Mike Madill’s poetry has appeared in literary magazines across Canada as well as in the U.S., including in The Antigonish Review, Event, The Fiddlehead and The Hobo Camp Review. After his full-length manuscript was one of four finalists in the inaugural 2022 Don Gutteridge Poetry Award Contest, he was awarded publication of his debut poetry collection, The Better Part of Some Time, (Wet Ink Books, 2022).
Between Stones
Those early rides took me
along hard-topped back-roads
to elude truck traffic, red lights,
practise the shift
of both weight and gears.
Decked out in full leathers,
bandana over ponytail,
black biker boots and beard,
just a thirty-something posing
as a bad hombré.
At the hushed churchyard,
I’d hang my helmet
on the handlebars like a pro,
take my keys and notebook,
head for the seclusion
of a certain stone bench to write,
zigzag between tombstones
to reach that view from the edge
of Lake Simcoe’s rocky shore,
lazy swells with so much to say.
Once, two women in sun-hats
and sorority wove a route of
their own back towards the
creaky gate, their loved one’s
location confirmed.
But their banter dwindled away
as we passed between
a weathered, white stone
on their right, a moss-covered
marker on mine.
A quick glance over my shoulder
caught them doing the same
in retreat, only afterwards
resuming their chat. But what if
they knew the real me?
Psychology grad., budding poet,
holding space on the periphery
at parties, fussbudget with more
than a dash of OCD, crying at movies
whenever a director lets the dog die.
Perhaps they bundled their judgement
home with them while I reflected
on the waves rippling across my page,
bridled in black-leather stigma,
the whiff of exhaust fumes
and the subtle weight of change.
Forgiveness
I’m sorry you didn’t stick around
longer, watch me embrace middle age
with all the grace of bare skin
against thorns. What we could have
bitched about: bad backs, more pills,
the lack of vim to get things done.
But that’s ok. You were made an offer
you couldn’t refuse: a one-way getaway
complete with complementary halo,
unlimited white robes, napping on clouds.
I pretended to sleep in the back seat
after long car rides home in the dark,
just so you’d carry me to bed, wooden
steps creaking loud and clear.
You held my hand when we toured the
Sydney coal mine. I was four
and I’ve never felt that safe since.
But you couldn’t say ‘I love you, too’
those final days in ICU, too scared
or already drifting. Maybe
you would have, if not daunted
by the brink of goodbye, that
threshold to cross, to be gifted
with all the time you needed
to no longer second-guess choices
you made, truths you wouldn’t speak.
I swear I hear them now when
the late night air grows cool and still,
settling that impalpable weight
like two strong hands on my shoulders.
Rise and Fall
(after Joan McKay’s “Heeled Over”, Oil on Cradled Birch)
Summit and plunge
the crests and troughs,
Georgian Bay’s
feverish joyride
outrunning
any carnival craze.
The bow crashes
into the next wave,
lurches down,
crashes into the next,
and then again.
Always again.
A strong westerly
throws the spray high
and across your face.
Your grin a little
forced, squinting
from the glare, firm
grip on your course
and the flickering
sight of your other
home, that battered
shore blinking back
at you with every rise
and fall of belief
in the here and now.
Top Shelf
How could a space-age stereo
ever work in my friend’s living room
that brims with Roethke, Rumi
and Rilke? Little more than a silver
shoebox with green LEDs and a slot
for CDs, we place it on the top shelf,
sit down and push play on the remote.
Eva Cassidy’s Fields Of Gold wrings
free its bittersweet harvest, her breath
between lines, the slide of fingers
on strings. A sunny meadow appears,
the wheat waves to and fro in the breeze,
settles my shoulders into the couch.
Next is Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah.
The haunt in his voice rouses memories
of friends I’ve let fade, others now gone,
then raises me up and through the open
window of Leonard Cohen’s
Chelsea Hotel room, swept up in the
disheveled bed sheets of bliss.
The show culminates with Sarah
McLachlan’s Angel. I’m weightless
with breathy sighs of flutes, cellos’
Gregorian chants. My friend sits
motionless, stares into his own cosmos,
his wife wipes away a few stray stars.
Our breath fills the room until
the picture window swells,
squeezes glass against sky,
holding fast to perfect harmony.
Two Pheasants
She took him to see Santa,
taught him how to make his bed,
heaped out hugs like she did candy.
A gift every June for passing
the grade; hearty laughter
for kid-sized jokes; dinners out
at The Ponderosa.
Wowed when he’d wear
the birthday shirt she’d given him;
besting him at Rummy,
pshaw-ing at the very idea
of a mercy win.
She knew better than anyone
how thorny it could be
to live with his mother,
confided to him in his thirties
she’d nearly taken him in
at sixteen, her daughter conspiring
to kick him out, (even then
not seeing eye to eye).
She never shied away from using
the word love. But her empathy
skipped a generation,
left a chilly border guard
between them.
On his wall hangs his favourite
of her needlepoints: a carefully
crafted scene of two pheasants
framed in the undergrowth, waiting
for a storm to pass.
The Galway Review 