The Good Tree

The good tree cannot bear
Bad fruit
It is only ordinary to the eye
Of those unused to
Studying the form
Or tasting goodness,
Tree roots descend
Deep into the heart of
Our mother mineraled earth.

The good tree
May suffer the severe
Tests of winter's frost,
Languish beneath the harsh
Burning summer heat,
Wilt from the drought,
And die before its time.

The good tree
Harbours the birds of the air
Giving a home nest to little ones
Its leaves shimmering
Always rustling a lullaby
In summer breezes,
And shade to the tiny plants
Growing in its goodness
Safe from the harsh
Assaults of daily toil.

The good tree will not bear
Bad fruit, there are
Those who take its goodness
And rot within themselves
From choice of reckless folly,
Who rejoice to see it die
Cut down by
The fury of the future.

But the little plants
Will always sing sweetly into time,
Rejoice with a memories embrace
The goodness this tree sent forth,
For now
Deep beneath the daylight shadows
It has earned its rest.

February 22, 1978 K.B. Lamb

Lent it is, and the prospects raise my wonder
Why, Lord, is the landscape black
These streets feel not sun but storms.

I do not like the look of houses
Always, in my strolls about;
Trees are faithful, flowers sometimes
But homes, with people in, or out,
Have sometimes too much devil in them
Hearths of heathen war with grace
The doors, which could not know I'm knocking
Slam with thunder in my face.

When all my songs are over,
Mother of minstrels, mother of men
Just let me rest my head on your heart again
You know I didn't do too well
But the fault was sure not yours
You would have given everything
If they'd opened up their doors.

Emily Carr KB Lamb

Emily Carr, I finally love you
Laughing bear has played his trick
At last I saw your list of wonders
A friend's persistence won the day.
I loved the stories but the painting
Long ago awoke no flame
Now I see the doors to open
And will tremble at your name.
Sorry for the long palaver
I don't know why I could not see
The coast in your eyes long in mine
But Laughing Bear has growled at me
His gentle back aglow with lessons
I laugh myself to take my place
Perhaps if I should be so lucky
You will lead me to his face.

Silvered Wings KB Lamb

Once I saw a flash of snipe
Or perhaps some other shore bird
A hundred, closely bunched
Race across a tide flat through the air.
Suddenly, as if by signal
Turned they wingward at the sun
And I saw a sheet of silver
Flashing earthward, catching me transfixed
Only God could give that signal
Thought I then and through the years recalled
The vision present, then the door
Swinging shut.

At times the vision of the seen
Was far too bright;
And the pain of beauty passing
Closed my heart, blustered shut
By the harsh cries of a half believing world.
Yet the hidden vaults were not forgot
And often open to my view;
Quite by surprise I would be caught
My soul would then fly up
And fall in silent tears.

Where hid that beauty?
Not in woman's eyes or in my books
And if in the forest why was it so secret
Not automatic yielding to my quest?
Something in their presence leaves me stammering
For the Beauty where I can rest eternal be.

Kootenai KB Lamb

For Tim Lander

I roamed around the world to find
A place to give me peace of mind
But I ain't found anything as kind
As my home in the Kootenai mountains
Kootenai mountains strong and high.

Going back home to the Kootenays
Going to get my soul untied
I've been down in the city too long
I think my brains are getting fried.

Hang out my thumb on the old freeway
Flagged a truck in Manning Park
Make it through Osoyoos
Before the sky got dark.

Had to hang around in Greenwood
Met a poet in a bar
Back seat on a motor bike
Froze my jaw by Castlegar.

But I'm back home by the lake shore
And my friends all know I'm home
Hang Vancouver on the clothesline
Next time I'll go by phone.

Lent March 9, 1975 KB Lamb

Lent it is, and silver March insists
In this month of memories of spring
That I set out to settle things within
And sort the thoughts that penance proper brings.

Lent it is and silver March returns,
And spring is breaking up the hills of snow.
The sun is growing stronger day by day
And I am thinking stronger as I know.

The time has come when all the hills and streams
Though they have been my friends and will again,
Deny me now and turn my feet away.
The time has come for me to challenge time
To make her stand in one surrendered place.
She must deliver up the treasure stored
She holds the mirror where I can paint my face.

And paint I must, my world can wait no more
My destiny has raised me up that other shore.

Do not decry my youth; my silent tongue
Knew not the words that summoned youthful fame.
If I wrote nothing more than common chat,
Give neither me, nor God, nor fate, the blame.

Navigators March 10/81 KB Lamb

What they really seek, these navigators,
Is forever another horizon.
Our gentle God made earth to meet the sky,
And likewise sea, so we might search
The constant dream, and instantly
Discover our own destiny: that's death,
The singing shudder of the body at the soul.
Like mountain ridges on swooping plain,
The rise of the forest crown against the sky:
Where they meet our vision.
What they really seek, these navigators,
Is forever another horizon. Where the 
Mountain meets the sky, on a swooping plain
Stops against the clouds, or ocean's tide.

The Coming of the Dawn KB Lamb

You came by and you knew my name
Trees in the forest fell in flame
Time, it stopped, and tides refused to run.
Mountains crumbled into dust
Towers fell in rings of rust
Wine in all my tumblers turned to blood.

Chorus
Don't go out in the dark tonight
Don't go out in the pale moonlight
Talk with me till we see the dawn
All outside is dark and wild
The devil's hunting down a child
Stay here till the rising of the sun.

First I wept, then I moaned
A fire was burning in my bones
I wondered if I'd have it to be kind
I saw the tears you tried to hide
I felt the pain you kept inside
I knew I'd have to open up my mind.

Chorus

I heard the wolves howl on your trail
I saw the knives and my blood ran pale
I sharpened up my swords and I threw the gauge
I kissed your eyes with a brother's care
I washed your feet and dried your hair
I barred the door against their howls of rage.

Chorus

 Now you're fed and warm with wine
The firelight has eased your mind
You think you'll go into the night again,
But don't you hear that howling outside
They'd love to get this tiger's hide
And I'd have to guide you through the wind and the rain.

Chorus

Cherry Valley Summer KB Lamb

Prince Edward county summer
Small boys roam the fields of hay
My days full of ease and wonder
Old farmers smiling as we play.

Every split rail fence a border
Every field an undiscovered land
A hickory tree a ship beneath my orders
Chasing pirates was my Queen's command.

Out Among the Raspberries KB Lamb

A poet crowding forty muses on old age
But this one does not worry his aging loves,
His grandfather's image in the garden rows
Speaks the peace of the advancing years,
Each passing sun was but a step to final rest
Old slouch hat and holey sweater,
Gumboots and hands wrinkles
And always a voice leveled against tomfoolery.
He went so quietly into that good night
He talked to me, in peace, before he went.

Towards a Permanent Hold on the Resurrection or: Inverse/Adverse April May 1977 KB Lamb

All poets die.
You'd better know this
As you, if you, search their ways;
Their labyrinthine passages
Might not seem worthwhile for following
Into darkness you would rather doubt
And death.

All poets die,
If they're real, I mean, of course.
There is a kind of verse
- Fifty cents a card, in the drugstore -
Written by someone who never was alive.
But that's not poetry,
And what was not alive can never die.

Real poetry is death.
Sister, angel, brother
Death:
To all ambition
To all haste
To all error
To all waste
To all but All and Nothing,
Death.
An every day funeral
Of something in the heart / Of something in the eyes
That blinds the eyes / That blinds the heart
And you can bet your sweet oblivion,
And all the ways you have of getting it,
That poetry will kill that too.

Eve, you know, sprung out
From Adam's ribs,
Is just the symbol;
The poet comes bone grey
From the ribs collapsed on Calvary
Do not come to poetry for comfort.

All poets die;
Do not come to poetry for ecstasy.
Do not rob the rights of fishing streams,
Or baseball fields,
Or churches still as stone.
Don't banquet, damn you,
Where dry bread and lashes
Leaping in the night
Might help you in your blindness
Find the missing dawn.

All poets die,
Especially on the eve of discovery,
Assassinated by the grim realization
That nothing, especially their intuitions,
Is really new.
If the poet finds anything new
He has to throw it away,
Because of all old things
Poetry is oldest.
Whatever is new, therefore, and so on,
Is not in any way poetry.
It might be physics, or even psychology,
But it is not poetry.

All poets die,
And kiss the grave that swallows them.
Oh lovely grave, oh welcome earth
Wherein the poet, discovering the point of worms
Knows a needed rest from men.

All poets die.
Their bodies sink like water to the rock.
Their bodies flow like rivers to the sea.
Their minds dissolve and all their words
Are honoured, like the fish they might have been,
Had God not ordered otherwise.

All poets die:
That is the lesson.
Poetry is death.
Poetry is death.
Poetry is death.
Death is poetry.

For Teresa Stratas 1976 KB Lamb

I have not been more glad of writing
Then in watching you
Pouring out Salome's wrath
And heartbreak: it is true
You reached such scalding depths of sorrow
And heights of passion's pain
The devil ran hard from my daughters
And fears to lurk again.
For you unmasked his coiling evils
With your mirror and masque,
More perfect image of his poison,
No one sane could ask.
Such a marvel was your making
That image by my pen,
Though I in justice must be writing
Yet is effort in vain.
But still as artist knowing fear
To climb perfection's height
I think that next time you could use
The honour that I write.
And so I stumble here to find
Some tribute fit to measure
That could touch you in your trials
To find again your treasure.
To rise again such creation
Must prove you twice a star
I am grateful, if I help
To tell you what you are.

In a Library (For my favourite editor) KB Lamb

Opening Bliss Carmen at random
And seeing some silly couplets
I felt the shame of bad poetry
From a good imagination
Which is mainly the effect of
Not waiting for the silences
That worked before.

That was yesterday, in a moment's
Moment
As I already held some Greeks
And other classics in my arms
And was being asked advice
But I got the message,
It was: mutter not at being made to wait.

Today, from perhaps recollecting
Hemingway's promise that the candlelight
Was worth the wait
I took some further time,
A memory's many moments
To remember how you taught me
To spot the artist over eager
To disturb his own peace and mine
For cheap production.

I swallowed gall, of course.
And you were either brave or innocent,
Or strangely both but in the end
It seasons out to honey.

Gratitude, good lady, moves my pen;
And caution, for I will be galled again
But better pain to share between us two
Than a fool's long pleasures for all the world to view.

The Miner KB Lamb

How much longer must I go on searching
How many books do I have to probe
How many shelves do I have to dig through
Before I find my mother lode?

I've been flown into the north country
I've worked the hill creeks of the south
I've looked around the east and west
And even tried the wise man's mouth.

I'm not an ordinary miner,
Though sometimes I wish I were
For looking out for the philosopher's stone
Is not so easy to prefer.

Light In August by KB Lamb

Faulkner, take me to your country
Your roads somehow are also mine
Let us discourse in your backwoods
Puzzling through our break with time.
Somehow you and I together
Both found logs a throne for rest,
Heard the singing in the forest
Of the angels make us blest,
Laid our guns aside for psalters,
Though the guns would roar again
And found the way that closed eyes hunted
Was a wise way for men.
My songs need your baton for singing
I have to hear your lyric hand,
Should my listeners hear my message
Yours the honour we command.

KBLamb

Since I last saw you, Baby
You've got some lessons to learn
My eyes won't follow you too close
But I'll be waiting by the turn.























                                                                                                           Arthur Lakes 1913

Rationale December 1972 KB Lamb

What is this woman, but a waking song
That rises from my throat when'er she sings?
"Tis joy to be a poet when I know
But that I wrote she might be doomed to cling
To some crude notion of the creature she,
Some earth bound shrew of labours shorn of love,
The deadly round of kettles, pots and socks,
The worship of the fate she's victim of.
So let me write, and let her being sing;
She needs my verses sure to know her soul;
But know the gift I bring could never be
Were she not by to guide my searching pen.
And that's the gift of living, don't you see,
That women, being loved, must give to men.

Interlude December 1972 KB Lamb

Heaven having come, I'll not push on,
Or seek for struggle that would suit the stage.
If there's no combat where some angels sing,
If I would hear them I must quiet rage.
The storm on earth - I need not fear - goes on;
There will be tales to tell to whet my pen;
So in this hour let me see Your light
Beyond the darkness stirring blood in men.
Your home is peace to make this warfare dull.
Your silence makes the ocean's roar a whine.
My fascination for the battle dies.
I sigh to feel the firm defeat of time.
I don't forget outside the siren waits,
But for the time I hide within your gates.

Early Spring December 15,1972 KB Lamb

Like the opening of your eye, the winter broke,
And I was there to see the melting sun
Turn all her rays upon the frozen waste
And start the little streams upon their run.
Old Mother Earth began to shake her skin,
She flexed the binding of her winter's peace;
It broke, and then the ice revealed the earth
That shimmered with the joy of her release.
In every bud the petals preened for love.
On every bough the birds began to sing,
The grass below the snow now bloomed above,
Deep in the woods the bells began to ring.
And I was there! What more is there to say
When Spring breaks through upon a winter's day?

For a Friend among Friends June 15,1972 KB Lamb

In 1972 Ken wrote a few sonnets, a poetic form he excelled in.

Was that a quarrel, these words that never came?
And did you hate, or blacken out, my name?
I did not mean to breach your peace of mind,
Though I was rough, more quick and free than kind.
I cannot rest, my pen fights with despair;
I flee from friends to lock away my face;
My heart is less than stone, my soul is bare;
I fear you'll never give me back my place.
You are not here; when will you come again?
And will you come in peace to mend the tear?
I do not gloss the truth to toll my pain,
My brain is thick with thoughts I cannot bear.
The chances are if you cannot forgive,
I must begin to wonder why I live.

Untitled KB Lamb 1976

Whitecaps running high on the water
Wind blowing a cool spray clean through my soul.
William, when you sang her praise
London might have larger lain,
But you have not seen Victoria
Late at night, in Rabbit Lane.

When I younger took to pen
Thinking I could turn some verse
Quick I thought my mind should fashion
Line to line, the last to first;
In the twinkling of a moment.

My metaphysics text books smell of pine woods
Sea waves curl with every turning page.
Golden arrow, straight I rise,
Heaven, to thy Mother's keeping
She has heard me, when I cry
And will not leave me weeping.

I could be a poet just for pine cones
There's a field to train my expertise
And if my heart explodes, well, catch the pieces
Only you can form them up again.
You owe me still a horseback ride
Should I bleed in the shadow of a mountain.

Then the stories, all of them
This is why God made us heaven.

Lady of the Shades KB Lamb 1976

Christmas coming down on me
I hope it comes around for you,
I just heard the other day
What you chose to do.

    Silent night, the lights went out
    You pulled the switch yourself.
    Of all the ways, saddest one
    And you didn't even call.
    Don't you know you could have care
    You could have shed your pain
    Was that not always clear enough?
    Oh God, don't let it happen again.

And we were the best of friends
And I never let it go.

Lying at my feet the city
All around me begs for light
Long the war and hard the battle
But our bugles sang all night.