THE POETRY OF BRUCE MCRAE

The Poetry of Bruce McRae
BIO:

Originally from Niagara Falls Ontario, Pushcart-nominee Bruce McRae is
a musician who has spent much of his life in London and British Columbia.
He has been published in hundreds of periodicals and anthologies. His first
book, ‘The So-Called Sonnets’ is available from the Silenced Press website
or via Amazon books. To hear his music and view more poems visit his
website: www.bpmcrae.com.

Cometh The Hour

Can’t you sense it, son of a bitch?

Something is coming over the fields.

Something approaches us on its stomach.

Some say it’s winter, or an army of snow.

Some suggest a muted messenger.

Everyone nods when death is mentioned.

It’s marching out of the seventh level,

dragging a chain, a bad foot, a giant’s head.

It flies from out the valleys of reason,

my sweetest demons prattling in their beds,

all my soft monsters despairing,

the sun blighted, the air scoured.

But it’s only the rain, an optimist declares.

Schools darken, our churches condemned.

It’s only the plague of our indifference.

The Spider Says

I’m familiar with apprehension,

aware of doubt, sympathetic to terror.

Consider me a patient knot in a thread,

a little stone calling to the dark of the world,

the multi-eyed beast in her sullen quarter;

she who is tethered to a latch or a hair.

The spider says Sweet fly, sweetmeat,

think me the wraith to your gummy end,

my door invitingly ajar, the table always set.

And these are my babies, my thousands,

so curious, so ravenous, nimble copies

of copies, sentient pebbles fleeing hunger’s edge.

It is they, era-perfect, who scurry.

I set them loose upon the edible earth.

Eventide

One of those evenings the dog slips its leash.

Tree branches scarring a yellow moon.

The saucy stars conspiring.

One of those evenings peace officers loathe.

The mad resigned to their fate.

A drunkard lost in his bedroom.

Civilization’s smoke rising over the rooftops,

as if gravity had given up on us

and our slow blue world.

A page turns in a family bible.

In the harbour is a sloop named Solitude.

And the black bat, resuming its lifelong journey —

a traveler come to the country of night.

As if such things were worthy of a mention.