Urban Geography
July 28 2009


Something sticky
on the floor mat.
Fabric worn
windows smudged,
where hands touched, noses pressed
all-night heads
slumped against the glass,
sleeping-it-off
a chesty cough
the fog of human breath.

The cabbie sneaks a smoke;
idling, unoccupied,
the lull before closing time.
People leave things behind
he finds,
dropped forgotten treasures,
like empties
wedding rings
lipsticked addresses.

The geography of the inner city
depends on where you sit —
night shift
navigating rain-slicked streets,
or on the back bench seat
of a cab.
Noticing
a brilliantined head,
the back of a neck,
an accent, vaguely menacing.

As street lamps flicker past,
light briefly enters
shadows sharpen, and lengthen
the mat brightens, a second
in the cold electric glare.
I expect condoms, vomit, clotting blood,
incontinent bodily fluids.

But there’s only rotten fruit
I see, relieved,
briskly shifting my feet.



The idea for this poem came from a quick glance at a review of a book called "Taxi!". The review was in the Globe's "buried treasures" section, and the book was published way back in 1975. I didn't read the book. I didn't even read the review. But the accompanying photo caught my eye -- a driver, arm perched in the open window, head facing out and into the camera. Something in her face conveyed intelligence, skepticism, toughness, compassion, and a kind of non-judgmental alertness. Yes, I somehow managed to see all that in a glance! Anyway, it made me want to write about taxis and cities. This is the result.

Talking Politics
July 26 2009


We talk about politics.
Anything, actually —
celebrity sightings
religion, sex.

He rails against
all those smirking bloated phonies,
with slippery handshakes
and gravy-stained shirts.
While I rant and rave
about pay-offs, and pandering.
Which leaves us feeling smug, self-satisfied.
We reward ourselves
with cold imported beer.
The situation in Uzbekistan is scandalous, I rage,
premium foam
clinging to my lip.
The new administration is in over their heads, he proclaims,
almost gloating.

He refrains from mentioning
my mother, his wife,
who is not permitted, yet
to leave the ward
unescorted.
I wait for him to ask
about my brother, his first-born son,
who haven’t spoken
in months.

We exchange a “fine, thanks ...and you?”,
shake hands with manly insouciance,
race, reaching for the bill.

I notice his distracting habit
of folding, unfolding
a paper napkin,
tearing-off long even strips
as he talks.
When I notice my own busy hands
nervously twisting a napkin,
and drop it, fast.

Bad manners, I reproach myself.
And try extra hard
not to notice anything else.



2 things converged to kick-start this poem.

First was hearing Frank McCourt (author of Angela's Ashes) recount meeting -- as an adult and after many years apart -- with the father who had abandoned them as children. Who, while never asking about the family, was content to to talk enthusiastically about the situation in N. Ireland, about the usual Irish martyrs and tragic heroes (something the Irish are apparently particularly good at!) In my family, I don't think we talk at all easily about personal or emotional issues; but politics is always easy, almost a relief. A convenient form of evasion and denial, I suppose.

Second was James (Arthur), who in a recent email strenuously asserted that he was not interested in politics because they're all "self-interested liars and cheats" (I paraphrase). (James, isn't it possible -- and, as a good citizen, desirable -- to ignore the politicians, but still take an interest in public policy?) Which gave me that colourful opening.

This poem is mostly about denial: the unconscious, as well as the deliberate, kind. How even the conventionally "forbidden" topics of politics, religion and sex are easy, compared to the personal and confessional. And about how we are all helpless creatures of the family culture in which we were raised; how -- to resort, again, to cliche -- "the acorn doesn't fall far from the oak".

Flight Path
July 22 2009


Living under the flight path
is a distraction, at first;
‘til soon, you stop noticing.
But thoughts of departures
of flight
of taking-off,
pre-occupy you, nevertheless.

There are steep ascents
under full throttle
rattling windowpanes and cutlery.
There are landings at night
that make your gut clench.
Bright lights appearing out of darkness
from over the adjacent low-rise,
indistinct rumblings,
then this great gleaming creature
directly overhead —
arms outstretched
landing gear grasping
the thrusters’ ear-busting roar.

Where a row of windows
like a string of festive lights
encloses a small orderly village
of convenient strangers,
sipping drinks
in the muted glow
of the oddly still interior.

So much coming, and going.
The strained smiles of seat-mates,
the great airport concourse
where important people hurry by.
You listen from your modest bungalow,
imagine picking-up
lifting-off
rising above
this earthbound melancholy,
so high
the sun always shines.

You will descend
eventually, of course,
through the clouds
into turbulence,
over the brightly lit node
of some unfamiliar town,
nod at your seat-mate
and go.
You will find a place
with the sound of planes
and the scent of jet exhaust,
where you will settle down
among convenient strangers.

Until the restlessness
grips you again.



I think what this poem is about is the delusion of escape; the notion of salvation somewhere else; the idea that others have bigger lives. It is the false promise of the journey itself that seduces him, the fugue state, the taking flight: where he "rise(s) above/this earthbound melancholy", and "the sun always shines"; where he demurely rubs shoulders "in the muted glow/of the oddly still interior."

His disappointment is foreshadowed in the 2nd stanza -- I hope not too clumsily, or too much over-written -- by the rather mercenary and visceral personification of the plane.

It is because of this false hope that he never commits; and so repeatedly finds himself living marooned among "convenient strangers", no more intimate with them than one is within the transient artificial intimacy of an airplane fuselage.

This poem had its seed in a brief image from a DVD I recently rented: dusk; the low rent part of town; a blaze of light in the sky, and an airplane suddenly appears, sweeping in low and loud and menacing. I immediately had the impression of it as a living thing. And there was this sense of stark division: the low-rise people trapped on the ground; contrasted with the freedom and escape offered up by the flight path -- so inaccessible, yet so temptingly close.

Body Heat
July 21 2009


Such sultry heat
there is no relief,
the sun so high
it drives our shadows
straight into the ground.
Even the bugs have hunkered down,
their hard black bodies
cinder-dry.

We move slowly.
We sit motionless.
We revel in the brief wisps of breeze
that stroke our shoulders
stir our sun-bleached hair,
the fleeting shelter
in a puff of cloud.

We are naked, eyes shut
heads tilted upward.
Our bodies are engines of heat,
dark skin flushed with blood
radiating barely contained desire.

I picture your body underwater,
smooth as polished rock
golden hair floating up,
your nipples stiff
your body slick,
the muscles in your arms
strong and hard.
Small bubbles of air
cling to your skin,
your measured breath
released as slow as blown kisses.
I follow your legs
rising up to the curve of your ass
the small of your back
your shoulder blades,
like delicate wings
rippling beneath an even tan.

We will make love
in this sun-warmed water,
weightless
frictionless
out of breath,
bursting out into air
where the sun will dry us
in seconds.

Except the wetness, where I entered you
running down your leg.
And the sweat, intermingling,
where we hold each other
our bodies touching
our skin still flushed.

Open Arms
July 20 2009


She was good in an emergency.
It was the every day
she had trouble with.

This woman of a certain age,
who loved men too much
to stay with one.
Who could cook up a storm,
but left the whirlwind
for the rest to clean up.
Who never owned anything,
but made herself at home
wherever she was.

She couldn’t resist
a road-trip
anywhere warm.
She sought out the adrenaline fix,
the high-octane fuel-injected lift-off.
She danced with her eyes shut,
content to live in her head
but thrilled to have you join her there.
Needless to say, she was always late,
if she showed-up at all.

So I was surprised, impressed
to see her focus
when the alarm went off
the lady was robbed
no one could stop
the bleeding.
A good woman to take charge,
when time went too fast
for the rest of us.

But let her get bored
and she was off —
her man confused
and helpless;
her kids
coping hard,
as usual;
and her friends
juiced when she appeared,
feeling as if all the light in the world
shone only on them.


This is called "Open Arms" as an homage to the novel of the same name by Marina Endicott, since it was inspired by her character Isabelle. I confess, I didn't read it; I cheated by listening to the audio-books version (on CBC's "Between the Covers" series of podcasts). Still, pretty impressive for a first novel!

Road Work
July 17 2009


Road work season.
Big yellow machines, belching smoke.
Guys leaning on shovels,
orange vests, muscles, sweat.
Some engineer has decreed the order of things;
but they’ll tear it up next summer
I bet.

We squeeze into single file
under a broiling sun,
heat-waves shimmering-up
windows shut
air-conditioners humming.
The flag girl looks bored.
She is a goddess
in all this testosterone,
in tom-boy clothes
fretting about a farmer’s tan
the blister under her toe.

In real life
she is an English major
working summers.
And in 20 years
a famous author,
she will write about road work.
The line of cars, crawling by.
The man, who caught her eye
for a moment —
tapping his fingers to jazz,
the case of wine, riding shotgun,
the classic Panama hat.
And like all of us
story-tellers,
we never recognize ourselves.

Unwittingly
plagiarizing each other,
making it up
as we go along.



This is how we all go through life, telling stories about everyone we meet, or even incidentally see -- professional story-tellers, or not. We project and we empathize, trying to imagine other people's lives, filling in the spaces, making presumptions, re-playing our own history, shamelessly invoking our prejudices and smug certainties. In other words, "making it up ...as we go along."

I like the misdirection here: how a relatively straight-forward descriptive piece about something we all immediately recognize takes this unexpected turn; how an incidental character suddenly becomes the story; and, ultimately, the conceit of the author in allowing himself to imagine all this about her. Because this is how it really happens: all these enigmatic and mysterious people, flashing past in real life. This sets up the final stanza, in which he is also the object of someone's story ...which, in turn, raises further questions about objective reality ...truth ...self-knowledge.

Of course, I've always been more of a stylist than a philosopher, which means that these big pretentious themes don't interest me as much as nailing a good line, crafting a fine sentence. So my favourite part is actually this: "She is a goddess/in all this testosterone ...". (I had some misgivings over the line "under a broiling sun", such an obviously tired and cliched expression. But what it loses in impact, it makes up in precision, since I was really unable to come up with anything more cogent than "broiling". So I let it stand.) ...I like the title, too! If I saw that listed in a table of contents, I'm pretty sure I'd turn to it first. Which is how I like to test a title: by imagining the table of contents as a delectable box of assorted chocolates, and trying to make every title scream "choose me! choose me!"

Antipodes
July 16 2009


Even in summer
it’s cold enough to see one’s breath.
At least they’ll know when we’re dead, we joked,
black humour
not yet spent.

Near the end, a man becomes irregular —
flurries of shallow breathing,
long slack-jawed spells.
You can see who’s next
huddled in the blanket where we left him,
beard thick with frost.
And this poor sod,
teeth chattering
breathing shallow, rapidly
desperately imagining
rescue.

While the rest of us, lost
are resigned
to God’s persistent deafness;
conserving our energy
breathing slowly, steadily
the acetone scent of the starved.
Cupping black and blistered fingers
around warm moist breath.

Some talk to themselves,
each word expelled
in a heavy cloud of mist,
as if speech could turn to ice
on contact —
flash-frozen letters
clattering down.

When we sleep, it almost stops;
slow regular breathing
probably dreaming
of sun-drenched beaches,
hot luxurious sand.

As Antarctic winds roar
and the flimsy shack shudders,
and this cursed continent
blows its lungs out.
A single candle flickers,
feeble shadows jump.
Our breath condenses on the ceiling
dripping down,
hardening
into stalactites of cloudy ice.
Breathing is no longer automatic,
and the effort
seems almost too much.

Even in summer
this place sucks the life from us —
wasted bodies
freeze-dried;
our dying breath
preserved in ice.




No, I wasn't reading about Hillary, or Franklin, or any other extreme explorer. Just a few unseasonably cold days in July: overcast, drizzly, incessant wind. I suppose it made it feel warmer, writing about the cold.

I don't know what I had in mind when I started this; but I ended up in Antarctica, holed up with Shackleton, dying heroically. I think the key here is the way, at the start of the penultimate stanza, I anthropomorphize the wind, and how this calls back to all the references to breath and breathing. It is almost as if a metronome runs through the poem, air moving methodically in and out, counting down in resignation to the end.

A bit of a departure here, as well, in that I let my medical background sneak in a bit: the Cheyne-Stokes breathing on the verge of death; the fingers blackened by frost-bite and dry gangrene; the acetone breath of starvation, a result of the ketone bodies produced by lipolysis. Just something for my literary biographers to make a fuss about. (As if!!)

...I was just about to sign off, when I remembered how the theme of "breath" became so instrumental in this poem. About the time I wrote it, I had been listening to the audio-book version of Lawrence Hill's "The Book of Negroes". There is a part where Amanita first arrives in New York from the South, and is shocked to see her breath. As I started in on this piece, that powerful image came immediately to mind, becoming an obvious hook and a natural point of departure.

Pollen Season
July 15 2009


The pollen was thick this year,
leaving a high-water mark
ringing the shore-line rocks.
It sticks to the deck
under the overhang,
a layer of heavy yellow dust.
And still, billows from the trees
when wind is up.

The lake is rich with it,
little golden motes of light
glinting near the sun-lit surface.
It feels like swimming through soup —
a nutrient broth for grazing fish,
the warm turbid liquid
a petri-dish
of life.

By September, the lake will be cold and clear,
its flat grey surface
uninviting.
Then ice,
locked-in
camouflaged by blowing snow.

Somehow, the fish survive,
pitch-dark
freezing cold.
And spring
seems impossibly remote —
when a yellow haze
blankets everything;
and ravenous fish
will feast,
the promiscuous trees
once again
serving-up their riches.

Fourth of July
July 9 2009


There was a mad dash
when the rain hit,
coming down in sheets —
wind-driven, sharp bits
of hail.
Heavy drops
ricochet-off the hard-baked earth
like bee-bees shot by drunks.
The sky goes dark,
thunder rumbles imperiously.

We scoop up blankets, basket, little kids.
Paper dishes
spiral up like water spouts,
vortices
of plastic, napkins, cups.

The say the car
is the safest place in a storm —
wet bodies
crammed-in,
windows fogging-up.
The radio was marching bands
baseball, static.
We sat, time stopped
breathing-in the sweaty fetid air.

We felt it rock,
could almost imagine
being whisked off to Oz
in the hundred year tornado.
Lightning going-off
like flashbulbs at the ball park
on opening day,
its ghostly strobes
freeze-framing the world.

Later, we learned the county over
was hit hard —
houses vanished,
little shafts of straw
impaling trees.
We were lucky, I guess,
just a picnic wrecked.
But the fireworks
were free.

Estate Sale
July 7 2009


The old poet
had run out of words.
All he had were the spaces,
punctuation
blank verse.

But all language is metaphor
he consoled himself,
meaning exactly what he said
no more, and no less,
purged of the clever misdirection
he used to serve-up instead.

Young poets breathe fire
chain smoke
sweet-talk the girls,
convinced they will save
an unwilling world.
His ambition
is far more humble —
to rescue himself,
to make sense of death,
and to use up what’s left
— the straight-ahead words
he found hard to express.

Like
“I could have loved
so much better . . .
or “The imagined transgressions
I forgive, and forget . . .
or “My magnificent debt
of gratitude.”


His entire life’s work
in a battered blue desk
— locked drawer, bottom left —
auctioned off, in a single lot
to the highest bidder;
desk, plus contents
sight unseen.

Ride the Wind
July 5 2009


This island is 10 minutes
from end-to-end.
Its trees are ancient
shrunken, twisted,
from cold and fog
and stony soil.

I pace
like an animal, caged.
The sea contains me
as surely as prison walls,
peering out
at the cruel temptation of freedom.

But it’s the wind
that makes me crazy,
a deafening incessant living thing.
I scream
at the top of my lungs
from the bottom of my soul
and hear nothing,
the words torn from my throat.
Yet the sound
is inescapable
— clear plastic
flapping frantically,
the mad percussion of air,
a thousand jets, taking-off.

I watch sea-birds soar
wings taut.
They ride the wind
dipping and veering and holding their own,
never setting down.
I wonder what they see
from such privileged heights,
looking far beyond
my claustrophobic horizon.
And when the water
will overwhelm this stubborn rock,
bashing the shore
with all its magnificent force.

Or the wind
will carry it off.
How a kite stalls and starts
tumbles and darts,
all the way
to landfall.

Posterity
July 1 2009


We had road-side ditches
a kid, in rubber boots with a pointy stick
could busy himself
all day.
Culverts under the driveways,
gravel roads.
Then streetlights came,
the big pipe
buried, then paved,
sidewalks, finally —
concrete, still soft
where we left our mark,
and fled.
Dares and double dares
still there
40 years on.

Which is how the sky looks today,
concrete, freshly poured
wet and grey.
Which I would also write on, if I could,
something to commemorate the day
the old place burned —
only charred beams left standing,
cracked sidewalks
dark with ash.

The forecast calls for skies to clear.
As I imagine the remains will be flattened —
the foundation razed,
sidewalks jack-hammered.
Fate, as usual
amused
at youthful illusions
of permanence.