Stigmata

March 31 2015

Wild blueberries

are small, dark, intense.

While in the clear pint box

you bought in the corner store

they’re flabby and pale

unnaturally large.

There is a secluded patch

deep in the woods

you keep to yourself.

Unless the bears got there first,

branches stripped

scat in the underbrush.

You rake loosely opened hands

through the dense green bush

and the ripe ones come cleanly away.

While the over-ripe

turn to mush,

sticky sweet

the corruption of yeast.

The exquisite temptation of purple fruit

its precious seed.

Because like sex and love, and the tingle of lust

it all comes down

to reproduction.

Forgetting

that beneath the bright outer layer

the pulp is pale;

that beauty is skin deep

sweetness transient.

You gorge, eating by the handful,

lips stained

fingers painted blue.

Like all sin

you feel the shame;

the gluttony

your face proclaims,

the hands you cannot hide.

How did I come to write about picking blueberries at the end of March? Simply because as I sat down to write -- and with no idea what to write about -- I had a slice of my famous (?!!) blueberry-banana bread in hand. I always make it with wild, never farmed. And always wondered why they're so different. (Not to mention how they harvest such small delicate fruit. By hand? Or some outlandish Rube Goldberg type machine?!!)

I may have taken a bit of poetic license. As I recall, the last time I ate farmed blueberries they were pretty sweet, not the watered-down version I depict here. But there is a general rule that works with fruit: that smaller is more intense, while bigger is usually washed-out and thinner in taste.

Wild grown are supposed to be healthier: more concentrated in those desirable anti-oxidants. Which is a natural response to stress. While the domesticated berries are protected, watered, and fertilized, the wild stuff has to deal with drought and predation and poor soil: adversity toughens them, and forces on them the metabolic cost of producing these complex but protective chemicals.

I like the line about the bears. Even though there is absolutely no reason to include it. Except that it reinforces this idea of the prime secret spot every picker jealously guards. And also that every time I read it, I can’t help but smile ;-) ...

This poem was a fun bit of mischief to write:  taking an innocent pleasure, then investing it with connotations of sin. But it really is all about sex: the tempting berry, exploiting us to propagate its seed. 

This was neither an inspiration nor a perspiration poem. Not inspiration, because not only did I sit down to write with absolutely nothing in mind, I wasn’t even that much in the mood. But not perspiration, either:  because it came as easily as taking dictation. So perhaps I need to come up with a third category:  something about the elusive muse and the mystery of the creative act.

Seedless Orange
March 29 2015


The orange
in the back of the fridge
is encased in mould.

Shrunken fruit
in a green constricting husk,
wisps of white

at the leading edge

of the slowly spreading corruption.

Flat, where it sat so long
back behind the condiments.
The ball-park mustard,

from industrial yellow

to jaundiced dull.
The dregs of ketchup

gone rusty brown,
hard crust
stuck to its screw-on top.

Behind the tupperware box
of unidentified remains,
leftovers
growing their own
mysterious flora.

A navel orange

as if mother-born,

a dimple, perfectly formed

in the finely textured skin

of its smooth round belly.
Seedless, barren,
a biological dead-end

the last of its line.
That has failed
at the two exigencies of life
-- reproduction

and survival.

Evolution
over millions of  years

has all converged on this,
left to rot
in the back of the fridge.
Like the sterile, the childless,
shrinking into their dotage
forgotten, as well.

White fuzz
clouds the shelf.
Spores, filling the void
as the life force flourishes,
doubling over-and-over
feeds on itself.

Even here

in the cold and dark

in the back of the fridge;

an orange, slowly transformed

into something else.

This started out as a still life (how many times do I have to say that each time I put pen to paper, I aspire to write a simple Haiku; but my prolixity inevitably prevails …lol!), then turned into something else. And not only did it get wordy; it took the usual dark turn – my terminally morbid frame of mind, I guess.

 …Except, in the end, I may have just managed to redeem the darkness! I'll leave it to the reader to decide.

I feel I need to add that my fridge does not have mysterious things growing in it. And also that I can't stand either mustard or ketchup, so -- the usual disclaimer -- any resemblance to actual condiments in this poem is unintended and purely coincidental.

Reading Faces

March 27 2015

Reading faces

I'm a blind man tracing braille.

An illiterate,
cleverly reading between the lines
who has learned to listen well.

How easy to miss
that phoney smile, constricted eye.
Yet intuit, somehow
every furrow and blink, smirk and sniff
flush and flare and twitch.
That distended vein
ticking away
like a time-bomb.

And how, in the dark
I can feel your breath
like a warm wet whisper.
Sense the brush of your lips,

insistent, tempting

red.
Hear that imperfect nose
with its faint whistling of breath.

But touch
makes you utterly clear,
my fingers stroking your face
as a sculptor probes his clay
before it sets.

Before it's tempered by fire

hardened in glaze.

Faces change
at the speed of light,
eyes adjust to the dark.
So do not trust
even yourself.
And do not judge
until time can tell.

Because covers lie.
Because ultimate truth
is not refracted light.
Because the heart rules
and love is blind,
reading her face
in the blink of an eye.

This poem is about the unconscious brain: about feeling vs. thinking, intuition vs. logic, the quick heuristic vs. deliberation. Because perception is irrational, emotional, intuitive, and lightning-quick. Because there is sight -- the mechanical processing of light in the visual cortex -- and then there is vision: which includes the fleeting micro-expressions we aren't conscious of seeing; which is as much feeling as logic; and which recruits many more parts of the brain, areas involved in things like judgement and feeling and salience. So the metaphor that pulls the poem together is the blind man, who sees just as well: the braille ...the stroking you face ...the love is blind and blink of an eye. (I've written before about how even the mechanics of sight is not a simple one-to-one translation of light into neural impulse and then cognition: that there is a lot of missing and filling-in, not to mention the distortions of expectation and selective vision and confirmation bias. But the idea of vision I'm referring to here is even further along the processing pathway of higher cognition, and introduces even more subjectivity into the nature of perception.)

I was reading an article in the New Yorker about computer algorithms for facial recognition, cutting-edge artificial intelligence sophisticated enough to read human emotion (We Know How You Feel -- Jan 19 2015). It contained this phrase: "our faces are organs of emotional communication". I like this idea of seeing the face as an organ and as a singular whole, instead of just as a convenient location for eyes and ears and mouths, one that's a small part of larger organ systems like skin and bone. Because as social animals, our faces are how we interact, and so essential to survival. Hundreds of thousand of years of evolution have honed the face, as well as our ability to read it. Even simple facial recognition -- being able to instantly attach a name and/or a context to a face -- takes tremendous processing power and speed; something computers have traditionally had a great deal of difficulty with. (Although there are some otherwise perfectly neuro-typical people with a condition called prosopagnosia who can't do this: the famous neurologist and writer Oliver Sachs, for example. (My deficit is a lot more common: terrible at remembering names, but always "know" the face!)) The phoney smile referred to in the poem is interesting in this discussion of computer intelligence: apparently, we think we're a lot better at discerning deception than we are, while those cutting-edge computers are actually much better at sussing out the truth. So as the poem says, do not trust/ even yourself: don't be smug about your ability to read faces and insincere smiles.

The poem questions whether we see as well as we think we do. It alludes to this new research into micro-expressions, which are so fast and subtle we aren't consciously aware of either making them or reading them, but do anyway. And so it questions the conceit that we are rational, logical, and deliberate; and acknowledges the power of emotion, intuition, and unconscious thought. So seeing is not necessarily believing. And there may be as much truth in sound and touch, as well as our 6th sense: that gut-deep knowing that supersedes first impressions.

Pot-Hole Gorge

March 25 2015

In whitewater
where we stopped to play.

Where the river quickens

and walls of rock pinch in.

Where the sound of falling water

is ominous, and loud,

but also oddly comforting.

Where we watched from the eddy
as friends ferried and swerved
shredded and surfed
endered on standing waves.
Spun, like window-shades
barely catching a breath,

danced on the edge of control.
Or were sucked into holes

and wrecked.

Legs wedged
in impervious skirts
in sturdy plastic boats.
That look like colourful toys,
bobbing about in the sparkling surf
topsy-turvy, and rolled.

On shore
deep pot-holes have worn
in the ancient rock.
Through countless millennia
of turbulent water
freeze and thaw,
the action of hard smooth stones
caught
in a small depression.
An immensity of time

the constancy of rock
we cannot comprehend.

Our daring play, and festive boats
are nothing, compared to this.
A mere blink, in geological time,
when we presume to rule the world
claim this place as ours.

Rivers pulse,

settling, surging
running in random bursts.
So the pot-holes submerge, and swamp;
stagnant water
hot, in summer sun,
cloudy, and algae-filled.
Or after a downpour
warming pools.

We'd never have noticed
if we hadn't stopped
to play.
All day, at the pot-hole gorge
we knew each rock and ledge
hole, and eddy
crest, and trough.

Because you must stop
and play
and observe,
or the current will take you
eyes fixed downstream.
To the flat pool
where water barely moves.
The placid lake
too far from shore to see.


I spent many years as a dedicated whitewater kayaker. And only now just realized that I've never written about it. The pot-hole gorge was our go-to place: not too far; reliable flow, even in low water months; lots of features; and the safety of a big downstream pool.

All you need to know about this recreational sport is that the operative word is "play". Some people prefer descents; others racing. What we mostly did is called "rodeo": staying in one spot on the river, working out of eddies, and finding sanding waves and hydraulics to pull off (show off?) moves like surfing and endering and whatever other stunts we could come up with.

I focus on the pot-holes not only because they're a relatively unique geological feaure, but because they're all about observation, taking time, mindfulness. That is, I think I got as much enjoyment out of being in nature as I did from the actual activity: it was rejuvenating being in the water in warm summer sun out in the wilderness. (If only the best paddling wasn't in freezing early spring!) So I suppose this is essentially a "stop and smell the roses" poem, if not quite so clichéd.

And the final stanza also serves as a kind of metaphor for my approach to poetry: which is a celebration of the small things; a practice grounded in microcosm and close observation. The poem adjures you to stop/ and play/ and observe; to be present, instead of always having your eyes fixed downstream.

I love the language of whitewater kayaking. Even though specialized language can be an obstacle for readers, this stuff is intuitive and colourful: from dancing and shredding and enders, to window-shading and wrecking.

The actual river is called "Kaministiquia". Clearly, it would take a greater poet than me to shoehorn that into a poem! (Although we invariably call it "The Kam".) The pot-hole gorge is he best spot. Further downstream are the falls: a beautiful tourist attraction, but hardly a place for safe kayaking!

Spectacles
March 24 2015


When I used to act
strictly amateur
and mostly bad
but friends and family clapped anyway,
the best part was dressing-up

in costumes and wigs.

Because transformation begins
from the outside in.
Because if clothes make the man
they also unmake him.
So behind my mask
I felt permission to change,
free from fear
and expectation.

And how given lines, ready-made
I could be witty, urbane,
instead of the usual tongue-tied stumbling dumb mistakes.
And how, squinting into blinding light
I was spared the sight
of being watched.

So can I re-invent myself
with a new pair of frames
from the optical emporium,
eye exams free, 2-for-1 sale?
Will the world seem more forgiving
through scratch-resistant lenses?
Will I see new possibilities
and be seen, fresh?

Dress-up, and make-believe
are child's play,
the standing ovation
intoxicating as love.
How willingly
we suspend disbelief,

how easily fooled.
How we are all impostors, inside
keeping-up appearances.

The optician's mirrors
are bathed in flattering light.
Get close, look directly into your eyes
at the child peering out.
And smile lovingly back,
the leading man
his lines down pat

invincible 
in trendy plastic frames.

Whose grand entrance

centre-stage

awaits. 

A uniform does much the same:  inhabit the clothes, and it becomes easy to re-invent yourself. I felt this in my professional life, slipping-in to the white coat, draping the sacramental stethoscope around my neck: an extreme introvert, temporarily transformed into the opposite.

On stage, as well, I could be incredibly brave:  bigger than myself, free of being judged. This was in high school and summer camp. I never did community theatre later in life.

I've recently been looking for new frames, and realize it presents a simple and painless way to transform my image (or perhaps just reinforce it, in a classic horn-rimmed frame in a nice tortoise-shell; the pair I've yet to find!) Or maybe this is an illusion: that a minor change seems so much bigger to me than it does to anyone else -- just as only you notice the big red blemish in the middle of your forehead. Anyway, the power of outward appearance is a necessary part of the "impostor" syndrome. This is a well-documented and surprisingly common feeling that afflicts prominent and high-achieving adults: that they're unworthy of their position, don't deserve their success; and that at any moment they'll be found out and unmasked as impostors.

(Which is at least better than its envious and bitter opposite: to feel far more deserving than those who've "made it"; to feel entitled but ignored, or deprived or even persecuted. Is it odd, or is it normal, that at times I've felt a bit of both?)

Intertidal
March 22 2016


Water creatures
stranded in the tidal flats.

Baby squid
scurrying crabs.

Slow swimmers, and bottom feeders
unprepared for land.

The shrivelled tendrils of jellyfish
that may still sting.

As the ocean abruptly recedes,
and the entire known world
pulls-out from under.

The irresistible tug
of invisible force

distant mass.
An accident of gravity
the luck of time and place.

The bizarre sensation of weight.
The rasp
of mud, sand, grit,
basking sun's
thirstiness.

As a whale gasps for breath.
Its giant eye
staring straight into mine
cannot comprehend.

Because the tide
catches randomly,
there is no planning death.

Although the poem seems very concrete in its intention -- factual(ish!), descriptive, and roughly narrative -- it's really about contingency; a theme to which I've often returned: intersections of time and place ...dumb luck ...a random universe.

I try hard not to write poems about death. But the image of the beached whale conspired with the natural rhyme to make that the final word. Sometimes, a poem insists on its own direction.

The penultimate stanza drops me into the picture: also stranded on the tidal flat. If the poem has any emotional power, that may be where it lies.

I shamelessly plagiarized my own recent work. In Fish Out of Water, I also toyed with this idea of weight as something utterly novel: incomprehensible to a suddenly grounded fish, feeling it for the first time. There, I used a phrase along the lines of ...never felt/ in a thousand generations of instinct. I think a twist like this is what poetry is all about: observing closely; seeing the world with fresh eyes; the mild jolt of turning the familiar through slightly different angles of light.

The poem came to me from a quick-cut image in a recent film I saw (was it Birdman??!) At this point, the context and intent escape me. But I'm left with this picture of a flotilla of jellyfish desiccating in inter-tidal mud. They are immobilized, shrivelling into the contours of the land, their domes dull and flat, and you can just imagine their insubstantial mass quickly vanishing. My immediate thought was "if you walked barefoot over these inanimate forms, would they still sting?" Since I always lament my inability to distil -- that I use too many words, that I don't trust the reader enough -- I have to say I'm rather proud I had the self-discipline to get all that down to shrivelled tendrils of jellyfish/ that may still sting.

Anyway, I like the idea of the intertidal: of this intermediate place, not quite sea and not quite land; of transience and surprise and unmasking; of contingency and suddenness. I say "suddenness" because, as someone who lives in the middle of the continent and only on fresh water lakes (even one as daunting as Superior), the idea that a person could be caught by the tide -- unable to outrun it -- hardly seems right. But I understand this may be so.

Bus Stop

March 20 2015

The school bus stops

on the sloping shoulder
of the gravel road,

like a lumbering ladybug

hunkered close.

Diesel smoke hovers

as clumps of sloppy snow
drizzle down.

In the murky light
on the final stop

of its short-hop route

-- brakes squealing, then grinding through the gears again --

the last child descends,
skirting the fender, darting for home

with barely a glance

right or left.

Idling behind the bus
I drift back to how it was
on those long milk-run rides.

The thinly padded seats

in rusty naugahyde.

The semi-sleep
in pre-dawn light

slumped against the steel.

The small intrigues
of grade school society
-- like adult life
but without the phoney smiles.

The windows fogged with breath.
The driver's narrow-eyed check

on the loudmouthed boys
who get antsy, sitting so long.

The heady mix

of their goat-like scent

pre-pubescent sweat

and warm wet wool,

along with the lavender girls
already filling out.

I was a quiet child
who never felt he fit.
As if living life
from the outside looking in
nose pressed against the glass.
Unlike the boisterous kids
who are waving through the big back window
making funny faces

at idling cars.
As if taunting us
for being stopped.
But also envious

of grown-up life

in all its mystery, and freedom.
Who want to be me

behind the wheel.

While I think
about a fresh start,
kneeling with them
on that back bench seat.
But with all I know;
the errors, regrets,
what-ifs
and should-have-beens.
A 2nd chance
to get it right.

Or would anything change

if I could live my life

over again?

As if character were destiny;
a kind of pre-determined fate
steering us along
our predictable rut,
like this bus, on its day-to-day.

Only to end up here,
peering through layers of glass
as wipers slap the rain.

Tapping the wheel

as I obediently wait

for the bus to be on its way.



I actually never rode a bus to and from school. And certainly not on one of those long rural routes. I walked; all seasons, every year of school.

There is a generous use of pathetic fallacy here. The dreary weather matches the mood of dissatisfaction and regretful remembrance.

In my description of the ride, I end both stanzas (3 and 4) with hints of impending adulthood: the smiling duplicity; the nascent sexuality. Puberty becomes the dividing line, and with a mixture of envy and wonder we're both looking over it from opposite sides. Everything about the driver's impatience, obedience, and drudgery make the idealized freedom of adulthood grimly ironic. While the stresses of youth -- the implied lack of confidence, politics, awkward negotiation of sexuality, and regimentation of school -- put the lie to nostalgia's carefree impression.

I really have come to believe how much character (temperament, personality) is destiny. It doesn't resolve the nurture/nature debate. But it does push back in time the point at which we become effectively "fixed"; while also acknowledging how hard change is.

And I have to confess that I do feel about my own life much as the narrator does: as if I've lived life waiting for it to start; as if I'm living with my nose pressed up against the glass. I've described this feeling before, in a phrase I stole from Oliver Sachs: like "an anthropologist from Mars", an alien observer, come down to Earth.

Red Plaid Shirt
March 18 2015


I am an impostor
in my red plaid shirt,
rolling-up my sleeves
getting down to work.

Its slap-cheeked blush
picks up my complexion
like the brisk outdoors.
There's the supple drape
of flannel cotton

softly worn,

the manly restraint
of its button-up front
undone one more.

Bright red plaid
is what a man of integrity wears,
and the impractical fashionable seeker-of-status
would shun.

My favourite shirt
is now thinning, faded,
buttons missing
cuffs frayed. 
But I am not one
for newness, change,
conventional expectations
fashion's fickle dictates.

It was a gift
from a long-lost love
when we both were young.
And now that we're older
and out of touch
and not much interested
in acquisition,
it reminds me of faithfulness, service
fresh beginnings.

Of a hypothetical us,
who might have grown old together
and worn each other
like softly worn plaid.
The unspoken comfort
of an older couple
ageing gracefully, and well.
Who have no need

to impress anyone else.

As little attention as I pay to clothes (and believe me, no one pays less!), I find I'm almost always dressing in blues and greens. But the last 2 days I ended up grabbing first my ancient red rugby jersey (and immediately heard my mother's voice asking how in the world I could possibly go out in public with all those tears and holes), and then my old plaid shirt. And realized how flattering a nice shade of red can be. 

I really love red plaid, and love that shirt. Which is why it came to mind as the perfect subject for a simple poem. (I say "simple" because all my poems start out as Haiku, even though they inevitably end up -- to my ear, anyway -- containing far too many words.) It was only 3/4 through the first draft that I recalled the shirt's provenance: that it started out decades ago as a gift from her. So the poem took a totally unintended turn.

I suspect my impression of old love is idealized. But doesn't every young person falling in love talk about growing old together? And there is something about the comfort and attachment, the acceptance and ease of "old" love that can make it seem even more desirable than the intoxication and excitement of infatuation. So when I thought of growing old together, what could be more natural than calling back to that shirt: soft, worn comfortable; unpretentious, yet flattering? For me, the key line is worn each other. In the spirit of Haiku, everything this paragraphs says is contained in those 3 words.

Talking about worn each other brings up the choice I made in the subsequent line: ...softly worn plaid. I'm never keen on repeating a word; especially in consecutive lines. And I could very well have gone with soft cottony plaid, or some variation. But I really like the call-back to the 2nd stanza, word-for-word. And to my ears, "cottony" sounded too much like a laundry commercial's "cottony soft" (or is that toilet paper?!!) And aside from that, I like the slight tension in two shades of meaning in the same word: first the verb; then the adjective.

You may have noticed how I couldn't resist shoehorning into the poem my disdain for fashion (which I do, every chance I get!) Everything I despise about being fashionable is there -- if not explicitly, then at least implied: change for the sake of change; pointless (and wasteful) obsolescence; desperate status-seeking; mindless conformity; surface over depth, and appearance over comfort. My red plaid shirt is the antithesis of fickle fashion. Like a string of pearls worn with the simple black dress, it represents the classic good taste of something that’s always in fashion.

Keeping Up
March 16 2015


Is the downspout blocked
by rotting leaves, a clot of ice?
Or is it the gutter
bunged-up by sludge?
The dark congealed gunk
of slow decomposition
I remember scooping-out by hand,
back when I was conscientious
about keeping up.

The gutter brims,
water freezing, drip-by-drip
in a massive spill of ice.
It seems to froth over the edge
like a waterfall
over uneven rock,
frozen, mid-plunge.

In an off-and-on spring
the monster feeds
on freeze-and-thaw,
one long witchy finger
almost touching the ground.
Its cloudy heart
is off-yellow, dirty brown,
malignant, compared to the pure transparent glistening
of picture-book ice.

The gutter sags, pulling away from the eave
like a great protuberant gall
disfiguring its tree.
Thin aluminum bends,
useless screws
point into empty air.
A glaring sign of neglect,
portent
of letting go.
Because gravity's insistent pull
outlasts us.
Because all our works

are transient,
relentlessly tending
to the dreary entropy
of low, flat, cold.

Just as water seeks its level
the path of least resistance
takes us down.
It starts with a gutter
and ends in a derelict house,
returning to the soil
and overgrown.

Things disintegrate.
The centre does not hold.



Defer home maintenance enough, and the ubiquitous signs of disintegration, neglect, and resignation become glaringly apparent. I think the neglect here is not so much moral failure as a parable for all things coming to their prescribed end, as well as graceful acceptance.

Entropy is the lowest state of energy. So the laws of thermodynamics predict an ultimate future that's flat and cold, a universe consisting of a low homogeneous hum just this side of absolute zero. My accusing eavestrough is the most obvious sign of collapse: just as dripping water seeks its level, the path of least resistance is down.

The title is not only both literal and metaphorical (metaphorically -- keeping up with chores; and literally -- resisting gravity) but also misdirection. It's recapitulated in the first stanza, which I hope sets up an expectation that accompanies the reader until she finally realizes it's time to let it go; until she recognizes that the poem is about the opposite of keeping up: tak(ing) us down, surrendering to gravity, acknowledging this common end. Of course, I stole The centre does not hold (Yeats -- The Second Coming). But what could be better to describe the centrifugal disintegration pictured here: the eaves trough pinging off its attachment, the beginning of things spiralling out and away?

The personification in the 3rd stanza almost takes on the quality of a fairy tale monster. Especially when you get to the last line -- the reference to picture-book ice. So I'm not sure how well the subsequent comparison to a tree gall works: after the witchy monster, it kind of comes out of nowhere; then worse, leads nowhere. But looking at the house with a bit of distance, and seeing this big deforming bulge, that was the image that almost immediately came to mind. It seemed too good to let go ...despite my evil internal editor whispering his misgivings into my ear!

I can understand this poem being read as dark: the perfect accompaniment to feeling overwhelmed by to-do's on a cold, wet, overcast day. But I think it also suggests a certain enlightened serenity: a philosophical acceptance of the ultimate reality; an admirable humility toward self-important busy-work and material possessions. This is especially so in the lines Because/ gravity's insistent pull/ outlasts us/ and all our works are transient. And what's really so negative about returning to the soil? It suggests to me the source of life, new growth, and a kind of posterity.

... Meanwhile, when the weather warms up, I'm going to see what I can do about that awful looking eaves trough. Apparently, I'm not yet ready to gracefully let go! (Although there isn't actually an icicle. Just the steady drip-drip-drip of cold water, the deformed silhouette of the roofline, and an eaves trough I hope isn't yet a total write-off.)

Broken
March 12 2015

The big ceramic mug
made of earthy stuff
like mud, porcelain, clay,
a substance that suits its weight
and constancy.

Solidly set 

on the kitchen table,

its thick-walled heft
armoured

in a hard enamel coat.

So when it lost its handle
I took it badly;
bone-white, where it cracked
in a jagged edge
beyond repair.

It looks wounded, unbalanced;
like a one-armed man,
the abandoned half
that was a couple, once.

How I loved that mug,
its generous grip, substantial lip
in a subdued bluish-grey,
finished flat
with a glossy swirl.

Beyond repair, they informed me.
But still, I can cup it in my hands
surround its warmth.
Because there is something about being broken
that makes us want to take care
accept without judgement,
ease suffering
console the hurt.

A favourite mug
that has faithfully served
will always have its place.

They don't make big heavy mugs like this, anymore: not with such substantial handles and wide lips and hefty walls; none that sit so solidly on the kitchen table. I have a matching one; but a crack has also appeared in its handle, so it's only a matter of time.

Broken things -- like a wounded bird, a limping pup, an injured child -- arouse a protective instinct in us. Inanimate objects can, as well. To me, my favourite mug looks somehow vulnerable, incomplete, and in need of love.

(Coincidentally, twice in the past 3 days I came across a completely new word, Kintsugi (from the Japanese), which is the art of fixing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with gold, silver, or platinum. The aesthetic idea is to incorporate the history of breakage and repair into the piece, rather than attempt to camouflage it. A local potter told me that my broken mug is unfixable. Perhaps he wasn't familiar with the Japanese art of Kintsugi. Or perhaps he was, but also knew that this technique won't work on a handle.) 

Winter Driveway
March 12 2015

Snow accumulates
over a long winter

on our rattle-trap drive,

until you realize

how high above the ground

the hard-packed snow has grown,

layer-by-layer

each pass of the plough.

Evening out

washboard and potholes,
submerging the endless rocks
that poke-up, in an annual crop
from bottomless earth.

The same way glaciers are made;
time, incrementally working,
turning dustings of snow
to a mountain of ice.

But come spring
the immaculate surface
is reduced to slush and mud, a morass of ruts
that make the long steep drive
impassable.
Like most things, it seems
a zero sum game;
what we gain in winter, we pay in spring
when a quick thaw
can cut us off for weeks.

Which is justice, I suppose,
because living so far off the road
was a great attraction for me;
the sense of detachment, the glorious peace,
the foolish illusion

of self-sufficiency

in which I indulged.

Stranded cars
in the frozen gumbo
of our poorly drained drive,
spinning their wheels
digging-in
deeper and deeper.
While we slog along
with backpacks and gumboots,

heading for home

in the frigid dark.

I rather like the sort of merciless symmetry here: the zero-sum game; the rough justice of my self-serving illusions. But the poem wasn't written to send a message. I really just wanted to write about this treacherous driveway, giving and taking away. And -- like another favourite "g" word, gobsmacked -- any time I can get gumboots and gumbo into a poem it's well worth writing!

Contemplating Permanence
March 11 2015


The front yard
of my narrow city lot
is temperamental grass.
Which never looks well,
pale and wan
in the heat and smog
hemmed-in by shadow.

So I've torn out the lawn.
Dug up dry compacted soil.

Yanked crabgrass,
unreeling in long tenacious strings
that slip, and catch, like cogwheels.
Pulled dandelions,
thick fibrous roots

dangling like daggers.  

I am an ancient conqueror
salting the earth.

A rock garden has taken its place.
With its pleasing geometry.
Its packed paths
of sterile sand
culled of growth.
Its smooth round stones
honed

by eons of water.

And its Zen-like capacity
for stillness.

Rain washed rocks
gleaming with sunlight,

brown and grey
ochre and rust.
Hot in summer

and warm at dusk

and cold as night.
Then all winter, resting beneath the snow,
with a steady certainty
of which I am envious.

Which reminds me of my insignificance.
From the needy grass I tended
to this self-sufficient stone,
which sits
oblivious of me.
Our puny lives, against rock's dense gravity
outlasting us all.

But the illusion of order
is also my conceit,
river rocks
ripped from their cool streams
and positioned by me,
as if nature's only purpose
were to please the eye,
confirm my mastery
over all I see.

Yet here I find myself
down on my knees,
tearing weeds
from my perfect garden
of perennial rock.
Which I thought had freed this citizen-philosopher
from lawn care,
the imperative
of growth at any cost.

So hard as I try
to contemplate permanence
my garden resists.
Because even rocks
cannot calm time.
And metastatic nature persists,
no less oblivious.


Another poem about man's hubris, his illusion of agency.

I like the vaguely querulous tone of frustration I think you can sense in the 2 closing stanzas : he wants to be all spiritual and Zen-like, but the outside world is too much with him. When all along, the calm and detachment are to be found within, not without.

In real life, I replaced my grass with low-growing junipers, not rocks. I thought I had forever freed myself from weeding and watering, cutting and fertilizing. Low maintenance nirvana. …Not a chance. The rest of it, yes. But weeds still grow unchecked, and without my manual labour may very well have choked the life out of my beautiful junipers.

Fish Out of Water

March 9 2015

A winter fish,

ripped from the lake

and tossed aside.

Where it flops

on the hard white surface,

thrashes, slaps, skirls

across the ice.

Shocked

from the constancy

of its underwater home

by the cold astringent thinness

of this parallel world.

By the sensation of weight

never faced

in instinct’s millions of years.

Paper-thin, velvet-red

its gills frantically flare,

grasping for purchase

in insubstantial air.

A glassy eye

staring sideways

from its flat round socket,

rendered sightless

by unrefracted light,

the brightness

of alien sun.

Death by freezing

is a mercy, in winter

sitting by the open hole,

which is black, and still, and bottomless

in the brilliant expanse of ice.

Because in summer’s merciless sun

it’s a battered oar, skull crushed,

in bilge, swimming with butts

that stinks of gutted fish.

Crude, but quick;

the spongy give

of its fine-boned head.

We are cruel

to inanimate fish,

who have no inner life

and, by rights, are ours.

Who quicksilver slip

with slime,

unnerve us with their staring eyes

side-to-side

behind.

Who bleed as bright as us

but cold.

A fish out of water

must end its life gobsmacked

gasping in air.

As if from one breath to the next

we were flung from mother earth

into the black void of space;

eyes bulging, blood boiling

our silent screams unheard.

I was reading a critique of a new TV show, described in terms something like your "run-of-the-mill fish-out-water cop show". The idea of using the cliché literally, and not as metaphor, appealed to me. So here is another animal-themed piece to go along with all the other fish poems, not to mention my menagerie of deer, dogs, foxes, hawks, elephants, wolves, horses, flies, spiders, dragonflies, mosquitoes, honeybees, ducks, and geese (among all the others I’ve surely written, but don’t recall).

I'm a hypocrite. I eat meat and fish (not much of the former, a lot of the latter), but hate hunting. Even the cruelty of fishing disturbs me, notwithstanding how hard it is to feel empathy for cold-blooded and glassy-eyed fish. Ironically, I live on a lake that's very popular with fishermen, all year round.

The idea that a lobster can be boiled alive and feel nothing is preposterous. Fish may not have rich inner lives; but they certainly do feel pain and fear. They must, because pain and fear are essential to survival, and so it's hardly an anthropomorphic fallacy to imagine that all vertebrate life shares these fundamental neurological functions.

I like alien sun. Imagine living your entire life in the cool dark lake, only to be rudely plucked into a diametrically different dimension: the shock of a parallel universe that existed all along, just beyond the ceiling of the air/water interface. And by rights, are ours returns to an old theme for me: man's presumption that the earth is at his pleasure, there for the taking; the conceit of man's dominion, conferred by God.

Anyway, any time I can shoehorn gobsmacked into a poem, it's well worthwhile!

Last Car

March 6 2015

It was blue and chromed and finned,
on thick pneumatic whitewalls
with shiny hub-capped rims

like big bulbous mirrors.

The old man's last car
was immaculate,
buffed and vacuumed and waxed
like some sainted virgin statue,
oiled exactly
every 4 months.

The engine had a slow gurgling rumble,
as if all that metal
muffled sound.

It majestically lumbered 
through slushy gears,

smooth as unction, but hardly fast;

a 3-speed transmission

hungrily running

on dirt-cheap gas.

Driven back and forth
to church, the club, the store,
to Sunday family lunch
at his son's suburban home.
Like the milkman's horse
who could walk the route blindfold
all by itself.

In his old clothes

on his dwindled frame

the old man looks lost.

Just as he does in that gleaming mass

of heavy-gauge steel,

sitting

in its vast interior

on the front bench seat,

small, and breakable.

Two hands gripping the wheel

as if the car might whiplash-off,

2 tons of inertia

on a rocket V-8.

A land yacht
proceeding over the asphalt

at a regal pace,

and in its wake
horns honking, fists shaking
pedestrians
leaping out of the way.
But in your last car
it's easy to be oblivious;
a shrunken man, peering over the dashboard rim

who can't help admiring

his creamy vinyl, shiny glass
space-age plastic trim.

It was eventually sold
to a used car emporium
for quick cash;
later, scrapped and crushed.
So was his a wasted life
keeping up appearances?
Would it have made a difference
had he known its ignominious finish
before he died?

Because a man does what he does
out of duty, love, pride.
And we all need to be needed
need to take care.

So now he rests in peace
beneath a polished granite slab,
a putting green, of immaculate grass,

fresh flowers weekly.
And we remember him
standing with a chamois cloth
beside his big Roadmaster Buick,
beaming proudly
at the gleaming car.

This sounds like a simple story, as well as a cheap chance to wax nostalgic -- to lovingly describe one of those great old land yachts of a car. But I think there are more existential questions here.

There's our relationship to things, to meaningful possessions.

There is the worth of what we do from the perspective of the end of life. (The first scratch on a brand new car, for example: all that futile angst, thinking back years later when you scrap the thing for next to nothing.) And so much of what we do is junk, anyway, when you take a long enough view. "Keeping up appearances", for example. ...A rather liberating thought!

In a sense this isn't a legitimate question at all. Because the man is the car: it represents his aspirations and values and character more than mere possession. His sense of self would have been incomplete without it. After all, it's not the actual car that's his legacy. What matters far more than any shallow materialism is the way he conducted himself: the steadfastness, caring, and stewardship the car represents.

On the other hand, there is something sad about people who invest their lives in taking care of material things. I admire the frugality and responsibility this can represent. But in the fullness of time, everything turns to dust; so that the preoccupation also become a waste of energy, a misplacement of priorities.

The part of the poem that affects me most, though, isn't necessarily a comment about the things we own: And we all need to be needed/ need to take care. This thought came to me soon after I got Skookum, my dog. Having lived alone all my life, and having no dependents, this obvious truth -- of being needed and taking care -- came to me like a revelation. So this lavishing of care on a material possession can be a form of displacement, fulfilling that essential need.

I'm always loathe to repeat a word: because it's lazy; because it's a wasted chance to take advantage of another word, with its slightly different nuance and sound. But here, the repetition of immaculate is useful (especially since "manicured" could have worked just as well). First, it calls back from the well-kept grave to the babied car. And second, it reinforces the quasi-religious references: the unction, the church-going, the sainted virgin.

This may be the 3rd or 4th time I've used Buick Roadmaster in a poem. I have a fondness for Buicks. The brand neatly evokes an earnest, mildly ambitious, and staid middle America. My father drove them for awhile -- before he became attached to Lincolns. And Roadmaster is a fabulous name; especially perfect for those vintage cars of the 50s and 60s. (Although I don't think they ever featured the big fins. Not like Cadillacs. So that was a bit of poetic licence in the opening stanza.)

You never know if this is your last car. My mother sold my father's Lincoln, and split the proceeds between the 3 sons. She had no use for it without him. It didn't fit anyone else. The everyday driver knows his car. And despite being inanimate objects, our soulless cars don't seem to behave the same for anyone else.

It's not as if he knew when he bought it. So there is a kind of melancholia about the last car. It represents the arbitrariness and contingency of life and death.