The frontier referred to in this volume's title is dual - the actual physical landscape of the world, and the perimeters of experience and mind and identity that are the boundaries of the unknown. Many of the geographies herein are direct references to specific places in the Bridge River-Lillooet Country or other regions of British Columbia, which has been a realm of inspiration as well as consolation for me throughout my life, and also represents one of the last truly wild margins of our shrinking, beleaguered earth. There are attempts here at pure geographic description; where the landscape is symbolic, or leads in that direction, I hope for the reader to be able to discern for themselves. In other cases where I reprise to lament the passing of the majesty and mystery of the natural metaphysic of the wilderness, I beg the reader to forgive my repetition of the same themes and phrases that inevitably must serve to portray these ideas, their images, and the feelings they have so often caused in me, as the English language has only so many words..... Index of Titles and First Lines

The Frontier

Minerals
(Bridge River Memories III)

Vermilion.

(1984)

Minerals II

Do you remember the sweet melody,
the scent of fresh growings in our ears,
the single tone of two strings tuned,
agonizing in its mergence, its fine
discord and sharp, sudden unison?
    Do you wonder ever on the blast of noise
    that drowned out our simple harmonies?

Brown burnt in wood, six-hued
long nights of endless, single flame.
The far mountains in the heat
of distance, cold-limned canyons
in a stark winter win. The sky
    upturned.

I barrel-brewed a pitch-dark draught,
steeped of bile and broken bones,
sweetened with the hurting blood,
lost loyalty, and the long pursuit
your curse has scorched upon my soul,
    my nakedness.

When these stones first from their mountains
flowed, what choice had they as their cooling set?

Taken, broken, locked within a truth
of olden earth. But only deep stone know
    its colours' source.

Taste my granite - may it choke your tongue.
For I must wait for your words
to be purged from my innocence
    forever, and forgotten. 

An Hundred Stones

White veined flush, a purple roughed,
dark pink enveined a-grey;
mottled, smooth, salt-glistening
the beach farewelled,
time hastening

(Untitled)

(Easter 1985)
 

********

Five years gone: the rains dissolve
all traces of the winter's turn.
We leave our homes returned to Truth:
Our shelter broken, but our dreams set free.

(Spring 1990)

October

I feel the sombre monologues of winter's solitude,
the wet nights, the fog-shrouded mountains;
into the wilderness and the wild rivers
the downpours plunge and fill.

(October 1995)

Broken

I hear the horns resounding in the winds
    roaring white and dark, blue
    within the night, above the day

Long the lay of years, longer still the mountains'
    names. The bower of earth's strong arms
    beckons to me in my solitude, my unending pain

(1987)

Peregrination

Flowered glades, and crag-covered lakes, canyons silver-misted
now but an agent's purse, a survey notch,
an hundred trees to buy some logger's child a toy.
This place was all an honest man could want,
no more decent fate could befall the rest of us.
Yet today, and tomorrow, and tomorrow still
we'll reap its beauty for blind, rich bounty,
make paper of its leaves, grey sand of its green and golden stone.

All wilderness is now made bread and steel!
The last wild lands rendered lie and myth.
Do you tell me that the heart weighs naught,
that the only currency of Time is wealth?
That all else is mere sentiment, thus false?
Then what devil taught you think, what blackard taught you count?
......for such a sweet-toothed feast is true famine for the soul.

You say I am a fool to play Poet in these times,
and yea, but not because the Craft is dead and its path is hunger,
but because of the foul rapine of this our world
that robs it of its beauty and will rob us all of life.
- then pick up a spade, and lay your seed
for what good part your doing is, what betterment
your hand shall leave for years of human life to come...
and if not - then your work is crude and waste,
and unmakes the stuff of living life and your own soul -
all for want of cash, and vain-wrought style, and corporacity.

(1982)

Drake in Nova Albion

Gilt-edged, the waves prevail, and consume our western sun,
and the stars fall into a distant, unseen storm,
homing down into the west that halts beyond our shores,
drawing night a-deeper still, and hauls the moon in tow
over this yet-unfamed frill-parapetted town,
the encircling waters quenching sky and human light,
lanterns yet out upon an island's prow, as jewel on a diadem,
a tiara yielding grace to the laughter of a newer, more innocent, Lyonesse
that drinks beneath these waves of all the dreams
cast into the dusky sea, and drowned
with the setting sun. Stars enstormed and evershining,
shadows mirroring celestial fields, rocks broading seacliff sharp,
shadows lengthened eastward to mate with mountainside
treetops reaching to snare a morning wind.

(1982)

Dusk

Summer's Last Moon

For all that I have sought good, wanted creation,
mayhap I am spawned to rot, to fail, to destroy
what I could have been or made before it learns to fruit.
Even in the redemption offered by love,
can the chains of experience still carry my deeds awry,
still foul my will, evenwhen I thought I had become strong.

I quail in this summer moon,
I seek the button to shed my latest skin
and step ouu into the wild alpine night
and let loose the cry of knowing that pains my life.

Into the canyons my soul would fall,
straight, and far, into the desert lakes below.
Onto the winds, my form wants for release
to wander free the last mountains of abandoned legend.
Bu can I be purified of my mortal stain,
for so much of it was wrought by choice,
by cupidity or by wickedness I dare not name.

I am lost to the generations of men:
my seed and harvest spoiled by fear and sloth,
cultivation checked by shame, truth checked by lack of courage.

To what Lord do I call? - what name is True
of all that I have known? Or should we save ourselves
and not seek a bargain with greater power to relieve us...
I do not know, and despair of the woe of this tormented mystery.
 

(1982)

Reverie (on the Nevernight)

The galactic light,
dim and far, space too vast
to cast more than dim fade
    and not far-off our rim;
    the dim 'mere between
    our sister whorls:
Andromeda, our home,
as if we are indeed castoffs from
the tempests of that greatest night,
washed upon our fiery Milky Way's last strands,
rescued from an ancient exodus
by this blue jewel
alone here, in this sparkling space,
                alone
                    for all we know.

and inward, into the fires -
the galaxy's boiling flames,
a cauldron of light;
a beacon in the nevernight
for any ships seeking long-sought shores.

Things Unknown

I walked on roads unbuilt,
roamed forests of great imagining
and mountain dales en-shadowed dark.

I stood in the waters, unheeding
the cold and the blameless night
seeking cause by which to toil my gift,
breaking apart all that I had been,
forsaking all I might become
to harry after mystery,
and wonder at secreted glory.

Music nourished, protected me, sweetly
healed the rhythm of my shaken tongue
that had not endured the lash
of the everyday and the life banal.
Then a thief stole my drum, my tune
with lust and lies and taunting hope,
my body reeled before a heartless wind:
my last refuge was broken, and my dreams denied.

A want for gold, and hardened flesh -
A hopeless wandering in the empty land
where mind and soul are dead, and comfort
provides the only surety of health -
this led me out of my dying's bed
taught me walk and run and dared me fly
to objure me of my heart's abandonment.

All that is now done, or failed.
I dream of doings long-vanished,
forests en-shadowed dark, imaginings
long since lost in mountain vales,
searching gift to make cause for toil.

Roads undone are beckoning,
gold unmade chains me hard.
Steel-cold waters bind my heart,
my loins, my wonder is all burdened
with mortal longing, mortal needs.
I have learned no skill or means
to pay the price for all that I would be
and I have not the heart to lie, or lust.

The greater world fluxes new,
a tide beyond all our knowing's might.
I might have made a ship when young
and sailed around the westering globe
to witness all the latter mysteries
and learned to sing in highest song
of the glory of these days,
not the banal tragedy
of a causeless life, a seedless loin.

Kicking Horse Pass

Roofless pillars of a storm-heavened temple,
the Rockies rear above the mountain glades,
high stones sacred and true of light,
great carvings by the master hand.

The narrow canyon's climbing way
harkens of my youthful westering,
the journey up to the broad and empty land
that is the dominion of the northern sky.

Passage through the wide-rocked Bow
to the sudden collapse where mountain yields to plains.
Astream the weekend traffic down to Calgary
the romantic squalor of Banff en-parked behind.

I sense the shining land
ravished by the Chinook wind
the many ranges of stone and barren
asky the green ramparts of the western sea.

The pass is closed; the west hidden -
all I know and do but a yielding guess
to bid what might be must in plaintiff's tone
to secure the mountains for my aging heart.

Why do I yearn the wild lands so?
Your mountains are the towers of my soul;
your canyons are the winding riddle of the stone;
your forests the catalogue of singing's dreams.

I would become as this,
but spirit is bound as mortal flesh:
I am as I was made
and no mountain pass will transit
to the yonder shore.

At a Campfire

Then before my fire, a-rest from out
the busy day of sloth, I rack my skull
to find only the empty seats, my mocking-mouth
left without a weight or grace, my pen dry and cold.

Sinking low, down from cerebral height's pretense
into the mundane flesh warmed by fir-hot fire....
Across the lake, a freight train's metal chorus
rumbles and squeals, and moans into the mountain night.

On to Cayoosh and the Cariboo, and northly yet
the iron wagons roll into the canyon passes cool and steep,
their course juncturing seacoast and the mountains' lea....-
a deep-rumbling mystery unsayable,
even into the private darkness
at the mountains' feet.

Yukon Journey

We spoke of shadows, talked of flesh,
drank apart the days
and worked the Yukon night
to feed our hungry souls with cash.

I left before the winter fell;
you stayed to feel the first cruel snow,
to bid Dawson a final farewell
before the Arctic's deadly darkling sleep
could seize your heart
and command you stay.

The angry decade unfolds upon us.
Fists, knives, clubs, and guns; cold malice
vented on the burdens of the world -
the truths of hate and war and lust,
the lost glories of long-plundered gold.

The Yukon locked by freeze-up,
the Klondike's dales deep in new-blown snow.
Two thousand miles of wilderness
from the horrors of the raging world.

The Wild Land

Through the canyon, crags just glimpsed
lush and slick and chill
harder than a winter sky
Rearing into a gorge
          and a river long-dead
 

Long since have gone the wilden feels,
the spheres of desolation swirling, grinding,
the jade and gold and game all gone,
now the forests are called to fall,
          and the high barrens mined, unmade.
 

Something has gone even these last few years
something thinner and less sure
in the sanctity of mountain wind,
some great thing has faded;
          cruel doom awaits the rest.
 

Three hundred miles on square, or more
is next year's price for human Will;
this decade will see the wildland end,
the mountains' bones forever
          haunting us with ruined glory.
 

Babylon! Akkad! Holy Thebes! Athens! Rome!
Your scions' brood swarms the wild earth,
creation falls beneath your lot and seed
and now only fire awaits
          to unleash a final mercy
          upon the ravished beauty of our earth.

New Gods

Fire on the mountains: cascades of silver melt
thunder rolls the stony canyons
rocks giving throat to the wind's rock and roar,
and crack beneath hard rain's cold leash.
The chasm spawns, the road winds higher
into a grey maze of tower, meadow falls, and gale
and all is lost
before the dam, the tunnel, the spout:
rivers undone, the canyon empty
of its river,
of its creating soul.

The Nameless Land

Che-lat'h, the lake is called
and the sky above it, the lands below.
A great Death swept here, then famine,
then the latter people plowed it under,
the metropolis that lay between the lakes was undone:
a once-great warren of home-holes and hearths.
Here the Transformers had come
and turned back before Coyote's will;
where were the floater-fish and the stone-snake,
the climbing lizards and the golden hummingbird;
when the lake was clear jade, the dust thin-gold and mauve,
where Begbie decried the desolate land
and damned the chiefdoms for their pride.

Retaskit, Skimka, Shalalth, Nkoomptch, Xwisten:
these are the battlegrounds of our nations' souls,
witnesses to the deeds of men and the ways of law,
a court ruled only by the power of the land.

(Che-lat'h and Shalalth are rough phonetic transliterations of the St'at'imcets name for Seton Lake, which is properly spelled Ts'alalh in the language's new formal latinization system. The other native place-names are rendered in their customary English renderings.)

Crown Lake, Spring 1982
(Campfire II)

Last,
far golden,
glow fading
beyond
the valley's mouth.

Small,
this lake,
and still
a fire encamped,
mirrored,
reflected,
pooled,
its other end,
another real.

Great rocks,
pale and steep,
yet dark
before the rising
of the last spring moon.

Sky,
blue
and shadowing
to the hue
of the endless night;
the first few stars
beginning
to pierce
the firmament
to rise
through, above
the canyon's sky-drowning waters.

The twilight is sharp
on the pine-spiked ridge;
cliff-edges, bulges,
dim
in growing twilight,
the silence
brighter
with the deepening night.

Crickets shrill,
fire crackling
cars course echoing in the canyon
waterfall fall...-
I cannot name these sounds
I cannot build this canyon
here, upon this page.

Now
I stop
and drop
this pen
to watch
the stars
come out
above
and let the fire
die....

For sleep,
embers covered
with desert dust
and kept from
rekindling
without need
lest the forest
be inflamed and lost.

(Dec 21/81)

(Untitled)

Waiting for the morrow's eve, biding the collection of resources that guarantee departure, waiting for a word here, a smile there, waiting for the sky to pale and chill eastward, higher, into the shining south, the mountains and the plains, waiting for a world to cool and fall away, calm subsurface behind a distant war. Waiting, waiting, old habits resumed by waiting, waiting.

Return? No, never return, for never is the same again anywhere, nothing to return to, nothing to resume, only memories (gratitudes and guilts) to grasp and collude, to place before the living present, to blind the road as blowing snow and bright-frozen light.

Bridge River Memories
(For my father)

For you
the stormwind at a cold canyon's gate
recalled to me the grey stone songs you sang
that came cold, and colder out the moutainous rift
that cuts between the desert and the sea

For you
I ran behind the midnight train
fleeing back to the arc-lit streets of town
from the darkness of your valley's air
that hindered me from rest
at being home.

I dream awake in shadow
of the flower of those gold-buttressed peaks,
the rosy snows of their summer dusk.
For you, I hark to their passing's lonely wail.

(1984)

   II (Bralorne)

     I had a cabin near a mountain edge,
     its hearth was built of precious ore,
     the roof arrayed in careful spruce,
     Most windows were broken to the alpine breeze,
     the bear grille down; I lived a mile uphill
     from all that's left of Bralorne town.

     I can't see it now, not here, can't feel that fire,
     I've forgotten the sense of dread that made me go:
     a bull grizzly shot a-haunch while stealing apples
     some twenty mountain miles away in Seton Portage.

     When the breathing of an angry bear
     can echo loud through twenty forest miles
     the warmest hearth grows cold,
     the bush feels thick and fierce.

Some lands lie wilder than the rest:
the roads expire before that march
where the last yonder mountains
sail out beyond the north horizon's lea.
I look back across the ranges
whose passes led me here.
I cannot see the hidden lands.

(Whistler, 1984)

(Untitled)

I write this to purport nothing,
to explore a few remnants of fear and despair,
to test the breeze through my heart
for the current of storm I feel and cannot name
and suspect may be only a tortured dream.

Coffee sings in my veins, my eyes are puffy-clear.
Something has transfixed me beyond my knowing
that I cannot surrender courage to.
What decision must I make,
     what is fit to be decided?

The toll of worlds and human griefs
has no cause to be lain out or saved
for memory or judgement
or for the book of time.
There is no cause to make cause of life:
I feel the wanderlust again,
I would seek the nameless road.

Passage to Shalalth, whence the night-train rolls,
futile yet compelled to explore the valley's deeps.
Through, and through, and always back again
to transit mystery in the name of unmolded quest.

(Whistler, 1982)

Oka Ultimatum

These are the streets
of all our kind.
This is the Land
on which we walk.

Bright cafes, pastry bars,
the leisure of the street;
shops and eyes
and food and lust...

What do we need
of war?
What could we want
of state?

On this spot
great trees once stood:
Dark groves, green glades -
below, blue life-boiling sea...

The forests are gone,
their ghosts our cities' bones;
We stand on their ground
We walk on their hearts
     (They stand on our ground
      They walk on our hearts)

The vote and its sword
march on our soil,
tear up our world -
make truth into lies
to feed to the crowd.
We make our hearts ready.
We are free when we die.

The city awaits the autumn's storm
The mountains fill with dread
The northwind howls of winter's might
The land awaits the dead...

(Robson & Thurlow, Vancouver, on the evening of the Canadian Forces' ultimatum to the Oka Mohawks)

The Waking World

Too late, too sad, the world is waking
to the fate of the wildlands,
a device of man's own making...

The Far Lands

They are unmade - those ancient
hills are crumbled by the will of Man.
Maps enchart their mystery, their
fierce blood tapped to feed
our ravened hordes;
no more mountains twist
into a far never, where
none may longer go.
their gates are closed
by the taking of their names.

Dreams of plateau starlight, canyons
in the hidden moonshadow; even winds
that sweep the mountain lakes,
pines roaring at the end of day.

(Untitled)

The Pinewood

Wide lands below, beyond,
  the gentle splendour of the earth unmarred,
      the world still right - unscathed.
  I would dwell there yet
      before cruel time comes
         to kill eternity,
                  to kill
                     the pinewood mountainside.

The Orchard

Ts'alalh - the St'at'imcets name for Seton Lake

The end of the trail - a reference to the town of Lillooet, which was the terminus of the Crown Colony of BC's first road, which came from the coast via this chain of lakes.

Waking Up

Waking up: the day broken, mountains hewn by steep shafts of light, the canyon deeped in morning shadow, the air still cold amid the trees. Bracing cool the wind, yet hot for morning, and hotter still the day to come. Blue, this sky, of china-plate and cerulean dust, almost grey in its northern-ness, whereby the north is known.

Waking up: the sun, burning on our skin before our eyes are cleared of sleep, the day brighter than can be borne, truth-of-being evident as grass and sand and river, as purposeful and eternal as the shaping of the land; the turning of the stars.

Waking up: our star burns within the ending night, the eternal dim that holds all worlds within vast emptiness: we have our span within this space, that time will measure out in vast distance and great mass: move out, mankind, if yet there is a way; for here the gates of time are closed, this year or in many yet; we must seek a way to climb the mountain of eternity, and spread our numbers into the stars for our tale to survive its mortal birth upon this lostling world.

Winters Past

Soft cold, and sweet, still
timeless as winter's pale cold
and magic fire, and bright palaces
of crystal gleam, and cascading ice
flash the windows of the hard, cold world
with the gentle chilling, grace and calm.
The night and day are still and poised
the twilight glows with flicker-flame
as snow falls, softly cold,
upon the silent hills, and the heart of the wild.
the forests, filling,
                echo-white.

The mountains rear slow
from the frozen lowland shore.
Palisades of falling gardens,
white flowers rising, down from the heights.
High places far, cold not cruel
wind bracing, hammer-blast,
freezes the lake of winters past.