Morning Glory

This video includes images of genocides
It’s the dawn
Of a new day
In an old era
In the same old way.

It’s the cycle renewed
Again and again without end
A ceaseless iteration
Of nation against nation
Of despair strangling hope
Shoots of hatred
Tendrils of fear
A choking underbrush
Infesting our gardens of Eden

Who was it said
We must kill, and kill, and kill
Until all are dead
Who would become invasive species?
Whose god roared that battle cry
Under the glaring sun
Denying even the possibility
of innocence
Declaring even the unborn
‘Enemies of our state’
Infected with murderous intent?
Vermin only fit to hate?

Bloodlines.
Worm like veins
Through our sacred soils
Rooting the detritus
That defines us.
Ancient scrolls
And chiseled texts
Implacable as tombstones.

Craig Spence,
August 18, 2024

Off Leash Zone

OFF LEASH ZONE

Lead on! Lead on!
my old, best friend,
beyond the very end
of this leash we both
are tethered to.

Lead on! Lead on!
Even though we do not know,
and dare not say,
exactly where we’re going…
Even though there is no point
within the compass of our ancient souls
to suggest one way or another—
no brilliant star, no station of the sun
for us to fix upon.
Whichever way we face,
that becomes the direction of our knowing.

And yet you pant, and strain,
and snuffle, and sniff,
as if there were some secret
(just around the bend
or crouching under some bush)
that makes sense of it all.

Lead on! Lead on!
Beyond the very edge
of this—our flattened earth—
and be assured, for what it’s worth,
that I must surely follow,
and you are not alone.

Craig Spence

CraigSpenceWriter.ca

A Dream Within a Dream

A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM
By Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

A wisp of a thing

Oh! How I wish the letters
Of the word
Would dissolve
Into the very thing

How I would delight
In that incandescence,
That essence emerging
In my bleary dawn,
Like souls coalescing
Out of nothingness…
Engendered by the welling sun,
And the risen mist,
And the stilled air that I breathe.

Oh! How I would sigh
And beg the pending breeze
To hold off—just a moment more
And not disturb this glowing dream…
This fantasy that must always be
Precursor to despair.

Craig Spence

View From Up the Hill

I’m so used
to looking at things,
not into them
that I’m startled when I witness
the space between our molecules of Being
and come to realize:
It’s not empty,
this infinite sky,
this eternal orbiting of day
into night / into dawn /
into the glare of high noon.

I wrote this morning
in my latest revision of a fiction:

She glanced away
then out the window
at the sunrise he’d witnessed earlier;
it had morphed into the blare of morning light
the gorgeous tints of dawn burned off
by the intense rays
of a risen sun.


Will this epiphany of the dazzling light
and its glorious host of questions
well once again at at the end of day?

Can the invisible be divisible?

Is it my plight to know?

How many times can we split
the atoms of our truths
before we discover the ultimate germs of
Infinity, Eternity, Omniscience, and Spirit?

Craig Spence

Every picture tells a story

Be Still and They Will Come by Diana Durrand inspired Craig Spence to write Waking Dream (see below). Photographs, paintings, sculptures—any art form—can resonate in the minds of writers.

If you are interested in a workshop that engages participants in responsive writing to shared images (photos & paintings), please contact me. More info below…


Every picture tells a story, which makes art a source of inspiration for writers. The same goes for music, dance, and every other art form out there, but the visual arts, especially, are a trove of ideas.

Open up a family photo album and memories are triggered by the images you see. That’s a source for writers whose chosen genre is memoire. But images from other collections can also inspire.

What if your mode is historical fiction? Take a walk around Chemainus and every wall comes to life in your imagination. You can feel yourself being drawn into the large-as-life scenes and back in time—hear sails luffing, wagons clattering, trains chuffing, the rhytmic stroke of paddlers in dugout canoes.

Is there an image that inspires you? Perhaps it’s not even a specific picture, but a sequence made up of many related images,  times, and places.

Craig Spence was inspired to write Waking Dream when he saw Diana Durrand’s mixed media piece Be Still and They Will Come, which has been displayed at the Cowichan Valley Performance Centre. Art galleries are great places to go in search of inspiration!

Stories or poems inspired by images aren’t descriptive exercises; they are works of art in their own right, which add a literary dimension to what you are experiencing.

Art, in the deepest sense of the word, is not meant to be ‘looked at’—or read, for that matter; it’s meant to be ‘invoved in’.  Looking at a painting, or reading a story, becomes an imaginative act-—it’s participatory. So stories and poems based on imagery are works of art in their own right.

Would you like to participate in a free workshop built around responsive writing to shared images? 

Waking Dream

They came to her
in a dream
on paws as soft
as evening light

They huddled in
the contoursof her restless soul
creatures of the land
between day and night

And she lay perfectly
still…
For an eternity…or so it seemed
Aware only of their being
and her delight

She dared not move
or even think…
of stirring…
for if she did
her moment…
she knew…
would take flight.

Craig Spence

Acts of Kindness

Acts of Kindness

I have to admit
It was kind of strange
for me to be hunched
at the edge of the lawn
like that…

On a Wednesday morning
After a Tuesday night-before
In a neighbourhood where
every sunrise-after
lulls the Land of Suburbanites
Into their becalmed state
Of being.
Of wakefulness.

It should not have surprised me
when a Good Samaritan approached
His footsteps cause for alarm!
I mean, what could I say?
“Just a minor heart attack.
The merest constriction of the chest
A barely measurable acceleration of pulse…
No need for an ambulance.”

What other excuse could I invent
that wouldn’t besmirch my reputation?
Why else would I be staring
into the dirt, beneath the parted blades of grass
As if I could see something down there,
couched in layers of smothering soil
waiting to be discovered by archeology
Even through the final act…
The ceaseless progress of decomposition.

“You okay?” he said
Summoning me to  the brink…
To my moment of truth…
I could not tell a lie… could I?
Couldn’t make up something
that would make sense
of my peculiarities.

“Just watching a worm,” I said.
“Burrowing into the earth…”
“Found him on the sidewalk…”
“They always do that when it rains…”

He looked at me as if
I might have been another species…
Or the long-lost member of an extinct tribe.
“Feast for the robins.” he might have hinted.

And who was I to argue?
Playing at God,
Absolving myself
of the inevitable sins
we’re committed to
By being alive?

CraigSpenceWriter.ca

The Flea’s Protest

The Flea’s Protest
Imagine yourself a tiny flea
Upon an elephant’s back,
Where every gaping chasm
Is really just a crack,
A crooked little wrinkle
In Behemoth’s leather skin,
Careful how you tread; you might fall in.

Or maybe you’re an atom
Inside a nuclear jar
Your nearest next door neighbour
Might just as well be a star
Because a fraction of a fraction of a fraction
Of an inch
Is a measure beyond measure…
And yet, it’s not a pinch.
It's a finger on a button,
and a mind that will not flinch.

We’re tinier than tiny
In this greater scheme of things
Fodder for the canons
In those places anthems ring…
But stop and think a moment,
If you only will,
There’s space between the drumbeats
To shout, why must we kill!

(Written for the tens of thousands who have died
and the untold thousands yet to die
in Russian President Vladimir Putin's war)

The Sum of Cornucopia

Had a little fun after discovering our jam jar more than half empty the other day!
My good friend Zeno says to me
you can have your jam for free,
nothing’s lost except by halves
the future never meets the past.

So in I dipped my eager blade
to test this wondrous promise made.
I scraped about the empty glass
for evidence of my repast.

Alas, the jar seemed quite remiss
and jam on toast was sorely missed.

Well, never mind, dear Zeno said.
At least you have your daily bread
and I assure you not a bite
will frustrate future appetite.

For once you’ve swallowed half that loaf
half remains, and half’s the most.
Munch and chew to hearts content,
the boundless half remains unspent.

Alas, I’m left with meagre crumbs
and a whole whose parts are not its sum.

CraigSpenceWriter.ca