Short and Fast

Feb 13 2013


The mid-February thaw
came as expected.
I find myself over-dressed
and oddly restless,
under leaden skies
a steady drip
of chilly mist.
Snow, heavy and wet
I could wring-out
like a sponge,
brown earth
where the road's churned up.
I inhale breath after breath
of that loamy scent
for the first time since fall.

How quickly
I miss the cold;
when the light was clear,
and a frozen world
held reassuringly still.

And how quick winter's over
the older I get.
The succession of seasons
speeding up,
just as year after year
blur into each other.
My memory

is equally muddled.

If not lost
then re-invented,

blended, compressed
like softening snow,

confused, and conflated.
As if I could resurrect the past,
or even trust
my recollection.

When it freezes again
the snow will be crusted
hard.
The ruts where my car
slogged through the slush,
jagged geologic formations.
And clumpy boots
caught, like some fossilized beast
in tidal flat, or dried-up creek,
too big for human feet.

March, with its whiff of spring
lies just over the horizon.
The month of lions, and lambs,
who will lie down, unscathed

in some Messianic age.
In the fullness of time,
when I need no longer
keep track,
not bother looking back.

Today, there are only mice.
Who live in the present
in a buried bed
of matted grass.
Tiny rodents
whose clever homes
underneath the snow
have collapsed.

In unseasonable weather
frozen fast.

 This poem is a rather melancholy rumination on time. I think most of us are inclined to think this way at the change of season. And also to think this way at the realization how much faster time goes the older we get.

(Of course, early February is hardly the change of season:  more like false hope, for those not so well disposed toward winter; and a blessedly brief respite for the small minority of us who are.)

The piece moves back and forth, from past to future; then ultimately settles into the present. And with the inexorable inevitability of death, I suppose exhorts us to revel in the here-and-now, rather than ruminate and remonstrate with what cannot be changed. I think this theme of fatalistic acceptance is reinforced by the contrasting metaphors:  the permanence of geologic formation and the fossil record, preserved in stone; as opposed to the recurring imagery of animals, of mortal flesh. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to imagine that the author identifies with the field mice, who are early casualties of the exaggerated freeze/thaw cycle that threatens to become a permanent consequence of climate change.

The meditation on memory is quite apt. Because the latest neuroscience tells us that memory is highly malleable:  that a memory is not a photograph filed away in some neuron, but rather is re-made each time it’s recalled. Hence, the “re-invention”.

Lost in Traffic

Feb 11 2013


A man of his age
who is dwindling, and often confused
has no business
behind the wheel
of his plush 4-door Lincoln,
more scuffed and dented
than I remember
last time I was home.
With all the fancy electronics
he chooses not
to touch.

But a man of his time
must drive.
The rite of passage
so essential
to manliness.
Back when cars were black
and heavy gauge steel,
unsafe, at any speed.
And you racked up miles
like a badge of honour,
(or even damned kilometres
how ever many that is).
And earnestly believed
only chumps paid for it,
driving miles
for a prized spot,
parallel parking land yachts
with sure precision.

But these days he'd be lost
if he couldn't find himself
lost
in traffic,
often paralyzed
with indecision,
ramming curbs
straddling white lines.

My brothers and I
should be diplomatic, but firm,
confiscate his keys.
But we are cowards, or in denial.
Will keep relying
on the skill of others
who share the road.
On the reflex that comes
from a lifetime
behind the wheel.
Not to mention airbags, seat-belts.

Or hope a minor accident
will put a stop to this.
After which
he could keep his last car
in its regular spot
the key on its fob.
Because possibility
is what an old man needs.
And you never know
when a good man
will be called upon
to take the wheel.

White Noise

Feb 10 2013


The snow machine
ripped the frozen silence
with its grating grinding shriek,
a wounded beast.
Its armoured driver
in gauntlet hands, tinted visor
is intoxicated on speed,
the stink
of half-burned gas.

As animals freeze, or flee,
while all he sees
is the easy path
of tunnel vision,
the aperture of his eye
constricting down
to haste
and distance.

He dopplers here, and back,
then invisibly past

the sweet-spot,
where snow-draped trees, heavy powder
obliterate sound.
Or is it the curve of the earth
that's come between us;
as if he'd dropped off the edge,
had never even been?
Like when the fridge stops
with a nervous shudder,
and in the sudden quiet
you hear how loud it was.

I am tempted to follow
his straight and narrow track
so well compacted.
But I'd rather struggle
through unbroken snow,
sinking halfway up my knees.
Weave, flounder, fall
in deep virgin powder.
Like a Sunday drunk
at some ungodly hour
stumbling home.

But here and now
I'm dry as a priest,
sober, all-seeing.
As a rabbit darts past
in the blink of an eye
in its winter white,
a window of safety.

From diabolical machines
unholy racket.
Knowing the first fresh snow
will bury its tracks,
the forest go back
to nature.

Fresh Kill

Feb 8 2013


The only evidence
of a fresh kill
was the snow-blind whiteness
stained red.

A dead animal

dragged into the trees,

or plucked skyward
in sharpened armoured claws.
All the frozen bodies
never seen
in nature.

Just the blood-red stain

that remains
on ice,

florid, fresh.

No fading

to dull brown dregs,

the colour everything

ends in.

The expert death.
Eyes glazed, in surrender,
tiny heart pumping
until nothing's left.
Then the edges, slowly spread,

blooming

like water-colour paint
on absorbent paper.

In the eternity
of winter
the blood-red stain
stays bright
almost festive.
As the violence has ebbed
in snow-dampened quiet,
and animals
dead, and dying
succumb unseen.

While the life force
they leave
may last as long as art.
This is the primary colour, the essence
of red,
so sharp
you can hear their cries
go silent.

Lived-In Places

Feb 2 2013

It's not the house I would have built.

You hear about ghosts,
bewildered spirits, stranded souls.
But no, it was not possessed.

And lived-in places
that reek of cigarettes.
Layers of paint,
and year after year
the sickly scent
soaking-in.

Carpet stains
that make you wonder,
door frames
with wood that’s scuffed,

rubbed down

to a fine patina.
Not broken, or bloodied,
just force of habit
the fullness of time.

It was dark,
narrow hallways, heavy paint.
A comforting darkness, I suppose,
like a room of one's own
a quiet withholding.
Even knowing
that behind closed doors
secret lives outlive,
awful lies persist
and fester.

If only
I could have built from scratch.
As it was, I sledge-hammered walls
wrestled 2-by-4's.
Stripped it down
to naked studs, bare sub-flooring.
Tried hard to expunge
the vestige of others,
make it my own.

One great room
with walls of glass
unobstructed.
A simple design
of straight clean lines

natural light.

As if I could be transparent
as my house.
As if cool astringence
could feel like home.
Especially in winter
when trees are leafless, sun is low,
and it can be lethal
to be so exposed.

I closed off the attic,
left the cellar
untouched.

Digging Out

Jan 28 2013


In an article about snow
I learned the sad truth
of averages.
That most flakes
are homely
just like us --
the huddled masses, trudging
through slushy streets,
in lumpy coats, salt-streaked rubbers.

That average flakes
are not as we imagined
-- lacy, filigreed, precisely etched --
but humble rods, and heavy plates.
That also seem
to have gained weight,
in the dull grey slog
of winter.
And wetly clumped, falling hard
icy pellets, blizzard-charged
stinging naked flesh.

Yes, there are the fashionistas
of the frozen world,
elegant high-strung hot-house girls
who nod at the doorman
to hail a cab.

And yes, we are all unique
if not much different;
the Christmas sweater, scarf she knit
you feel obliged to wear.

You look out
at freshly fallen snow.
But what seems uniform
is not.
Every non-conforming flake
so sure, by grace
of God.
A billion modest narcissists
who grimly co-exist.

Until gravity serves, the sun returns,
blurring features
sagging girth.
Ambition curbed
beneath the slumping mass of snow,
the lumpenproletariat
at work.

         ~

And then

the next winter storm
charges in from the north,
crystalline snow
dry and cold.
And after it's done
I toss shovel after shovel
into a brisk west wind,
feel the visceral high, muscling-up,
the comforting rhythm
digging out.

Watch gossamer snow
under gaudy sun
levitate, like glitter dust,
escape the Monday crush.

Word
Jan 22 2013

In the beginning
there was the word.
Earth
conjured from nothing,
as all of us are.

Heart thumping
like the pounding surf.
And after the first
few months
her voice booms
through amniotic fluid;
close as a whisper,
yet everywhere
at once.

First time ever
your name is said,
the movement of air, a sharing of breath
will accompany you
from birth, unto death.
But even slabs of granite
weather,
in the fullness of time
rubbed smooth.

You wonder
how that helpless baby
makes sense,
somehow comprehends
when words begin, and end
droning on.
The most intense listener
ever.

As when you say a word
out loud
over and over
until the sound becomes alien,
a strange intonation
in a foreign tongue,
detached
from meaning.
This elegant language
reduced
to jagged noise,
and you
regressed to infant.

How frightening, you think
to so easily tip
into speechlessness.
As if conceived
unfinished,
unable to talk
inaccessible thought
beyond desire, and need.
Locked in,
like a pent-up beast
prowling its cage
who cannot fathom freedom.

When the last speaker
passes on
the final word
will linger,
resonate, repeat
waiting to be received.
Expectantly suspended, diminuendo
in tenuous air.
Until it can be heard,
take
its meaning.

Naive Art

Jan 16 2013

Children of the Depression
like my frugal parents
accumulate things.
High-ceilinged, over-heated,
old apartments groan
with china figurines, prized collectibles,
the sentimental stuff
of lives, well-lived.

They would like for us
to claim it, when they're gone,
little treasures
with which to take
their measure,
keep memory alive.
As if some small part
however small
might survive.

Or not.
Because my mother gives a knowing shrug
as she bustles about the place,
dusting, re-arranging
neatening-up.
Sensibly resigned
to obsolescence,
indifferent descendants
who just as well might rent
a hulking dumpster,
clear all of it
out.
The modern aesthetic
of less.

But there's a single painting
I'd gladly claim.
Over-powering the room
it irresistibly lures
the eye,
a tropical, succulent
lushly colourful
moving life.
By some obscure Haitian artist,
so clearly out of place
in this glacial winter,
monochrome white.

A family story
comes with it.
That it was won, by my mother
at some raffle, or other,
not knowing she had just
won the right to buy.
But my father indulged her
dug deep, paid up;
if not a lover of art
then a temperate man's
undemonstrative love.
A party of two,
who made their own good luck
come true.

They call this primitivist art,
as if a child
could have done.
Which is why I love this piece.
Because it proclaims you can choose
to be naive.
Grow old, but refuse
to grow up.
Never lose the wonder
of a world that once
was new.