perhaps
I mentioned
the breeze

15 minutes later
a photo the sun
you snapped

in my mouth
saw wind parry
grass and said so

30 minutes later
between trees
we inverted dirt

the technology
our approach
emerged

we pushed through
through the wood
made no mistake

looked back
saw mimicry
of our thought


III

I used to think
everything should
be cut through

a blade fast
clean as
breathing

a clear cut
through language
as it approaches

the surface
all this foliage
breaks through

easily -
the rhythm of
millions of years

evolved in
such sounds.
all this will fall;

an assemblage of
machinery so
delicate nothing

is absent
seasons begin
and end

creatures speak
about the edges
of colour


IV

so many
landscapes exist
to push through

the foliage and grasp
a natural absence
of words

caught like a leaf
when it falls
the structure understands

what must become
dirt the new blades
cut through

you look, you
try to read, you
are disgusted

you see words
but they speak
of death, of something

that will push from
you when you
lay the book aside


V

death reminds you
there is something
you can't pin

to a thought, some
inescapable code
beneath the folds

perceived of as
the mind as it
continues

to read the
machinery
wonder of voices

or ever speak
with the clarity
of a blade

until then the
phenomenon
will say no more

vibrations
pass along the
jawbone to the ear


VI

I used to think
of language as
a blade that cut

everything, as
blades of grass
push through

all there is to know
our lies and our forgetting
are as natural as

two small creatures
copulating at the edge
of a quiet meadow

you won't notice
their nervous quickening,
the flux of energy

as the soft fur mingles;
to grow is all too natural
to cut is all too human

and who exactly
is following who
is exactly what

these sad extremities
operate in tandem:
the secret desires

of our language
species reduced
to names

in a language so
distant they could
be enclosed together

*

Sum Lakes


in the cool morn
lives the call of song
birds and one crow

here, in the liquid
traffic of the shore
the call is calm

in the mind's dull fire
I imagine no matter
which way I turn

I will be forever free and bitter
free for the fire burns
bitter for the suffocating

forces of that fire
the call is calm
along the liquid traffic

of the shore
out of that which all
the songbirds sing there is

who to sing a note
or two outside
the song

*

Shore Song


full moon

blue night

right here

what pulls

*

Canoe


once water
rounds weather

a wind
in sects

the butterfly

sun or
beam

turn slow

*

Pine Trees


pines lean
time over
green leaners
northwest
rock holders
totems
sideways

they are
of the shore
the winding
holds them
in time's
lapping
of the
shore

water in
place a
pace in
dark drops
the deep
leaning
here over
the shore

*

Variations on a Sentimental Poem

I

I want
that morning
his mind
refused
walked down
suffused
and wandered
an occasional
wind that
worked into
the water
to see
the difference
between
a space
separated by
a quality
the senses
want
standing on
the lake
watching
a quiet
raise itself
and imagine


II

to imagine
like
4-year old
to sleep
the hill
in grey air
a shore
tossing
ruffled shirts
and our
no reason
bu the wind
and I
two things
what connects
time, air
and we
remember
that
with him
the storm
made as
against
a year


III

what
was
to
that
together
to a beach
bewildered
stone
into our
skin
and for
the stone,
explained
lightning and thunder
between
them
certain
by sheer nerve, to
shore,
looking over
in
attempt
to the weather
old mind


IV

5:30am
so we
beach sepia
along
the struck
and the water
of
tie together
our
come
the sun
31

*

Sonnets from the Protegé


drives around a
bike around a city

at each complete stop
something writes down

when it happens will come of it
the mind
landscape and season turn

turn over a leaf
turn under a tree
turn the next line

how city works when you're in it
travel logs mailed to a reflex
about moves as quickly

the next page arrives

* * *

how old is your forest?
this year grew one
a whole clearing into the midst

not old enough to but still
young enough to get the job done

fungus is friendly
humility is human

simplicity takes work
every sheet of paper grows speech

money is everything in this broke peace

nature is helpful when love is a forest
you carry a forest across the room

hold him asleep in your arm
stir the soup at the same time

* * *

so we replace the Prime Minister's latest poem
with the city's latest national paper

it begins to rain softly in the middle
of October we fade into the weather

begin to think the thing to do
might be to run for a walk
or read for a write
let the end of the line
forget to return the page

I pick up the phone call
we all talk at the same time
this makes us a conversation

here at the end suits wander aimlessly
until traffic lights interrupt them

* * *

"it's fine - you
you go ahead and
lie your way to the top

see if I'm here
when you get there"

down here
the water
collects puddles

there's always
evaporation to
deal with, sure

but it always
remembers
to rain again

* * *

if you want to know what scribbles are
they could be

pay attention or you miss entirely
the living with a baby works

we all watch for a while they never comes
then he swings off to sleep

two cats looks out "of" the window

relax -
the weather all around you
will explain what's going
on the other side of the window

cats still the sill

I lost my free time
on the way to the bank

* * *

what makes a word
provide examples
if revision is a living

we watch our child sleep
wonder who he'll wake up as

thought or language
bird or tree
sound or singing
hand or dealing

new card up for grabs
fit the sky perfectly hold
gambling a case for a smile

question what will you catch when you fall
answer the ground

* * *

every day a habit I picked up years ago
when the sun's gone withdrawal sleeps
a takeover with its singular demand

meanwhile dreams never have particulars
to occupy the planet you're up against

this bunch of holes
we never filled in

if to the present I won't arrive
I wasn't about to leave
when I arrive a minute later departs
why think the way

each fault line
every poem cracks
acts between

* * *

today's dead bird is a finch
fallen leaves brown the green grass
uncut for so long can hardly remember

we cover feathers with an autumn colour
around the yellow mark on the back of the scalp

gentle not to disturb it
rise it into them morning's thoughts

crunch leaves under wheel

on a bike you're never more than a sound
away from the ground

here leaves land in sight
see their shadows fall first

when the ground and the air come together
stop everything

* * *

in arms you're more
than shared
across town you're never less
than a bike away

the new mail service
chain-bicycle-to-post city

flip that page
lip these words

I'm not mulching mine

sometimes you're exactly as I imagined
when you aren't around

say something about how the world holds apart
applause silence

arrive at the end of this poem's traffic jam