Ice Age - May 16 2026

 

Ice Age

May 16 2026

Winter lingers

in the mountain of snow

where the plow stopped,

deposited

in front of a tall line of trees

that still block the strengthening sun.

Walking by

on a warm spring day

I feel the cold coming off it;

like the sudden chill

when a ghost enters the room.

Of course, there’s nothing malevolent

in a pile of snow

   . . . but still

I feel a shiver up my spine.

A small pool of water

sits on the downstream side.

Like glacial melt, it’s cold as ice,

and like a mountain tarn

reflects the sky;

as unsettled as the weather 

this time of year.

But fresh as it is, it’s also fossilized.

Not for millennia

but at least several months,

arresting time

and preserving what remains of winter;

a hard one

I hardly need reminding of

in this hopeful spring.

Like an archeological dig

it gives up its secrets

layer-by-layer.

Gravel mixed with sand,

stripped from the driveway

and scattered like glacial moraine.

Autumn leaves

that are waterlogged

and the drabbest brown there is.

Downed branches

lost mitts

dead birds,

and some hand-written papers

with painful news

that were snatched by a gust of wind.

Water, 

that will percolate through the soil

and work its way down fissures

in subterranean rock

to some deep dark aquifer,

finding its level

as water inexorably does.

Where it might remain for years

before being drawn up

in some future spring;

an envoy from the past

nourishing

the nascent plants.

Water,

changing phases but conserved;

indestructible as energy

and as indifferent to time

as we wish we were.

It’s May 16, and that dense pile of snow is — remarkably — still there. Although I’ve been looking at it out the kitchen window for so long it’s begun to seem normal! 

Something that’s become so familiar deserves to be memorialized in a poem. So I began by describing it, and then — as usual — just riffed. Where it took me was unplanned: as much a surprise to me as I imagine to the reader. But this is the nature of water. It flows where it flows. And, of course, is conserved. The water cycle, but expressed a little less dryly than your middle school science teacher would!

(I only know the word “tarn” because my neighbour’s dog was named that. (An avalanche rescue dog (retired), so it makes sense.) I could have used “lake” instead:  less obscure, but also less interesting.  And also seems too big.)

See For Yourself - May 15 2026

 

See For Yourself

May 15 2026

    Pay attention.

    Be astonished.

    Tell about it.*

I try to pay attention;

attending to things

and bearing the cost.

Because there’s only so much I can afford

in my one precious life.

Mary Oliver exhorted us

to be astonished as well.

But it’s hard to go through life

in a constant state of astonishment.

Easy when you’re young,

not so much

when you’ve lived long enough

to become jaded and cynical

or simply bored.

Distractions tempt me.

Attention thieves

try to take more than I can give.

Anxiety

and the dire state of the world

rob me of focus.

So I narrow my gaze

and work at being intentional. 

After all, it’s spring

and life’s reawakening.

The air is sharp

with the loamy smell

of freshly thawed earth,

birds sing

when the first hint of dawn

has barely softened the sky,

and squirrels squabble over who-knows-what

after their long winter torpor

of blessed quiet.

  . . . But then, aren’t they always bad-tempered

in their short frenetic lives?

Nattering incessantly

as they dash through the trees.

Taking pleasure

in tormenting the dogs,

cat-calling

from their lofty perches

like hecklers at a wrestling match.

And pilfering food

distrustful neighbours

have surreptitiously cached.

I squish and squelch over soggy ground

skirting the really wet spots.

Pause

and take a slow deep breath.

The sun is high

and the trees, still bare, cast short shadows.

Buds, set last fall, are tightly furled;

too cold a spring

to have yet leafed out.

There are fresh scars

where winter culled the weak branches

and took out the dead.

I crane my neck,

narrowing my eyes

to make out the high ones,

etched against

a brightly rinsed sky.

“Sky-blue”, I want to say;

not because I’m at a loss

but because presence is everything,

and words — at best — approximate

so why even try?

Which even a poet

as fine as Mary Oliver

might say;

for me to truly tell

you must look up

and see for yourself.

*Mary Oliver wrote this — when she was 80 — in a poem called Instruction for Living a Life:  wisdom, informed by age. Three basic things (basic, but maybe not “simple”, as I initially wrote), and exactly what a good poet does. If only I could write something so restrained, so tight, and so perfectly crystallized!

I also paid homage to (a nice way to say “stole from”!) Mary Oliver when I wrote in my one precious life (5th line). I think this sentence, with which she ends the poem The Summer Day, is her most well known: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Stairwell - May 12 2026

 

Stairwell

May 15 2026



I make a point of climbing stairs.

Wherever

and however treacherous;

uneven risers,

trip-wire edges,

slippery treads and all.

The stairwells are like afterthoughts

architects can’t be bothered with;

cold, and dimly lit

with cinder-block walls

and cheap plastic bannisters

sticky as a toddler’s hands

but I’m sure with something worse.

Landings

  —  where drug deals are done

and tipsy drunks

slump against the wall  —

are littered with butts

and have a sour smell;

a toxic mix

of piss

human sweat 

and cigarettes,

sitting heavily 

in the stagnant air

my motion has grudgingly stirred.

But I persist,

because elevators are decadent

and exercise is virtuous.

So I race up the stairs

footsteps echoing

off the hard glossy walls,

pivot around the landings

like an antsy monkey

swinging branch-to-branch,

then heave open the fire-door

and arrive at my floor

grinning triumphantly. 

And finally, stand by the elevator

waiting for my friends

while trying to look unrushed;

wiping the sweat from my brow,

running a hand through my hair,

and wind-milling my arms

to air myself out.

First 

in a race

where no one else is keeping score,

or even knows

they took part.

The Trip of a Lifetime - May 12 2026

 

The Trip of a Lifetime

May 12 2026

I think of the many people 

I might have been.

The forks in the road

I could have taken.

The intersections I sailed through

too keen on making time.

The turns I missed

and the rutted lanes, too tempting to resist

I abandoned soon enough,

reversing in a cloud of dust

with one hand on the wheel.

As if life was a road trip

without good maps

or sense of direction.

Looking back, of course, it would seem to add up;

like connecting random dots

and imagining a picture

even when there’s not.

Because where some see scattered stars

others find constellations

   . . . despite celestial navigation

not working that way.

The narratives we construct

to explain ourselves

are like the old paper maps

that fanned out like accordions;

awkward to hold

and blocking the view.

That became crumpled and faded and hard to read,

stained

from gas station coffee

that was always too weak.

That eventually tore along the folds,

becoming almost as delicate 

as ancient manuscripts

  —  handled with kid-gloves

in a dimly lit museum

as a stern minder watched.

That were wadded together

in the glove box

or the pocket behind the seat,

bulging out

like an autobiography

of the trip of a lifetime

and disappointed plans.

That went with the car to the wreckers

and were crushed along with it.

No retracing your steps, or reminiscing;

no filling in 

all the places you missed,

or looking back

now wish you did.

A sentence in the 3rd last paragraph of this Atlantic article (link below) caught my eye. So I wrote it out, and just let myself riff. (And if you think there is some more esoteric process to my writing, you’re wrong. Endings are rarely foreseen. The journey takes me, not the other way around.)

“Surrendering to the computer had given him the courage to sample the lives of the many people he might have been.”

I suspect we all think this about the choices we made, or failed to make:  not only comparing ourselves retroactively to other possible versions of ourselves, but usually unsparingly to other actual people all the time. The fallacy, of course, is that we tend to idealize these hypothetical selves or unknowable lives (is their marriage really as happy as it looks?) — filling in the blanks with the best case scenario — while we are all too aware of the disappointing details of our own reality.

I did rescue a wad of old paper maps from the seat-back pocket before getting rid of my 20 year old Jeep. (20 years. Yes, I’m both stubborn and frugal. Not to mention find change hard.) Still have them, stuffed into the back of a high shelf in the entranceway closet.

Btw, I could never do what this guy did. Too limited. Too fixed in my ways. Too averse to change.

(https://www.theatlantic.com/family/2026/05/algorithm-decision-making-randomization/687098/?gift=7KKUTeeJruMo0n11oQFrLqSCBD0a1e191MC9ddobpds&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share)

No Wings or Feathers - May 11 2026

 

No Wings or Feathers

May 11 2026

Aliens have not come to earth.

There are no angels

wafting down on feathered wings.

And the dead do not linger,

troubled spirits

with unfinished business

in this bright material world;

only memories remain,

alive as ever

to haunt their loved ones’ dreams. 

So as much as I’d like to believe

in the holy and unseen

I remain a skeptic.

I’ve begun to question even love.

Perhaps because

it’s so often thwarted

disappointed

betrayed;

too much wishful thinking,

too easily carried away.

After all, why romanticize

synapses firing

and hormones flooding the brain?

Why should attraction differ

from any other chemistry

that emanates heat,

as reversible

as ice turning to water

then freezing back?

So is love over-rated?

Or am I too jaded

constrained

or even afraid

to let myself surrender?

Am I dead inside?

In need of guardian angels?

Or an alien

cleverly disguised?

An extra-terrestrial

with my nose pressed up against the glass,

a detached anthropologist

from some sterile metropolis

where cool logic rules.

Here to observe, but not interfere

in the strange but tempting rituals

of a mercurial earth,

where hot-headed men

and love-struck women

take big leaps of faith;

no wings or feathers 

to break their fall.

Should I Answer the Call? - May 10 2026

 

Should I Answer the Call?

May 10 2026

Most predictions are wrong.

Except that the future always come true

and by then it seems inevitable.

Is it foolish to try?

Does the here-and-now not suffice?

Is life a lottery

for folks who like to take a chance

but also find gambling 

too dicey by far?

There are many forms of augury.

Tea leaves

observing the stars

an outstretched palm.

Not to mention the darker arts

like conjuring the dead

and the reading of entrails.

Then there’s premonition, intuition, straws in the wind,

tables of statistics

the prophecies in scripture

crystal balls.

I prefer to keep it small.

No great men,

no seismic shifts

in social conditions 

or human consciousness.

Just what’s for breakfast 

which socks to wear

should I answer the call.

Or even get out of bed?

With the possibility there

that I can hold it off

at least a few hours;

that the here-and-now

which was once in my future

still is,

a simple prediction

that fulfills itself. 

Thought it would be fun to riff on the idea of prediction. I wanted to make it less linear and more whimsical than my usual stuff. I think I succeeded. 

I immediately recalled the quote attributed to Yogi Berra (even though he never said it!): “It’s tough to make predictions. Especially about the future.” So I was careful about committing the same redundancy in my opening line, especially when my first impulse was to write “predictions about the future”!

We talk about “the” future as if it’s not only singular but almost inevitable. But, of course, there are infinite possibilities:  many futures (plural), but — of course — only one of which will come true. (Or, if there really are multiple universes and quantum probability, that should be amended to say only one of which will come true “for us”.) 

I chose the title because it’s suggestive of those fateful forks in the road that determine a vastly different future:  a phone call, for example, you may have chosen not to answer. 

No great men refers to the “Great Man Theory”:  that history is primarily shaped by exceptional individuals born with innate leadership qualities. The competing theory has it that great individuals emerge from societal conditions, not vice versa. To me, the first seems more random and unpredictable; while the second suggests that one could more reliably map out the future as a more coherent chain of cause and effect. So if Hitler hadn’t appeared, would someone similar have simply filled his role, dictated not by personality but rather the inexorable tides of history? I tend to favour the great man (and now woman) theory. The second seems too deterministic, too settled. Because prediction, as I wrote, is almost always wrong, confounded by contingency and event. Not to mention nature. (What dinosaur on the prehistoric version of 24 hour cable news (where opinion too often masquerades as news) would have predicted a devastating meteor impact? Did anyone in Pompeii anticipate the volcano suddenly erupting?)

Some Reflections on Posterity - May 8 2026

 

Some Reflections on Posterity

May 8 2026

I imagine great grandfathers

I’ve never met.

Who passed on a name.

Perhaps some minor legacy

in wealth or reputation,

an echo of identity 

in old country food

an ethnic dance

a colourful turn of phrase.

I know there were greats, of course,

but no memory

has been handed down

of the men who actually were.

The fact they existed, yes;

but no warp and weft of a life,

not even a given name.

Certainly not a picture

in sepia tones

of a proud man in formal clothes

with an ornately opulent beard,

standing unnaturally still

for a long exposure photograph. 

So did he think, once he’d attained an age

when a man seeks meaning in life

and contends with existential angst,

that a long line of descendants

spreading down through time

was where he would find it?

That he was not a loose thread

but a stitch in a tapestry?

Not a blip of a life

but a link in a family?

That he might find a kind of immortality 

in memory

continuity

and respect for the past?

The meaning

a young man thinks he can find

with the possessions

he works hard to acquire,

the status

and social ladders he climbs,

and the acts of creation

he might leave behind.

Which, like most human endeavour

soon enough

turn to dust;

as ephemeral

as we ourselves.

But then, my people are matrilineal,

so it’s great grandmothers

and all the greats that came before

I should be thinking of.

Women, who didn’t leave even a name

to pass down to their progeny.

Whose children

  — whom they birthed, and nurtured, and loved

and sacrificed for —

left for faraway continents

or foreign wars.

And whose descendants 

not only speak an alien tongue

but don’t know where they came from

or really much care. 

The irony

in our notion of posterity

is to presume that future generations

will, if not venerate

at least remember us,

while we, in turn, forge on through life

with our eyes fixed firmly in front.

Just as I suspect

that in a moment of reflection

  — when life was hard

and introspection a luxury — 

she, too, considered her legacy.

That, in a sense, she thought about me

 — at least hypothetically —

while I

uninterested

and ignorant of history 

am oblivious to her.

Considered her legacy,

never imagining

that my ingratitude

would betray her life’s work.

That I would never look back

let alone glance

at the long familial line

of begottens and begets.

That my thread would unravel

and the tapestry fade;

abandoned

in some ancestral home

that was never handed-down,

we lost track of

long ago.

Creature of Habit - May 8 2026

 

Creature of Habit

May 8 2026

I am creature of habit;

my well-regimented life

does not waver

get distracted 

or welcome surprise.

There is an order to things

that emerged, like life on earth

in the primeval slime

of my formative years;

lost

in the mists of time

I’m too far gone to remember. 

Or perhaps, some undersea vent

spewing hot infernal gas

that stinks of rotten eggs;

too deep 

to go back and interrogate. 

Others might call me curmudgeonly,

unadventurous,

perhaps a touch eccentric.

Even arrested

mid trajectory

in the arc of the life well-lived;

too comfortable

to risk deviation,

too timorous

to pursue personal growth.

Trouble is, you can’t stop in the middle of an arc

without falling straight down. 

Like a work horse

eyes blinkered and head lowered

ploughing the same old furrows,

I plod along

lost in equine thought

row after row.

Who will some day soon

find himself retired 

to his familiar stall

and the barn door closed.

Then shipped off

to the slaughterhouse

to be chopped-up into pet food

rendered into glue.

If any of my poems are autobiographical, it’s very indirect — little hints dropped here and there. I guess I prefer distance and deflection over revelation and confession. But I have to admit that this one hits closer to home. Because I am very much a creature of habit. And the older I get, the less I resist such complacency. An unusual degree of change aversion is characteristic of autism. Since I check off a lot of other boxes, being on the spectrum (supposedly “high-functioning”, although the result after so many years of life makes me wonder just how high!) is my shorthand way of explaining myself.

Or maybe it’s not preference. Maybe it’s fear, because I feel I have something to hide. Or embarrassment, because I feel my inner life is too unworthy to ask people to bother with. Or just propriety, because I think confessional poetry is too self-indulgent.

Anyway, an attentive reader already knows I’m a creature of habit. Who else would feel compelled to write a poem almost every single day?!!

(Btw, glue is actually rarely made from horses anymore. If not synthetic — which it mostly is — it’s made from the collagen of cattle and pigs.)

A Good Listener - May 5 2026

 

A Good Listener

May 5 2026



In my practice of silence 

I still talk to myself.

Not out loud, of course

so I presume my vow still holds.

The voice in my head is unstoppable;

my inner monologue

never tires of itself

even though I do.

Monks once took a vow

perhaps still do.

What purpose this serves

in a life of devotion

I’m trying to understand.

Does it suppress the ego, human pride,

as if all of your weighty thoughts

aren’t worth the wasted breath?

Does silence leave space

for the word of God,

that famously aloof

and taciturn redeemer?

Or is it an exercise in denial?

Because virtue is served by restraint,

austerity clarifies; 

just as poverty

celibacy

and unquestioning faith

are antidotes to avarice, envy

and sins of the flesh.

If only my wordlessness

had a purpose greater than circumstance,

because I’d have more to say

if there was someone to listen.

Sure, I see the dog’s ears perk up

and her head cocking quizzically

at the sound of my voice,

but that’s all she hears --

a woodland creature

sending out its throaty calls

and crude animal noises. 

So I vow to speak

when I’ve something worthwhile to say.

When a good listener stops by

and decides to stay.

When the unbearable pressure 

of all the words in my head

cracks the cone of silence

I somehow made for myself,

the monastic solitude

I never really wanted

so much as needed, back then;

when life was hard

and peace felt unattainable.