I’ve had mercy in places you wouldn’t believe, so much mercy that I sometimes get cocky about it. Like when one of those sand candles from the 70’s nearly burned our house down. That ramshackle on Saanich Road I wrote a famous song about. (No? I’ll play it for you sometime.)

Candle: squat, bowl-shaped, and at four pounds of industrial wax, it burned for days and nights — thought it would never die. It was the summer we lived in the basic detritus of a continual party. Pilsner empties (the odd Mateus), hash pipes made of tinfoil, blackened butter knives, ashtrays made of melted disco LPs (that’s what you did with disco back then), and sleepers — I mean us, six, eight, ten, depending, splayed across a crusted carpet. (I could give you names but they know who they are.)

Anyway, I don’t remember who started to cough, then started yelling, fire! But I remember running to the sink to get pots of water to throw at the corner of the living room. Walls scorched, our bed-sheet picture window curtain, singed; the candle, now, a greenish-black canopy caked over a charred speaker tower, a puddle of paraffin on the floor. We opened the windows, the doors, front and back, and returned to sleep.

A month or so later we abandoned the house and left for a smaller island. On the final night we had a house wrecking party. Sounds bad, I know. But listen, a week earlier the landlord showed up, “Sold to developers, you need to get the hell out before the bulldozers come.” “When?” queried I, “Not to worry,” quoth he, “you’ll know.” That was the longest and deepest talk we ever had.

Moral? as you predicted, there is none. I’m sorry. So I’ll just cut to the end: One fine day the following May (or May-ish), after wintering on Salt Spring, we returned to Saanich Road (we could be sentimental) and found, growing on the mound of that demolished house, a healthy and happy crop of cannabis. Some plants were already in bud, others too young, still, we harvested a large garbage bag full. And to think (stretching the thing about mercy), we used to curse the amount of seeds you’d get in a dime bag.

(After Psalm 81)

When everyone is saying it’s too late, it is you who must decide
it’s not too late.

Time is at hand. Raise a song. Sing loud with your voice
while it is day. Strike the cymbal while you have strength.

Go to the sea. Take your easel. Paint the wounded waves, the whitening
coral, give everything your best pink.

Paint long streaks of lavender in a scarlet sky. Turn to the east
and paint a field of wheat. Paint wrens nesting with falcons.

Show us a congress of crows lifting quick to the Morning Star.
Like galloping antelope restoring our rhythm and hope.

Paint bread and wine, a cascade of grapes, a chalice, every single thing
in form and function, created excellent in its own way.

Creator, who forgoes the cosmic halo and speaks in butterfly,
who rests in our heart’s atrium.

Who is a breathing Word, a black water strider,
exquisitely robed and floating on a shimmering creek.

Who answers in the secret place of thunder;
who says, Open your mouths wide, and I will fill it.

And we eat, supper after supper until we see our faces in the faces
of our foes. O bitter unveiling. O possible healing.

Shout a psalm! Get your Gibson, your Mel Bay chord charts, your
Neil Diamond songbook, your tambourine.

Blow the trumpet at the new moon.
Taps, never to be played again.

Imagine such peace. The lie of blood and soil exposed.
The law of tears revoked. Honey flowing from a rock.

It’s late. Not too late.
Speak with your hands, pray with your feet.

~   I wish I had not taken so many shortcuts. It’s the winding journey that leads everywhere.

~   All this saving of time, and I still only have now.

~   You may think it’s difficult taking back your words, …try taking back your silence.

~   The thrust of it is: the soul is built up through mercy and truth, and torn down by resentment.

~   There are 59 million people in the world who are 68, and every one of them understands that by this age, change is a long shot, and should it come, it will come from the inside.

~   My sudden cry of, hallelujah! startled everyone in the Dollar Store.

~   After years of shedding the trinkets of faith — faith found me.

~   Hope resembles Covid, in that it resists extermination.

~   And yet, and yet, I look at the trembling sea, radiant orange from a sinking sun, and I want to wrap my legs around it. Hopeless, like many other desires.

~   So many things can fill the heart. But nothing, it seems, fills it completely.

~   Consciousness of the abyss is also an engine of conversion.

~   Cynicism is a cranky old man with a full bladder, and yet, as appealing as Louise in that crochet halter top.

~   Speaking of romance, O, such a notion I had burdened myself with: that I needed no one to show me who I am.

~   Matter gives way, opacity wears out, transparency is the mystery.

~   As a lifelong skeptic, I live in fear of clarity. When clarity comes, I live in fear of doubt. When in doubt, I practice replacing the word “void” with “God,” over and over again. As soon as it sticks, the skeptic returns.

~   Infatuation gives way, passion wears out, intimacy is the mystery.

~   When the thief stole my watch it was as if he’d severed my wrist. I scolded myself for being that attached to possessions. Yet now I can’t seem to stop dividing the world into upright citizens and thieves.

~   When I demanded consideration for my years of sacrifice, God said, “My son, you may be confusing me with an investment broker.”

~   I pleaded, O Lord, help me to know my faults. The Lord asked, “Tell me, of what faults do you accuse others?”

~   To the conspirators, as to the Fundamentalists, there is an obvious reason for everything.

~   The calendars of establishment leftists and institutional liberals boast of endless conferences.

~   The shadow is darkest when there’s just you holding a candle. Call to your side others with candles.

~   I asked the Divine Mother if there was anything greater than joy, She said, “Nothing, other than finding its source.” Then I asked, is there anything greater than finding its source? She said, “Nothing, except being its cause in another.”

~   I spent 25 years working at a homeless shelter, every day I was amazed that no one said, “What’s that boy doing working at a homeless shelter?”

~   If you’re lucky, the poem will wait for the noise in your head to clear so you can grapple with a few short lines that say what they mean. If you are even luckier, you will receive a grant, the condition of which is to leave off writing poetry.

~   I renounced the world. Then someone picked up what I renounced. Then I refined my renunciation. It goes on like this.

~   God, while I have your ear, tell me, how in the world will I shoulder all this weight? God said, “Well, in the first place, you don’t have to pick it up.”

~   That’s when I heard myself, for the second time, cry, hallelujah!