Mars! Mars! Mars!-poetry

Revised Edition: LukivPress (Victoria, BC), 2022.

Previously published as Life on Mars (Seeker Magazine [Vancouver, BC], 2005).

An excerpt

Corvus Corax-The Raven

Siberian storm front-prophet,

MacBeth-black cloud,

And Poe's ache-

This trickster,

This ravenous clawer of

Fruits and seeds

And rotting flesh,

This coniferous roamer

And desert nomad,

Croaks like a mournful hag

Or mimics that diminutive

Brainless crow.

Inuit carvers

Immortalize this prankster-

Thief haunting ice fishermen,

This vaudeville clown who dumps

Snow on Yellowknife-victims

Beneath steep metal roofs.

In the torrent valley of Cherith,

You fed Elijah

Between ravines and crags,

Your thunderbolt blackness

Filled aerial somersaults

And upside-down fly-bys

In courtship

Or mere play.

You taunt wolves-

Peck their hairy tails-

But feast on their feast

Between tricks that

The Haida often recall.

You croak of the glee, the surprise,

The excitement and anger and

Tenderness in the blood

Of every man,

Of every Noah sending forth

A query-

"Is all well

On dry ground?"

You are the shaggy-throated

Roamer, the blue jay-cousin,

And cleverest passerine.

When you mate, it is for life,

And there is no child abuse

In your beak or claw.

You are the clown of the forest,

The king of the pun.

The author

Dan Lukiv, published in 19 countries, is a poet, novelist, columnist, short story and article writer, and independent education researcher (hermeneutic phenomenology). As a creative writer, he apprenticed with Canada's Professor Robert Harlow (recipient of the George Woodcock Achievement award for an outstanding literary career), the USA's Paul Bagdon (Spur Award finalist for Best Original Paperback), and England's D. M. Thomas (recipient of the Cheltenham Prize for Literature, Orwell Prize [biography], Los Angeles Fiction Prize, and Cholmondeley award for poetry). He attended The University of British Columbia (creative writing department), the acclaimed Humber School for Writers (poetry writing program), and Writer's Digest University (novel writing program).