Thursday, March 29, 2018


Pebble
March 27 2018


There are consequences, no matter what.
Like concentric rings, rippling out
from the small rock
in the still water
you idly tossed that day.

But even when you kept on walking
and never bent
and never lobbed
inaction still has its effect;
like the lie of omission, the thing unsaid,
the best of intentions
that went unexpectedly wrong.
So either way
damned if you did, or did not.

Even in death
which you'd think would be the certain end
the world grinds relentlessly on,
secrets revealed, trust betrayed
memory corrupted, or lost.
Because events inexorably unfold.
Because we control so much less than we thought.

Except that time I paused
and watched the ripples decay.

Until the small pond
was at rest, again
and it appeared nothing had changed.
Just one more stone, set on the bottom,
smooth and small and grey.

And how many more would it take?
Water seeking its level.
The pond
eventually drained.



In a column in today's paper, something Niall Ferguson wrote really struck me. I thought every history teacher should start the first class by chalking this up on the board, and then leave it up there for the entire course: The only law of history is the law of unintended consequences. I thought about the truth of this, and what a humbling corrective it should be for all who confidently believe they should lead, and for those ideologues who pursue their beliefs with such intransigent conviction. I also thought how it applies not only to what we do, but to what we choose not to do. There are consequences to everything. Choosing inaction can be as consequential as blundering on. Or, to paraphrase the poem, you're damned if you do or you don't.

So I thought it would be interesting to play around with the theme of “unintended consequences”, and this poem is the result.

As I often do, I like to toy with cliche.

It's a challenge, locking yourself into a cliche while at the same time trying to be fresh and original.

It's kind of ironic and self-mocking, as well: the last thing a poet wants is to fall into platitudes and triteness. So intentionally jumping into the deep end is like a wink and a nudge between the reader and me.
And I like interrogating a cliche: taking a tired metaphor, and rendering it instead as something literal and concrete. Which at least wakes up the expression, making it at the same time more illuminating yet utterly silly.

Friday, March 23, 2018


Sweet Water
March 22 2018


Before the white froth of surf.
Before the green glass 
where the swells start to flatten
then bottom out.
Before the majestic procession of waves, glinting with sun
that roll metronomically shoreward
I can hear its dull roar.

And even further inland
where I first encountered the smell,
overwhelmed
by the sharp tang of brine
and mucous-coated life
and warm stagnant waste,
the fishy stink
and rotting weeds
and decomposing flesh.
The cool astringent air
heavy with fog.

And when my journey ends
at the rich inter-tidal,
teeming with shelled creatures scuttling
and soft burrowing worms,
probing birds
on bent pencil legs.
With algae, limpets, crabs.
With barnacled rocks
damp and knobbly,
tenacious plants, inured to salt,
their long bedraggled tendrils
a deep absorbent green.

Which is all too much for me
accustomed to this small land-locked lake.
Its thin water
fresh enough to drink.
Its shallow wash
over cleanly scoured stones.
The few solitary fish
slipping through the dark
of its cold still reaches.

How simple to comprehend,
how comforting
in its changelessness.
Nothing here
of the amniotic sea,
the churn of the shore,
the rich abundance
of subaquatic life.

Even the trees are marginal.
Spindly fir
and witchy black spruce,
small sheltering cedars
and struggling pines   —
the descendants
of once great whites.
Leggy aspen
in dense weedy patches,
and striking silver birch
that grow too slow to flourish.

Where I feel at home,
immersed
in its sweet water,
the earthy spice
of its sparse boreal woods,
its brisk northern air.

Far from the stench and mess and vastness
of the one great ocean
that spans the world;
the danger
its black surface conceals,
the desperate drama
of life and death
in silent bottomless depths.




This is the second time I've entitled a poem Sweet Water. (I note, too, that I've posted the first poem twice: apparently, an updated version as well as the original.) It just fits this poem too well to resist. The expression emphasizes the essential contrast that runs through the piece: the thinness of my small land-locked lake compared to the rich ocean and inter-tidal; between fresh-water and marine. Which could really all be simply contained in salt vs sweet.

This is something I've often considered: my aversion to salt-water swimming; my preference for freshwater lakes over open ocean. This probably says a lot about me: more comfortable with a simpler ecology, with smallness and stability, with less life and mess.

But what triggered this poem today was reading a piece in the latest New Yorker (March 26 2018) by Jill Lepore about Rachel Carson – the celebrated write of Silent Spring – and her earlier and more prolific writing about marine biology (The Right Way to Remember Rachel Carson). Lepore's opening paragraph was beautifully written: really, closer to poetry than prose, and something I must have re-read at least 3 times. Here it is:

The house, on an island in Maine, perches on a rock at the edge of the sea like the aerie of an eagle. Below the white-railed back porch, the sea-slick rock slopes down to a lumpy low tideland of eelgrass and bladder wrack, as slippery as a knot of snakes. Periwinkles cling to rocks; mussels pinch themselves together like purses. A gull lands on a shaggy-weeded rock, fluffs itself, and settles into a crouch, bracing against a fierce wind rushing across the water, while, up on the cliff, lichen-covered trees—spruce and fir and birch—sigh and creak like old men on a damp morning.

Frankly, I think her paragraph puts my poem to shame. But, of course, I'm writing about something different, and felt impelled to have a go at it not in the spirit of competition, but simply to say what I've been thinking about saying for awhile now. And at least my poem has given me an opportunity to share this lovely little paragraph.

Wednesday, March 21, 2018


Sense of Place
March 19 2018


They used to build
on the ruins of the old,
accreting layers
like a sea creature's shell
encrusted with age.

Impatiently striving
ever upward
no matter what had come before.
Yet beneath such busy lives
the past still dwelled;
scorned, perhaps
but at least preserved.

While we heedlessly raze it,
the debris carted away
the ground neutered.
Until all that are left
are soaring towers of steel and glass
anchored in bedrock,
untethered cities
floating on air.
No ancient tells, or tell-tale mounds of sand,
no carefully sifted layers
where further down
is further back.
In fact, no past to speak of.

So future archaeologists
will be starting from scratch
beginning with this benighted century.

A good metaphor, I think
to represent the discontinuous present
the breathless self-importance of now.
And to raise the question
have we become so forgetful
we are doomed to repeat our mistakes,
our humility lost
our sense of place?

And to wonder, when history ends
without murmur or trace,
    who will remember
        . . . who will remain?

Sunday, March 18, 2018


When Seeing is Believing
March 17 2018


Dogs do not see red.

Their rich olfactory world, drenched in smell
is bloodless.
Ripe fruit
might as well be sour green
and hard as pith.
And this sunset, magenta-pink
never existed;
its brilliant light replaced
with a dull wash
of bluish-grey.

As I am blind
to infrared, ultraviolet,
my world thin
my view impoverished.
We think we see reality
as it is,
our eyes capturing light
our minds processing it.
Because how would you know what you've missed,
squinting
through a narrow aperture
at partial glimpses
and shifting shadows,
surface the eye cannot fathom.

A manic dash
after the bright orange ball
that will always incite her,
as if taunting the killer
who lives in her core.
Or what weak yellow light is left;
orange
bled of all its redness.

But she is infallible
in fierce pursuit;
following her nose,
digging it out
from deeply drifted snow.
Then triumphantly holds up her head,
eyes glowing
with the thrill of the hunt,
jubilant tail
a brownish blur.



I've often idly wondered why these balls come only in orange. True, it's bright and easy to find – for me. But to the colour-blind dogs who are chasing after, it's at best a dull yellow, the orange bled of its red.

I've wondered something similar, driving at night, following the red glow of the car in front. Does the brightness even register? Is there at least some kind of grey ...or are they totally invisible? The latter, I have to believe: with no receptors for red, these brake lights simply cease to exist, no matter how brightly they shine.

And tonight, admiring a beautiful sunset, the same thought came to me: do they see this part of the sky as utterly dark, absent all colour and light? ( ... Which is academic, of course, since not only are the dogs' noses glued to the ground, sniffing everything in sight, but they never look up at the sky or take an interest in what's overhead – ever.)

A typical human retina has 3 types of cones: red, green, blue. While butterflies, with their tiny insect brains, have either 5 or 6, depending on the species. And the mantis shrimp may have up to 16! So the world we see is not actually the world as it is. Our version of reality is incomplete, and our intuitive understanding that seeing is believing is mere conceit.

Just imagine: the ability to see various shades of ultraviolet, or to perceive magnetic fields, or to see further into the electromagnetic spectrum. An alarming thought, actually, considering how we are bathed in radiation from all our electronic devices and the WiFi that connects them; from satellites beaming their signals down to earth; from all the microwave transmissions that invisibly fill the air; and from the stray energy that leaks from hydro lines and appliances and who knows what. Perhaps better to remain blind after all!

Wednesday, March 14, 2018


Heart's Content
March 12 2018


Heartfelt, heart melts, heart skips a beat,
heartstrings
heart leaps
heart on my sleeve.

Heart's desire, heart throb
from the bottom of my heart,
cockles warmed, whole-hearted
sweet-hearted
soft.

Have a heart, faint of heart, lose heart and will,
followed heart
change of heart
beating heart be still.

Take heart, lose heart, heart of hearts sinks,
cross my heart
in my mouth
eat it out or weep.

Heart felt, heart sick, half-hearted, numb,
heartache, heartbreak
what the heart wants — undone.

Heavy-hearted, gold-hearted, dark heart of stone,
soft-hearted, hard-hearted
heart warm to cold.

Poured out, set on, stolen lost or light,
know by heart, heart of hearts
the person after mine.

All heart, young at heart, brave heart or faint,
take heart, big heart
in the right place.

Heart bleeds, still as sweet, heart set against,
near my heart, have a heart
to my heart's content.



Monday, March 5, 2018


Secret Garden
March 3 2018


The houses stand
shoulder-to-shoulder
on ample rectangular lots.
They look out
from dark impassive windows
on cul-de-sacs, and pampered dogs
and placid sunlit streets,
where tut-tutting people
steal glances upward.
Sturdy doors
securely shut,
facades all prim and neat.

The lawns are nicely cut
but oddly idiosyncratic  —
some, like putting greens, are emerald and plush,
while others are patchy, yellowed, overrun.
Where there are majestically spreading trees
the sun-starved grass is sparse,
and where the lawns have been covered
in paving-stone, or river-rock
absent, entirely.

While in back, behind high wooden fences
secret gardens flourish
cool and green and lush.
Where people gather
in small congenial groups,
intimate couples
seclude themselves.

Now, in this long fallow season
buried under snow;
a thick blanket of white
concealing warm dark soil.
An especially private place,
where a loose thatch
of dead brown grass
shelters small warm-blooded animals.
Where succulent worms nestle
and microbial life thrives
and matter decomposes.
Where dormant roots
await rebirth.

The architecture of snow;
intricate bonds of frozen water
with tiny pockets of air.
Protecting a subterranean garden
for months on end
in this winter of discontent.

Except for the heavy tread
where someone stepped
on a warm wet day;
the virgin snow compressed,
its fine crystalline lattice
shattered and crushed.

Frost penetrates.
Entire worlds
no one even knew of
laid waste.



Somewhere – it has already escaped my mind – I read “secret garden”: 2 simple words, but somehow highly evocative. Which is where the poem started. After which it wrote itself: no planning; no idea where it would lead. Writing like this is a pleasure: it feels as if you're taking dictation; the words seem to travel from inner consciousness, along your arm, and out through the pen. Only later do you bring some critical thought to the piece, ordering its content and refining the language.

In retrospect, it seems almost inevitable that the poem would have taken the turn it did. Because it's so much my style: in its close observation, its fascination with microcosm, its idea of orders of magnitude and invisible worlds layered one on top of the other. Even in its somewhat supercilious take on bourgeois suburbia.

I like the unexpected and abrupt shifts: from front yard to back; from summer to winter; from the sun-lit world to the subterranean. I like the casual indifference of the footstep, as well as the disproportion between action and effect. I would hope the reader makes the inference at the end: that we are tiny insignificant creatures in a vast indifferent universe, subject to unimaginable contingency, or – if you are a believer – to the fickle moods of gods, so that the entire world contained in this small patch of soil could as easily be ours. (Yes, another of my recurring – and I imagine by this time tiresome – tropes: that, to quote myself, we are “tiny insignificant creatures in a vast indifferent universe”!)


Black Bile
March 1 2018


I say melancholy
over and over again.
Until all I hear is sound.
Patter, piffle, bafflegab,
or one of those long compound German words
of Teutonic exactness,
all bark and phlegm and spit.

Mouthing four syllables, of equal weight
without emphasis
or intonation.
Beginning with the lips, briefly pursed.
Then the tip of the tongue
tripping lightly.
Followed by the hard guttural
against the roof of the mouth,
and ending in a clenched exhalation of air
that becomes a sigh
if left to linger.

In the archaeology of words
black bile.
But unlike its namesake, bitter-sweet.
A mix
of rumination
disenchantment
self-pity, perhaps.
But more detached, in its sadness
than a good cry.

If yellow bile's fire
then black bile is earth.
Soil's dry metallic taste.
Its iron and chalk.
Its pungent fruit, and slow rot,
sweet hay
fresh manure
old barn.

Why does blackness
carry so much weight?
Black lie, black sheep, black witch,
black eye
the blackest of depths.
Black arts, black magic, black death,
the black dog
of the deeply depressed.
The dark night of the soul
and the darkly eternal unknown,
transcendent with wonder
as well as despair.

I am suffused with spleen
caustic as gall.
I am rich dusky oxblood.

I am wallowing
around in myself;
the bitter taste
in back of my throat,
the warm dark soil
it feels I'm under.



I was reading Rafael Campo's poem The Four Humours. The final of 4 sections is called Melancholy. This is a word that has always appealed to me: I enjoy the literalness of its roots, absolutely true to the original Greek. I love the sound and the “mouth-feel” of the word. And its nuanced meaning appeals, because I am often melancholy, and I identify with its combination of deep reflection and tempered feeling.

“Black bile”, though, seems so much more intense and emphatic than its English descendant. And there can be no doubt about its implication: the prejudice of black, the bitter poison of bile.

This piece is less linear than my recent work. It leans more heavily on mood and sensation than story-telling or constructing an argument. You might think I was depressed when I wrote this. I was not. It was much more of an intellectual exercise in exploring my response to this word than it was an expression of my state of mind.