Isle of Hoy

  • Northwest Passage

    Stepping into a roomAnd seeing its lightI remember the window.Placed, set, squared.And on walls and floorPhosphorescences ofWhat could be, shardsOf water jars, sea phrases.I breathe,Not exactly what belongsBut what is there. Not belief, not knowledge.An opening.

    Paul Hoy

  • Ghazal #2

    With them, I break my animal trail,Canoe scrapes treelight for creeks. Words dam rivers,  Comets rise to feed. I breathe like them,Airholes stars have pricked. Having passed under it all,A world’s run over with me,  Migrant island boats steeped with spruce,My boots choke on the taste of clay. Blazes are the eyes of steppingstones.I see…

    Paul Hoy

  • Umbrella

    Here the wind is a country.Rain flags hills. Trees refugeethe borders of their creeks. The wind’s airthe body doesn’t breathe, The body that’s not the body,the you that cannot be Just a window, more or less a doora storm left opened As if you were never here,returning to the you who left Her umbrella here,the…

    Paul Hoy

  • Today

    A drive to another city.Getting lost in a forest.Your stillnessin the grass.Birds again.  Sumacin yourhair.

    Paul Hoy

  • A River Passing

    This is the wayyou must look to birds,nothing but a breeze. Which rounds the hand,loosens fingers’ memory,how in your hair they digress. To the other lifebehind the trees,overhead, a river passing.

    Paul Hoy

  • 53

    On this hill that sails tamarack woods,my shoulders are a clove-hitch ache. Thirst overflows our calves,we portage the camel bone it’s madethat slowly says, along the way, thisis a rough bowlhand-sewn by handsthat still would liketo drink.   Like everything at 53, even the thirstis heavier, the creek in the palmof the valley,as I climb,overflowing…

    Paul Hoy

  • How much simpler to disbelieve uncertainty

    How much simpler to disbelieve uncertaintyThan to trust its unfaithfulness. To believe a plainness,I miss you, You, a strikethrough of your absenceBlurry because I cannot comprehend Only hold beyond my reachThe expanse of your closeness.

    Paul Hoy

  • Poem to a deer

    There is an apple orchard that leans against a crest,A shadow of a road The horses from the barn sometimes wander there,Scenting fruit Breaking branches on the dull horizons of their backs,The chase of scrub light Mixing with you,Loving where you take us Wading into trees, marvellous in the thickets of wind,To bring back The…

    Paul Hoy

  • I loved you before

    Like the world that came to us,claimed itself a sphere,despite the sun, a spirit level,nights laid between you and me. Like the poem you love;on the tip of your tongue,its truth,its desert flood,no mouth to say,its taste swallows you.No synonyms for why,but word by word,the course it sets from you. But you are not a poem,of…

    Paul Hoy

  • Madawaska

    I carried you inside me,frozen river carrier.But I leave ice to burythe current it will bury.I leave pines to stand for me,fly their ancient flags.I will let stones be stones,feel their hold releasetheir million birds of silence,their shadows lain in snow.

    Paul Hoy