Poems by Daniel MacIsaac
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photo by M.C. MacIsaac
Chilcotin Wild Horses
by Daniel MacIsaac
Dan lives and writes in a home overlooking Witty's Lagoon on Vancouver Island.
They died off
in the last Ice Age.
And for a century
of centuries
only the wild grass
remembered.
Broomtails blunt-toothed
and rough-hoofed,
a cayuse herd
stole back, cross-bred
from buffalo runners
and a claim-jumper’s plug.
Native flesh, foaled
from lean Andalusians
shipwrecked in America,
and drawn north
across sierra spine
and salt lake.
Now from pine scrub
to parched grassland,
the free herd thunders,
hides scarred
by snag and thorn,
not spurs.
Hoof beats echo,
rattling in
the dead throat
of a volcano,
ringing in
a vast crevasse.
Scoured again
by colossal ice
or scorched by
seismic fire,
the Chilcotin
turns barren.
Wild planets
wheel, gyre,
stampede --
first horses
again on that plain
of hurtling starlight.
© Daniel MacIsaac
Giant Pandas
by Daniel MacIsaac
From Canary Spring 2014
Ailuropolda melanoleuca
These are contrary creatures,
carnivores evolved to live on shoots,
bearcats that the Ming Chinese
believed ate copper cooking pots.
Bulky as beer kegs,
they must slip each hemp-line snare
then dodge each hunter’s blind,
becoming addled blurs
to the snakehead’s eye.
Jailbirds, blackpatched
lifers hostage
to the flowering
of bamboo,
under house arrest
they pace, tagged
and monitored,
kept to high ground
by slash and burn.
Tinged snowdrift
and deep treeshade,
they just blend in,
knowing their place.
Shy cousins
to burly cave bears
they slink through Time,
discrete and buttoned-down
as butlers.
© Daniel MacIsaac
Peregrine Falcon:
Manhattan
by Daniel MacIsaac
The broker glares
from a glass crag,
malevolent against
that sheared scarp.
His hooked beak
preens a power tux
as he rattles claws
like slate cufflinks.
Flint eyes fixed
on a down market
of heedless doves,
he catapults
chaos—plummets,
slams talons fisted
to stone against
a bewildered bird,
and on the crazed
upswing, seizes
shocked flesh burst
from the blast,
the quickest
cut-throat
in that break-
neck business.
© Daniel MacIsaac