Wednesday, September 28, 2011















Enduring Object
Sept 27 2011


My favourite mug
is grey-blue glazed,
a shade I find tasteful, calming.
A heavy vessel
made from proletarian clay,
its thick blunt rim
sits gently on my lips.
Not fine bone china
that digs in
chips easily
totters on a matching saucer,
tinkling
like tea-time, and finger sandwiches.

A substantial handle
that accepts my fist
with a firm reassuring grip.
Like shaking hands
with a real man,
not a politician’s wet fish.
The generous cup
will hold enough
to keep the coffee hot,
topping it off
with strong black java
steaming up.

My favourite mug
does not say
“World’s Greatest” anything.
Should I spot it
on the lawn
at an early morning garage sale,
I’d forgo the thrill of the hunt
pony-up full price.

It would not do
in a crockery fight
between warring spouses.
Would not shatter against the wall
in a grand denouement,
but instead
would dent the sheetrock
fall to the floor
with an anti-climactic thud.
And we would both watch it
roll to a stop,
half hoping
it would have broken,
relieved
it did not.
An enduring object
you can depend upon.

And when she leaves
early next morning
my favourite mug will keep me warm,
steady
my trembling hands.

Our Beautiful Daughters
Sept 23 2011


Don’t over think this
I’ve said to myself
too many times to count.
Things are complicated enough.
Go ahead, trust your gut.
A little prayer
wouldn’t hurt.

And don’t be too proud
to learn
from the politicians 
there’s a simple answer
to every problem,
so what if it doesn’t work.

Does this come from the gut
the heart
the soul?
When you just know,
when feeling is so utterly sure
you never second guess yourself?

Some people always go by feel.
They have the conviction, the passion
the rest of us lack.
Attractive, charismatic
we can’t help but believe
as well.

Just like falling in love
when I kept my doubts to myself.
If I’d given it some thought
I’d have stopped
at falling in like.
As it was, I fell hard,
the love of my life
who would quickly break my heart.

And the glorious leader
we wanted so much to believe,
despite his silly cowboy hats
the conspicuously dropped “g”s.
We were all his loyal followers,
until he made off
with our bank accounts,
our beautiful daughters.


A poem about the pitfalls of faith;  about people who prefer the easy route of feeling over the rigor of cold rational thought.

Although the poem hints at romantic love and a broken heart, it actually began with how much the current crop of Republican Presidential pretenders disgust and repulse me. People like Michelle Bachman and Rick Perry, who are clearly incapable of critical thinking; who repeatedly demonstrate such a breath-taking lack of self-awareness; who can be so blithely and unselfconsciously ignorant of basic facts, and don’t care if the facts don’t fit; who prefer bromides and slogans and ideology over thoughtfulness, openness, and nuance. I am gobsmacked by the smug preening confidence of these utter mental cretins, to sincerely believe they are even remotely capable of being President. (Don’t get me started on the Harper Conservatives!)

These are the leaders we get, and the leaders we deserve, because their simple solutions, their empty but handsome suits, make us feel good. Stephen Colbert’s TV persona constantly mocks this:  by proudly proclaiming he only goes by gut feeling; by flaunting his determined anti-intellectualism. The trouble is, Colbert’s flagrant parody isn’t very far off the real thing. Which utterly demoralizes me.

…On the other hand, comparing Rick Perry to a con-man cult leader and sexual predator was very satisfying (if egregiously unfair)!

Yeats, of course, comes to mind:   “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. ”

High-Water Mark
Sept 20 2011


The high-water mark
lasted all summer and fall.
Where spring run-off
thick with pollen
stained the sheer granite wall,
plunging down
into deep black water.
The smooth round rocks
that bob in the shallows
like balding monks;
a fringe of hair
a vow of silence.

The line reminds me of a bathtub ring,
grey water
circling the drain,
sucking, slurping
gurgling down.

Winter
will scrub it clean.
Or break-up
scouring the rim with a crush of ice.

There are familiar markers all around
methodically tracking
the passage of time.
The line of shadow
that marches down the deck
like a daily measuring stick,
how quickly summer ends.
Pine cones, or what’s left of them,
in scattered piles
where squirrels furtively dined.
And leaves, of course.
Although here, it’s variations on yellow,
too far north
for the burnished oaks
flamboyant maples.

The tamaracks
I planted years ago
will drop their needles;
but first
turn a luminous orange-red.
Not evergreen
like the rest of the conifers;
but better for shedding snow
when it’s heavy, wet,
letting wind slip through.
Pliable, slender,
they poke up into the breeze
like moistened fingers
testing the air.

And all the while
the high-water mark
glares passively back at me.
As if I had shirked my basic chores,
leaving the tub to cool
a leaky stopper, badly plugged.
But we choose what’s important
and what can wait.

Next May
will be soon enough 
spring break-up
the first warm day.
And the lake
returning to life;
full, again.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

In My Mind’s Eye
Sept 19 2011


I did not need to be told
that seeing is believing.
Even the blind
feel their way through the world
according to surfaces.

But to see
you must believe as well.
That the mirage will dematerialize
revealing truth.
That the outermost layer
of molecules
carries all the way through.
That we are all tuned
to the very same light;
reality
is absolute.

When I first saw your body
in the 40 watt glow
on that sweltering night,
your nakedness slowly revealed
the desire in your eyes,
I felt sure.
Looked away, looked back.
Breathed you in
saw with my hands,
sun-warmed skin
the salty wetness.
Then began with your lips
our moistened tongues,
eyes, drifting shut.

Now, 20 years later
I see you exactly the same.
Laid bare, beside me;
in my mind’s eye.
Could reproduce
every curve of your body
all the secret parts,
off by heart.
I feel no older,
and believe
as surely as I did
2 decades before.

We have explored
so far below the surface
it’s as if a thousand bolts of light
had turned us transparent
left
temporarily blind.
Yet not even caring,
because we’d seen all we needed,
gone deep inside.

Now, This …
Sept 17 2011



Tomorrow’s high, seasonal.
Home team wins,
stocks closed mixed.
Tuned-in
to the usual politics
celebrity gossip,
the latest medical marvel
that will fizzle-out
next year.
The radio is on
in the background,
a liquid voice
connecting me to the outside world.

True facts,
which don’t much matter
in the larger pattern
that might actually make sense,
and leave me feeling worse
    even more powerless.
Wondering what gets in,
when just about everything’s
left out.
Until pretty soon
could anyone tell
if they re-played last year’s version?
An urgent loop
of human oddities
mass atrocities
news-you-can-use.
Anchors
making happy-talk.

In World War II
Lorne Greene read the news.
That’s right, the guy from Bonanza.
The “voice of doom”
he was called,
the reassuring gravity
of his deep dulcet tones,
coast-to-coast
across Canada.
Keeping up morale
on the home front,
instilling sacrifice.

Maybe it’s the common purpose
we lack.
The clear distinction
between good and evil,
the certainty
of where we stand.

Or tune-in to the music station,
easy listening, modern jazz.
The familiarity
is comforting,
keeping company
with people just like us.
Serving up
an up-beat version
of a better world,
current
informed
reassured.
Where, if nothing else
we can at least mouth the words,
tapping our toes
all the way to utopia.

Sunday, September 18, 2011





Here for Good
Sept 14 2011


A gentle slope
of wildflowers, stunted brush,
dropped by wind
on runners, burrowing-in
underground.
Stony soil, good sun,
where stiff nor’westers
blow unobstructed.


A decade since
we put in the jack pine,
grown from seed.
A sharp jab
with steel shovel,
spindly sapling, seated roughly,
earth tamped neatly back.
Repeat.

So 5 years on
end of season
I survey the survivors.
There was the frantic greening of June,
when it felt like a steamy bayou
that would choke-off, swallow-up
everything made by man.
And a hot dry August,
that sent roots deep
tested toughness.

Noticeably taller
some inching over my head.
But willowy, wands in the wind,
as if they grew too quick
were life or death.
Needles thin, top-heavy
like hungry new-born birds.
  …But all-in-all, here for good.

I will grow old
and they will be full,
generous with shade.
I will be gone
and they will be strong,
with thick branches
wizened, twisted.
A monument to foresight,
on a hot spring day, long forgotten.

When we scattered saplings, without a plan
on that tangled slope
that had gone to nature.
Imagining cool escape
in high summer.
A sanctuary of trees,
wind-toughened
green canopy, up above.

Not really believing
they’d come to much.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Alone With Your Thoughts
Sept 12 2011


To have gone through life
and never known silence.
I mean absolute silence,
so deep and sublime
all you can hear
is the hot rush of blood
in your seashell ears.

So never truly by yourself
alone with your thoughts.
No cloistered cell
renouncing talk,
expelled to the desert
wandering, lost.

Your place is here,
the city you never left
and always loved.
And the wilderness, you know something of 
reassured it exists,
and that’s good enough.

How can I describe such a silence?
Like colour, to a blind man
love, a psychopath,
but worse.
Because this is an absence,
the distillation of less
to less and less,
essential
ineffable
pure.
As impossible as proving a negative.
The unimaginable stillness
of the world at rest.
A held breath,
the seconds left
before your heart contracts
again.

I think you would find this unbearable
and quickly flee,
seeking solace in noise
and constant motion,
the illusion of progress.
Or your over-wrought brain
abhorring the vacuum
would fill it with static
invent a new sound-track
crack under the strain.

I can just imagine
how oppressive this might feel.
A hundred atmospheres
bearing down
on top of you.
The floor of the sea
the density of water.
Or softly swaddled
in countless cotton balls,
unable to move
breathe
think.

Anyway, is silence really possible?
The flush of blood.
The butterfly brush
of air on skin.
The microscopic life
that rushes in.

So you went through life
consoled by noise,
lost
in its anonymity.
Content
to wait for death;
an infinity of silence, then.

The Inaccessible Queen
Sept 11 2011


This was the season of anthills.
As if overnight,
great monuments of sand
several feet in diameter.
Like pyramids, ziggurats
lost cities,
that layer by layer
have risen above
more ancient ones.

I am impressed by the industry.
By the plan, when there is none,
each automaton ant
acting on its simple order.
Yet every grain of sand, uniform.
The smooth symmetrical surface,
as if rounded down
by unseen hands.
Black lines of ants, racing to and fro
in a frenzy
of incomprehensible purpose.

Our modest temperate version
of African termites,
who fashion giant mounds
as big as a man,
as idiosyncratic
as avant-garde art.
Tiny insects
that alter the landscape,
leave tell-tale remains
of their brief existence
some future civilization
will ponder on.

Or not.
Because anthills are taking over my lawn.
So one-by-one, I kick them down,
watch worker ants scatter
soldiers, scurry into action,
I can just imagine
glaring up at me.
Squirming larvae
abandoned,
the inaccessible Queen.
Destruction comes
as sudden as an asteroid
the hundred year flood,
the judgement of a God
who is quick to anger.
As philosopher ants
consider the nature of evil
free will
dumb luck.

Next day, to my surprise, the mound is up
as big as it was.
Tiny black ants
frantically bustling,
chemical instructions
impelling them.
Slender antennae touch the air
sampling, seeking,
bodies brush, and greet.

As anthills rise, generations succeed;
oblivious to me.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Unit of Measure
Sept 8 2011


You’d think 10 years
would be just about enough.
A nice round number,
the counter re-setting to one.
As if starting over
was somehow possible. 

This is, after all, how we measure out our lives
however unevenly.
The decade of your teens
filled with slow desire,
and then your 40s, flying by.
As each milestone year
gets less and less consequential.

So a decade after the big event
that changed everything,
that made odd expressions
like “the new normal”
make a kind of sense,
you’d have at least expected
some comprehension
numb acceptance
or even dull forgetting,
however tenuous.

Not closure, of course.
That presumes things end,
doors close
irrevocably
behind us.

Because what happened is done
but never over.
And it’s true what they say,
you can’t go home again.
So you go on
carrying what you left with,
all you ever needed
to feel anchored, grounded
a sense of place
    safe, in your inner harbour.
But baggage accumulates,
and like dead weight, a ball-and-chain
pulls you down.

Relationships change, love alters.
The earth shrugs,
and solid ground
will never feel the same.
But not how towers collapse 
in an instant
before our eyes
leaving gaping holes in the sky.

All over the world
hospitals were full
of dying people
that very day,
the high drama
of little lives.
Some expected,
others, a call in the night.
But these were not monumental,
and our attention
was somewhere else.

And then, when the dust finally settled
we carried on.
Except 10 years later
the body count hasn’t stopped.
A state of war, that’s constant
a culture of fear.
And 1st responders
who still thanklessly fall.

And a hole in the sky
defying us
to build stronger
                              …finer
                                        …high.


I don’t think I’ve ever written a 9/11 poem. Which may seem odd, since I began writing poetry in Oct 2001. As it is, pure coincidence. There were other reasons I turned to poetry. And other than that, politics is one of 3 things I’ve tried to resist in my writing; the others being confession, and personal therapy. I have too much concern for the reader’s patience to indulge in any one of those!

The opening question – how much distance do we need to fully understand something – reminds me of Chou en Lai’s (the premier of China at the time of Nixon’s landmark visit) famously amusing quote. He was asked his opinion of the French revolution. His response, succinctly and inscrutably Chinese, with all the world-weary patience and historical perspective that implies, went something like “Too early to tell.”

But we humans have this penchant for decades: for the round number, for big commemorative events. There is nothing intrinsically significant about 10 years; but, like football fields and Volkswagens, it seems to be an awfully convenient unit of measure. So that’s where I got my initial traction in this poem; and it went from there. Which means that the poem is as much about the idea of a decade later as it is about 9/11 itself.

I touch on many things, but briefly. I’ll trust the reader to take it from there. Although the idea in the 3rd last stanza has interested me ever since I heard Joan Didion interviewed about her beautifully written book The Year of Magical Thinking, about her husband’s untimely death.  He died unexpectedly in New York City on Sept 11 2001. It struck me that the monumental events of 9/11 somehow diminished all the other deaths that must have occurred on that same fateful day; and by diminishing their deaths somehow invalidated their lives. Which in turn touches on the idea of US exceptionalism:  all over the world, people have been dying daily in horrible wars and terrorist incidents; and yet Americans was so utterly shocked to learn that they (we?) are not immune, inviolable, exempt.  At the time it was – and still is – rather subversive to suggest that the horrible destruction of the twin towers should be set among all these incidents, rather than being set apart as something particularly horrifying and unacceptable. I didn’t say any of this in the poem, of course:  that would be far too political for my taste. So I kept things typically small and personal. (Actually, I think that 9/11 does stand out as perhaps the most egregious:  not only the fact that it still stands as the most deadly terrorist attack ever, not only its undeniable symbolic weight, but also the way it does seem to have changed everything. Of course, as I said in the beginning, it seems awfully presumptuous to declare such a thing a short 10 years on.)

The new tower that replaces the World Trade Centre will, in fact, be higher:  1776 feet, to be exact. No matter what you think of American politics and American culture, you can’t help but admire their irrepressible patriotism!