Sunday, November 29, 2015

Felled
Nov 28 2015


The road
badly overgrown.

Trailing vines, like trip-wires
branches lash my eyes.
I bulldoze through,
stumbling
on weathered rocks
camouflaged with dirt,
gnarled roots
that knuckle-up from earth.

Weeds colonize openings
trees compete for light.
And in the cool gloom of the forest floor
opportunistic plants
plant their flags;
wild flowers
papering the ground like confetti
after the victory parade.

When it became impassable
we abandoned the road
and the forest took it back.
How nature encroaches
on the works of man,
our conceits are subsumed in soil.

Leaving nothing
to tell of us.
Except a few scattered stumps
level as table-tops,
felled trees
crumbling into rot.

Where new growth
sprouts from their trunks,
black ants
scurry in long sinuous columns.
Claim as their own
a no-man's-land
of waterlogged bark
shattered heartwood.



I share a very long driveway with 3 neighbours. It's technically their land, and I depend on an easement for access. I bought this place about 17 years ago, but only just now learned that my predecessor here had gone to great expense to build his own road on his own land. Did he dislike being dependent on others? Or did he simply have a walking- and ski-trail in mind?

Not only did I never know this, I've never seen any residue of this abandoned road. So I plan to explore, and see what -- if any -- evidence is left. In the meantime, I let my imagination have free reign, and came up with this poem.

I like the density of exuberant first growth. I like bulldoze, which calls back kind of ironically to the forgotten builders. I like the martial theme: our "war" on nature , that nature won. And I like the final line, shattered heartwood: I can hear the echo of "broken heart", and with it a quality of rueful remembrance and pained regret.

Inexorable nature vs. the hubris of man: hardly a new theme for me. And conveniently depicted by ants: who, like the proverbial cockroach, will probably inherit the earth. This is also the point of view I'm most partial to: microcosm and close observation; directing my gaze to the smallest of things.

I chose Felled as the title because it's an unusual word; especially when read alone, without context. I like a cryptic title: it invites the reader in, if only to find out what's up. And I think it directs the emphasis of the poem to the ending, which is just where it should go: to the tiny world of ants, the rotting heartwood.

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Door
Nov 25 2015


The door was double-hinged
swinging in, as well as out.

It took all my weight, shouldering against.
Then whispered swiftly shut
with a soft pneumatic hiss.

Was that a click,
tumblers falling
locking cogs enmeshed?

And looking out
through the small glass pane
I saw only my face, looking back.
The darkness of night
a mirror's silvered paint.

Triple-glazed
and reinforced with mesh
it seemed unbreakable.

The massive door
I shouldered against,
that let me in
this windowless space.
Stale air
with a vaguely chemical scent.

No exit
despite what they say
about fate, surrender,
trust.
Impatience
trying me.

Thinking
I cannot wait.
                           …I must.
                                                …I will.










I read an article about a man (Abbas Kairostami) who has spent years photographing doors, and whose work is on exhibition at the Aga Khan museum (in Toronto). These are not ordinary doors. They're doors with character and the patina of age, the kind of massive wooden doors and dilapidated doors and doors with stories to tell that you'd see on some ancient building in the Middle East, or sub-Saharan Africa. The pictures were beautiful, and made me think that the lowly utilitarian door was worthy of a poem.

At my new pool, there is a hydraulic door that at first caught me by surprise: if I don't lean all my weight pushing against it, it will snap shut, throw my balance off.

Somehow, the image and the experience conflated, and gave rise to this poem.

I was thinking of the old adage: when a door closes behind you, a window opens. And maybe something about a gilded cage, as well.

The poem can also be read metaphorically: something about life choices and bridges burned, about self-fulfilling prophecies and dead ends. Is he locked in, or locked out? Did he cage himself?


The poem ends with perseverance, the indomitable life force: as in Beckett's Godot, when there is no choice in life, we simply go on.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Wrestling Cable
Nov 23 2015


Copper cable, thick as my wrist
in its black glistening skin
was stiff with cold.

Electricians
wrestling cables
through boxes, conduits, holes,
plugging-in
naked wires.

The switch flicks
the line goes live.
Copper hums
its confined Niagara
of easy power.

Do electrons race
at the speed of light
along its copper strands?
Or do they nudge one another
on down the line
telegraphing the wave;
how excitement
becomes a contagion?

Insulation stripped, virgin metal exposed
revealing its rich coppery tone,
lighter than gold, but even more lustrous.
Too beautiful, I thought
to enclose in a lightless box.

While the old cables
are dull.
Electricity, or age
has depleted their brightness.

But still
copper is inexhaustible;
not one atom stripped,
no dark corrosion
corrupting its length.

And still conducting a fatal shock
easy as fingers
flick off, and on.



The electrician was hooking up my new generator today. Holding a light for him, I joked that if he decided to be an electrician because there was no hard physical labour involved, he apparently chose badly!

This is a job I would never volunteer for. Electricity scares me.

When the insulation was stripped and the virgin copper exposed, I was struck by its beauty:  a rich bright copper colour, lighter than gold, but even more lustrous.

The old wires made me wonder, as well. Decades of use have not left them brittle or corroded. And despite the many millions of volts that have passed through them, it appears not a single atom has burned away. Copper gives, yet remains pure and undiminished.

Although unintended, I think an attentive reader might find a sexual metaphor running through the poem. Consider stiff with cold …naked wires (I’ll discreetly ignore plugging-in!) confinedeasyexcitement and contagionstripped and virgin and exposed. And finally dark(ness) and corrupt(ion).  …Or maybe it’s not so much attentiveness as it is the mind of the beholder!




Tropical Blood
Nov 19 2915


Her tropical blood.
Salt-water thin
ran hot.

Her sumptuous skin,
cool
as loosely woven cloth.
As if her body could breathe
through every supple inch;
a small amphibious creature
in its permeable cover.

Her languid grace
in the indolent heat.
Sultry eyes, half shut
like a permanent act of seduction.
No wonder why
she never would be rushed.

And her sun-bleached hair
that was untamable
in the swampy warmth, equatorial rains.
Which I had always loved,
she struggled to straighten.

Who followed me north,
but only once.
Unbearable cold
that clutched at her throat
left her gasping for air.
Ice-picks, piercing her heart
like hard tungsten steel.

You’d think a tropical flower
would last in the cold,
unaccustomed, though it is.
Fresh
as a gaudy orchid
in the florist’s glass-walled fridge.
Or cool jasmine’s
undetectable scent,
volatile atoms at rest.

Yet still, she refused to stay;
fleeing winter
at the first cold blast.

As if she had known
the moment she arrived.
When the heavy door hissed open
and she stood, looking out.

As if she couldn’t help herself.
Like a butterfly, migrating south,
her gossamer wings unfolded
and she fluttered into flight.
Erratic, but sure,
tacking left, then right
and heading straight for the light.




The subject was originally a "he". I was thinking of Jo-Jo, a man I met in Turks and Caicos (my sister-in-law's handyman and all-round Mr. Fix-it). He was raised in the Philippines, and had lived all his life in the tropics. I complained of the heat. He recounted his only visit to Canada. It had been in the fall, and hardly up north: but the cold hit him with physical force as he stepped off the plane, and he never could get warm. I think I understood, because a northerner gets a similar feeling stepping through the airplane door into that heavy tropical air. It's like crossing a 2-dimensional boundary. The muggy atmosphere seems to have a substance you never noticed before.

But the poem was far more interesting when it envisioned a woman instead. And then, what would be more natural than to make her flight from the arctic chill a metaphor for lost love and disillusion? I think the end gives pause. The butterfly's wings recapitulate the delicate beauty of the flowers. But they also recall a moth: helplessly attracted to light, but risking immolation as well.

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Mongrel Colour
Nov 15 2015


How odd, the purity of white.

The creamy porcelain saucer
the virgin bride.

Black ink
messily penned
on a blank absorbent sheet,
neutral, mute, serene
in its acceptance.

The wedding bed, deflowered;
stained red
sluiced clean.

Because it's a mongrel colour
of all visible light;
difference subsumed
in inexplicable white.

Combining pigment
you get brown, drab, dead.
But light is cleansed
of all impurity,
vaulting through the universe
to its ultimate edge,
pushing-out against
the black abyss.


Muscle Memory
Nov 13 2015


The secret was
not to think too much
or think at all.

Not of broken bolts, frayed rope.
Of a flayed body,
rag-dolling down
the face of rock.

Not of the rapture
of a man-sized speck,
the rarefied beauty
of thinning air.

And never of death;
because the moment was all.

I remember the ball-player
who lost his mojo, throwing to first
when the arm got in his head.
Gravity, friction
the arc of the ball,
the point of release
the perfect toss.

The inscrutable art
of the emptied mind.
The things you can
and can't control.

Finger-tips jammed
in a seam of rock.
The point of release
where the bolt let go.




I was reading a short article (by Nathaniel Rich, in the Nov 2015 Atlantic) about the world's most famous free-climber, Alex Honnold. (The occasion was his new auto-biography, Alone on the Wall.) He is an elite extreme athlete, solo-climbing without ropes. His accomplishments are astounding; his lack of fear, even more so. There was a lot about focus and risk-taking. I briefly wondered if he might have a disorder of his amygdala: that he is neurologically wired for fearlessness. But I thought even more about his ability not to think: "non-thinking", as the piece put it. Because I over-think too much, and could use some of this enviable skill in everyday life.

I also thought about "the yips". And in particular, a former major league all-star 2nd baseman (with the Twins and Yankees) named Chuck Knoblach, who later in his career developed a horrible case of the yips: he could not make the simple throw to first. He started to think too much, and the muscle memory that enabled his arm to mindlessly execute perfect throws was lost.

So there is much to be said for not over-thinking things. And also for not worrying about the things you can't control. You can't think about the release point of the ball. You can't worry about a broken bolt. Because if you do either, you'll soon find you can't go on.

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Unseasonably Warm
Nov 10 2015


Unseasonably warm.

On the cusp of winter
that refuses to tip
into cold.
The natural order of things
we thought was set.

So the landscape sits;
leaves undressed
greenish grass, arrested.
Confused birds, that should have left
stretching-out their stay.
And the low sun, unsettling us,
as shadows lengthen
darkness comes too quick.

When the succession of seasons
we’ve always known
has broken down,
all predictions missed.

Yes, how pleasant it is;
but this steady state has us squirming
as if on hold,
expectation
penting-up.

Apprehensive
the weather gods
will exact their pay.
A zero-sum game
of a hard winter
frozen spring.

How amused they must be,
glancing down
as we fretfully wait.



This resigned pessimism seems endemic to northern people: that we will inevitably be punished for good weather; that life, at best, is a zero-sum game.

It really is unsettling, though. There is this feeling of waiting, of something impending: an uncomfortable holding pattern, and nature out of whack.

I think Weather Gods (or perhaps The Gods of Weather) would have been a much better title. But this is a good case of not wanting to steal my own thunder:  that is, best to leave  the little twist of superstition and whimsy to the end.

Sharpened Three Times
Nov 3 2015


A pencil achieves its ideal length
when it has been sharpened three times.

The way it rests
in the fleshy web
of finger/thumb,
easy balance
perfect heft.

My finger runs
its stubby nub
of dully glistening lead;
so silky smooth
to paper’s rough,
so lovely to impress.
Hard letters
softly smudged,
lined foolscap
3-hole punched.

Like a connoisseur
of fine cigars,
slowly rolling
loosely gripped.

8 faces, length-wise
are stepped like little cogs;
regular as clock-work
back-and-forth in time.
My mind, free to wander,
while finger-tips
are on their own.

Not round, or it would roll
under desks
across the floor.

Bite marks, in splintered wood
flecks of yellow paint.

I tap my lip
with fleshy tip,
sit and wonder
pencil-in,
scribble, picture, write.

The pink eraser
leaves a paper trail
of greyly scrubbed mistakes;
flubs absolved, rubber rubbing,
forgiveness granted
confessing nothing.

The sweet spot
between sharp and dull
where graphite flows.
A medium pencil's
cherished length
to have and hold.



The opening lines came from a short whimsical piece about pencils in the latest New Yorker (by Mary Norris; Nov 9 2015). Apparently, there are aficionados of pencils, historians of pencil-making, and virtuosos of perfect sharpness. I find this delightful: the love of the mundane and utilitarian; the attention to infinitesimal detail. This is the appeal of the eccentric, the hobbyist, the esoteric.

I read these lines and naturally thought "what is it that makes this length ideal?" ...and so the poem got its start.

In going from cigar-making to clock-work, the mixed metaphor in the middle stanza may be a problem. And I'm not sure if this line -- forgiveness granted/ confessing nothing -- is necessary. Does it may interrupt the flow of the poem? Is it more about cleverness than content? Other than that, I think I'd have preferred a more conversational voice: I find the rhymes a little busy, the sentence structure a little abrupt.

What I do like is the natural progression from the nicely worn nub to the pink eraser. And how the last 3 lines call back to the opening quote, closing the poem by bringing it full circle.