Consider: 8 Poems by Susan McCaslin

by Susan McCaslin

For those interested in listening to Susan read these poems aloud, she has graciously provided a recording

Consider the Bleeding Hearts


extravagant liberals
plunging purpling into spring

burgeoning blushing
then drooping into summer

followed by fall's free-fall
scattering seed pods everywhere

such superabundance
in heart-shaped petals

such suchness
in these wild core hearts.


Consider the Sandhill Cranes


trumpeting courting
crying from coiled trachea
flying between worlds


red-masked eyeing each other coyly
hopping and fluttering
their prehistoric dance
echo makers          bird gods
wafting on thermal winds
landing in damp marsh


their rattle and hum reinventing time
dropping into our laps
a kind of longevity


their one-legged stance
a stillness
bestowing on our senses
this now

Consider the Bearded Lichen


in symbiosis with fungi and algae
filaments intertwine in mutuality

no harm to the Douglas fir
living on its surface

no laying down of roots
feeding through its own photosynthesis

wispy bearded one
white cord at centre of each strand

hibernating and reviving 
resilient elder

in fossil record
400-600 million years

provides antibiotics
makes breakfast for wintering caribou

first to reappear in forests after a fire
whitish-yellow-grey tree gnomes

just hanging in
till we join the enlichenment

Consider the June Snow


soft puffy galaxies suspended in air
float their neurons down

spinning slipstreams of white
that land on a path by the Fraser

ephemeral dancers
down down tumbling

from green catkins
of tall black mother trees

cottonwoods intent on scattering
seed pods

some poising briefly
on a dog's nose

others suffering cement
and trampling

some swiftly dreaming
in moist sod

imagining deep roots
long shoots

Consider the Western Red Cedar


aromatherapist
out of whose inner bark Kwantlen crafters
wove ceremonial capes, canoes

Halq'eméylem language drifting in boughs and bowers
through her beautiful brain
wrapping round its syllables, chanting

fungi interfacing nourishment to saplings
stretching northsoutheastwest

arched boughs swooping earthward
then rising
sun-gatherers

her elderdom intuits our hands
pressed gently against her lichened layers
inviting us to join the round and round
antics of grey squirrels

our threescore and ten
a mere dewdrop
against her old growth glades

the secret gift of her attention and ours
leaning together in this

zero
and
everything
zone

Consider the Hydrangea
Serrata Miranda 
water vessel
garden queen
erect on her stem

flaunts her seeded lace cap
rimmed by sepals'
violet-blue blooms -
a blue beyond names

A human bends
at the rim of a forested ravine
ledge between cultivated and wild

inbreathes Miranda's
exquisite shadings,
awed by her deft design

asks the Queen's permission
to cut a single bloom

Miranda bows nods
holies the evening meal





Consider the Millipede

or
if not
herself
then
her
thousand
tiny
feet
or if not
her prints
then her
delicate
calligraphy
elongated
haiku
caught
between
sand
and
sky
these
fragile
signatures
all too
briefly
here
the
artisan
embedded
deep
down
cherish
her
lovelorn
love
letters
whoever
has eyes
let them
feel

Consider the Southern Cross


long before Jesus, before time
a cosmic constellation flared

crosswise on a crossroad’s
vertical/horizontal conjunction

both here and there, inner and outer
spangling night sky

further north in Dante’s time
then not visible in Italy

yet Dante dreamed it into his Paradiso
placing it among the order of angels

where he stood at the ledge
with Beatrice beatitude and guide

who set her gaze on point zero
where we disappear and are remade

where the many and the one
and all apparent opposites

sing union

Susan McCaslin is the author of seventeen volumes of poetry and ten chapbooks. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia in 1984 and taught at Douglas College in B.C. in the English and Creative Writing Departments from 1984-2007. Her most recent volumes of poetry are Consider (Aeolus House, 2023) and Sentient Stones (Raven Chapbooks, 2023). She resides in Fort Langley, British Columbia, where she initiated the Han Shan Poetry Project as part of a successful campaign to protect a rainforest near the Fraser River.