A Perfect 5th - Oct 26 2026

 

A Perfect 5th

Oct 26 2026



I have no idea what a perfect 5th is.

Except that it pleases the ear

has even been called euphoric.

The democracy of music

where even know-nothings get a vote.

Was it part of the music God chose

on the 7th day

when he took His well-earned rest?

The mellifluous interval

the orchestra ended with,

lifting their spirits

on the upper deck

as the Titanic went down?

We make music,

but really, like the laws of motion and speed of light

it’s out in the world

and we simply discover it;

as if the music of the spheres

governed the universe.

Because even the lowly mosquito 

an insect we despise

uses the 5th to harmonize,

a mating pair

adjusting their frequencies 

to create a perfect interval.

Perhaps I should listen more closely 

to that damned infernal buzz.

If only it was as simple for us

to find and keep a lover

   —  a pleasing duet

with the opposite sex

and you’ve found your perfect match.

Instead of punk,

smooth jazz

played by ear.

That knowing nothing of musical theory

or how to play an instrument,

you can still fall in love with your soulmate 

simply by listening closely

and clever use of the tongue.

A friend sent me this link, and the poetic possibilities came  immediately to mind.

https://www.mosquitoalert.com/en/los-mosquitos-armonizan-sus-zumbidos-en-duetos-de-amor/

Here’s the gist of the article:

“Until not so long ago it was thought that insects were great masters of timing and rhythm when it came to mating, just think of the summer concerts of cicadas and crickets, but they did not control the pitch very much, however the mosquitoes did. make. In fact, when both sexes adjust their frequencies, the interval between the pitch of the male mosquito and that of the female mosquito comes very close to what musicians call a perfect fifth. For centuries, composers considered the fifth interval to be the most euphoric of all, something that seems to work in the case of mosquitoes: if the male manages to create a duet with the female, creating a fifth interval, the chances of being chosen and reproduce multiply. In other words, the female tends to choose the male who best sings her duet.”

Making Do - Oct 25 2025

 

Making Do

Oct 25 2025

I sometimes watch my hands

at work

as if they’re disembodied;

unattached

and acting on their own.

No, they aren’t a farmer’s hands,

broad and fleshy

with the worked-in grime

that’s impervious to scrubbing.

But still, all lives are hard

and the signs unavoidable;

the calluses

and knobby joints,

bad nails

and jagged scars

left to heal on their own.

I notice the ageing skin

it’s too late to help,

slack and blemished

and close to the bone.

But also the skill they show,

from muscle memory

to millimetric control.

I notice the injuries

mapped on their terrain

like signposts

on my road-trip of life

I can travel in reverse

  — the knife that slipped

in a game of dare,

the nails I bit

waiting to hear,

and the knuckle 

that sucker-punched the wall.

I notice the touch

they’re capable of

and that sometimes scares me;

both the reaching out

and flinching from,

the neediness

that leads me who knows where.

Did evolution engineer the human hand

so precisely

it couldn’t be improved upon?

Are 5 digits

  — no more, no less — 

the optimal number?

Is the angle between finger and thumb

the best possible?

And why a pinkie

shorter than the rest?

Why didn’t mother nature

make a hand strong enough 

to crush steel;

a hard touch

to complement the soft?

Or, given how we abuse the power

we have even now,

would that be too much

for the things we hold dear

and people we love?

Far more likely

it was accident and randomness

over vast stretches of time.

Which is how evolution

came up with the platypus

as well as with us

with all our quirks and flaws

  —  by making do

and seeing what works.

As if design studio

kept throwing jelly against the wall

just to see what sticks.  

So I suppose a man smarter than me

could come up with something better.

A purpose-built instrument

of flesh and blood,

the Swiss army knife of hands.

Or even better, a titanium one,

with finely jewelled gears

carbon-fibre tendons

and lab-grown skin.

Clockwork hands

programmed precisely. 

As for me, I’m content as is.

Hands so familiar 

I rarely notice them,

and hands that have served me well

these many years.

I’ve stopped watching now.

My eyes are on the screen

as my hands type away;

missing keys

or double-tapping them,

stopping to scratch

or run one through my hair.

Working hands,

imperfect as they are.

Hands say a lot about a person. They embody personal history. They keep us in touch with the world. They’ve allowed us to build a technological civilization, and — through writing — save, transmit, snd amplify knowledge. 

This poem began with the farmer’s hands of the second stanza, inspired by a photographic essay in the weekend Globe on the loss of the family farm. It included an image of the hand of the author's father, and the caption under it contained the description “ …blackened, dried, and cracked by manual labour …”.  That set me off. (Unfortunately, I can’t reproduce the photo here.)

https://globe2go.pressreader.com/article/282235197651169

I’ve been wondering why everyone’s building humanoid robots, which doesn’t strike me as necessarily the optimal conformation. Is it because familiarity makes human looking robots less scary? Domesticating them, you could say. Is it because they fit into world built for bodies of our size and shape? Or because we labour under the conceit that we couldn’t be improved upon? That we are the ultimate product of evolution?   . . . As if!

Hence the digression into evolution. Because the hand is probably not optimal. After all, it’s the product of a hit and miss process that makes do; that manages to repurpose traits that were selected for one thing and then use them for another. A series of kluges and approximations. Evolution isn’t planned. It has no intent. There is no such thing as a more or less evolved creature, as depicted in the so-called evolutionary tree (with us, naturally, at the top): there is only better or less suited to the environment an organism finds itself in. Yes, intelligence can be stratified. But if an animal does perfectly well without our intelligence, is it necessarily “lower”? Just because we privilege intelligence is no reason to think evolution does.

Searching - Oct 23 2026

 

Searching

Oct 23 2026

I am looking for a small orange ball

in a tangle of brush

in a crush of overarching trees.

Roots underfoot

claw at my feet.

The slope is uneven

ground soft

and light not for long

as the evening sky darkens.

The dogs, who have lost the scent

race excitedly,

tracing rough circular paths

with their noses to the ground

and ears pinned back,

at times

leaping like tightly sprung cats

ambushing prey.

On 4 graceful legs, they seem to levitate

over dense scrub

rotting logs

and through the thick scrim of branches

sprouting from the ground.

If not guided by some 6th sense

then by the grace of a god

who watches over the innocent

— the young children

and dumb animals

who can’t fend for themselves

and don’t know any better. 

While I am earthbound

and not so innocent,

slipping, tripping, and mincing my way,

ducking under branches

and bulling through the overgrowth. 

I watch, they smell.

But in the dark, they see better than me,

and their superhuman noses

work just as well.

So while I concede,

they were born to retrieve

and will run until their hearts explode;

single-mindedly

relentlessly

and sometimes even recklessly.

Because to my dogs

who live in the perpetual now

a small orange ball

well-chewed, and covered in slobber

is all that matters in the world

the meaning of life.

Something I’ve been searching for, most of mine.

Bullet Points - Oct 22 2026

 

Bullet Points

Oct 22 2026

• Just give me the gist
• skinny
• big picture.
• The lowdown, without the clutter,
• the cut-to-the-quick
• minus the puffery.

• The executive summary,
• distilled
• point-by-point;
• because important people like me
• can’t wait.

• I’m too impatient for detail
• nuance
• earnest argument.
• Just tell-me-like-it-is
• without the prolixity,
•   —  simple words
• a kid would understand.

• Because I count on getting the time I save
• back at the end.
• My plan to beat death
• barrelling ahead
• right on schedule!

Ways of Missing - Oct 21 2026

 

Ways of Missing

Oct 21 2026

I don’t mean missing out

or that missing tooth.

Not missed opportunities,

and not the bus that left without you,

standing in the rain

breathing exhaust. 

I mean the other ways.

How you can pass on the street

and miss each other

looking down at your phone.

How you can miss someone

who was once a friend,

is the lover who left,

or was taken from you

too soon;

whether by slow dementia

some chronic disease 

or sudden death.

How you can go missing yourself.

Perhaps to escape

failure, abuse, neglect,

or for just a change of air

  — a time-out

from the struggle and stress

of daily life.

Sometimes, even missing yourself,

putting distance

between the old version

and the reinvented you

you’re either working toward

or hoping to

  —  this time, for sure. 

And then there’s the girl

who disappeared one night

never to be seem again. 

The missing person 

that keeps haunting you

with guesswork, and dark conjecture.  

Like, why, and where, and when  . . .

  . . . The how, you dare not think about. 

Is she a Jane Doe

in some unmarked grave, 

sex slave in Dubai,

or homeless in Seattle?

A life left unanswered

perhaps for years.

To law enforcement 

a missing person is no priority.

The police will suggest she ran away,

remind you

that sovereign adults

answer only to themselves.

Trouble is, not only do you need their help,

the brush-off hurts. 

When the helplessness

feeds despair.

When all you can do

in the uncertainty

is imagine the unthinkable.

But you fear resolution as well.

Because while not knowing is hard

closure can hurt;

when knowing the worst

makes you miss them all the more.

This poem was inspired by a beautiful story I heard on The Moth — one of my favourite podcasts. Here’s a link:  https://www.themoth.org/stories/episodes/mortality

It’s the final story, and you can find it by fast forwarding to the 34 minute 10 second mark. (The others are also good listening!)

Assisted Living - Oct 19 2026

 

Assisted Living

Oct 19 2026

The assisted living facility

that took my mother in

was pleasant enough.

She was placed in her own small apartment

with a clever kitchen

that was foolproof, but never used,

and where she kept on living

a few more years.

Yes, of course a facility,

she couldn’t live on her own.

But does anyone not need assistance

to live their life,

hasn’t had it all along?

Even the libertarian

who exalts the sovereign self

depends on others,

the survivalist

who believes he’ll never need help

eventually will.

As if it’s even desirable 

to live like a feral animal

hunkered down in its lair

all alone.

I think of the help I received,

the community

I leaned on.

Of the stranger I saw

help a blind man cross the street,

elbow in hand

guiding him firmly to the curb.

And of the dog I lost,

and the good samaritan I’m grateful to

for finding her.

When she moved into the facility 

where she would live out her life

we packed light.

There were the usual essentials

we assembled in advance.

A landscape painting

to brighten the place.

And some practical clothes

for a lover of fashion

who always dressed immaculately,

whether attending a premiere 

or dashing to the corner store.

And, of course, some sentimental tchotchkes

she would have chosen if she could.

Not to mention the precious mementos 

of a life well-lived

for the woman who forgets.

A black and white photograph

of smiling newlyweds

  — the parents who raised her

looking impossibly young.

A modest urn

with my father’s ashes

  — her help-mate all the years

we were a family.

And pictures of the kids

in mortarboards and capes

she supported on the way;

faces she could no longer name

but found somehow familiar. 

The vibrant young woman

who became a stooped old lady

with thinning blue/grey hair.

The young mother, who stopped taking care,

and hardly ever complained

when an attendant changed her diaper

helped her undress;

the kind people

at Sunset Acres

who sometimes grew impatient

but assisted all the same.

Assisted living

from birth to death.

I overheard the phrase “assisted living facility” mentioned incidentally somewhere, and it instantly struck me that no one — of any age or ability — lives unassisted. 

We live in a complex interdependent society. Even the smug survivalists are fooling themselves. Our lives are only rich and easy because we depend on legions of others, on complicated systems and logistics we take for granted but never see and know nothing about. Not to mention family, friends, and the kindness of strangers.

Sunset Acres is a little much! But it was the first name that came to me, and it fit. So I kept it.

Sitting Still - Oct 18 2026

 

Sitting Still

Oct 18 2026

Sit still, I tell myself.

Just as 3rd graders, confined to their desks

are instructed;

the fidgeting boy 5 rows back,

the girl in the corduroy jumper

fussing with her braids.

The antsy child who wasn’t fed

and barely slept 

with all that shouting through the wall. 

Sitting is hard for kids,

fizzing with energy

like carbonated drinks

shaken cold,

Coca Cola over ice.

So why can’t I?

Belly up to the desk

put pen to paper?

A white page

against the darkly stained wood,

staring blankly back at me

like a bottomless hole

I need to fill by deadline.

But there are blue skies,

and through the open window

the sound of children at play.

I am a child again, in that 3rd grade class

staring out the big bank of windows

at a grassy playing field.

Is it true 

that when a shark stops moving it dies?

Perhaps we weren’t made to sit still.

Perhaps you have to get out

immersed

in the sturm und drang of a life.

Because sitting at a desk

with a bite-mark riddled pen

looking out an open window,

what is there to write about

but eye strain and sore teeth?

And who wants to read about a writer’s angst?

Which is when I fell into it.

That gaping hole

became a portal into other worlds,

like the mirror in Alice,

the magic door

in the dusty wardrobe

that led to Narnia.

So even though I’m sitting still 

my mind is travelling.

Whether to a tea party in Wonderland

where it’s always 6 pm,

or back in time

to a Grade 3 class

5 rows back.

Where an 8 year

with a pencil between his teeth

daydreams who knows what.

Perhaps imagining 

what he’ll become

50 years from now.

I no longer sit at desk with pen in hand. I recline in my easy chair, tapping on the keyboard of my iPad.

Neither do I don’t get writer’s block. If anything, its opposite.  Perhaps “writer’s logorrhoea”? 

Do I spend an inordinate amount of time sitting? Yes; and have no trouble sitting still while I’m writing and in that delightful flow state when time disappears. (I’ve written before about once being so immersed I only noticed later on that the space heater near my leg had given me a 2nd degree burn!)

So the poem is — as usual — not autobiographical. But the notion of mind travel is    . . . because it’s universal. One doesn’t need to move travel. The mind wanders. Sitting still may be unnatural, and it may be susceptible to distraction, but it can also be a ticket to anything and anywhere. 

As usual, I had no idea where this poem would go. It truly felt like taking dictation as one word after another came to me. So I’m delighted it found its way to this ending, the closed time loop between the writer’s older and younger self: one looking ahead, the other looking back. 

Btw, to answer the question the poem poses, only some species of shark have to keep swimming to keep water flowing over their gills (“ram ventilation”). Others can pump oxygenated water through their gills using mouth and throat muscles (“buccal pumping”). (That is, according to Gemini AI.)

Coke is still made with coca, but the cocaine is now chemically removed. So the original unadulterated Coke would have been an even better analogy for an antsy kid! Although a good editor would probably remove the Coca Cola line entirely — redundant. Fortunately, I’m my own editor (and probably a bad one!), so free to indulge.

My thanks to Joshua Rothman, whose piece in the New Yorker (Why is it So Hard to Sit Still?) inspired this: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/open-questions/why-cant-you-sit-still

Greased Watermelon - Oct 16 2026

 

Greased Watermelon

Oct 16 2026

The word that comes to me

on the cusp of sleep

hours after I needed it.

It was there, on the tip of my tongue

before slipping away;

a letter or two

that linger like the aftertaste

that leaves you wanting more.

As frustrating

as the greased watermelon

at a pool party

squirting out of your hands.

As the maching at the penny arade

with a box full of prizes

and the dangling claw.

The word, slipping from my tongue

like that cheap watch

from its loosely grasping tentacles.

Memory, but not a good one

when it's there – you know it is --

but can't retrieve it.

There

on the tip of your tongue

There

in some hinterland of your brain

at the bottonm of a long winding sulcus

where it moulders away

in some grey-haired neuron

too vain to use a cane.

A long way to go,

like those Sunday drives down gravel roads

looking at fallow fields

and hearing the kids complain.

Is this how dementia starts,

the first shiver

in a death of cold?

Is my brain overcrowded,

like rush hour

when a lane is closed

and no one lets you merge?

Or is it corroding,

rust

flaking off the wiring

and mucking up the veins?

But doesn't getting the word, eventually

count for something?

Could this be just normal ageing?

When you brain takes its time,

but wisdom

helps you make the most of it.

When judgement is better

and lessons learned.

And when the urgency

of impetuous youth

has turned to composure;

after all, why hurry time

when there's so little left?

It’s true. On tests, younger people show faster processing speeds. But older people make up for this with more experience and better judgement. I lose more words from the tip of my tongue than I once did. But I know more words   . . . not the mention use them more cleverly!

When a word eludes me, I find that the harder I push, the more it recedes. Often, a little distraction — diverting (took a couple of seconds to retrieve that one just now!) my train of thought — is enough to unblock it. But sometimes I just have to put it aside and wait. It may take a day; but then, out of the blue, there it is: disinterred from some deep dark recess of my brain. My subconscious has been beavering away in the background all along.