Tornado Season
May 30 2013


It's tornado season
in Oklahoma,
and I heard a witness say
the sky went green
and she could feel the pressure
change in her teeth

and over all the screams

were 10 locomotives

careening full-speed.
She saw open mouths, voiceless

couldn't hear her own,

felt her throat

reamed taut enough to bleed.

I once lived on a flood plain.
That spring
the basement had 4 feet of water
I felt betrayed,
as if nature had it in for me.
But memory
sugar-coats the past,
and after awhile
you get complacent
when nothing’s happened.

But it did,

and that was it, for me.

In tornado alley
they rebuild.
Take comfort
in the wind's whimsy,
touching down for an instant
somewhere else.
Either wilfully blind
or consigned
to a higher power.
People who don't swear, drink, gamble
in a game of chance,

damn the odds.

I heard the survivor say
her prayers were answered,

trapped

in a miraculous pocket

when the house collapsed. 
That she felt blessed
by a merciful God,
her bedrock faith
refreshed.

While the dead
were not quoted.
I presumed they prayed
no less.

A deadly Tornado this May: the highest rating of 5 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, which measures the destructive power of tornadoes. The Moore tornado touched down in a suburb of Oklahoma City, and along with all the usual mayhem destroyed two schools, a day-care, movie theatre, and medical clinic. The final tally was 24 dead.

One wonders why people persist in building -- and re-building -- in tornado alley. Are we in denial? Do we feel we are immune to fate, somehow exempt? Or is it just inertia, false hope, misplaced faith? Of course, I found myself in a vaguely similar situation with that flood. After all, sooner or later it was inevitable. On the other hand, and to my credit, I was naive when I bought the place; and as soon as I could, moved away.

I always hear some survivor say something like this: that God answered my prayers. As an atheist, it leaves me shaking my head. I mean, even if there were a God, what an utterly solipsistic world view, no to mention a childishly simplistic theology. But more than that, it's thoughtless, disrespectful, and -- as a fellow human of whatever belief -- infuriating: because if she was somehow virtuous enough to warrant rescue, then presumably the dead were deserving of their fate as well.

Drift
May 25 2013


In the dark fortress of trees
at their densest,

with the correct exposure, perfect slope,

and the south-west wind

missed

a small protected pocket

and dropped its load.

Still snow,

in shirt-sleeve weather
in early May.

A glimpse of white
radiating cold,
as if I'd entered a narrow gorge
sun can never penetrate.
The drift, locked-in
to the rocky hollow,

trunks, thrusting-up
from its frozen hold,
dead branches
scattered on top.
A granular surface
where lost needles, dropped cones
emerge,
as fresh as extinct mammoths
trapped in Siberian ice.

A becalmed eddy
with the scent of spruce, damp and resinous

sitting in the heavy air
dense with cold.

Winter persists
here, in the forest,
like a little ice age
in a small forgotten glade.

Or could this possibly be
an ancient remnant
of the last great glacier,
that was once a mile thick
and seemed invincible?

Reduced to this,
fossilized snow
millennia old
no one noticed before
I stumbled off the trail,
saw the glint of white
felt my shoulders tighten
with a shiver of cold.

Running at Night
May 23 2013


I remember running at night.
How fast it feels;
untroubled by thought,
enclosed
in the bubble of dark;
existence distilled
to body heat
the need to breath,
hypnotic ease
of pace.

Running as far as I can
just to go back,
a god, in stamina
in quickly cooling air.
Or imagine moving on,
a clean break
free of care.
Feet barely touching the ground
body virtually gone
-- an automaton,
set in motion
and left.

Now, on a lame hip, ageing knees
I walk.
But nights are just as magical;
in a world unnaturally still,
where all they catch is a glimpse of me
ghosting through.
Knowing that humans have always walked,
migrating
to the ends of the earth,
blindly setting-out.

And whether going to, or getting out,
there is the loneliness of the long distance runner
who cannot run far

from himself.
A solitary man
in starlit night
under vast indifferent sky,
almost effortless
in his measured trance,
step-by-step-by-step.

Who must learn to be alone,
at home
inside his head.



As the poem says, I used to run, and now have to find the same solace in walking. Which I don't think suits night-time as well: there isn't the same inexplicable sense of speed and stamina, or even quite the same sense of invisibility.

Running, no matter how social, is still essentially solitary: alone with your thoughts, your pain, your sense of accomplishment -- or failure; and, when you're lucky enough to have it all come together, alone with the exhilaration of a body that seems to go by itself -- effortless, automatic, weightless. It's then that you seem to think with laser-sharp clarity, and when your body seems more god-like than mortal. (Walking, I'm afraid, not so much once again.) This is something I very much wanted to convey, and ended up doing so in 3 out of the 4 stanzas, going from "hypnotic ease" to "automaton" to "measured trance": doing, but I hope not over-doing.

Whatever your reason for running or walking, you can't go fast enough to get away from yourself. If anything, you run into yourself: it's a great time for introspection, for living inside your head. Which may be why I always liked to run: that I'm good at living in my head (and probably like it too much for my own good!) So "the loneliness of the long distance runner" is not so much a lament as it is a highly desirable state, in that I see the solitude more as aloneness than loneliness.

Humans are the best walkers, the champion endurance animal. That's why our ancestors survived, and what we were born to do. Of course, being someone who likes to live in his head, I'm hardly the adventurous type. Nevertheless, the romance of "blindly setting out" is still irresistible -- even if just in poetic form! The same theme is also present in the preceding stanza: the idea of "moving on", ...(of) vanish(ing)". I think we have all thought this, if not out for a run then out for a drive: "What if I left everything behind, made a clean break and just kept on going?" This might have been as good a place to leave the reader -- perhaps better -- that "inside his head." But the stanzas seemed to work best in this order, and so "blindly setting out" had to settle for 2nd last.

The line " ...the ends of the earth". may too much of a cliché  So originally, I fudged with " ...to fill the earth". But the neat little resonance of "ends ...setting ...getting" was too good to waste. So for the sake of sound, I ended up risking being criticized for cliché. Does the trade-off work?
\

Wash-Out
May 20 2013


The road washed-out
in the non-stop rain
that came
before frost had left the ground.

I felt daring
in my compact sedan,
blasting through a foot
of murky water
that might well have been bottomless,
flowing fast
over asphalt
patched with tar.

And then

like a sand-castle collapsing

as the tide licks higher

the roadbed crumbled, pavement cracked,

jagged slabs
spinning-off
in the unstoppable stream.

A gaping hole
around a blind turn
where the road abruptly drops,
cut-off
on the wrong side of home.
Standing on the shoulder
cold rain, soaking in
nowhere else to go.

A thin strip of asphalt
a useless car.
The gossamer thread
of civilization
suddenly cut,
solid ground
underfoot
no longer to be trusted.

How rivers flow
where they must.
How all at once
a steady rain
becomes a flood.


This is the 2nd spring in a row when unremitting rain threatened to turn into a flood: dried-out creek-beds became rampaging streams, foundations leaked, and poorly built roads washed out.

My route in and out of town drops down to a low point where, even in a usual heavy rain, water covers the road. Today, it was pouring over, eating away at the edges and threatening to undermine the pavement. I splashed through it almost up to the fender, anxious to hustle back before it either washed out, or was closed to traffic. In real life, I made it (and the next day, was reassured to find that the road held). In the poem, it disintegrates just as I pass; which is when I stop, looking back.

A little more rain, it seems, and nothing much suddenly crosses that tipping point, when first the roads become impassable, then the hydro poles topple, then our homes are swamped: and the thin line of civilization -- the gossamer thread -- is rudely severed "all at once".

(Repeating this phrase 3 (or more) times would have worked really well, as a kind of refrain. But there was only 1 other spot where it fit; and using it just twice sounded to me more like lazy writing than powerful repetition. So, in the penultimate stanza, I instead went with "suddenly": all the while feeling highly conflicted, because not only do I dislike adverbs in general, I especially dislike "suddenly". I'd much rather have the idea of suddenness made obvious by the context. Spelling it out strikes me as patronizing -- almost insultingly so -- to the reader: too much hand-holding; when I think one key to good poetry is to trust the reader -- to make her own connections, to be a collaborator, to experience her own creative thrill.)

In our unthinking hubris, we assume the status quo, imagine our way of life is pretty much impregnable. Which is why I think the key phrase in this poem -- and the part I like the best -- is " ...rivers flow/ where they must." It implies the inexorable power of nature, her sublime indifference to man: that you can cover up the natural landscape, pave over the ancient watercourses; but water seeks its level, follows the path of least resistance, and always flows where it will.

Fallen Poplar
May 19 2013


The poplar had always been there.
Soaring, straight, sheer,
clear of branches
all the up
to its dandelion tuft
of soft green leaves.

If it weren't for the beautiful trees,
both freshly planted

and mature and grand
like that signal poplar, 
I would never have bought the place.

But now, its crown thinner, turning brown
the rot had been obvious for years.
So when it snapped in two
halfway-up that long tapering trunk
I was not surprised,
only gratified
it had missed the house.
In a fierce north wind
that free-wheeled through, one night,
like a runaway train
scouring out the deadwood.

Its broken stub will remain,
a monument
in scarred and mossy bark.
From softening wood
for woodpeckers with jack-hammer heads,
to shattered tip
where eagles may nest.
Because the place belongs to nature
I will leave it as is.

I am merely its steward, for a few short years,
after which
I, too, will return to the earth,
mature, but weary
a little thinner on top,

stricken by who knows what.
Like that fallen poplar

on some blustery night,
toppling

in our own good time.

A Sense of Place
May 18 2013

When I see a map of the continent

my eyes are drawn
here.

Zero-in
on the Great Lakes,
you might mistake

for a squashed bug,
right of centre, a little up.
Where I feel grounded, right away,
that warm flush, a sense of place
on the upper edge
of Lake Superior.

They say backwater, middle-of-nowhere
remote,
compared to the great metropolis, cosmopolitan coast
where important things get done.
Fly-over country;
unplumbed
at 30,000 feet.

Place shouldn't matter so much.
After all, we are defined

by people,
entangled, embedded, embraced.
But everyone needs to feel at home,
find a landscape
that resonates, and consoles.

I see forest and lake
hear the rustle of leaves.
See rushing water
on its way to the sea;
seeking its level, coming to rest;
salt, freshened by sweet.

See the line of darkness
approach from the east
and suddenly feel the speed;
as if riding the earth
as it steadily turns
into night.
This magnificent sphere
suspended in space
in all its ponderous grace,
the precise choreography
of gravity
and place.

Where I hover, weightless
looking down.
See the beacon of light
on the shore of the lake,
darkness all around.


I like the way this poem telescopes in and out: from the local landscape, celebrating nature, all the way to the astronomical. And I like the way it evokes (or at least tries to evoke) a sense of place that is both spiritual and geographic.

I'm a regular viewer of The Daily Show. On the set, behind Jon Stewart, is a large illuminated world map. And every day, I find my eyes inexorably drawn to that little squashed bug -- over his right shoulder -- where I drop an imaginary pin, exactly here. So, is this pride? Or is this insecurity, a desperate need for validation and recognition? Other than that, I've always had a fascination with maps; the older the better. On Antiques Roadshow, for example (yes, more TV!), I find myself especially excited when a vintage map or atlas comes up; and then find myself despairing at how undervalued they almost always are.

The poem began when I was reading an article on modern cartography: how imaginative maps have become; how artists and geographers use them to convey all sorts of unexpected or esoteric information. The piece also made a point of the importance of sense of place: how idiosyncratically each of us would fill in the outline of the same geographic space.

When you see us in satellite pictures, at night, we really are a solitary dot of light, surrounded by darkness. So, are we isolated and remote? Or could we just as well be the centre, and everyone else remote from us?!!

Mushrooming
May 16 2013


Mushrooms, in the grass
in the shadowy damp
of trees.
Exponentially feed
on unsuspecting plants, dead matter,
white, bulbous, glowing.

And in a week
black, decomposing,
so insubstantial
a hand would vanish
into frothy mush,
too gruesome to touch.

In a wet spring
under cool sun
one easily succumbs
to fungus.

Spores, in the breeze
like alien seeds
naively breathed
into soft pink lungs.

Eats

or is slowly eaten up
by toxic mycelium,

that mushroom, and bud
all over creation.

The snake in the grass
you never imagined

here.  

Fracture Line

May 13 2013

Fracture lines

materialize

on a warm day in spring.

And within a week

the lake breaks-up,

scattered ice, in jig-saw bits

before erratic winds.

Fragments

that will vanish

in an hour of sun,

or big enough

to float away on.

Who knows

where the weakness lies.

Is the fracture line

determined at freeze-up?

Or is it all dumb luck;

some darkness marring the surface

melting early,

a windrow of snow

reflecting sun?

Like the fork in the road

one may have taken, or never begun;

but either way, comforts himself

that this was meant to be.

Melted pools

of indeterminate depth

nest like lakes on lakes.

Where famished geese will rest,

the early arrivals

before this endless winter ends.

Downwind, ice piles up.

Like tectonic plates

they subduct, grinding the shore,

open and close

ebb, re-form.

While water warms,

and even deeper down

earth boils.

From the surface

we can only infer.

The silty bottom, murky depths

where fish have slept

all winter.

Fat and benthic, they lurk unseen,

pelagic and sleek

they slip with silky stealth.

A cold war

of eaten, and eat

in this dark unknowable world.

A descriptive poem, a simple seasonal piece, but with hints of the metaphysical: allusions to escape, and precariousness; to fate and free will; to hidden depths upon hidden depths (such as in "waters, nesting", for the pools that form on top of the ice; and then, in "the earth boils", plunging all the way down to magma.) I hope the ending conveys a sense of delight and mystery, as well as of resigned finality; resigned that is, to the inexorable cycle -- and cruelty -- of life. It's that last stanza, as well as the first, that are my favourites.

I'm not too thrilled with the "fork in the road ...wilful agent/ or creature of fate" bit: it seems to be saying it more than showing it; which is what prose is supposed to do, and poetry assiduously avoid. So if this strikes you, the reader, as too didactic or pretentious or obvious or clichéd, I might be persuaded to lose it.

I struggle with the title. Because I'm more taken with the idea of the unseen and the deceptive surface than I am with the idea of precarious fate; and it's the latter that Fracture Line is meant to imply. But standing on its own, I think Fracture Line is more evocative than something like Surfaces, or Nesting Waters, or Tectonic Ice (maybe because "fracture" is as much verb as noun). If you think otherwise, please let me know. I'm more than willing to re-visit this. (Although, come to think of it, in the science of plate tectonics fracture lines are invisible -- hidden under our feet, and underground.) I might even consider the whimsicality of Float Away On -- the inelegance of a dangling preposition notwithstanding! (A potential title makes me think of Joni Mitchell's wonderful song River. If you've never heard it, please listen.)

Vigilance
May 12 2013


The rabbits have turned.
Dun-coloured fur,
invisible
in the shrivelled grass,
nibbling
on thinly nourishing straw.

Concealed by shade
a crust of snow persists;
white, in a murky thaw

as if at odds with the world.

Startled, darting off
he stands on top,

frozen, for a moment

reconnoitering;
a skittish creature's
fleeting pause.
Ears twitching, head cocked
he has the startled look of prey
who are never safe.
Even worse, betrayed
by clever camouflage.

I feel the shadow
of the bird of prey,
the thrum

of powerful wings

displacing air.
As if my own disguise
were just as transparent,
the penetrating glare
of an in-between world
where I feel as out-of-place

out of sync.

Then he dashes off
swiftly lost
in last year's fallow field.
A creature of flight

who depends on vigilance, and speed,

the unreliable art

of concealment.

And almost overnight, it seems
the grass is green
again.

Condensation
May 8 2013


Cool air
spilled-in over the sill
all night long.
The house, thrown open wide,
unguarded as an innocent child
asleep.

A thick heat, today
and I can feel the ocean of air
weighing me down,
so very different

from the cold dry winter
it seemed would never end.

Now, the windows are closed,
misting over
containing the cool
of the night before.
I look out through fog,
the world as impressionist art
in water-colour paint
on creamy paper.

Tiny droplets
coalesce,
running down the glass
leaving random trails
that merge, and branch

dropping-off the edge.
Abruptly stop
where surface tension
and gravity
exactly cancel out.

Saturated air 
envelopes
my hermetic house.
Stepping out
into wilting heat
that hits me like a body-blow.

As forgetful
as if my whole life
had been winter.
As if the existence of spring
were a comforting myth,
whispered to children
to make them sleep.

A very late winter this year, so when it turned warm it was sudden, under clear skies and lots of sun.  Today, though, is the first day with overcast and a little rain. 

The house is cool and dry from the night before. So when I stepped out the door, it was with the shock of hitting a wall of humid air, thinking to myself ..."oh, yeah, this is what it's like":  so unexpected,  it was as if it had been in a previous life I'd experienced summer weather; or at least so long this felt like the first time ever. And seasons rarely collide like this, the contrast rarely so dramatic. 

What mostly made me want to write this, though, was the stylistic exercise of microcosm, of close observation:   playing around with the simple image of heavy condensation on cool glass.  

The Country Girl
May 6 2013


She was a beauty
with flaming hair, fierce blue eyes
a famous blush,
who defied her elders
danced, did drugs,
chose her lovers
on impulse, lust.

And who persists
in gradations of grey,
as if a ghostly apparition
had wandered into the frame
and was snapped.
Unnaturally still
for a woman who lived so fast,
was never black and white.
So we can peruse, at leisure,
reading-in a life
of colour, and depth,
what went before
might have, after.
A reflection, perhaps
less of her, than us.

When the cause of death
is old age,
we forget they once were young.

That in retrospect
future generations
will see us as contemporaries,
not notice, or care
who came early, who came late
to the same shared century.

Forget
that in the vast history
of life on earth
we flicker, instantly
in-and-out.
That the presumption of youth
who are immortal,
the invisibility of the old
who feel no older
are mere conceits,
the narcissism
of the living,
repeatedly coming of age.

So I am grateful,
her voice still fresh
in the writing she left

to posterity.
While her exhausted body
will not wait long
for us,
who will soon arrive
like unexpected guests
at one of her fabulous affairs.


There was a terrific column about the author Edna O'Brien in The Globe and Mail this weekend. (I've copied it below; which is probably an infringement of copyright, if such a thing applies to obscure blogs).

The piece reminded me of the narcissism of youth, the solipsism of generations, our patronizing attitude to the elderly. After all, it doesn't take much of a long term view to realize that we are all contemporaries, despite the self-absorption of youth, the invisibility of old age. This is what I mean by "the narcissism/ of the living": in 100 years, all of us -- from newborn to centenarian -- will all be gone, replaced by billions more who -- like us -- feel themselves at the centre of the universe, as if they were exempt from the fate of all who came before; who see their predecessors as 2-dimensional figments, and those to follow as merely hypothetical. So we distance ourselves: unable to identify with ancestors who persist, at best, in faded black and white pictures; unable to appreciate that our shared humanity transcends generations.

I also thought about the power of the still photograph: the archaic impression we get from sepia, or black and white; and the evocative power of seeing life in this unnatural state of fixation -- the reading-in, the implication -- that probably says as much about the viewer as the subject. Since McLaren never mentions a photograph, perhaps I was thinking of that formal author picture that appears on every dust cover. Or perhaps it was just the way she brought this woman to life, like injecting colour into black and white: taking someone who was just a name to me, who I knew was an old woman, and who must have written vintage and very proper books; then bringing her to sudden life in the most unexpected way. And probably also because I had just read another feature in the same section of the paper, which was about two celebrated photographers: the Brazilian Sebastiao Selgado, who works in brilliant black and white, and whose photographs reminded me what a surprisingly epic and eternal quality black and white confers; and the Canadian Edward Burtynsky, whose large format works are full colour, and breath-taking in their monumental scope. The Selgado photographs are of the natural world, untouched; but they seem almost other-worldly in their power. Black and whit pictures really arrest my eye in a way that colour can't. There is an analogy here in poetry, where less is almost always more.

So when we see old photographs, we not only see -- and imagine -- more than there is, but the old fashions and black and white format distance us even further. It is only when a fine write like Leah McLaren brings someone to life -- as she does here with Edna O'Brien -- do we find ourselves identifying with someone so much older than ourselves; and then reflecting on how absurd to have entertained the notion that a few decades could have made that much difference in a life.

The line "...repeatedly coming of age" tries to get at something we all feel as we age: how deceptive is our exterior; how we seem to get fixed on a certain age -- usually late teens or early twenties -- and in our interior lives never feel older than that. This is something I think we will all experience: looking into a mirror, and wondering who that old geezer staring back could possibly be!

The title of McLaren's column (just below) refers to the recent HBO series Girls. Lena Dunham is the precocious young talent who stars, writes, directs, and produces. I love Girls (which may seem strange, for a man, who is middle aged, and has nothing to do with Brooklyn!) The conflation of Dunham and O'Brien reminds me even more how everything old is new again: a useful cliché, that probably sums up the poem as well as anything more original and profound.

One more note. If you never realized that the writer's life is one of envy, then I feel obliged to confess that I wish it had been me, instead of Leah McLaren, who wrote: "clanged like a recess bell in my teenage brain." Nice!!


The Lena Dun­ham of Her Time

LEAH McLAREN (lm­claren@globe­and­mail.com)
The Globe and Mail
4 May, 2013

When I was a girl, I wanted to grow up to be just like the Irish novelist Edna O’Brien – or at least how I imagined her to be. Her 1960 novel, The Country Girls, clanged like a recess bell in my teenage brain, ringing in my first adult notions of life and love and longing. Lena Dunham and her kicky gang of Brooklyn neurotics can thank Kate and Baba, O’Brien’s emancipated 1950s Irish convent girls set free in the big city, for inventing the genre they now so anxiously inhabit: clever girls gone wild.

O’Brien, whose wonderful autobiography Country Girl was just published in Canada this week, wasn’t just a pioneer. She also paid dearly for her home truths. Her books were banned in Ireland, her local Catholic parish burned copies in a bonfire, and her family was publicly shamed. O’Brien’s husband, on reading her first manuscript, spoke the words she describes as “the death knell of an already ailing marriage – ‘ You can write and I will never forgive you.’ ” Her mother later disowned O’Brien for refusing to send her own children to Catholic school. In short, she got her lusted-after literary fame and sexual freedom, but she also paid the price.

It’s easy to forget the social sacrifices made by women writers of O’Brien’s generation. They weren’t just breaking boundaries “to make a splash”; they were risking social exclusion and, in some cases, their sanity (see Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath for details) to make a point we now take very much for granted: that young women should, within reason, be allowed to speak, behave and – most crucially – have sex in whatever way they wanted.

O’Brien certainly did that in the end. She is now in her early 80s and still writing the luminous sentences for which she became famous. It took her a while to escape the clutches of her first and only husband and later regain custody of her young sons; but by the late sixties, she was living in a mansion in swinging Chelsea, writing bestselling novels, hit West End plays, and screenplays with Peter Brook. Her parties were legendary, and she writes about them with the innocent enthusiasm of a wideeyed interloper who makes name-dropping a pleasure.

Over those wild years, she played host to a fantastically bizarre mix of inebriated notables, including Judy Garland, Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, Richard Burton and her close friend Sean Connery. A flamehaired beauty, she was heavily pursued by many (Paul McCartney, Marlon Brando, and Burton among them) and ended up in bed with more than a few (most notably Robert Mitchum).

She tried everything – drugs; interpretive dancing; even dropping acid with the original celebrity shrink, R.D. Laing. But beneath all this taboo-busting revelry lurked the lingering effects of her religious upbringing. Single and heartbroken from a love affair at 40, she received a letter from her mother imploring her to “never bother again with men outside of meeting them in everyday life or for work. I pray for you, and each day of life, I go down on my knees and ask Christ that you remember the words of St. Paul, ‘Flee fornication.’ ”

O’Brien is one of the great talents and rule breakers of her generation, a woman who knew everyone and was loved by the literary public in turn. My own encounter with the author some years ago was so spontaneous and surprising, it could almost be an anecdote from one of her early novels.

Ten years ago, when I first moved to London, I went on a date at the Chelsea Arts Club. From the moment I sat down with the sour, humourless man – a complete stranger, as the date was a set-up – I knew it was going to be an excruciating evening. Sipping my cocktail, I debated what to do, and when it was my turn to go to the bar for more drinks, I panicked. I turned to a handsome, jolly-looking chap at the bar. “Listen,” I said, “I’m on a terrible date and I need to get out of it, so will you pretend to be my long-lost friend?”

The words weren’t out of my mouth before the man was throwing his arms around me and buying me a drink. I wriggled out of my date, and my saviour and I ended up having dinner. He turned out to be Sasha, Edna O’Brien’s younger son. When I told him that his mother was one of my favourite authors – and had recently been the answer to a trivia question at at quiz at my local pub (“Which author believed August is a wicked month?”) – he laughed out loud. We became friends and kept in touch.

One day he texted to ask if he could come to my quiz night, which I found strange (it was a skeezy pub in a not very fashionable part of London). But when he arrived with his mother in tow – a regal woman in her 70s wearing a fabulous purple velvet coat dress – the entire pub fell silent, then burst into applause. She was charming and witty, with a good head for trivia.
In other words, exactly the sort of woman I’d like to grow up to be.

© Copyright 2012 The Globe and Mail Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Dusty Leaves
May 6 2013


A desk chair
of close-grained wood
darkly stained.
The patina of age
on the slatted back
were countless hands have gripped,
tinged by sweat and skin.
The contoured seat, with its worn finish,
on a creaky swivel
on a broken tilt
on sticky wheels.

Back when a government office
was green-walled, bad fluorescents,
with black phones, on boxy desks
on cracked linoleum
with curling edges.

And a stunted plant
in the corner,
big glossy leaves
pale with dust.
It survives desiccation, neglect,
the cool breeze
from the constantly opening door.

Bureaucrats
who file paper, process claims
and were never trained
in horticulture,
someone else's job.

I take my place
in a long disorderly line
of petitioners, and supplicants.
Admire the fortitude
of this indestructible plant,
indifferently unloved.
And knowing it wouldn't take much,
imagine the beauty
it might become.

I heard the phrase "dusty leaves", in a context I now completely forget. But it immediately evoked an image of a neglected plant: broad-leafed, dull green, in the corner of an old-fashioned office. I see a dingy bare-bones place, with those heavy wooden chairs, sturdy furniture, old technology; before anyone had heard of ergonomics, and when civil servants made do.

I had no idea where this was going when I stared to write: it was simply an exercise in description -- which is more about the wordsmith showing off, and rarely makes a very readable poem. But when I found myself identifying with this humble but indestructible plant, I think I found the key to the poem.

I like the word-play here (and "play" is the perfect word, since it's a lot of fun!): just on the verge of being over-done, but not enough that it gets in the way.

How Not to Die
May 2 2013


How not to die
being kept alive
longer 
than anyone would want.
Machines beeping, whirring, wheezing
into inert cachectic flesh,
my anxious mind
locked-in,
speechless.

How not to die
in pain
or short of breath.
But also, how not to die
with meaning
left unaddressed.

Of self-consciousness,
a very private man
intruded upon
by strangers.
And how not to die
undignified

loathing his dependence,
wiped, suctioned, turned
on his bed of nails.

How not to die
is like the holy grail
of medical science,
a war on death
where the casualties
are the nearly dying.
So like friendly fire in the fog of war
keep out of range
of high calibre ordinance,
heroic intervention
however well-meant.
The complicit silence
of Oz-like men
and futile quests.

How not to die
anywhere, except
an ice flow, on a constant sea;
knowing it's time,
showing you care
for those left behind
by leaving them be.
Succumbing to the numbing cold
as if an airtight door
had whispered closed
behind you,
the quick compassionate end
for which all of us hope.

How not to die
before learning to trust
the primordial sea,
its water
salty as blood.
To dispense
with my useless body
as it always has,
inscrutably
as life began.

This poem came in response to an article by Jonathan Rauch, in The Atlantic of May 2013. Here's a link: http://theatln.tc/Z5MKL2.

I've read numerous pieces on the same theme, and have written tangentially about this before. I feel very strongly about end-of-life care. About the overkill of medical technology. About the push-pull of doctors and patients:  the pull of professional hubris; the push of families, who are poorly informed, as well as susceptible to guilt and unrealistic expectations. My philosophy of medicine tends toward therapeutic nihilism, anyway. But especially so when it comes to ICU deaths of the frail elderly and the unsalvageable: to heroic interventions that prolong death instead of prolonging life.

So I credit this piece with encouraging me not only to write this, but with the refrain, How Not to Die. I'm thrilled by the misdirection of this title:  as if the poem will be an instruction manual in immortality, when it really says the opposite -- a critique of our death-denying culture, of heroic high-tech medicine, of cruelly misplaced resources.