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Drift: Poems
What are we thinking at any given moment? What happens to a thought as that moment, on its way to oblivion, collides with its successor? Rambunctious, witty, joyous, and bittersweet, drift is an investigation conducted by a truly unfettered imagination. In fluid, sparkling cadences, Kevin Connolly's poems let the mind's downtime have the stage for a change -- the desert sky transformed; Spring Break as viewed by passing skipjacks; narratives of danger and dream narrative; a meditation on the business end of a sea cucumber; figures of history disfigured and left to wander the consumer grid -- such are the entirely odd, entirely current events in Connolly's world, a realm that stands at an acute angle from the place we normally live in but which we all seem to drift into. As one of Connolly's own high-voltage sonnets states, what stops the heart starts the world. In drift 's constant juxtaposition of abundance and loneliness, we hear what it is to confront a new century, having quite likely failed during the last. We're reminded, by a voice unlike any other on the Canadian landscape, that our solitude is painful yet precious.
95 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 1, 2005
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January 29, 2022
There is a lake
in the scene above my body
no one dares to touch -
a question, a rumour
clothed in throaty silence.
From where I sit
drowning in the garden,
I can see my fingers
fish-hooked by its
briar of stars.
* * *
I can't see the widow in the garden -
black scarf glaring out the sun
I don't recall the swam of fish -
garish mouths, little gasps of mud
I've forgotten the dice-box of thumbs -
their flight, fret and clatter down the hall
I've stopped thinking of the sea of thought -
weak peaks, flotsam in the swells
I can't remember that particular grey light
(you know the one)
that lingers on the pavement and
keeps the day from warming
* * *
You are the toy delivered at daybreak,
conundrum to a storm of check marks,
and still, so familiar to me
this bale of regret
I have strawdogged . . .
Cordwood, filibuster,
young love caught under the porch
with the chamois and the millionaire
A class of oafs
can set the terms more finely
than any time-share Nero
But when I put up my fiddle, the
moon dawdles on my cheekbones -
all those plump hours tractoring back
in the scene above my body
no one dares to touch -
a question, a rumour
clothed in throaty silence.
From where I sit
drowning in the garden,
I can see my fingers
fish-hooked by its
briar of stars.
- Finger Lake, pg. 24
* * *
I can't see the widow in the garden -
black scarf glaring out the sun
I don't recall the swam of fish -
garish mouths, little gasps of mud
I've forgotten the dice-box of thumbs -
their flight, fret and clatter down the hall
I've stopped thinking of the sea of thought -
weak peaks, flotsam in the swells
I can't remember that particular grey light
(you know the one)
that lingers on the pavement and
keeps the day from warming
- Lapse, pg. 36
* * *
You are the toy delivered at daybreak,
conundrum to a storm of check marks,
and still, so familiar to me
this bale of regret
I have strawdogged . . .
Cordwood, filibuster,
young love caught under the porch
with the chamois and the millionaire
A class of oafs
can set the terms more finely
than any time-share Nero
But when I put up my fiddle, the
moon dawdles on my cheekbones -
all those plump hours tractoring back
- So Familiar, after Darrell Gray, pg. 66
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