My Neighbour Stacks Wood
Mar 29 2010


My neighbour stacks wood
in neat round piles,
constructing giant igloos
6 foot beehives.
Split birch
left to season.

5 sturdy domes
that are testament
to his industry, and foresight.
And leave me feeling like the ant
to his grasshopper,
a parasitic wasp
to his man-sized mound
of busy termites.
He is a silkworm, spinning,
a dung beetle
rolling its prize up-hill
as many times as it takes.

While I burn oil, electricity
punky green wood,
fizzing, sputtering
spewing smoke;
a shunned drone
left honeyless.

A diesel flatbed
dumped a 20 cord load of logs,
rolling-off
in a cacophony of snapped branches and bark,
which he methodically grappled chain-sawed split and tossed
into 5 perfectly wrought piles,
with a symmetry, and weight
I find strangely pleasing.
The kind of work
talkers and paper-pushers envy,
the tangible completed thing
that a man can stand back, hands on hips
and quietly admire,
feeling the sweat, the pleasant ache
the well-earned rest.

Like the scent of fresh-cut grass,
it’s hard to describe
silver birch, freshly split
left to dry.
And even better, when it burns
on a cold clear night
next winter.

Flakes as Big as Pancakes
Mar 27 2010


Sloppy wet snowflakes
drizzle down
from a monochrome sky,
the drab grey
of unpainted canvas,
absorbing light.

The snow barely accumulates;
so paved surfaces glisten,
the dead lawn
wears a thin white shroud.
The thermometer hovers
on the cusp of zero
in a quantum state of flux,
either freeze or thaw or both —
just as subatomic particles
can be here and there at once.

The flakes are as big as pancakes
not lacy, but clumped,
the fine filigree of their crystal lattice
smudged.
They drift, windless, to earth
like little parachutes,
lightly touching down.
Swallowed-up
in the murky puddle where the culvert froze.
Or on the grass, in a thin white layer,
that looks like vanilla icing
whipped-up
with too much sugar and air.

The month of March
slips between winter and spring
and back again.
And sometimes almost summer
when sun burns through the cloud.
I’ve put away the shovel,
because March snow takes care of itself.
Much like October —
no grass to cut, no shovelling,
a break from daily chores.

Rubber boot weather,
with winter hat, and gloves.
I splash through puddles,
leave sharply etched tracks
in stiff translucent slush.
And though I’ve grown accustomed
to the deep-freeze of winter,
the damp chill
has an even bitter cut.
As if the sun, too
had taken a break this month.

Khrushchev Came to America
Mar 23 2010


Khrushchev came to America
to the city of immigrants, and fixers
and limitless ambition,
who, like him
were also descendants of Russian peasants,
fattening pigs on feudal farms,
conscripts
in the Czar’s Imperial Army.

When this dogged apparatchik
with his earthy charm, and bullying manner
started hammering his shoe on the table,
people wondered —
was this the omnipotent ruler
or a dangerous buffoon?
Childish tantrum
or shrewdly calculated tactic?

He was sure the Supermarket
was an elaborate sham,
or at least strictly restricted
to the capitalist nomenclatura.
After all, what self-respecting grain-fed Ukrainian peasant
wouldn’t suspect,
led past dazzling rainbows of exotic fruit
overflowing stalls of produce;
gleaming coolers of meat,
and row-on-row of gaudy cans
wrapped in mouth-watering promises.

And then a family farm
with tractors, combines, harvesters,
glossy cows, and well-bred pigs
contented chicks.
Surely a show-piece, a Potemkin village,
and he’d be the village idiot
to believe all this.

Nevertheless, he wondered
if the capitalists might just be winning the war
of conspicuous consumption.
So he returned
to his grey sullen country
of heavy machinery, and rocket science
and launched a dog into space,
smugly triumphant.
They got him up, all right
but had no plans to bring him back,
so the dog was left to die —
its dead body circling the planet
in a small steel canister;
a hero
of the patriotic motherland.

Khrushchev was not a sentimental man
did not find this troubling.
But what did haunt
this successful peasant’s son
were visions of fat contented livestock
and eye-glazing abundance;
and he knew there and then
the great socialist experiment
was lost.

But he was wrong.
Because it had nothing to do with stuff.
It was because, in America
any politician who abandoned a dog
with such cold-blooded cruelty
would soon find himself in a tacky smock
bagging groceries back home in Peoria,
grabbing his mop as the speakers fizz
“spill on aisle 6”.

Dead Quiet
Mar 21 2010


I have seen dead birds.
A smudge of feathers,
airy flesh
evanescent.

The body of a mouse
snow receding.
A nub of grey, freeze-dried,
a blackened tail
stiff as wire.

Most wild things do not die
of old age.
But should his time come, he knows.
A quiet place, out of sight
lying on his side
panting.
No heroic measures
no demands.

I walk through the forest,
almost never see
a dead animal, flesh scavenged
burrowed down in its private place.
There is the carcass of a deer
disembowelled,
fresh wolf scat all around.
There are the violated bodies
of road-kill,
the dull thud
the bloody skull.
But death is mostly private,
and hardly lasts.

I, too, will go far away.
Beyond the electric cities,
the glow of the last solitary porch-light
left on.
Beyond the reach of noise,
mile after mile
until only I disturb the heavy quiet —
my pounding heart
and rhythmic breathing,
my clumsy human feet.

I will lie supine
arms at my side
eyelids touching,
in the litter of leaves
wet moss, and lichen
decomposing soil,
feel the absolute quiet
the absence of light.
Never having felt
more intensely alive.



Two things coalesced to make this poem.

The first was this idea of animals dying in the wild: how you almost never see their remains; how animals are programmed to conceal pain and weakness, and so go off to die with stoic dignity, in private.

The other was the precious rarity – and luxury – of total darkness and deep silence: how far you have to travel to get away from the effects of artificial light; how noise pollution pursues us everywhere. As implied in the poem, perhaps we ultimately achieve this only when we’re eventually buried, a good 6 feet under. So seeking out untouched wilderness may be the closest approximation. I think there is something essential about this perfect solitude. It probably has to do with being utterly alone, where you have to squarely face your own truth without all the distractions of modern life.

Which is like those animals going off to die: an unprotesting acceptance, surrender, and – ultimately – a kind of peace. This is part of the great and simple nobility we envy in animals: how they give birth without pain; how they live by the pure and unintellectualized morality of survival; how they die without fear, free of the burden of knowledge.

All the images are true. The new puppy has an unerring instinct for any dead mouse under the snow. She takes them gently into her mouth and playfully tosses them around, then takes great delight rolling in them. We’ve all seen the weightless remains of birds, a few days after crashing into a picture window. There was a deer on the frozen ice last winter, killed by a pack of wolves. And many many years ago, I ran into someone’s dog who dashed out onto the unlit highway at night: I still recall with a sick queasy feeling the dull thud of his head against the bumper. (I was young, and didn’t stop. I doubt I could have done much. But it would have been the right – and humane—thing to do.)

Copper Wire
Mar 14 2010


They never got around
to hauling off the phone booth here.
Too small to notice
a back-road town like this.
Or maybe the locals got up a petition
got some politicians
making a fuss,
and they left well-enough alone.

The light’s broken, but you can make a call.
The bi-fold door, clattering shut.
The dial tone, buzzing.
The rattle of my last quarter
bottoming-out.

It’s stifling in summer,
a transparent box
in unobstructed sun.
Which reminds me of when we were kids
in the doldrums of August,
setting flies on fire
with a magnifying glass.
Back when geography mattered,
and there were no mobile devices
tracking us,
and we weren’t electro-magnetically attached
to everyone.

If only I could dial, instead of punching buttons.
I’d savour the well-greased whirr
counting down,
the dull clunk
when it finished spinning,
the feel
of heavy-duty machinery.

You got a single call
with your last quarter
or dime.
Which takes serious thought
when you’re out of gas
or lost,
on whom could you rely
in the middle of the night
to pick-up
and come?
A coat, thrown over-top of pyjamas.
Floppy galoshes, undone.
Cold breath
turning to fog.

A big black phone
as heavy as a typewriter
on a cluttered matching night-stand
with its shrill insistent ring.
Connected to each other
by copper wire,
running uninterrupted
all the way to her house
her bedroom
her bed-side table.

As if you could give it a good hard tug
and feel her holding on.

Flux
Mar 12 2010


You can live a lifetime here
and nothing much ever changes.
The lake, the river, the woods.

Yes, there are trees snapped by heavy snow
lightning strikes, and blow-downs.
The old familiar path
slowly eroding
— exposed roots, entangling me
like gnarled arthritic fingers,
boot-sucking patches of mud.
And ancient rocks
turned-up by frost and thaw.

There are the seasons, of course.
I notice, mostly, because they come all of a sudden —
first snow,
the day all the leaves seemed to turn,
when the buds, all at once, unfurled
and the world turned green.

But this week, the river changed as I watched.
It went from abstract sculpture
to installation art —
from milky ice
as smooth and flowing
as the wind and water that made it,
to performance —
a sound and motion show.
Then the ice turned clear
and broke.

It will rise,
run a brown furious torrent
sweep fallen trees downstream.
Or toss them into knots,
caught
where it eddies and curves.
And then return
to what it was last summer,
running clear and cool
so still, it almost stops.

Everything in constant flux
never quite the same.
Yet, in my short lifetime here
nothing much really changes.

Road Story
Mar 9 2010


The bike dull
the rider in black,
no light, reflector, caution.
Just after dusk, when it’s darkest.

I suppose smugness
makes you feel invulnerable —
the environmentally correct pedaller,
vs. me
in my hulking rusting guzzler.
A rolling stop
him, flashing across
dropping-down from nowhere,
as I stomp the brake
hard,
surprised as anyone.

That reptilian brain
— the one that snags a fly with a flick of the tongue
slithers into nothingness —
had taken over
from peripheral vision, to motor cortex
by-passing awareness;
the higher centres
that make us human.

He waved, speeding away,
saluting my power of attention
good driving.
Or maybe flipping me the bird
— too dark to tell.

Another inch forward
and our lives would have transformed
instantly
in ways I care not to think about.
So now, I inhabit
the rarefied “after”.
In which real life
is flashing lights, police tape,
while I get to live-out the fantasy —
pulling away, heart beating faster
into accustomed humdrum existence.

Except for the giddy freedom
I feel,
now, thinking back.
The fork in the road, the erratic path
zigzagging-away
behind us.

Close Enough
Mar 10 2010


There is the official start to spring —
the alignment of planets,
the tilted axis
of earth.
But winter ended early
and the season is up for grabs.

We emerge from darkness
into limbo,
wet snow, bare ground
the sound of returning birds.
The weather, uncertain,
the tempting warmth.

The morning sun
slants-in the kitchen window,
a parallelogram of light
on the cool ceramic floor.
The rectangle skews, narrows
as it moves,
the day gets later.
The dog follows,
basking in warmth
too lazy to chase.

Looking out
the sunlight hurts,
eyes accustomed to winter.
The lawn submerged
in grey snow, pools of water,
the rough dirt lane
a muddy lake.

The sun is like a heavy-lifting machine,
its radiant heat
drying out the soil,
filling the warm damp air.
I crack a window,
breathe-in
the earthy smell of spring.
When the radio warns
of a low pressure system
heavy snow.

Unseasonably cold.
So it’s a cozy night
a blazing fire
the dog at the foot of the bed
for warmth.
And a lazy morning —
close enough to spring
the luxury of sun,
no need to shovel anymore.

Due Process
Mar 5 2010

No babies
torn from mothers’ arms.
No one beaten, tortured
shot point-blank.

It was orderly queues.
Prim officials
uniformed, meticulous.
Forms in triplicate
signed and stamped.

We felt reassured
— a civilized people
a legal plan.
So they took away our valuables
our homes,
left only each other
hope
the clothes on our backs.

We assembled in well-mannered lines,
straggling into draughty box-cars
tightly-packed,
stinking of wet wool
and human bodies.
With a single bucket in an open corner
sloshing onto the floor.
We let them lead us on,
too familiar with due process, order,
anaesthetized
by our refusal to believe
in evil.

Totalitarian regimes
are brilliant at bureaucratic legalese.
Over-compensating, perhaps
for their depravity
their complicity
— just following orders
saving themselves.
So what satisfying irony
that they so meticulously documented their crimes
for posterity,
in gun-metal boxes, on yellowing pages
neatly filed and signed.
In hand
by name and rank.

If we hadn’t been so civilized
we might have broken from line
escaped.
But we meekly obeyed, took our place
in the warm bath
of order, authority.
Only to be boiled alive.


Hardly my usual poem: not the typical lyric poem, inspired by nature; nothing small and personal about it. This one is political, polemical, and ambitious – things I try hard to avoid. But I felt like saying it; which, I guess, is a good enough reason for any poem.

Actually, what set me off was the movie Defiance: I thought the scene of rounding up the Jews was unrealistic. The Germans believed too much in order and due process, in their own superior civilized sensibilities, for such unsavoury bullying. (Although, to be fair to the film, perhaps their Byelorussian henchmen weren’t quite so scrupulous.) But more than that, I thought the contrast between the inhuman and brutal outcome and a sanitized legalistic process would be far more effective, far more chilling; even if it is less obvious and less explicitly dramatic. I’m especially thinking of the Dutch Jews and their collaborator countrymen: the habit of compliance (so very Dutch!); the denial of the existence of death camps; the belief in a civilized Europe.

It’s not by any means a great poem; certain not in terms of style or artfulness. (Which is usually what I’m most interested in.) In fact, the day after it was written I was going to delete the rough draft. But, as I said, it was something I felt like saying …and still do. Anyway, as anyone who knows me will attest, I’m far too frugal to ever throw anything away!

The ending refers, of course, to the famous frog experiment (which, for all I known, may be entirely apocryphal.) This is the supposed experiment in which a frog, tossed into boiling water, immediately leaps out. But if placed in a warm comfortable bath, remains: even as the heat is slowly turned up, until the frog is boiled alive.

Where
Mar 7 2010


I’m not sure where I’m from.
A question frequently asked
in this land of immigrants
and travellers.

I was born in the far-off capital
in a spanking-new hospital
downtown;
3rd son,
not the hoped-for daughter.
But began life in a modest suburb,
much like all the others
in the post-war rush
of optimism.
That provincial city
is now a preening metropolis
I do not recognize,
and was hardly ever a part of, anyway.

Then college town.
Restless twenties
and counting.
The place I now call home.

I have lived half my life
away
from my place of birth;
but, like blood and belonging
find it hard to escape.
Despite the realization
you can be in more than one place
at a time.
And now that I’m free to proclaim
whatever allegiance I please
I feel as though I’m falling through the cracks,
belonging to neither.
As the future and the past
pull apart faster and faster,
the older I find myself.

You can get comfortable, after awhile,
setting down roots
like a house on its concrete foundation.
Or just feel settled,
a small wooden cottage
nestled into the land,
after its slanted floors and crooked walls
eventually stop moving
— off-kilter
but solid enough.
Yet you’re still an outsider,
the big-city boy
from the suburbs,
without the attachment of grandparents, cousins
uncles and aunts,
of families dividing
branch-by-branch.

Presuming, of course, that “where” is geographic
and not a state of mind.
A state of travelling
from here to there,
from young to old,
from boy to man.
A question strangers never ask;
and so much harder to answer.

Cold Case
Mar 3 2010


Blood on the snow
a tuft of fur.
In the cold
the stains are still bright red,
and the edges have that softly blotted blur
of water-colour, on paper.

The Labrador pup charges off-trail
almost submerged,
her nose angling-up like a snorkel,
plush brown back
rippling along the surface,
blunt body
powering through.

Her snout is magnificent, noble,
burrowing into deep white powder.
She snorts and sniffs, almost chewing the air
— a connoisseur of scent.
Then stops, transfixed,
darting off on invisible trails.
She investigates the area like a crime scene,
reconstructing events with forensic precision —
the olfactory clues,
tell-tale molecules
left behind.

To which I am totally blind.
While she occupies a 5th dimension
beyond space and time,
inaccessible to my weakened senses
my inattention
my pre-occupation with human cares,
always thinking
what comes next.

She emerges triumphant
— a severed head
congealed blood
fur matted, wet.
The death of a rabbit.
And a fugitive hawk
in flight, at large,
the prime suspect excused from trial —
the defence of necessity,
exigencies
of survival.

The DNA now safely banked
in this dog’s exquisite brain —
processed, protected
cross-referenced.
Cold case.
Hard evidence.

Hope the Gods Won’t Notice
Mar 1 2010


We don’t talk much, here.
The weather, the game
the price of tomatoes.
Hard and tasteless, this time of year.
More of the same,
home-team lost, again.

We scan the horizon, hoping for snow
in this clear cold winter,
septic beds frozen
wells pumped dry.
Grass as stiff as straw
left over from fall,
a mat of limp brown leaves
under thin receding cover.
Drought, this spring
you can hear us mutter.

But we are a modest people,
and tend to believe
things even out.
We approve of stories
of squandered fortunes
of winners losing their house.
We believe in paying the price
for easy weather
a winning record,
tomatoes with bite.
So if not snow, then eventually rain,
replenishing the soil
recharging wells.

Yes, but all at once
we worry,
lost to run-off, flood
when the land’s still frozen hard.
So even though things even out
our hope is tempered by doubt —
that fate
will not favour us.

A good reason
not to talk too much —
go under the radar,
hope the gods won’t notice.
So that sooner or later
more snow will come,
a gentle rain
a steady thaw.



I like this image of taciturn modest people, living close to the land, and susceptible to superstition, as people can be who are dependent on fickle nature and the vicissitudes of weather. They believe that life is a zero sum game; that justice is served when the tall poppy is cut down to size; and are probably happier than their more ambitious and optimistic counterparts -- if only because of low expectations.

But this is also about this season of extremes: a cold dry winter, with hardly any snow cover. So the poem recounts exactly what’s been happening. And my own feeling that, in a world of zero sum games and regression to the mean, we’ll pay for this lovely steady thaw in the worst way: an unseasonable dump of heavy wet snow, or early spring rain, turning the unpaved roads to impassable gumbo, and the yard into a mud-pit. Of course, we need the precipitation for every reason imaginable; but still, an easy winter and an easy thaw have their advantages!

In choosing a title, I’ll often avoid using my favourite line: not wanting to steal my own thunder, I guess! But I love this line, and I think it’s the lynch-pin of the piece; so when you eventually get to it, having already read the title, it gains that much more resonance. Because there is some other stuff going on in the poem, and I don’t want any mistake that this is the heart of it: the linking of their taciturn nature and private suffering with their superstitious and fatalistic view of life.

Safe Passage
Feb 28 2010


A smooth driver
timing the lights.

I grip the wheel
grim, focused,
push the pedal
to the edge of speed,
hope the yellow holds
a few seconds more.

When I shall breathe easy
crossing the point-of-no-return,
safe passage insured.
The right-of-way
the privileged space
between yellow and red,
where I am untouchable
in my sleek metal pod,
flying through unchecked.

The cross-town traffic
observant, obedient,
the automated signals
clicking through their sequence,
the hail Mary mercy
of time-delayed greens.
This is the clockwork intersection
we never question,
implicitly rely.
And my unblemished record
the effortless drive,
the seamless perfection
of timing each light.

Except for that extra single second,
when even best laid plans go awry.
When a routine trip to the bank
goes somewhere else entirely,
interrupted
by smoking rubber
crumpled steel
shattered glass.

A moment of indecision
is all.
How, in just an instant
there is a before, and an after;
and you will take nothing for granted
again.

Speed
Feb 26 2010


From 2 lanes to 1.
Through asphalt gravel dirt.
And mud
when spring comes suddenly.

The hump in the middle, with grassy tufts,
twin ruts
no passing.
From all who stuck
to the well-worn path —
rusting pick-ups, grinding trucks,
dusty cars, lost on clever short-cuts.
As far from the ditch as possible,
where it’s standing water
gumbo, muck,
the stuff that sucks you under.

You drive hard
beneath over-arching trees,
through green translucent light
rapidly flickering shadows.
In a black Cadillac
top peeled back
faster and faster,
with the rapture, and rush
of speed.
Too noisy to speak
too ecstatic to think,
of blind curves
spongy brakes
single lanes,
on the old plank bridge, that sways
like a 2-day drunk
who hopes to get lucky
some day.

The girl at your side
holds on tight,
eyes bright
gaze greedy.
Up to the edge
the release
the slow-motion scream,
every micro-second
fixed in memory.

Or it could be steamy windows
perfumed sweat
a summer dress.
Like heavy necking
or back-seat sex
— but better.