Giving Comfort
Oct 30 2010


You sit at the side of the bed
fuss with the covers
reach for the pale hand
that feels like a tiny captive bird,
hollow-boned
resting limply.

You are unsure what to say
why you came
who is this person, really?
And when can you make your escape
not seem ungracious.

You want to give comfort.
You were told your presence alone
was enough.
You remember how hard
it is to take;
so why isn’t giving
easier?

You watched the tears roll down
the smeared makeup,
how she would not brush them away.
Remember the salty taste
that burned, almost sweetly.
Still feel bruised knees
and awkward hugs,
stiffening up
with manly resistance.

You hate hospital visits.
The friends of parishioners
you are asked to see,
people of little faith
who want to believe.
You wish you were as generous
and forgiving
as you preach.
Not a hypocrite, so much
as somehow incomplete.

No wonder
a man like you
has such meagre comfort to give,
who hardly feels comfortable
in his very own skin.


I was listening to a talking book version of Marina Endicott’s “Good to a Fault”. (I apologize if I misspelled her name.) One character is a very conflicted Anglican priest, who has had a recent trauma in his personal life. This poem began with him in mind.

I like this idea of giving comfort simply by being there. Sometimes, we agonize about doing the right thing, when all that’s really needed is being present.

I also like the idea that it can be harder to take comfort than to give it. After all, taking any offering, any gift, should be easy. But pride and shame can get in the way. While, on the other hand, the magnanimity of giving can more than repay the giver. (Altruism, after all, has been programmed into us by thousands of years of natural selection.)

The man in the story is not comfortable in his own skin. And generosity to others is impossible if you are incapable of being generous (acceptance, forgiveness) to yourself.

I suppose it would seem odd for me – a militant(!) atheist – to be inhabiting the persona of a clergyman. But this is the kind of clergyman I like: more prone to doubt (even if it is self-doubt) than sanctimonious conviction.

Absent-Minded
Oct 30 2010


I lost track of time.

As if the hands of the clock
tick-tocking off in the corner,
went racing on
to the small hours of morning.
And the relentless drip-drip-drip
of the leaky faucet
stopped cold.

Days blinking past
the earth spinning madly
and rocketing ‘round the sun.
And the cosmos
majestically circling above,
glimpsed briefly at night,
obscured
by the light of day.

I found I could go either way,
reversing back through life
to the singularity
at the first moment of consciousness.
Or slip into my dotage
and perhaps beyond;
although here, it all gets blurry
and nothing seems sure.

Which is when I looked up from the page
in this cone of yellow light
enclosed by darkness
and picked up the trail again,
tracking time —
marks in the sand
washed clear by incoming tides,
what happened by
while I was distracted.

Blissfully
transcendently
absent;
my cold cramped body
left behind.



This is when writing – or any creative endeavour, for that matter – gets so enjoyable. It’s that highly desirable state of free association, when the compartments in your mind break down, there is this easy focus and flow, and you feel as though you’re channelling: taking dictation, transcribing what’s already out there, waiting to be realized.

In fact, I was tempted to call the poem “Ayahuasca”: not just a beautiful sounding word that would make an irresistible title, but also a word that connotes a similar transcendent state. I chose not to, though, because I didn’t want any reader to think I was referring to an actual drug-induced experience. Of course, the act of writing is not specified, so this would be a reasonable interpretation, which the reader is free to chose. It’s just that, since it’s not what I intended, I’d rather not point him/her in that direction.

The poem started with the first line. (Believe it or not, this isn’t as obvious as it sounds, since it’s often not the case!) I wanted to play around with this familiar expression, deconstructing it in a very literal sense: so I become a tracker, literally on the trail of time. I suppose I’ve done essentially the same with “absent-minded”: where the creative act is an out-of-body experience, and the metaphorical absence becomes actual.

Cardboard Crates of Pumpkins
Oct 26 2010


Cardboard crates of pumpkins
lined-up outside the superstore,
tractor-trailer sized
crammed with bulbous orange orbs.
Like expressionless orphans,
waiting for some family
to take them home.

Someone bet the farm
on a single day
in the festive calendar.
And now, there’s a cornucopia of squash —
a loss-leader
at cost.

The rich pumpkin scent
returns me instantly to childhood,
which is when I last carved into one.
And the vaguely menacing entrails,
like cold spaghetti
or hollowing out brains,
scooped onto yesterday’s paper.
I’m as bad an artist
as I was back then,
plunging in the kitchen knife
— a toothless smirk
a walleyed stare.

I choose one with character,
lumpy, and asymmetrical.
A homely gourd
that some might take as ironic
mocking the excesses of this holiday,
but I mean with all sincerity.
So now, the house is redolent of fall,
a pumpkin
filling the window,
staring out
almost longingly.

I hate waste
and would love to make pie,
harvest food
instead of ornaments.
But I bake as well as I carve.
So the pumpkin will end up
broken, on the sidewalk
waiting to be trucked
for landfill, or compost.

For awhile, though, the company is nice.
And the sweet pumpkin smell
it leaves behind.

Beyond Precious
Oct 20 2010


The first person who ever died
was my grandmother.
We may have been close, once
but I don’t remember much.
Baked goods, mostly.

Back then, children did not attend funerals,
not in our tribe, anyway.
Perhaps, we were being protected from death
in that brief bright world
of the very young,
when everything is as it was
and forever will.

My mother’s father eventually moved in with us
in a basement room
that was always cold.
He smelled old.
His strong hands
looked wasted.
Even a kid could feel the tension
— the sins of the fathers
conveyed down the generations.
So, will I be as distant
as my own parents age?
And when he too eventually succumbed,
the vague sense of endings
became hard-edged fact.
And life, in turn
beyond precious.

Language, and abstract thought
make us human.
The opposable thumb
a social culture, passed on.
But most of all
when we learn we are mortal,
and our beautiful innocence
is irrevocably gone.

Ignorance, though, is never bliss.
And I’m glad I know
we are not for long.



I’m always resisting the urge to write about death. Perhaps it’s that I don’t want to be seen as so morbidly pre-occupied. Or my belief that people don’t want to keep reading about death. Or that it’s just self-indulgent and pretentious: a big subject, where anything you say can appear profound.

But I guess it seemed time, again. And I’m pleased with the way I entered into a poem with such a heavy philosophical message: that is, keeping it small and personal. The message, of course, is that despite our fear and avoidance of death, it really is essential to the full appreciation and enjoyment of life. Everything would change if we lived forever. I suspect we’d lose our drive, our edge; and would spend eternity fighting boredom. And also that what separates us from the other animals is not empathy or culture or the use of tools, but the unavoidable awareness of our own mortality (and language, of course.)

I also like the celebration of that fleeting interval of childhood innocence.

The allusion to inter-generational friction hints at nothing dire or deep. It’s simply a product of a non-demonstrative family, whose interactions are more head than heart. We weren’t the touchy-feely types! Although I guess my mother did have some baggage from the past. (Both brothers, though, are very much touchy-feely with their own families. So perhaps this is the generation that stopped passing it on.)

A Small Utilitarian Building
Oct 19 2010


A small utilitarian building
on a minor street
of laundromats, and repair shops.
And plain post-war houses
rented out
by working-class owners
counting on the future of real estate;
and so far, disappointed.

It is single story,
rising like a corrugated island
in an asphalt sea,
cracked by weeds
that have gone to seed
and look like mutant transplants
from some alien planet.

I noticed a new sign, today
fresh paint.
A hopeful entrepreneur
determined to make his fortune,
as sure of success
as the last one,
the one before him.
Because this modest building has been abandoned
and resurrected
abandoned again,
in a morality tale
of bright-eyed hope
bank foreclosures.

So I admire the pluck
of the latest owner,
this budding small tycoon.
And wonder if he knows the history of this place,
if he feels the taint
of failure
I can’t help but see,
attached to these tattered walls
the layers of peeling paint.
I’ve seen other buildings like this,
scattered about the seedy streets
of depressed commercial districts,
where a black cloud
hovers permanently over them.

The sign says “Children’s Toys, New and Used”.
I hope they make a go of it.


I repeatedly drive by a place on Red River Road that looks exactly like this. It has corrugated steel walls, an air of abandonment, and the same dismal history. It keeps getting re-invented as some new business – a business that inevitably fails. I can’t help but admire the entrepreneurial spirit, and feel deeply for the crushed hopes of these small tycoons. I’m too cowardly to even try. They deserve a better fate.

Yet at the same time, I wonder why they didn’t see it coming; how they missed the oppressive sense of destiny that hovers over this decrepit building; and how they could allow themselves to be so deluded and seduced by possibility.

I know there is no such thing as “false hope”. Hope is hope, after all. Still …

A Sad Song
Oct 13 2010


A sad song
comes on the radio.
I turn it loud,
let the sound
push the world away.
So space becomes small,
just me, and this plaintive voice.
While the seconds grow long
as if there was all the time in the world
— the metronome paused,
entire lives, unfolding.

The surrender to sadness
the salty warmth of tears
feels good,
almost self-indulgent.
When the world is a comforting blur,
and we all regress
to childhood.
There is self-pity, yes.
But connection, as well,
immersing yourself in a sad song
of hard luck
a life gone wrong
— the hard swallow,
the warm fist
opening slowly inside your chest.
Because we are hard-wired
to feel each other’s pain —
to console, and commiserate,
find strength
in numbers.

We rarely acknowledge our sorrow
in public,
reflexively mouthing “How are you …
Fine …and you?”
Both question, and answer
more handy
than insincere.

But if you’ve been listening to a sad song
you might just slip,
let go your burden
shed a tear.
And there would be stunned silence
an awkward pause;
after which strangers would flee,
acquaintances
carry on, regardless.

And just a few would stop,
take one step closer
give the time you need.
Then join in, a cappella, in a minor key —
the high lonesome sound
of grief.



I like listening to sad songs the most. I think most of us do. (Or at least those of us with a naturally melancholic temperament!) In the first stanza, I try to capture how, as you immerse yourself in a sad song, the world seems to shrink, there is this intimate feeling of enclosure.

Later on, I sneak in a little bit of evolutionary biology (my favourite explanation for anything that has to do with human behaviour!) to explain why feeling sad so effectively lights up the reward centres in our brains. That is, how we’re hard-wired for empathy, and how feelings of empathy can help us survive. Science tends to come across as didactic and dry, so this is not an easy thing to do in poetry! Especially since I found I couldn’t use either “empathy” or “empathic”. Both sounded far too technical. And both verged on transgressing the cardinal rule of poetry: which is to show it, not say it.

Of course no one wants you to actually answer when they ask “how are you”. It is, after all, simply a rhetorical device, a formulaic greeting: a call and response, that contains no actual meaning. But occasionally, it’s awfully tempting. So the poem goes on to wonder what would happen in case you actually did take the question literally, and answered with the truth.

The ending calls back to the opening. Because the saddest songs are bluegrass — those high lonesome harmonies, sung in a minor key.

Enough Solitude, As It Is
Oct 11 2010


The sidewalk is wider here.
With spindly trees
sticking-up every 10 feet, or so
in a circle of meagre soil.
Which will never grow enough
for shade.
Because when their roots invade
water-pipes and cables
start buckling the pavement,
a crew of men
in hard-hats, and bright orange safety vests
will work their way down the street
in a cacophony of back-up beepers and chain-saws,
lopping them off
one-by-one.
A day’s work
and all the trees are gone.
While the men move on,
quenching their thirst
at quitting time.

People streaming by
on this downtown thoroughfare
have the 6th sense of city life,
slipping seamlessly past each other.
Distracted by phone calls
lugging packages
they never collide.
Like a school of silver fish
flicking left and right,
a flock of birds
veering suddenly,
they move with unconscious precision
collective purpose.

But no one notices the trees
with their stunted dusty leaves
struggling
in dry compacted soil.
Which were never meant to grow
as solitary ornaments,
so impoverished.
And isn’t there enough solitude
in the world
as it is?
So perhaps, this is all for the best.

And now
no one will ever object
to the loss of their magnificent shade trees.
When the city fathers decree
the street is inadequate,
and more men are dispatched
to jack-hammer the sidewalk
for traffic.


This poem started with “there is enough solitude, as it is”. It’s from Philip Roth, as quoted by interviewer John Barber in a newspaper interview on the occasion of his latest book. He was explaining why he had moved from his Connecticut acreage into a New York apartment: not just the rigors of age, but because his friends there had gradually been passing away, and that was solitude enough.

Which made me think he had arranged his life – in his austere apartment, writing compulsively – with just as much solitude. And also that cities, despite teeming with life, are paradoxically full of solitude – the easy anonymity, the isolation and alienation of metropolitan life. (Hardly a new trope for me!) So he hadn’t escaped his solitude at all; he had simply exchanged one kind of solitude for another. And his feverish writing, in a way, was/is an heroic effort to write his way out of it.

I think what happened was this line of thinking became conflated with an essay I recently heard (or was it something I read?): about mature urban trees being chopped down to make way for a road widening, the impotence of a local resident, and how this had impoverished both the physical and social landscape of this downtown neighbourhood. (Another familiar theme with me: trees!)

In this poem, the unnatural isolation of those pathetic and neglected urban trees becomes a metaphor for being lost in this mass of uncaring and self-involved people. And also a bit of a political commentary on short-sighted urban planning. In this sense, “city fathers” is somewhat ironic: they are hardly the caring stewards and protectors the name implies!

It kind of breaks the flow of the poem, but I wouldn’t change the closing lines of the 1st stanza. I wanted to convey the nonchalance, the lack of reverence for nature, the utter indifference of these disinterested men sent out to do just another day’s work. This is especially true in the context of a mature shade tree, which might be a century old. “All in a day’s work, and it’s gone”(to paraphrase myself) I think captures perfectly the quality of vandalism in such a destructive and irreversible act.

Personal Space
Oct 6 2010


The doorbell rarely rings
since it’s been fixed.
There used to be hard knocking
muffled voices,
the screen door
slapping closed.
Sometimes, a face
pressed against the glass
squinting in,
as if they knew
something was there,
a deeper shadow
holding its breath.

No one goes door-to-door, anymore.
Selling subscriptions.
Man-handling vacuums
with hoses, attachments,
a handful of dirt
tossed on the floor.
Except, that is, for the nicely dressed Witness
beaming with well-scrubbed faith.
And the politician, of course,
who glad-hands his way
converting voters.

I have issues
with personal space --
the foot in the door,
pamphlets and tracts
shoved brusquely towards me.
Five feet
is my minimum distance,
quarantined from handshakes, hot air,
the sweat of ambition
with its perfumed scent.

The doorbell really was broken
when I moved in.
I only had it fixed
after the big announcement.
When you said, grimly
we both needed time away
a change wouldn’t hurt.
And just as you left
“who can say for sure?”