Emit Time 
  
 Poets, physicists, and philosophers
 have discussed traveling in time.
 They have focused on change,
 consequences, contingency,
 and the never was of is.
  
 Philosophers, physicists, and poets
 flail in a river that has no source,
 no banks, no end, and no forks.
 There are so many questions
 like ‘Are we not there yet?”
  
 This poem runs on time.
 I must be quick to propose this;
 If time itself simply began a rewind,
 we wouldn’t even know it, would we? 
 In any garden a path must go both ways. 
  
    
  
 Preserving The Ghost
  
 Process grows and thickens
 with the rituals of advice, tips,
 tricks, and the lore of shortcuts.
 The true craftsman bends a nail
 deep in dovetails of ancient dust
 humbled by the handsaw of time.
  
 History, knowings, and legend
 are particle essence of waves
 in the medium of all remains
 of art and alloys of memory.
 We possess the possessors’
 writing, on stone to code.
  
 Reflection or inflection
 fill the missing history
 with hope for futures
 braided out of spirit.
 Hammered etchings
 meld flesh with words. 
 


One Day in Amsterdam
  
 On a flight from Canada to Kenya
 we had a daylight layover in Amsterdam.
 Early train in and back for a late flight,
 but in between, well you know
 the things travellers do . . .
 . . . a quote from a poem I wrote;
  
 “Room to room tourists
 step the confined ways
 like synapse signals
 as memory forms
 in the living house.”
  
 . . . and where words failed
 in the stirring of suns and stars
 in Vincent’s voice of light.
  
  
  
 Poem For Who Have Not
  
 lame but lissome,
 moving like a light
 summer breeze,
 needing but kind,
 hurt behind doors,
 patient
 by the wayward trail
  
 poor, without one
 but kind to children,
 saver of true things,
 modest but proud,
 no petition or privilege,
 warmth
 waiting on a wharf
  
 not possessive
 as you do without,
 appreciating
 of other voices,
 clement dignity,
 beauty
 needing no light
  
  
  
 Scraving
  
 Truffle words smelling of sand
 are sweetened and contained
 within the muddled pen.
  
 It is the in and out of it;
 (‘I’ person and universe
 both directionless.)
  
 A grave matter of expanding space
 for fading time moves into light
 of a crackling conscious fire.
  
 Brooks scrave new words from rock;  
 suspiring, scouring, and babbling;
 deepening the course of mind.




   

J.S. MacLean has been writing poetry since the early 70s with two collections “Molasses Smothered Lemon Slices” and “Infinite Oarsmen for one” available on Amazon. He has around 175 poems published in journals and magazines internationally in Canada, USA, Mexico, Ireland, UK, France, Israel, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, and Australia. He enjoys the outdoors, and indoors too. In 2007 he won THIS Magazine’s Great Canadian Literary Hunt in Poetry (1^st Prize). He strives for lyrical and hopes for accidental.