Husband
Jan 31 2009


The bride practiced
in front of the mirror:
“I do”,
she tried to convince herself.
She was wearing white,
taffeta, satin, silk —
some gossamer confection,
as dreamed of
by little girls.

Sideways
you could see the beginnings of a bulge.
The man, who would control her;
and this germ of life,
slowly taking her over
from the inside out.
She feels like an impostor
in this chaste white dress,
far too pure for her.
She’d much prefer red,
as a Chinese bride is wed.
And to them
white is the colour of death,
she consoles herself.

The life inside gives a bump,
its tentacles reaching out
enveloping her vital organs;
its bright red blood
mixing-up with hers.
She will marry poor
and mother well,
she tells herself —
a daughter, she hopes
or a son;
and a father who’s afraid to love.

Itinerant
Jan 19 2009


Some people travel to find themselves;
others, to get lost.
Alone, on a train
talking to yourself.
A table for one.
A narrow single bed.

So you learn to live in your head,
surrounded by strangers
the babble of foreign tongues.
You learn to like
the person you’ve now become.
Or, like a room-mate you’ve been stuck with
learn to get along,
overlook the mess,
and tolerate
all the thoughtless mistakes
and missteps.

You leave no forwarding address,
losing yourself
in some teeming hot metropolis,
living rough.
Finding out
if you’ve finally learned how to love
yourself.
Or better yet
some other.

In From the Cold
Jan 17 2009


The ski club
is like an old family cottage,
with scraps of mismatched carpet
lumpy over-stuffed chairs
and donated sofas.
On weekends, little kids take over,
kneeling-down with toy soldiers
piling pillows into forts,
conducting brief sibling wars
and the small insurgencies
of childhood.

The girl in pink is at the toy-box —
selecting, rejecting,
bossing-over
her sequestered little corner.
I envy her intense concentration,
oblivious to skiers, tracking-in snow
and all the flushed excited kids.
She oversees her own private world,
a mercurial princess
learning to be Queen.

Me, I live alone;
so when I put something down
it will be there tomorrow.
Apparently, a rare luxury —
lots of grown-up stuff
collecting dust.
So the scattered toys are trip-wires
stumbling underfoot
— sharp-edged Lego
camouflaged trucks.

A young mom, slightly hoarse
admonishes her non-stop boy.
She flashes a frazzled smile,
and I smile in return.
Coming in from the cold
to such unexpected warmth.

Self-Incrimination
Jan 13 2009


The “permanent record”
terrorized us all through school,
documenting every lapse
and transgression
for the rest of our lives.

Like the 1,000 year Reich
that lasted little more than 5,
keeping track of every deed
for glorious posterity,
with methodical
Teutonic
efficiency.
How the meticulous records of autocrats
are eventually used
against them.
How a clerk
in a proper office
in neat legible ink,
tallies the buried bodies
the forced confessions
the stolen hordes of gold.

Everyday
he wears a clean white shirt
a sturdy overcoat
to work,
his desk clean
the books in order.
This is the normalcy
that makes it easy to forget.
And who is he
to protest
against the all-powerful state,
the inertia of bureaucracy?

Every tyranny works this way,
because most of us choose security
over freedom.
Funny thing
there never was a record;
and why would anybody care?
Looking back
wishing we had gone
a little wild,
had the time of our lives
when we were so impossibly free.

Here For Good
Jan 11 2009


Here for good, you said.
Tired of dead-end jobs,
first month and last,
acquaintances
instead of friends.

But when the whole world throws itself wide-open,
how do you decide on home?
Ands how do you settle
when the itch starts-up
the feet tingle
you can’t sit still?
Because you are hard-wired to roam,
pumped-up with the desire for change
novelty
and re-invention.

And here
only for good,
or for the bad as well?
Or is it “good”, the easier version of God
for humble travellers
— serving Him,
resigned to your appointed place
here on earth?

In this boom-town
full of big money and fast women
and pick-ups full of toys,
a young man can do very well
for himself.
And he may even be here for good.
Or to do it,
who knows?

Falling in Love
Dec 27 2008


Sometimes, falling in love
really happens like that.
You’re strolling along
— carefree, optimistic
minding your own business —
when, in an instant
an open manhole swallows you up.
Dead-weight falling
all the way down.

But if it’s falling-in, then it’s drifting-out
— starting, stopping
stalked by self-doubt.
And trying to resurrect
how it felt, back then.
You remember being young.
You remember how it was
giving-in to surrender —
the free-fall
the total trust.
And you remember thinking only
of what is to come,
as if your past
belonged to someone else.
And looking back
you never really stopped loving her after all.
Or the idea of love, anyway,
once flesh and blood became too much.
Because ideas are easy, all froth and fluff
— no falling,
no hitting bottom,
no sudden stops.

You close your eyes,
and there she is
again.
But this time
when you stumble
you quickly open up,
watching-out for manhole covers
left undone.

The Sun-Warmed Surface
Jan 4 2009


We sit
on folding chairs
on soft white sand,
watching waves roll in.
Watching crabs scuttle
on the inter-tidal flats,
and hardy clumps
of coarse green grass.
And watching a sinking sun
boil-up
in ferocious reds and yellows,
enormous
when it comes so close to earth.

But I no longer swim,
timing my stroke to the swell
taking air in the troughs
saving my breath.
Too dangerous
because there’s an undertow
— the deceptive beauty
of the sun-warmed surface,
concealing what runs below.
I know a man cannot fight the ocean.
I know to swim parallel to shore
let the current take me
until it lets go.
Because it’s not the undertow that pulls you under,
it’s the exhaustion that does.

But it caught me once,
which is more than enough.
So now, I refuse to touch this water
I’ve known since I was young —
here, where I was born
where I grew up.

Instead, like old men, we sit and watch,
turning brown and hard in the sun.

Starting Over
Jan 3 2009


If it were only that simple,
a foot of freshly fallen snow.
So white, it hurts,
its smooth surface, perfect.
Re-making the world;
concealing
our sins of neglect,
our shameless omissions.

It fell all day
from a windless sky,
gentle relentless snow.
Then a clear black night
when the mercury dived,
shot through with stars.

The frost penetrates the earth
purifying the first few inches;
so much different than the tropics,
where thin fetid soil
is corrupted by humid heat.
And deeper still
in suspended animation;
so come spring, the land is renewed,
productive again.

I would like to be covered in white
as well —
a soft cotton gown
a heavy sheet
a shroud,
something to make me feel clean
if not invisible.

Or to be placed in suspended animation
on life support
in my sleek titanium pod.
Starting over
on some unexplored planet;
a traveller to a distant star.

Leap Second
Jan 1 2009


Already it’s 2009,
and we have yet to decide
what to call this decade that falls
between the 90’s
and the teens.

There was a leap second this year
— the earth
moving that much slower
as it grows inexorably older,
just like the rest of us.
No wonder 2008
seemed to take
forever.

But still
there are killing fields in the Middle East,
and we carry-on
as the planet over-heats,
and 3 billion hapless souls
live on less than a dollar-a-day,
and have never made
a phone call.
While the superstitious claim the only God,
and the enlightenment
can barely pierce the dark,
and even the courage of atheists
is lost,
preferring to be called agnostic.

And as the impoverished
shrug-off hard times,
the rich panic,
and the rest of us re-assess
the values, the blessings
we were working too hard
to give much thought.

It is hard to imagine
this beginning
in the dark eternity of winter.
But the calendar has decreed it so,
the last numeral
conspicuously
clicking over.
Which makes the year feel like a bad used car
with the odometer turned back —
we could be partying like it’s 1999,
and no one would ever notice.

A Simple Walk
Dec 29 2008


As I descend deeper into the forest
the sun begins to set,
and shadows lengthen
into grotesquely twisted trunks and limbs.
The trees here are dense,
so I tight-rope along the river
risking thin ice that forms at its edge,
and missing the thick wet snow
clutching at my boots
as I high-step through it.

At dusk, the wind relents
leaving an awful stillness,
and I am acutely aware
how my clumsy progress
disturbs
this self-contained place.
It is remarkable,
how a park in the heart of a busy city
can seem so inaccessible,
and how quickly
a person finds himself lost.

I stop,
listening to the river run
under ice and snow,
and in the quickenings
where it stays open.
A simple soaker,
one misstep, and it could all be over
for me —
one foot heavy, frozen
the clinging snow
the cold,
slowly consuming my heat.

If I’m to go by ice
or by fire,
I think I’d prefer freezing
— the long slow sleep,
my body
at rest in the snow until spring.