Testing the Elements

Formatting note:

In the electronic versions of this book

blank pages that appear in the paperback

have been removed.

TESTING THE ELEMENTS

BRUCE MEYER

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Meyer, Bruce, 1957-, author

Testing the elements / Bruce Meyer.

Poems.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-55096-393-9 (pbk.)— ISBN 978-1-55096-394-6 (pdf)

ISBN 978-1-55096-456-1 (KINDLE)— ISBN 978-1-55096-457-8 (EPUB)

I. Title.

PS8576.E93T47 2014 C811'.54 C2014-900182-7 / C2014-900183-5

Cover Photograph by Sean Puckett

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PDF, ePUB and MOBI versions by Melissa Campos Mendivil

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This book is for

Kerry, Katie, Margaret, and Carolyn

and in memory of friend and mentor

Seamus Heaney

Dawn

i.m. Seamus Heaney, August 30, 2013

Yellow hedgerow gorse blinked and fell

at summer’s end on a hill slope waking wet

in dewy blessing. Sun sang in each bauble.

Fields clasped rosaries of ancient starlight.

It is time, sky and humbled clouds rolled on,

for silence to learn the silence of fierce sleep,

to learn the world’s living voice alive again

risen from pain to life to love to live in the deep

earthen footprints of fattened flocks grazing

the worried slides. Words are carved on wind

and filter boughs of father oaks phrasing

a spell from what was said and left behind,

never to be forgotten the way a shadow shows

the outline of a body wherever the soul goes.

Contents

Prologue

The Penguin Book of Mayan Verse

Earth

Forage Caps

On the Exhumation of Neruda’s Body

Myth

Clean Fill

Berczy Park

The Remains of Bidwell

African Methodist Episcopal Church

Brown Shoes

Fox in the Fallen Snow

Water

What’s Left of Nineveh

Horses

The Narrows

Musée de Bon Chance

Loonie

R.M.S. Titanic

Victoria Square

Invisible Snowmen

The Frogs

Fire

Serendipity

A Bed in Paris

Sunrise on the St. Lawrence

Volta

Campagna

The Cayuga

Sincere

The Devil’s Paintbrush

The Lovely Fallen Angels

Air

Prom Night

Underwood

The Prisoner Dreams

The Sweetness

Cezanne’s Card Players

Syllabub

A Lifetime

The Modern American Poem

Writing on Your Back

The Movie Being Filmed Across the Street

On the Judgement of Dogs

Dreaming of Joe Weider

In Defence of Narrators