The Thing About Being Young …

April 27 2011

The thing about being young

I started out

before I was struck

by the presumption of “the”,

as if there was one definitive thing

discussion over.

The definite article

is like your know-it-all brother-in-law,

full of swagger, and certainty.

As in the truth  … the people

 …the thing,

a suspect word

when it can be invoked so easily

by poets and despots and priests,

a truly unholy alliance.

How nothing hurts

the morning after,

kissed away

by sleep.

How a year goes on and on,

half your life

so far.

How you will be an astronaut

when you grow up,

never having considered

phone sales.

How asking a girl out

makes your ears burn

your tongue turn dry as dust,

devoutly believing

this surely must get easier.

How 20-somethings

seem so grown-up,

and over 30

can’t be trusted.

Didn’t they say that, once?

That your love is pure

and permanent,

nothing to do with lust.

Or in return
with being loved.

That old people

were always that way.

That this is the very first time

it’s been done.

That you’ve never been understood,

and how good

self-pity feels.

And still does.

It’s only later you’ll learn

that those middle-aged women, and men

whom you and your friends

laughed about

poking and nudging each other

or were merely invisible,

were having much more fun

than your sullen smirking buddies.

Or than they themselves

ever did

young.

I’m always suspicious of grandiloquent pronouncements involving “the”:   a preacher, invoking the truth …a charismatic leader, speaking in the name of the people …or me, pronouncing the one thing. Because very few things are so singular and definitive that they justify the definite article.

Was it G. B. Shaw who so trenchantly said “youth is wasted on the young”? He was right, of course.

But in a culture that worships youth and fears age, we also romanticize our younger selves, forgetting the angst, insecurity, powerlessness, and lack of perspective that can at times make being young unbearable.

So this is a bit of a corrective. Time goes mercifully slow. Our bodies are indestructible. Everything in life is possible. Being as old as them is inconceivable. No one has ever been in love before; or at least never like this. And how delicious that self-righteous idealism feels. But …

“Happiness” studies bear this out. In general, people get more satisfied with life as they age. I believe the peak occurs somewhere in our late 40’s. Maybe worth the price of bad knees and thinning hair!

Reluctant Spring

April 22 2011

Ice persists in the narrows.

A perilous walk, crossing

in this on-and-off spring.

Although two fat imperious geese

are squatting, warily watching,

early arrivals

when there’s little to eat.

A strip of open water,

where the frozen surface

has released its grip on the shore.

A glistening edge

of blue translucent ice,

receding imperceptibly.

Until one bright warm morning

it will all be gone,

leaving cold black water

lapping at rocks.

The dog wades in

transfixed by sticks of wood,

water-logged, slick with rot

sunk in the silty bottom.

And suddenly finds herself swimming

oblivious to freezing cold.

As if the long dry winter

had never occurred,

she takes as given

the change of season,

utterly unperturbed.

And then shakes herself briskly

in a spray of tiny drops,

goes charging off

to her next great adventure.

But I keep thinking of the geese.

I presume a goose and a gander,

whom I’ve been told

mate for life.

Irritably honking

at the dog’s approach,

awkwardly hopping

into laboured flight,

enduring the hunger and cold.

I idly watch them,

sitting impassive, or calmly paddling

looking blankly

at the snowbound shore.

Whose early arrival

will go unrewarded,

this squabbling couple

alone, so far.

Then I shiver slightly,

tugging the zipper

tight to my neck.

In this endless spring

when winter won’t retreat

and summer seems impossible.

But the dog, as usual, couldn’t care less.

She is thrilled with life,

intense, ballistic

bouncing with delight.

At the intoxicating scent

of freshly thawed soil.

At the ice letting go.

At the tepid sun.

Because it’s always dog heaven

no matter what.

First Draft

April 20 2011

The first draft

is always in long hand.

Like anything we start

we assume it will all end well.

That the rules

are for everyone else,

and we are above needing nice straight lines

to follow.

And that our penmanship

may be illegible,

but in retrospect

make perfect sense.

Some find the blank page daunting.

Some doodle in the corners

fiddle and fold

spill hot black coffee.

But I love an empty canvas

bleached white bond.

It feels like an uninhabited island,

with low-hanging fruit

south sea beaches

a mast, growing slowly longer

above the shimmering horizon.

Bringing characters to join me

in this brand new world,

provisions

of fresh new words.

The ending

may seem inevitable,

but I had no idea when I set out.

I feel like a willing instrument

a receptive channel

an amanuensis,

in a state of suspended awareness

looking on

amused. 

Until the final version

is printed out

and seems inviolable,

with its nice neat stanzas

and formal font.

When the first draft

that began

with a stab of the pen, a hopeful sentence

lies
crumpled in the trash.

And then, I send it out into the world,

hoping it will, eventually, be read.

And knowing it will be re-invented 

by each new reader.

That the first draft

never really ends.

It’s been quite awhile since I’ve written a “process” poem like this:  that is, a poem that’s about the act of writing, the creative act.

I’m not sure if the 2nd stanza succeeds in the way I intended. It was supposed to allude to starting out in life:  things like youthful rebellion and mistakes; the utter unpredictability of all the twists and turns and forks in the road; and the foundational faith that it will all eventually turn out OK. That, as the saying goes, life may not be a dress rehearsal; but still, every moment of it is a first draft!

The one thing I would have liked to add is how rhyme is a gift, and often takes me by the hand and leads me through a poem:  how simply the sound and resonance of words gives me all the next line, and then the next. In this case, it may not have come by rhyme, but I’m quite thankful for the gift of “the uninhabited island”:  what turned out to be a nice gentle metaphor. And which in turn, gave me some nifty rhymes:  island …horizon …inviolable. Well, in the first draft, anyway(!):  since in the final version, the stanza with “inviolable” ended up getting moved down.

I try to avoid big words like “amanuensis”. After all, no one wants to accompany their poetry with a dictionary. And the more you have to process the language, the less you’re able to lose yourself in the poem. Music is the best analogy:  the way it enters directly into

the brain and touches the emotions and the intellect without any cognitive processing. This is the effect I strive for (strive for, if not often achieve!) in my poetry.  But in this case, “amanuensis” was just too perfect to resist:  the meaning is exact, and the mellifluous resonance with “receptive” and “suspended awareness” was just too delightful to let go.

The description of this sort of trance-like state – the “channelling” – is very much the way the creative process has always felt to me. I suspend that logical, analytical, intellectualizing habit of mind that comes most naturally to me, and try to be more intuitive, visceral, and passively receptive. I think my most natural form is the essay; so poetry is always a challenge. And the most challenging part is where it diverges most from the essay:  the “less is more” part – leaving  stuff out!

As the poem says, I had no idea what the ending would be, where I was headed when I set out. So that I was somehow able to call back to the “first draft” was very gratifying. And the sentiment in that last stanza is absolutely true. People will read or hear my work, and blindside me with the most surprising interpretations. And just as often, miss some of the subtle allusions and ambiguities into which I put so much effort. But all that is exactly the point of a work of art (or whatever, since “art” sounds awfully presumptuous and grandiloquent when using it to describe what I do):  like your child, you have to send it out into the world, and then let it go. It becomes the reader’s (or viewer’s), not yours.

After

April 17 2011

The phone rings

in the middle of sleep.

A big old-fashioned land-line

bedside,

jangling, masculine, mechanical.

Not that soothing electronic chirp,

or the jazzy tone

you’d have chosen.

On, then off,

a jackhammer shattering the stillness

so even the silence is loud,

the sound, leaking into it

lingering in your ears.

Its measured urgency

is inescapable,

poking you hard, again and again

right between the eyes.

You lie

in your warm moist nest,

on the swampy edge

of wakefulness,

waiting ‘til it stops.

Hoping for a wrong number

an automatic dialler

a time zone gone awry. 

Because bad news comes

in the middle of the night.

When you feel the cold

in bare feet, and thin pyjamas,

and feel suddenly older,

body stiff, brain muddled

mouth thick with sleep.

You reach over

fumble the receiver

hear a tinny voice

calling from the floor.

And through the fog, you realize

that before has crashed to a stop,

and every second of your life

from now on

is after.

I indulged a bit in this poem. First of all, I went with a lot of detail:  so maybe failed to trust the reader enough, spoon-fed her a bit too much. This is something I often find I have to resist, strenuously reminding myself that I’m writing a poem, not a novel! And second, I succumbed to “suddenly.”   I say “succumbed” because I generally dislike adverbs, and this one in particular. Because the writing should be strong enough that whatever the adverb would have done is implied:  in other words, the crucial  the idea of “showing it”, now “saying it”. It’s that adverbs tend to patronize the reader:  hitting her over the head, doing too much of the work for her; which takes a lot of the pleasure out of poetry, where the reading and re-imagining can be as much a creative act as the writing was.

But sometimes, precision takes precedence over compression. There is pleasure in both approaches to writing.

This poem is all about those critical “hinge” events that bifurcate life, events that create a distinct “before” (usually naïve, and bathed in rose-coloured nostalgia) and “after” (the new harsh reality.)  And why does bad news inevitably come in the middle of the night anyway?!!

Mass Evacuation

April 15 2011

All the people had fled

in the emergency.

Dinner left

cooling on the kitchen table,

that will spawn maggots and mould

and turn to hard brown crust.

Tableau’s of daily life

under fine-grained dust,

rendered poignant

by lifeless objects  —

a door ajar, an open book,

its pages riffling in the scorching breeze

until they yellow

and stiffen.

The entire city

evicted.

Leaving a deathly stillness

that speaks of feverish haste.

Like a sentence, cut off

in the middle of a word.

Or a modern Pompeii, preserved   —

same as us, same petty concerns,

who didn’t see it coming

either.

Invisible poison

falling out.

A mass migration

before the invaders,

the inundation

of an angry sea.

A dark spot

on the X-ray

they said was routine.

When you  look the same

but everything’s changed

completely.

Or the empty chair

pushed back from the table

which will always be hers.

Was she taken away

by some force of nature?

Or did she flee

in fear for her life?

So the city’s been emptied out,

except for echoes

and absences.

Even the rats,

who gorged in the aftermath, reproducing like mad

then mysteriously vanished.

Abandoned the place,

or crawled out of sight

to die.

Who knew

how badly they needed us

to survive.

A poem inspired by the tragic events of Fukushima and Chernobyl:  those powerful images of entire cities, abandoned; of daily life, cut off in midstream. And in the case of Chernobyl, the poignancy of the undone things that have remained for decades, just as they were left.

And then I make the implicit comparison to other great life-altering events (a diagnosis of cancer, domestic violence):  when appearances are maintained, when nothing external changes, when the frail scaffolding of surface disguises the anguish and pain. The invisible absences.

My favourite part, though, is "crawled out of sight  /  to die". As well as the final stanza, the reference to rats and man:  a relationship which fails to elevate the rats, but somehow succeeds in diminishing us!

Sweet Water

April 10 2011

I have always lived on the shore of a lake,

in easy sight

of water.

Its possibility, and promise.

What lies beneath

its glassy calm,

the white froth

when it freshens.

When the nearest city

is too far to see,

and the knowing

is good enough.

A mere glow

on clear nights

somewhere south.

There is the harbour, the narrows

- a quicksilver finger

tempting our land-locked state.

Where the breeze quickens

gulls wheel, and screech,

water

advances, recedes.

The mind empties

the world breathes.

Seasons succeeding

as they’ve always done.

The breaking-up, an early freeze.

A flotilla of ducks, the skirl of geese.

The first loon

slipping seamlessly under.

Today, flat and grey.

A small lake, no way out.

So I circumnavigate the world

here,

paddling alone

hewing to shore.

Could reach out and touch

but don’t.

The beginning of spring:  an odd season to have written this.  The explanation is that this poem comes out of a fragment of a sentence, an allusive expression, I read, and couldn’t resist:  nothing at all to do with the season.

The weekend Globe has a regular Arts feature that reviews in bullet form 3 magazine cover stories. This one came from some obscure outdoor/adventure magazine. It was about scavenging for natural and “found” foods in Central Park (New York):  what to look for, and where; and how this is almost becoming a competitive sport; and whether it’s sustainable in such a small patch of wilderness.

There was a mention of “frost-sweetened crabapples,” 3 words in which I immediately sensed such irresistible tension, a series of implied opposites. There is the sense of sweetness juxtaposed with the notoriously sour fruit. There is  sense of the adversity of fall -- of longer days and increasing cold -- endowing them with sweetness:  of unexpected comfort in a season that implies adversity. And the compounding of two words that seem to cancel out:  of “frost” with “sweetened”. And finally, that the despised crab apple should have become so desirable.

So this was one of those inspirational (as opposed to “perspirational”) poems that come in a flash, and in which the writing seems much more like channelling than calculation and artifice. There is much about it I like, things I try to achieve in almost every poem I write:  the natural conversational rhythm, and internal rhyme that doesn’t seem intrusive or shoe-horned in; the emphasis on microcosm and close observation; the first person perspective, with its easy intimacy, its feeling of authenticity; and the allusion to something bigger from something small, the finding of the universal in the particular (which I hope isn’t done pretentiously or in a way that hits the reader over the head, but rather lets her take or leave, as she wishes.) In this case, think about the "toughening" and the "sweetening" that come out of adversity, and how this calls back to the old man's hand.


And something else of which I’ve lately been rather guilty:  an unseemly dose of nostalgia, a lot of poignant references to childhood! (So if I’ve ever tossed a rotten crap apple at your passing car, my sincere apologies!)

Snow-Blind

 Apr 4 2011

In the vitreous humour

of my weak left eye

the remnants of blood

have softened.

They are no longer hard black dots,

like a rack of runaway bowling balls

silently rolling

left, when I turn my head right,

tumbling and bouncing in slow motion

through the viscous ether

of inner space.

Now, they are amniotic butterflies

fluttering about like motes of dust,

inscrutable, translucent

smudged.

Mostly, I’m used to them.

But they become intrusive

in blizzards like this,

against a white monochrome world.

Almost painfully bright

when the clouds disperse.

Like looking through gauze, or blinking back tears

the world will never be clear

again.

So I find comfort in dusk

overcast, and all-day rain.

Or when I’m looking past

these ever-present reminders

at the printed page, the written word,

concentrating on the worlds they conjure

inside.

It’s hard to tell

when there’s no more snow,

if it’s falling, or blowing, or both.

When all of us

are snow-blind.

But somewhere, above the clouds, it’s clear.

And down below, enclosed in night

when the floaters disappear.


I experienced a retinal tear just about 1 year ago. For a few days prior, there were flashes of light in the periphery, and then on the fateful day a shower of tiny black dots falling down over my left eye, and filling it up. Laser surgery has sealed the tear, and the retina is apparently fine. This is idiopathic:  in people of my age, more common than I had previously thought; and even more so in people who are very near-sighted. I subsequently learned that my father had the same thing happen; which may suggest a familial component, or may be simply coincidence, since he is even more myopic.  

Anyway, as the poem says, the floaters have become far less problematic. But against a bright lightly coloured backdrop like snow, they are suddenly and dramatically more noticeable. And then at night, I get to console myself by feeling totally normal.

There was an unseasonable blizzard on the day I wrote this. Almost white-out conditions. And other than that, for the past couple of weeks it's been consistently sunny, with lots of snow on the ground. So I've taken to wearing sunglasses -- routinely. In both circumstances, these floaters have become highly intrusive. And an inescapable reminder of not only what happened, but what may still (another retinal tear, or worse, a retinal detachment). I realize I've never written about this incident. So this poem afforded a nice indirect entry into what is really another (boring!) "nature" poem! But I hope with a fresh and more personal twist.

Witching Water

 Apr 3 2011

The well is slow to fill.

The water is hard,

and dark

with flecks of rock.

And pure enough to drink,

leaning over the sink

gasping with cold.

Like a mountain stream,

where dappled fish jump

never to be seen.

Except this water comes

from a steel pipe

bored straight into the earth,

down through broken strata

and fractured rock

into lifeless dark.

Where hard flat water, dense with cold

seems that much heavier

than the frothy surface.

Drilled blind,

where the water-witch

felt his willow wand tug,

his turgid body

amplifying signals,

quivering hands

helpless to resist.

The attraction of man and water

of like to like,

as iron filings

align with the poles,

the planet’s molten core.

I learn to use it sparingly,

the forced scarcity of a precarious well

that takes its time

recharging.

So by how much did we miss

the raging underground river

I’m certain exists

somewhere under our feet?

Limitless water

I could easily squander

conscience-free.

And when I finish

it flows downhill

into the land-locked lake

then subterranean,

through unmapped fissures, and cracks in the clay

where it seeks its level

again.

A closed loop

connected through me,

passing it on.

I am 89% water,

a transient vessel.

And like my well

slow to recharge.

An actual autobiographical poem; or at least a memoir of a balky well. Which I’m pretty much stuck with, since it would take tens of thousands of bucks to drill another; and even then, there’s no guarantee we’ll hit that mythical “raging river”.  

We’re urged to conserve water. Yet drawing from this well, and living on this lake, I know I can in good conscience use as much water as I like. The only constraint in terms of the environment is the electricity used to power the pump (which I imagine is really quite negligible.) So it’s an oppressive irony that I find myself unable to drown in these hypothetical riches.

But more than this, what I think this poem really gets at is our oneness with nature. ( I hate that sentence, it’s such a cliché. On the other hand, it says what it says, which is pretty much what  I mean. If this was part of the poem and not an explanatory note, I’m sure I would have done a lot better than “oneness with nature”!)  The water that constitutes our bodies; the air we breathe in and out of every cell:  these tie us inextricably in to nature, of which the hydrological cycle is both a great example and a great metaphor.  Except that “hydrological cycle” isn’t at all poetic! So that was the challenge of this poem:  to express this idea without getting didactic or technical.

(Although the iron filings thing might be a bit cryptic. The science here is that the earth has a core of iron. The fact that it’s molten and therefore in motion is what creates the magnetic field. Iron-to-iron. A damned important thing, this magnetic field, since without its ability to deflect cosmic radiation, life on earth would be impossible.)