Bruce Meyer
Two Poems
Safe Room Service
The happy place. The place to be. The place
to hide. The no place to go.
The place that reminds you of another place.
The place someone said you needed to be.
The place you should have been but couldn’t.
A place in the sun. A place for everyone. A room.
A room where you place your favorite things.
A room you can go to when all you need
is a place to be alone. The safe room.
The things you need there. A cup of coffee.
A glass of water, maybe some wine. A notebook.
A quiet place. A place to think. A place
where no one bothers you, when you can hear
the words your heart is thinking, what it says
about the kind of place where think you ought to be.
The wants that arise from staying in one place.
Of staying in one place too long. The familiar.
Shadows moving across the room.
The last light that fills the room. What it offers.
What it brings you. The darkness after dusk has settled.
The night outside. A view of windows.
A mosaic of other lives nearby. What they need.
Who they ask. They must need something.
Perhaps they only lack for love. Maybe they only ask
to be noticed. The figure standing, leaning on a sill.
The person’s elbows propped beneath them.
The light behind them revealing their place.
The place that reminds you of another place.
Your place. Your need to be loved. The need to give
love if you have it to give. The safe room.
There is nothing to fear by being here.
Nothing to fear about being who you are
and who you are is better than happiness,
better than any joy you’ve known, and knowing it
you must give it away, must give it a home
a place to exist, a place where it can grow even more.
The place you belong. Where you’ve always been.
Here. Your presence. The sound of your heart.
Go. Pick up the phone. Tell someone, anyone,
what you desire most. They may not answer
but you’re free to ask. So little to ask.
So much to come. Ask and it will be given to you.
Give and it gives you more. The happy place.
The place to be. In this moment. This moment now.
The place where they will not find you
even if they come for you to make you disappear.
Claimant
My friend received death threats
for writing poetry. He phoned me,
described his window, how bullets
leave small eyes, how they could see
him move about the unshuttered rooms.
He wished he’d never learned poetry.
He wanted to see snow. Dreamed
of holding it in his hand. Asked how
it felt – did it feel death-numbed
as it wept in the palm? Could it know
warmth for long? If life succumbed
to time could one live with snow?
By the time PEN got him out,
by the time his lost identity
consumed his soul, he learned about
the weather, how storms pass by,
how long someone could be out
in sub-zero and still write poetry.
How can he bear it all in mind,
open drains, the tangled market
visited in memories, anger of a kind
I’ve never known? Did I read Keats
and Shelley? Did I hope to find
liberty in a poem? Do I have regrets
about impossible ideals, places
needing to be mapped in language
for fear I will lose the faces
of those I love, or the sound of strange
music played in the glacial traces
of starlight that outlasts our age?
Bruce Meyer is author or editor of 64 books of poetry, short fiction, flash fiction, non-fiction, and literary journalism. He was winner of the 2019 Freefall Prize for Poetry (Canada) and has been twice winner of the Gwendolyn MacEwen Prize for Poetry (Canada) and has been shortlisted for the National Poetry Prize (UK) and the Bridport Prize (UK). His most recent book of poems is McLuhan's Canary (Guernica Editions, 2019). He lives in Barrie, Ontario.