A Student of Weather

June 27 2011

There is a heavy rainfall warning

in effect.

This is the weather office advisory

more shrill than watch.

Which seems rather pointless

watching out for bad weather

  —  it will come, regardless.

And either way, the roof will hold

the river rise

well below me.

But I am worse than the fool

who doesn’t know

to come in out of the rain,

and I go out

in this Biblical flood

this inundation.

Like a monsoon, the heavens have opened up.

The air so full, I am breathing water,

torrential drops

stripping leaves, bowing branches

hammering straight down.

Puddles quickly find each other

joining up,

until I’m standing ankle deep

in a broad flat lake,

soaked clothes

shrink-wrapped against me,

hair, streaming.

We have had hail, fire, wind,

so water is hardly threatening.

I can dare nature

without consequence,

here, on high ground

free to duck inside.

Or so I thought.

Because the road’s washed-out

power-lines toppled.

And I am a fool

cold, and sodden

standing in the hundred-year-flood,

head back, eyes shut

surrendering

to wetness.

Now, almost up to my knees

and rising.

So much water, in a world

that is full of drought.

That will run down to the sea

eventually,

leaving it green, overrun with weeds.

The steeper slopes rutted

with dried-out streams.

Exposed rocks

like bones, picked-clean.

So I’ve learned to keep watch

  —  the sky

the far horizon.

Because weather never stops.

Warned,

or not.


My apologies to the fine novelist Elizabeth Hay, for stealing her title. She is an exquisite writer. So please regard this as a kind of homage …not plagiarism!

It sounded familiar, so I googled it. Just as I thought …but too good to change. My alternative was In, Out of the Rain. Which is OK …but just OK.

The War of Northern Aggression

June 25 2011

The heat makes us stupid.

And just to prove it

we’re slow talkers,

swirling long vowels around our mouths

like hard sour candy.

We take our Coke in bottles,

that instantly break

into sweat,

beads of clear sweet water

dripping down the glass.

And hold them against

fevered brows, soiled necks

like a cooling poultice.

Sugary liquid

that just increases our thirst.

Pavement, with heat shimmering off,

a broken mosaic

of asphalt and weeds.

Dust blurs the horizon, paints the sunset red,

and the sun

like a dying ember

still putting-out heat.

We sit in the shade,

a tin awning,

that’s pitted by hail

and makes such a clatter in the rain

no one talks.

Today, hot enough to burn

any fool who touched it.

We look warily

at strangers,

who are probably lost

trying to get back to the Interstate.

And reminisce

about The War of Northern Aggression

as if we’d been there,

when Lincoln freed the slaves

and millions perished.

As if nothing much has happened

since,

as if the world

hadn’t shifted.

And even if it did

we would sit,

waiting for a breath of air

on this baking plain

West Texas.

Watching , as the sun descends,

a dull red ball, that seems immense

so close to the horizon.

And overhead, wings outstretched

a turkey vulture rides the thermals,

super-heated air

whisking him up.

In slow wide circles

peering down.

As the US Civil War is still called, in some parts -- south of the Mason Dixon line, that is.

I really just wanted to write about heat. (Heat I’m still waiting for, this stubborn summer.) The thought of which immediately conjured up a steaming bayou in Louisiana, a baking plain somewhere south. West Texas won. I guess dry heat seemed more like it. I’m rather pleased I managed to resist that clichéd tumbleweed, rolling down Main St. unobstructed.

Of course, the poem ended up being about more than high summer. It’s also about xenophobia, stereotyping (theirs, as well as ours), and clinging to a dying vision of a mythologized past. But most of all, it demands that you read it slowly, taking in the dregs of this hot, seemingly endless, day.

Channelling

June 22 2011

The famous author talked

about her characters

taking on lives of their own.

Like a disengaged God

who sets the world in motion

and then is gone,

letting fee will, anarchy, passion

reign.

So I wonder, do we all contain

this universe of characters

lurking unaware?

First sleep,

incoherent dreams

that vanish, when I waken.

Now this multitude

who accompany me, unseen.

Conscious

of a miniscule sliver

of my own reality, it seems.

I would love to know

if I’m the hero

of my own existence,

or just an extra, a walk-on part;

indispensable

or unscripted?

Or is my singular conceit

all there is?

Sometime, a poem comes out

effortlessly,

like automatic writing

like channelling.

A voice whispers in my ear,

and I do its bidding

unwittingly.

So who is the speaker,

and which is me?

And do we ever meet,

and in whose dreams?

Borrowed Atoms

June 21 2011

As if you could move through the world

incognito.

But the body

reveals itself.

Its boundaries

aren’t as hard as you thought.

Traces of skin, a fingerprint

glistening

in ultraviolet light.

The rumbling in your gut

no matter what

you ate.

Borborygmi, eructation

flatus,

where bacteria

outnumber all the cells

you’re made of.

And the hot wet breath

you can’t help express

so many times a minute.

Even saliva, aerosolized,

inadvertently left

behind.

Molecules

drifting off, wafting up,

carrying your scent

your sickness

your inner life,

your idiosyncratic signature.

The chemistry

of pheromones

and antigenic fitness.

So your body’s slowly bleeding off

into the surroundings,

exposed by the skin

you still insist

encloses you.

You are a raw neuron

immersed

in life’s primordial soup,

cringing, retracting, firing up

at the slightest touch.

At a flutter of wings

you never imagined

mattered.

There is even a hollow tube

that runs right through

from your nose

to the seat of darkness,

turning you inside out

into the world at large.

Confusing

where things end

and start.

No in and out

no right and left,

no us, and them. 

You return to the earth

from which you came.

And your borrowed atoms

the stuff of stars,

eventually reclaimed.

I think we live with this unexamined conceit that the environment is out there, while we are contained in here. But, in a very literal sense, our bodies are in this constant intimate exchange with our surroundings. We can’t seal ourselves off from pollution, from the water in which we swim. And, if you do the numbers, you’ll realize that we are repeatedly breathing in the same molecules as those exhaled by Napoleon and Joan of Arc. The "flutter of wings" are those of that notorious butterfly of chaos theory:   a theory which is meant to illustrate the non-linearity of cause and effect; but also gets at this same idea of interdependence through time and space.

In  a larger sense, we are all stardust:  where all our atoms were born, and will eventually return. Of course, this isn’t an argument for immortality. Because our singularity, our consciousness, does die. Which makes us all the more miraculous:  thrown together in this extraordinary transient reprieve from entropy.

This is one of the few poems in which I dig in just a little to my medical background. And also one in which I take the great risk of actually appealing to a modicum of scientific literacy.

(There is the brief reference to pheromones, for example.  This is based on the fact that we are able to unconsciously sense our partner’s immunological status (based on the HLA antigen, or so-called major histocompatibility complex), which has been shown to be a basis for romantic/sexual attraction. In this case, it’s the attraction of opposites:  which makes sense, if you think about “hybrid vigour,” about immunological fitness. Another example is our gut. Anatomically speaking, it actually defines a potential space that is outside our body:  a long donut hole that runs right through us. I’m not sure what to make of “seat of darkness”, except as a backhanded homage to Conrad – who sensibly selected a much more heroic bit of anatomy! )

On the other hand, medical jargon throws up such great words – like “borborygmi”, and “pheromones.” So how could I let such lexicographical gold go to waste?!!

Too Many Funerals

June 19 2011

My mother answers.

Only when she’s out, when he’s left alone

does he pick up.

And it’s her voice, as well

on the answering machine.

Dead air, at first;

as usual, confused

by technology.

Then enunciates extra-carefully

into the electronic void.

Thinner, with age,

her disembodied words

sound unnaturally bright, and chirpy.

My mother answers

and does most of the talking.

His intermediary,

his social convener

his lifeline

to the outside world.

But on the 3rd Sunday in June

there is the obligatory call.

The ritual exchange of pleasantries

bland inquiries,

diverting handily

into politics, and sports.

We are each happy, well,

no problems

to speak of.

The word love

does not come up,

and we are both comfortable with this.

He was a good provider

and I, a dutiful son,

and this is more than enough.

My mother takes the phone

so happy I called,

and now all of the brothers

have remembered

wished him the best.

As if anyone could forget

in the tempest of ads

for aftershave, golf.

My father told me

tomorrow he attends the funeral

of a friend, his age, who finally passed.

A mercy, he says.

In a man’s 90th year

there are too many funerals.

And who makes new friends

at this late stage?

He has outlived everyone.

He has run out of friends

in his adoptive city,

and no one is left

in the city he grew up.

“But I have your mother” he says

before the phone

is handed off.

He is stoical

as men of his generation were taught

and he taught us.

Not one to complain

about the infirmities, indignities

of age.

The phone lines are humming

the 1st Sunday, of summer

from daughters, and sons.

Although Mother’s Day

is busier.

Which a father understands.

And would be just as glad
if his day of thanks
was hers. 


When I called this Father's Day, this is close to what my dad actually said to me:  "I've run out of friends", or "All my friends are gone", or something like that.

He is the last survivor of his immediate family:  the youngest child, who has lived the longest. We easily think about the importance of friendship in school age kids, in adolescents and young adults. But close friends are probably more important as we age and our world shrinks. In this case, of course, it's not simply a loss of companionship, but a very real and poignant reminder of imminent mortality.

Anyway, when he said this, his sadness showed through his manly stoicism. I thought I should honour it with a poem.

Lion’s Tooth

June 17 2011

The lawn has been colonized by dandelions.

The imperialists

of the vegetable world,

who arrived here from Europe

and never went home.

Even the name is imposed

from the mother country,

a corruption of dent de lion, or lion’s tooth

for their sharp serrated leaves.

They are dazzling in spring

with tight succulent flowers  —

bright yellow polka-dots

sprinkled across

a lush green lawn.

But by now, they are gaunt and leggy,

cute kindergarten kids

who suddenly sprung up

into sullen adolescents.

With thick tenacious roots

and purple stems,

and seedy heads, pale as death,

that seem alien

metastatic.

Like us, they are opportunistic,

filling vacant spaces

finding cracks in pavement,

frugally extracting

the last stray bit of sun.

They grow big,

are indiscriminate

in procreation,

until the last square inch

of the planet

is taken up.

They live on light and air,

thrive

in the driest land.

So we don’t stand a chance.

Like cockroaches, and plutonium

the dandelion

will not only outlast

our lovingly manicured grass,

but us.

A Strangely Familiar Room

June 14 2011

In the same room

in the next town

in the dead of night.

The chair, the desk

the queen-sized bed

you haven't slept in, yet,

as usual.

Gazing out

from this high dark window

the city goes about its business

with complete indifference.

As if no one was watching.

As if the city

had emptied out.

The arterial roads

are the usual grid

of a well-planned city

in the flat Midwest,

intersecting, receding

fanning out at your feet.

There are just a few toy-like cars,

no doubt arousing suspicion

so late at night.

And from such imposing height

they are soundless

and painfully slow.

The traffic lights

are tiny jewels of primary colour

lined up

one after the other,

clicking green-yellow-red

deliberate, set

handing-off to the next.

Controlling

the non-existent flow

of busy traffic.

Commanded from some electronic bunker

the lights run precisely

all night long,

which surely must have delighted

the city planners, and traffic czars,

the architects

of such pleasing order.

Like an automaton, they will go on and on;

or at least until a relay sticks, a transformer blows,

power-lines topple

electricity stops.

The world

as we know it

so far.

You are sleepless

in this unnamed metropolis

in this strangely familiar room.

And the traffic lights

in their seamless order

are an unexpected comfort.

As regular as a heartbeat

resting your head,

as your lover’s quiet breathing

beside you, in bed.

So you watch

exhausted,

longing for rest.


This poem was inspired by a radio interview with the singer-songwriter Moby. The occasion was the release of his album “destroyed”. (The lower case is his, not mine. And there were two interviews, actually:  first on CBC’s Q, and shortly after on NPR’s Weekends on All Things Considered.)

He talked about his insomnia, and about writing the songs late at night in hotel rooms on the road:  the loneliness, the dislocation, the feeling of unreality; and the strange familiarity of hotel room décor all over the world. And he also talked about his fascination with built places used in incongruous ways; of the feeling of places that should be full of people but have been  emptied out. The image of the traffic lights is his. But it resonates with one of my own, since I can look out of my bedroom window and see something very similar:  looking down on a series of autonomous street lights, clicking through their sequence all night long, oblivious to the presence or absence of people.

On re-reading, just now, I noticed the telling progression from town to city to metropolis. In the writing, this was simply an exigency of rhyme and meter. But in the reading, this seems to nicely reinforce the sense of dislocation and anonymity:  the writer not knowing where he is, in this generic anyplace.

Pickled Herring

June 11 2011

The coupon lady

was counting out change,

then fastidiously arranged

12 items, no less

in a stretchy mesh bag,

fussing about a dozen precious eggs

at the head

of the express line.

A penny dropped

on dull brown linoleum,

rolled, and stopped.

She knew the value of a penny saved, a penny earned,

so there we were

all of us down on hands and knees

searching.

A lucky penny, apparently

irreplaceable.

So I’m guessing luck is a zero sum game,

and the express line

a cruel irony.

Her penny saved, my time to waste

clutching a screw-top-jar of pickled herring

on sale

final day.

Funny, what you find

on a grocery store floor

in high summer

in tourist country.

Sun-screen, gum

a bunch of dusty change,

a coupon for a buck

in pickled herring.

The store manager

wasn’t happy, at all,

banishing the stalled cashier

to shopping carts

and manning the till himself.

But well out of practice,

and with incongruous hands

a blacksmith, or farmer, would have,

his fat finger was poking at numbers

and searching, and hovering

like a hunt-and-peck typist

under the gun.

A penny for his thoughts

  —  I wonder?

The manager

grimly persisting,

the scanner

missing its mark.

Lots of time to go back

get a 2nd jar.

Going Sideways

June 9 2011

Why not ascend, vault, jump

get lifted up?

But no, we fall in love.

Like a patch of ice

thinly covered by snow.

Like a broken step

heading into a dark dank basement.

Like being shoved

on a double dare

over the edge.

Or at least, going sideways.

A lateral move,

like secretary

to executive assistant.

Not a promotion, exactly,

but the benefits are better

and it sounds official.

Or maybe metaphysical.

Because it takes belief   —

the she is the one

out of a billion potential others.

That she won’t give up

as easily

as your last great love.

That destiny

has conferred its approval.

And disbelief, as well.

That you’ve not just been drugged

by brain chemicals, 

the addictive rush

of infatuation.

Because you know enough

to wonder  —

how much is oxytocin

and how much moral agency?

I am a skeptic

by nature,

which may be why I haven’t fallen

so far.

Not an agnostic

who reprimands God

when He fails to come,

but a true non-believer;

whose belief in the rigor of thought

has left me deprived

of consolation

and comfort.

So I find myself stuck,

not moving up, or down

or sideways.

Although I have crept close to the edge

peered over skeptically,

felt the trickle of sweat, prickly neck
wobbly knees,

and quickly leapt

back to safe flat ground.

Which is exactly where old married couples

are found.

Except their intimate patch

of safety

is so far up the mountain,

a man like me

can hardly even imagine.

People like me, who are congenitally incapable of belief, may have as much trouble with love (romantic love, that is) as we have with God. Love is no less a matter of belief.  Because they each require a leap of faith, a leap that involves surrender, trust, submission – a leap that’s beyond me. Or maybe this is just my  problem:  most confirmed atheists seem to make out just fine.

So placing the highest value on intellectual rigor is probably not the best plan. Although it does explain why religion – and  the superstition that seems to inevitably accompany it – escapes me. Unfortunately, it also means that the easy consolation of belief also escapes me.

I was reluctant, setting out on this poem. First, because there are some complicated philosophical ideas here that probably lend themselves more to essay than poetry. (As in the way that throwaway line “how much moral agency?”, which I’m sure I’d be delighted to expand into a book length essay on the conceit of free will vs. biologic determinism in the context of evolutionary biology. You see,  it can be hard work restraining myself! But that’s the challenge or poetry, and what I like:  the discipline to say what I say, and let the reader do the rest. …Or not.) And second, because I’m not usually comfortable with something as personal/confessional as this.

So I’m quite pleased with the result.  I think the poem reads easily:  it’s fun to recite and hear; the rhyme and rhythm work;  and it comes across with the light conversational quality I always try to achieve. It has it’s amusing moments; but I think the voice still manages to be consistent. And although the complexity of some of the ideas has been minimized, I don’t feel I’ve sacrificed anything I wanted to say.

Other titles I considered were “Love, and Gravity”; “A Cartography of Love” (or “Geography …”); and “An Atheist in Love”. But I was reluctant to use the word “love” in the title at all, because I think the misdirection in the first two lines (what’s this about? …where could it possible be going?) would be lost. I know it’s just a couple of lines; but isn’t it the first few lines that either grab or lose a reader? Anyway, “Going Sideways” was a nice find. It’s cribbed from the poem, of course. And it anticipates the central device of direction and movement.  But I also like the metaphorical meaning:  how the narrator – especially in the last two stanzas – appears to be stalled, stranded; and which, in turn, reflects the way I find myself feeling more and more.  (But then, that’s a whole other poem I haven’t yet written – and most probably never will!)