We formed a circle around a small fire,
we sat cross-legged, listening to the lake,
someone had a guitar, someone passed out candles,
we sang softly, our faces glowing, our eyes gleaming,
sparks leapt from each to each,
we held hands, we hugged,
we gave our lives to Jesus,
our eyes wet and heavenward,
our bodies alive with desire,
like drawn bows trembling,
plotting and promising impossible reunions.

When the campfire went out and the morning came
and we waited for the bus to take us
home, we were solemn,
and then made fun.

Deeper than guilt or embarrassment
was the heart’s new intelligence.

That beneath our touches and embraces,
our imperfect intentions,
we yearn for two worlds:
to fall headlong into self-obliterating love,
to grasp the hand of just one companion, and be received.

In the beauties of holiness
from the womb of the morning,
thou hast the dew of thy youth.   (Psalm 110)

It’s sunrise, and the verdant earth is baptized in dew.
You gaze further out: a sea of cerise, an island of emerald.
Soon, all the lucid beauty, as from a forgotten world,
or some new heaven, floods your heart.
And like beauty everywhere, it is holy.
Sliding toward seventy, and still there is ecstasy.

Aging softens ego. Memories disappear, words disappear,
possibilities slowly disappear, but so do your fixed defences,
your fears and controls, which now, leave to you
whole new oceans of beauty, of wonder.

The throat tightens and releases a tide of emotion,
and you stand at some shore, entirely empty,
and utterly grateful, open, now, to receive
the orphaned cries of the world.

And the Bible says, God created day and night,
land and sea, flying birds and swimming fish.

And in between (but not mentioned), God made
more beauty: dawn and dusk, intertidal wonder,
corral reefs and estuaries, squirrels with wings,
penguins, soaring dolphins, flying cod,
and platypus, for heaven’s sake!
Not to mention the purple-throated sunangel,
one non-conforming hummingbird,
or the “half-sider” cardinal, a male/female chimera,
split down the middle, in marvelous colouration
and morphology of both — and never mistreated by the flock.

And humans, male and female, God made them,
and in between (but not mentioned), still more beauty:

a red-lipped, purple-fingertipped trans woman
who loves to dance, and when she does,
sparkles like stirred coals;
and two trans men, whose love for each other,
whose love for others, expressed through the vocations
they’ve taken on, rise above
the fear-based rejections they’ve faced;
and like Jay, who carries a weight of unseen pain,
from bricks thrown by a pious mob, 
defending an exclusionist reading of Genesis,
and yet, because she’s come home to her body,
has adopted the name, Joy.

Clearly, this poem is not a polemic. Just a rather simple (simplistic?) observation — towards tolerance. As it is, I personally know some wonderful trans people (which is an advantage), so I worry about the ever-growing anti-trans rhetoric that is fueling far-right politics, galvanizing a segment of Christianity, giving a certain liberty to paramilitary and neo-Nazi hate groups, resulting in a year-by-year increase in violence against trans and gender non-conforming people. Framing this is the systematic erosion of their human rights. Already this year, just south of our border, state lawmakers have introduced 460 bills attacking the rights of LGBTQ+ people, with 356 bills specifically targeting transgender people. Obviously, Canada is not immune (there are, and will be, ongoing attacks on Bill C-16). In the meantime, we can remember that LGBTQ+ rights, are human rights; and maybe, should we wish to reinforce that, we can talk to trans people, listen to their stories.

The day has begun.
Across the ink-dark bay, the barest hints of light.
Pale pinks and a suggestion of peach, etch
an outline of Salt Spring Island.

A dark-eyed junco is the first to sing. Now,
the breeze-less morning gathers its long shadows,
and the sun slowly explodes above the island’s crown.

In my place at the window, it is good to feel my smallness
and my brevity, like the pale flame of a match, against
the sky’s red blaze and wordless horizon.

I can’t trace the time, exactly, but my gratitude
has become corroded; my instinct for praise
has been dulled by the din of topical news,
its noise, like the seventh circle of hell.

I’ve learned that the first birds to sing in the dawn chorus
are those with the biggest eyes. So here I am,
doing a kind of mind-eye tai chi, to get my soul back.

Me and the dark-eyed junco, reading the light,
analyzing the alchemy of mist on the bay,
studying the vague sway of a looming hemlock,
the incarnadine storyline of a neighbour’s magnolias.

I never made it through Dante, but one thing stuck:
that dawn should open my mouth in song,
and to will to refuse is hell.