Three Poems – George Moore

My Dog at the Window

staring at the place where his friend should be
which is snow blown now just

across the street but she the dog
is not out in her yard

she has disappeared has gone into the ether
the stratosphere as elements decayed and consumed

by a universe that is only of the moment
only of everything of all things

And it looks cold enough to freeze fish
in their south shore dreams

That is where we are these days
dreaming as fish and dogs

searching the streets for friends who will not
retreat from those ancient enemies

of bad sense pride of belief
and the stale importance of opinion

But where she should be no movement
his eye quick to catch anything

so slow moving with age and
a limping history

across on the neighbor’s lawn
but no he stands alone at the window

patiently waiting for her to happen
absence always life’s anticipation

her death surely
nothing that will last

 

In the Belly of the Whale

for my brother, Jim

I have learned how to grieve
by common measures

by the color of cloth
and the lighting of candles

and the darkness
that does not speak

But then I have also learned
of the measure of days

of the invisible remembered
the faded features and gestures

simple words or a phrase
amid the terror of last moments

And in those moments
hides the empty mirror

the hours cut up by minutes
the trail with no one there

And I have learned
how greedy the world is

hungry as winds on a desert
or the anger of oceans

that slap at the shores
and how we escape

only the providence of ourselves
to achieve the emptiness of stone

that never waits never arrives
And yet we crowd into

the last second
where the light is

among the living
and the black we wear

is night itself
hungry for dawn

 

Refuge

It’s strange to feel change coming. It’s easy to ignore. An underlying
restlessness seems to accompany it like birds flocking before a storm.

― Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge

As the world went one way we went another
and like many turned inward

lived by impromptu moves in isolation
curtailed rather than ended

those voyages outward into the world
And having just booked a flight to Ireland

to read and do a bit of writing
explore some ancient links to a personal history

everything then canceled out by a cryptogenic instant
the engendering of an old scourge

in the repetition of human history made new
for those of us who had grown too complacent

we sat still and watched as the south shore
blurred into a dull routine

And yet out of this we learned a refuge
is still a place within that carries with it

images of the world
a balance that becomes a haven

and here on the south shore of a country
I have taken up as home

the still point and the surrender
in the moment of this pathogen

might be measured
by the going out and coming in

of lobster boats off the ramshackle wharf
the dancing ropes and cables

that can drag a man down
and yet at the edge a refuge

on simple solid ground

 

George Moore’s poetry has appeared in Poetry, The Atlantic, North American Review, Arc, Colorado Review, and Stand. His collections include Children’s Drawings of the Universe (Salmon Poetry 2015) and Saint Agnes Outside the Walls (FutureCycle 2016). Nominated for eight Pushcart Prizes and a finalist for The National Poetry Series, he taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He now lives with his wife, a Canadian author, on the south shore Nova Scotia.