Dark Matter

March 25 2014

We even see ourselves as remote,

far enough off

to seem almost exotic,

out here

in the vast neglected middle.

Take stoic pride

in the hardship of distance;

like weather snobs, in winter,

one-upping each other

with tales of snow.

When they are just as far

and no less alone.

And except for the weight of numbers

we'd ignore them, as well.

But even if you do live

in the centre of the universe

-- in New York City, say, near Central Park --

you find yourself wishing

you could fall out of touch.
You stand by the window

tilting your head, angling just so

until you see only trees,

something wild and green

that feels like home.

Because deep in our DNA

this landscape persists,

some pastoral, tropical
antediluvian world.

And anyway

your insignificance here
makes you undetectable as us,

as theoretical as dark matter

just passing through.

It could be a tiny island

a thousands miles by sea,

a blind spot

even satellites miss.

I could close my eyes

and hear its breaking surf, its ocean breeze,

a white sand beach

too far south

of everything.

Or open them

and all I see

is blowing snow
4 feet deep.

I live in the middle of the continent, the kind of place where you can't see your neighbours and the area codes have big numbers. (In the days of rotary dial phones (before push-buttons and no buttons), big numbers like 8 and 9 took longer to dial. So the population centres were favoured with 1s and 2s. Here it's 807, which lets you know right away that we're "remote"!)

So we are properly "in the middle of nowhere." On the other hand, wherever I am is the centre of the universe to me, and should be no less valid than anywhere else. After all, who's to say it's me who's remote, when you're just as far away? Some people in some places might rightly regard themselves as being at the centre of action, and have the weight of numbers to substantiate it; but their personal experience really isn't any different than mine. Not to mention that today, with the internet and instant communication from just about anywhere, there no longer appears to be any hierarchy of distance from the centre.

So in this poem, I'm playing around with the subjectivity and ultimate meaninglessness of this idea of "remoteness". Not only who's to say, but the idea that you can be at the centre, surrounded by people, and still be alone. And also the push/pull of here and there: we love the vitality, action, and human contact of big cities, the bigger the better; yet also long for those quiet remote places that are not only spiritually nourishing, but seem to fill some need deep within us.

Here, the trees provide the urbanite with a simulacrum of wilderness, just as the snow provides me with the illusion of a tropical beach: there is always somewhere more remote to escape, at least in imagination.

The first stanza may be getting at something uniquely Canadian: how we're weather snobs, and in the inverse calculus of suffering, like to brag about how cold it is, how much snow we've gotten. In the big cities to the south, they may complain about their mild winters; but here in the northern wilderness, we know what winter's really like!

Of course, there are truly remote places on earth. This has come up recently in the disappearance of MH370, the Malaysian airlines jet with over 200 people that's now been missing for 2 weeks, and looks more and more as if will never be found. In this day and age, who would have thought that a large modern commercial jetliner could just disappear? It seems to have done so in the southern Indian Ocean, and the difficulty of the search there has illuminated the vastness and remoteness of that, and similar, parts of the world. The planet is gargantuan, and only seems small because the ease of transportation and communication have distorted our sense of time and distance.

The Unfortunate Events of This Morning
March 21 2014


Plucked by the collar
and hoisted clear.
You could see how scrawny
his body is
beneath the sodden fur,
freezing water dripping-off
darkening the snow.
Fast water, thin ice
he'd slipped-in unobserved;
an exhausted dog,
all his fight
gone cold.

But an hour on
he was running, barking, chasing balls.
The doggedness of dogs,
who slough off
near misses,
do not obsess about mortality.
No flashbacks, intrusive thoughts
trauma counselling.

He may very well have forgotten, by now.
Or act more cautious, near water, this spring.
But he will not fear death,
having no word for it.
Will not tip-toe into life,
unlike those who tell time
frugally watch
each step.

The unfortunate events of this morning,
when his human companion bellied-out
over thin ice
and, like the hand of God
snatched him back to the light,
have most likely been lost
in the excitement of dinnertime.

We love our dogs,
who shake themselves off
like an afterthought,
shed the past like water.

We envy our dogs
their forgetfulness.

We, who lead serious lives,
and remember
far too well.

Another dog poem, but inspired by true events. Connie courageously and resourcefully rescued Taz -- the preternaturally happy Springer Spaniel -- and we are grateful for that. 

The poem covers old ground: how dogs are the Zen masters of living in the moment; how our foreknowledge of death conditions our lives, while their ignorance frees them. It's all there, in the way language is necessary for abstract thought ("having no word for it"); in how the telling of time defines the arc of our lives (with cautious "frugality").

The ending seems simple enough. But I'm very pleased with "seriously"; because as human beings, that's what we do: take ourselves too seriously. I think that single word, if you voice it with a slightly mocking tone, or as if it was placed between ironic quotes, says everything about human solipsism, about our vanity and self-regard and self-important anxieties. (No, we are not in the image of God; who doesn't exist, anyway. And no, we are not the centre of the universe; which is, in fact, imperiously indifferent to us.) And "seriously" also says everything about how the knowledge of death weighs us down. (Not that mortality is all bad. As I've written before, the awareness of death also gives life its urgency and sweetness. ...The beauty of dogs is that they know nothing of death, do not introspect or measure out time, yet manage to lead lives of unselfconscious fullness nevertheless.)

It's worthwhile to think about how important forgetting is, and how much of a burden it can be to remember too well. There are rare individuals with perfect biographical memories: pick a day at random from decades ago, and they will accurately report what they were doing, what the headlines were, even the weather report. But these savants of memory cannot function in life: hold down jobs, fall in love, get things done. The organ of memory is as much designed for forgetting as it is for remembering. The cure for post-traumatic stress is the selective obsolescence of memory, not perfect recall. And too much clutter in the brain just gets in the way.

I had wanted to expand on the "afterthought" of dogs shaking themselves dry, but backed off. I admire the economy, the perfect mechanical efficiency, of this apparently simple reflexive motion, and wanted to say something like "nonchalant efficiency" (which also nicely resonates with "dog" and "off" and "afterthought"). But that stanza could not possibly get any longer, or any more out of proportion to the next, without losing the thread of meaning. On the other hand, all I wanted to say is probably already there -- for the knowing reader (dog lovers, that is!) -- in the picture conjured up by "afterthought" and "shed".

"We envy our dogs/" gives me an opening for one of my pet peeves. Even among highly literate people, I repeatedly ("repeatedly"/"constantly" another pet peeve, where "constantly" should only apply when the thing you're describing is literally continuous) encounter confusion between "envy" and "jealousy". The meaningful difference, and easy mnemonic, is simply that envy applies to someone else's stuff, jealousy to your own: you are envious of another's success, while you feel jealous over your beautiful wife.

Exposure
March 18 2014


The lake thaws from the middle out.
Ice thins, and splits,
leads widen
fragments drift apart.

The action of waves
eating away
at the margins,
as the opening steadily enlarges
closer to land.

Overnight, a thin skim of ice re-forms,
next morning
shatters.
Until I can see open water from shore
cracks zig-zagging out,
shading my eyes
squinting hard.

And later, fully thawed.

When the lake is still cold enough to kill
in 3 minutes flat,
your throat clenched
hungering air,
heart racing faster
until it can't.
Cause of death
hypothermia, exposure,
a lack of respect
when the land has warmed
but water hasn't.

When ice floes, wind-driven
are piled, haphazardly
at the back of the bay.
A cool northern exposure,
where a small remnant of winter
hides out
almost to May.

When, on a shirt-sleeve day
a chilly breeze
from the ice-box of winter
sends shivers up my spine.
A pebble beach,
where small tongues
of smooth transparent ice
have formed in the shallows.
Water rises and falls
as if the lake were gently rocking,
washing over
then running off.
They gleam
in early morning light,
tinkle brightly
breaking.


I'm not sure descriptive poems like this engage the reader. At worst, you lose her one stanza in; at best, she never feels compelled to re-read. On the other hand, with words like "kill" and "death", I might have worked enough drama into this poem to make it move along. And there is also the first person narrator, which tends to pull the reader in with its feeling of intimacy and authenticity.

The view goes from macrocosm to miniature, which is what I like most of all: from straining to look all the way out to the middle of the lake, to looking down at his feet. I think the best poetry comes from close observation of small things. Here, it's tiny evanescent tongues of ice on a cold spring morning. (And probably way too early for me to be awake; but isn't that what we call poetic licence?!!)

The Things We’ve Lost in the Snow

March 14 2014

The things we’ve lost in the snow.

The spare glasses, from your back pocket,

now vacantly watching

in absolute dark.

I know how careful you are,

how the scratched lens

would upset you.

How essential they are

to your view of the world,

sharply etched

and unequivocal.

The keys I dropped

on my way to the car

fingers stiff with cold.

When all I want

is to go as far as possible.

How something dense, like that

will vanish;

as seamless as water

straight to the bottom

all the way down,

its smooth white surface

undisturbed.

Like her inscrutable face

turning away,

eyes empty

mouth set.

All the dog turds, freeze-drying.

The orphaned mitt,

I gave up trying

to find.

The footprints, that circled blindly

and unaccountably stopped.

Until the leveling wind,

another blizzard

filled them in.

Sanitized

just as history does the past;

written

by the winners

as it usually is.

It will all emerge in spring.

Like a prisoner, from quarantine,

blinking

in unaccustomed sun.

Footprints, even;

because packed snow

is slow to thaw,

the ghosts of where we walked

glistening wetly.

Side-by-side

or single-file

or heading-off our separate ways.

Lost, and found

and lost again.

I've written this poem a few times before: the idea of tell-tale footprints in the snow; the way an object can vanish without a trace in snow, or water; this metaphor for separation and romantic disillusion. I just hope that each time I have a go at it, I improve. And, after all, you can't really plagiarize yourself!

Not that I intended to have another go at something. It was more the first line materializing, and feeling compelled to run with it. Perhaps the idea came from an article about Lydia Davis, whose writing is a cross between prose poetry and flash fiction: short stories that are as short as a paragraph, and combine the ambiguity, irresolution, and distilled language of poetry with the narrative drive of story-telling. And what could be more distilled and inscrutable than objects lost in the snow? And what could be more challenging than constructing a story by implication; that is, imagining the objects as points and drawing lines to connect them?

Here's an example of her writing:


If you were to look in on us, you would be amazed at the elegance in which we live. You would see us sweep into the driveway in a pale green station wagon, casually pat our thoroughbreds as we entered our restored, pre-revolutionary home with its thick beams and red tiled floors. . . . You would see us during the day with dreamy looks in our eyes writing poetry and little dibs and dabs of nothing, as though we had been born to idleness. Perhaps I would invite you to go sketching and we would take the folding chairs and our pads of sketch paper. Perhaps later we would listen to an opera from where we lounged beside the bright medieval fireplace, our Labradors sleeping at our feet on their deerskin rug. But as dinnertime approached you would notice that we grew nervous. At first it would be hardly perceptible, the smallest haunted look in our eyes, a dark shadow on our faces. You would intercept embarrassed glances. I would blush suddenly and turn pale and when dinner arrived, though the pottery were of the finest quality, hand turned, and the mats from Japan and the napkins from India, the beans would stick in your throat, the carrots would break the tines of your fork and you would recognize the taste of cat. How much more painful is poverty for the caretakers.


And actually, now that I think about, I realize exactly where this poem began. Here's more from the same article (from the March 17 2014 New Yorker, and written by Dana Goodyear). (I included the first paragraph because I have exactly the same problem. Which I guess only someone not prone to writer's-block would regard as problematic!)


It is not only the act of writing that forces Davis to write fiction; reading is a danger, too. “I don’t need to go to other writers to get excited,” she says. “The problem is almost the opposite. Certain kinds of writing will give me too many ideas. I have to keep stopping and reacting.” She recently got a collection of lectures Roland Barthes gave at the Sorbonne. “I found that there were so many interesting ideas in one paragraph that I almost couldn’t read it.”...

...E-mail can be equally threatening. In the office, Davis opened up her account to a folder of messages from the Listserv at Bard College, where she used to teach occasionally and where Cote was on the faculty for three decades. Material, practically ready-made. Here was a message from a woman named Lisa Hedges, wondering if anyone had seen her glasses. “I loved her name,” Davis said. “This is what it started as: ‘Round, faux tortoiseshell glasses, bifocal lenses, lost sometime Friday, between the Nursery School, B Village, A Sacred Space. It would be great if somebody has found them and they aren’t in a place covered in a foot of snow!’ ”

What it became:

Personal Announcement
Woman named Shrubbs
Has lost faux tortoiseshell eyeglasses

Where?
Somewhere between nursery school
and sacred space

They are possibly
covered by snow.

I can't explain the radical change of voice in the 4th stanza. It's all you, we, I; then suddenly, and in only this line, it becomes "...Like her pale face ...". It just sounds right. Perhaps it's the sense of distance, of alienation, this conveys. Perhaps it's because this is more an interior thought, a rumination; as opposed to the rest of the poem, which is more a one-sided conversation with this hypothetical "you".

Fancy Rat
March 11 2014

The to-do list
is never done.
The way a rodent's tooth
grows and grows,
a curved dagger
that will splinter my palate's eggshell bone
bore through the base of my skull
skewer my brain.

Aimed at me
my whole life long.
So I constantly gnaw,
tread-milling madly
barely keeping up.
My list, tacked to the fridge,
like a fancy rat
bred for human companionship.

Just imagine the done list,
an immense scroll
from the age of giant animals,
filling the kitchen
unravelling over the floor.

A record of banality
that covers my life,
every appointment, grocery, chore.
The daily grind, the growing back,
like a frazzled rat
hanging on
by the skin of his teeth.

Free-wheeling madly,
going nowhere
fast.


Unlike my writerly persona here, I've succeeded in simplifying my actual life down to the bare minimum. So you'd think I'd occasionally have the rare privilege of a blank-slate day. But no, a niggling to-do list always seems to accompany me, unceremoniously stuffed into my back-pack. I can get close, ready to strike-off the final item, when something inevitably comes up; and before I know it, the page is once again full. (And yes, it's pen on paper. After all, you can't ball up a smart phone or iPad and throw it against the wall!)

If, on one's deathbed, one could somehow re-assemble all these lists, is this all a life would amount to? I suppose this thought is very much in the spirit of two other recent poems -- Killing Time and At My Most Negative ... -- which, in a similar philosophical spirit of "don't sweat the small stuff", also counsel perspective, distance, detachment.

That tooth aimed at my brain was a really helpful metaphor for this life-long race of minutia, of barely keeping up. And once I was onto that rodent/rat idea, it was a fun challenge to work the metaphor for the rest of the poem; without either torturing it to death, or leaving it feeling unfinished, a tired balloon phffffting out stale air. I'm pleased with the balance here.

I think I even got away with the admittedly lame "treadmill" metaphor. If my main point of comparison is a caged rodent, after all, it's pretty hard not to get a treadmill in there somewhere! I may have taken a greater risk with "hanging on/ by the skin of his teeth". I know clichés are inexcusable. But sometimes, I let myself: usually using them ironically; and sometimes using them to give the poem a more colloquial voice. Here, it's just that it fit too perfectly to resist: the mix of the literal and metaphorical; the feeling of desperation.

My favourite part is right off the bat, in the first stanza. I really like the violence of the verbs "splinter", "bore", "skewer". (Although I must say that managing the sideways rhyme of "animals", "unravelling", and "banality" (and maybe you could throw "companionship" rhyming with "imagine the done list" in there too) isn't bad either!!)

Heartbreak Hill
March 8 2014


I always wanted to live
at the end of a long driveway.
Where the sound of traffic fades,
majestic trees
enclose you.
Like entering a cool dark cathedral,
except for the brief zenith
of sun.

Whoever built my house
deferred to geography.
Did not steamroll, bulldoze, fill
heartbreak hill,
blast bedrock
for drainage, ditching.
So impervious

even glaciers could not shift.

So every spring
when hard-packed snow
softens into gumbo
the hill becomes impassable.
Intractable tires
whirring nowhere,
cars careening sideways.

When we resign ourselves
to be snow-stayed,
and hope for dry heat
April sun
nudging above the trees.
When we dread the inevitable dump
of heavy snow
we prayed wouldn't come
for once, late spring.

But it's good for the soul
to be marooned
by events you can't control.
To cede to nature her due,
acknowledge
our powerlessness.

To be humbled
by heartbreak hill.
Which, one day
some energetic soul will engineer.
Will stand back, hands on hips
admiring his handiwork
like all the men before him.

Having paved and drained and straightened.
Having hacked back from the edge
its virgin trees,
profaned
my cool dark refuge.


Not much to say except "true story". The message, of course, is humility, reverence for nature, and -- once again -- the almost mystical power trees seems to have over me.

There is a bit of a religious motif that runs through the piece, and gives it some loose coherence. Although, where I'm usually too heavy-handed, I may have gone a bit light this time. There is "cathedral" and "pray(er)" and "good for the soul". And something of man's hubris before creation, as he stands admiringly, hands on hips. All of which lead to the weighty "profane"; and, in the repetition of "cool dark", its call-back to "cathedral". Although here, it has more of a pagan or pantheistic sensibility than a Judeo-Christian one.

I made a conscious decision to use contractions instead of the more formal "would not" and "it is" and "cannot". I think they help give the piece a more conversational tone (or perhaps I should say "vulgar", in keeping with the religious trope!) I think the complete sentences, as well as the restraint in my use of adjectives and adverbs (actually, there isn't a single one of those hated adverbs) and flowery language, also contribute to that less formal and more inviting tone. Which is something I'm always striving for; but often fail at, I think. (On the other hand, now that I come to think of it, I guess a lot of people would find “impervious”, “intractable”, “zenith”, and “cede” more appropriate to written language than everyday spoken language!)

Killing Time
March 6 2014


The lights turned
as if waving me through,
clicking from red to green
in perfect sync,

ushering me seamlessly on.

Traffic parting like the Red Sea

just as I approach,
and almost as improbable.
Rarely, in life, do you hit the sweet spot
and the gods defer,

the universe unfolds

like clockwork.

The check-out girl
killing time
waves you to the front of the line,
the cop
lets you off with a warning.

That rarefied morning
I felt like the commander-in-chief

speeding self-importantly

in my armour-plated Cadillac, smoked-glass black,

police whistling down
cross-town traffic,
saluting
as I flew past.

And me, the most powerful man in the world
busily ignoring them
in my tightly packed day.

I was early, of course
and had time to kill

as the waiting room filled.

So I sat, leafing idly

through fashion, and gossip

celebrity reports.

All that time saved
for what, exactly?
As if time
could be put in the bank,
a nest egg
to retire on,

some death-bed bequest.

Saved, like cash
you count on getting back

when you’re nearing the end.

I overheard the expression "killing time", and immediately thought what an ungrateful way to view the privilege of being alive: even at its worst, better than the alternative! And, in my usual morbid way, also thought how different those minutes or hours will seem at the end of life, when you'll fight for every last moment. (Or I hope will fight, since I realize that for a lot of us, the end may very well come as a welcome mercy, exhausted by a long struggle with illness, the accumulating loss of pleasure and purpose.)

I also reflected amusingly on how we rush around to "save" time: as if we'd somehow get it back in the end, "saved" in some temporal bank account. (Sorry, another morbid reflection on death!)

Both of these notions -- of killing time and saving time -- get at the more fundamental idea of being present: of living in the actual moment instead of just putting in time while you either reflect on the past or fret about the future. Which is a little like the busy self-importance of the poem's commander-in-chief, who can't find even a moment to acknowledge his helpers and admirers.

I had a lot of trouble getting "killing time" to work. Because when you actually listen to that common expression, it starts sounding a lot more violent than off-hand!

The last couple of days, I've had a few incidents when time was on my side. Twice, just as I aproached, supermarket cashiers (is "check-out girl" sexist?!) were idly waiting, not serving anyone; and then nailing every light on Red River Rd, heading into town. (Which hardly equalizes things, since more often than not they seem so diabolically coordinated I hit every single red. Not to mention the universal experience of picking the one supermarket line (or bank line or vehicle registration line ...) that inexplicably stops moving!)

The "Red Sea" thing is pretty clichéd; but for some reason I found the image compelling and just couldn't let it go. Hope it works ...

I also threw in some gratuitous detail because I loved the word-play. What a hoot to imagine yourself standing in front of an audience and reciting "armour-plated Cadillac, smoked-glass black"! I think there's more risk in the final stanza, when the poem takes on a more serious tone, but "nest egg"/"death-bed" was too perfect to resist.

"...fashion, and gossip/ celebrity reports ..." was originally something like "waiting room magazines" or "well-thumbed periodicals", but I couldn't resist throwing in a few more lines and taking a shot at popular culture, while at the same time emphasizing the empty victory of "time saved": stuff in which I have less than zero interest, and would never in a million years seek out to read. It's a bit of a tangent, risks making the poem too wordy, and is probably on the heavy-handed and self-indulgent side; but, like "Red Sea" and pretentious limousines, I insist on having my fun!

At My Most Negative ...
March 5 2014


At my most negative
more than usual, that is
because imagining the worst
keeps me grateful.
Gratitude, and forgiveness
the keys to happiness, I've learned,
nothing in there
about a sunny disposition.

So anyway
I stop and look around
and understand
that in a hundred years
the entire planet

  —  busy, worried, annoyed

vain, or grasping,
falling in love
or falling in war, 

flushed with success

or crushed by loss  —
everyone alive, everywhere, right now

will be dead and gone.
Mostly forgotten,
and not much mattered, it turned out.
And after the supernova
even the forgetting, over.

So there is a lot to be said
for nihilism.
You don't drown, you shrug,
and like water off a duck’s back

come up dry,
a little ball of down
bobbing straight to the top.

The failures and humiliation, mostly;
the wins, you still enjoy.
It frees you of pettiness
and self-importance.

This is how you can look out at the world
so detached
it's as good as gone.

How you rise up in euphoria,
giddy, invulnerable
non-corporeal,
so metaphysically free
the boundaries of ego dissolve,
and everything
is possible.

If only you could care enough
to bother.


Here's a poem I haven't been brave enough to write until now. Who wants to proclaim to the world that they're a nihilist, after all? It seems defeatist, almost immoral, certainly unGodly, and maybe just a convenient excuse for failure. But I am one; and instead of being dragged down by the black dogs of negativity and pessimism, I feel surprisingly liberated. It’s the consolation of being to say “really, what difference does it make?”  It’s the way the expression “in the fullness of time” provides perspective, a healthy philosophical detachment from both the good and the bad.

The thing is, you can be a nihilist and still be awestruck by the absolute improbability and privilege of life. It's just that you see it more as playing along: why question ultimate meaning, if the answer is inconceivable anyway? So you play the game as it's been given, just not that seriously. There is even something virtuous in this perspective: a kind of healthy modesty, a detachment, a rebuke to ego; a kind of levelling, that can only be good for the temperament.

The last line summarizes the struggle of being a nihilist: all that good feeling stopped short, when you have to fake it to really care. (And, of course, if you believe in God then all bets are off: magical thinking is not at all compatible with the deadening certainty of nihilism.)

I think the style here -- which is less structured than usual for me, less concerned with sentence fragments and the obvious easy cliché -- fits the theme: why revisit and revise, when there is no posterity breathlessly awaiting my immortal words? Why not just write in a steam-of-consciousness fashion, taking the path of least resistance? In other words, break the cardinal rule of poetry, and just say it instead of show it.

Wipers

March 2 2014

The wipers thwok-thwok-thwok
squeegee across

the windshield.
The heater hums, the wheels slosh
and rain keeps coming down;

a comforting sound,

softening the noise

of an old car

in heavy traffic.

The rubber blades are clockwork

moving slickly over the glass,
leaving the world, for an instant
sharp
and unambiguous.
Until drop-by-drop
the veil thickens,
and a pleasant vagueness
settles in.

As hypnotic

as a dripping tap,
except you can’t stand
the fraught expectant waiting,
listening
straining to hear.

As a sprinkler, on summer grass
going fffft-fffft-thwak,
its intermittent arc
whirring out.
The spray, suspended like a veil,
briefly rainbowed
with light.

This is how water
softens the world,

with its pleasing drone

and liquid blur.

Which I prefer
to those moments of hyper-focused clarity.

Of oncoming traffic
thundering past
on an undivided road.
That goes on and on
its straight and narrow path,
all the way

to the vanishing point.

 A cold hard winter, and it hasn't rained for months.

But I started to read an article on the invention of intermittent wipers (yes, a highly poetic topic!), and immediately flashed back to driving in the rain: the comfortingly hypnotic sound of the wipers going thwok-thwok-thwok; the view flipping instantaneously from this pleasantly watery blur to hyper-sharp.

The blur of rain becomes a metaphor for denial -- like rose-coloured glasses -- softening the danger of an undivided highway, of tractor trailers thundering past. And it obscures the boredom and inertia of the pre-set path, and so becomes a metaphor for the possibility of re-invention, serendipity, and unexpected curves.

Succession
Feb 28 2014

In a blistering wind
I stop in the trees,
refuge
from its cold cacophony.
Absorbed
by their dense immoveable mass,
the labyrinth
of branches.
Except for the leaves
a million little whirligigs.
And a creaking trunk,

like a weather-vane

seized with rust.

Lightning-struck,
or weakened by drought, or bugs
or heavy run-off,
that record flood
the year I was born.
Or that flash fire
a century ago;
this long-lived survivor, badly scorched,
long before
the succession of forest
renewing itself.

It is hollow inside,
the majestic trunk
deceptively weak.
A passing breeze
might topple it,
tearing through branches, bringing down trees.
Or get hung up
groaning and creaking,
snagged
by a supple neighbour
still standing, for now.
I hunker down,
imagine it looming above me.

In the fullness of time
it will fall,
digging deep
of its depleted strength
in a final heroic spurt;
budding with life
as it slowly dies.
While we go fast
and stubbornly,
deny the fate
of our mortal remains
laid well underground,
bloated flesh
and worm-infested eyes.

It will return to the forest floor,
in the cool murk, that smells
of decomposition
and earth,
rotting matter
where bright green saplings
are growing fast.
Springing up
from the loamy soil,
straining for light.


I wrote recently that when I can't think of anything to write, I always seem to fall back on weather and dogs. I should have added a third category: tree poems. This one started in the refuge of a wind-break in a cold winter, and somehow transformed into summer.

The first person narrative that wends through it was accidental, even though it probably seems like the crux of the poem. The opening line was originally "It's quiet in the trees". This became "I stop in the trees" (and moved to the 2nd line) because inhabiting a person and a point of view is a lot more powerful than the passive "it". And once I began that way, I couldn't very well leave the reader without his surrogate voice. A strong first couple of lines is critical, because I think a lot of readers aren't willing to go much further if they aren't hooked from the get go. In the second stanza, there is a reflective humility to this voice. The tree intersects with his life, as well as bracketing it: so I think his observations contain a sense of the immensity of time set against his own insignificance; of nature as an endless succession, set against the brief flash of a human life.

How hard I try to avoid writing more poems about death; but once I had this slowly dying tree sprouting with new life, the contrast between that and the way we experience death -- both sudden, and final -- was too compelling to resist. So, in the spirit of "go home or go big", how could I say no to " ...bloated flesh/ and worm-infested eyes"? As does the tree, we also return to the earth. But sanitized to the point of denial: embalmed, formally dressed, and contained in heavy burnished box; as if the bacteria and worms will not reclaim us as well. (I hope they harvest my organs and then throw my untreated body into a cardboard box or wicker basket and bury me at the foot of a tree. If the animals dig me up, so be it. I don't see the point of being sentimental over dead bodies. After one's gone, one's mortal remains are just an empty bag of meat. Being returned to the earth is the most reverent thing to be done.)

Fortunately, the negativity is redeemed by the over-arching theme of regeneration and renewal. What could be more uplifting after all, than "straining for light"?!!