The All Nighter’s Radio

By M. Travis Lane

Lane is a pluralist in outlook and technique whose work, over the years, has explored civic space, domestic space, wilderness space, and interiorized psychic spaces. I've long enjoyed Lane's openness to idiosyncrasy - her willingness to let the odd, the quirky, the eccentric, sing... I admire the risks Lane takes in her poetry, her penchant for taking us to 'the place where the map gives out.'

• Language: English
• Publisher: Guernica
• Release date: Jan 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781550715361

M. Travis Lane

M. Travis Lane is the author of sixteen books of poetry and has been widely published in literary journals as a poet and critic. She has won the Atlantic Poetry Prize, the New Brunswick Poetry Prize, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, and the Bliss Carman Award. Her most recent book, Crossover, was a finalist for the Governor General's Award for poetry in 2015. She is a founding member, as well as Honorary President, of the Writers' Federation of New Brunswick. She also is a Life Member of the League of Canadian Poets, where she has participated vociferously in its feminist caucus. M. Travis Lane lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Book preview

M. TRAVIS LANE 

THE ALL NIGHTER’S RADIO

 ESSENTIAL POETS SERIES 173

Guernica 

Toronto – Buffalo – Lancaster (U.K.)

2010  

Contents

BODHI ROAD

The Pickup Poems 

Fall 

Closed 

Alchemy 

Christmas Goes Back to the Attic 

The Safety Net 

Flight Dreams 

Dry Spring 

Star Fish 

GREETING CARD

That Was You Who Got Hurt 

Bindweed 

Like Water 

Lost Boys 

Swedenborgian Church 

All That Perfection 

Sacrifice 

Dog in Grief 

We Keep Saying Goodbye 

The Gardener 

An Excellent Dog 

Hummingbird 

Blue Interior 

IF YOU LIVED HERE. . .

Stymied 

Entering the Forest 

Basilisk 

Cove Beach 

On That Fine Morning 

Owl’s City 

The Bird 

Jerome in Venice 

Red Coast 

Dragon 

Jellyfish Off Japan 

Mer Choice 

The Cat 

Normal Precautions 

Evening in Saint Augustine 

Swimming Under Florida 

Moon Over Alabama 

The Prison Without Walls 

Embarked 

If You Lived Here You’d Be Already Home 

LOCAL

Now

Obbligato 

Remember the Day The Gleaner Missed? 

Home Exile 

Old Tire 

Only Sometimes Dangerous 

The Road 

Lament for a Marginal Snake 

Late Ride 

Solstice 

Fredericton Night 

Walking Back by Night 

The Lights 

Cottage in Winter 

A.M. 

SHUFFLE TEXT

Ducdame 

Falling Into the Cosmos 

Woman Moving 

Wayside Nude 

A Rock for Lorna’s Labyrinth 

Imperfect Harmony   Shuffle Text 

The Plot 

Who Is This Poem Talking To? 

Tinker to the Audience 

Stove in a Gully 

Writing Workshop Assignment 

Red Eye 

MOON GLARE

Moon Glare 

The Mountain Trembled

Morning, and Young 

Any Voice 

Sheepish 

The Blare of Moonlight Waked Me 

Beach Walker 

Everything Blunts 

July 

News 

Maze 

Morning in the City 

Garden 

Jonah Addressed 

Living on the Margin 

Locating the Particle (Bohr’s Scissors) 

Something Is Always Ending 

Gold, Silver, Lead 

Scrip 

Eden’s Mislaid 

Mountain Stream 

Holy Innocents’ Day 

Sky Blink 

It Was Supposed to Become Familiar 

Asterisks 

BODHI ROAD

The Pickup Poems

We’ll talk about truth and mystery 

you won’t see me though

all you’ll see is mountains.

Pickup

1

Economy

Monk, poet, and philosopher,

I live by myself in the high woods. 

Cold Mountain they call me. The bell 

at the foot of the forest path

is clapperless; hit

it with your fist or crutch. 

I might not come.

If you see me I am invisible.

Each morning the monkeys visit me: 

No news. Their tree top voyages

are all one to the mountain,

here or there. When snow comes, 

I’ll be old. No one

will climb up here to chop my wood.

I’ll go down to the village gate 

where a steel drum

keeps fire for the houseless ones,

like the star at the edge of Bethlehem, 

that said NO ROOM. NO ROOM!

Beggars must be philosophers.

2

Millions of Gathas

I have millions of gathas 

instant cures for every trouble.

Pickup

Cures for all curses? 

Don’t care!

If I knew more, 

would I be talking?

You know already 

things are bad.

Like the farmer’s dogs

I bark and bark.

And there’s all that moon.

3

Bodhi Road

They are not thieves, your eyes, 

ears, touch.

Listen. Touch. 

Look closely

though your fingers burn, 

though your eyes sting.

Nothing repeats. Sand,

seed,

riff in a rainbow, 

desert pearl,

feather dropped from Noah’s dove, 

or a nacrescent

waterdrop,

the candles on Mt. Ararat –

all, all are song. 

Caress

this life,

this Bodhi road.

4

Fed by the Birds

Fed by the birds. That’s me, 

cold poet in my mountain cave. 

They boil my rice and bring it up. 

I scrub my poems on the floor.

Is that a payment, 

kindness,

grant?

Really, they ought to read my stuff, 

after all the work they get through, 

but

a poet’s like a monk, we say:

you need us, need not think of us,

except for food, this stony verse.

5

Hermit Poem

My