Poems by Bruce McRae

Joy Through Suffering

We all serve another power.
My master is a dog twitching
while it dreams in its sleep.
A moonless night guides my fate,
my master a rat caught in a drain pipe.
A stifled whimper gets the best of me.

In awe of the natural world,
I bow before a council of arbutus and cedar.
Idle moments are my overlord.
Half way down the ladder of awareness,
my master is a horse in the bath.
The hog's sonnet is my 9th commandment.

This is why I'm on my belly and crawling
across the church of the earth.
This is why my family was sold into bondage —
as proof of unrequited love.

I worship the ant and Mount Vesuvius.
I tug on the hem of beauty,
my master a grand misperception,
my master the keeper of an afterthought.
'O Lord,' is how I start each prayer,
'I am made drunken with your sorrows'.


In A Moment


Deep is the snow
and sleep of the deer.

The hand of the wind
moves over still waters.

Small waves are weeping
for the children of tomorrow.

A fire is lit and our fast broken,
my love washing 
her feet in the sun,
eyes as black as midnight,
as blue as a lily,
as green as the sea,
the light always changing,
this world another world,
this moment every moment
that ever came into fruition.

Time is our only bauble.

Too poor to feast,
we savour affection
and this is all that we are
or want or own.

Soft is my beloved's singing.

Deep is the snow
and the cry of the dove.


 History


“History is a nightmare 
from which I am trying to awake.”
                                            James Joyce

A number of dead people
from a long and convoluted past
made things happen and not happen.
Every action had a reaction.
Inaction had its consequences.
A word could cultivate a war.
A sneeze led towards 
international interventions.
A slipper dropped
and the course of humankind
was forever altered.

History was
when excuse bled into reason
and gods ruled over the Earth.
It's a length of chain
with a fool on the end of it,
a book in the fire,
an empire surrendered,
a face in a high window.

History is what happens
while other things are happening,
the world-shaking events,
the countless banalities
gone unseen and unrecorded.
A partial truth,
the past is a memory regretted.
It is written and underwritten.
A comedy cum tragedy, history
is the age-old story of our invention
turned against us.



 For Crying Out Loud


Oh for the love of God . . .
But I thought you were an atheist.
Indeed, God has lost his faith in me.
Then why were you petitioning the lord?
A turn of phrase, like 'for Pete's sake'.
Peter was the rock they built a church upon.
I wasn't aware you were god-fearing.
You're the one asking for divine intervention.
Perhaps there's something greater.
You think our purpose is to obey a higher power?
No, I just can't get this jar opened.
And now the gods are laughing.
We are blessed by their lack of interference.
I've read that God is another word for joy and pain.
For many that concept has been diminished.
We go up and down the mystical ladder.
Finding words to describe what lies beyond.
This supernatural business, it's so, so unnatural.
Spectres in the mind-meat, I daresay. 
And still the jar remains unopened.
Failure is parcel to the human con

Poet’s Bio:

Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with poems published in hundreds of magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. The winner of the 2020 Libretto prize and author of four poetry collections and seven chapbooks, his poems have been performed and broadcast globally.