Eye-to-Eye

July 30 2013

I saw my father
looking back
eye-to-eye.
I flinched first,
then we both averted our gaze.

The same high forehead
of grey receding hair.
Drawn cheeks 
more gaunt than I remember.
Laugh-lines

more deeply set,

bracketing my mouth

in a permanent scowl.

The mirror
now steamy
like soft focus film.

Like any boy
who wants to grow into the man,
and hates to be told
he has his mother's face.
But yes, I can see the resemblance.
Although now, late middle-aged
I find myself tending 
to my father’s side,
in his 10^th decade of life. 

Who moves softly
through the thickness
of a failing brain,
as if knee deep
in some viscous liquid
he cannot name.
He was always sweet-tempered
my mother says;
at least that hasn't changed.

We are contained
in 3 lbs of grey glistening matter
mostly fat.
As if the air got at it,
bacon drippings
left in the pan
gone dry,
to a hard rind
kind of yellow.
Its slippery pathways
stiffened,
fluid connections
fixed.

How ludicrous, how poetic

we become our parents

no matter what.
So I know what may come
when I am old.

And even if luck, or best intentions
leave me intact,
it will end, as it does.

Because while we all die differently

suffer more, or less,
the great equalizer
is death;
the one irrefutable fact
wrapped in a mystery.
Wondering

about nothingness
consciousness expunged;
the drunken dreamless sleep
when even time
is meaningless.

In the right light
I can easily see
my younger self.
So I let the mirror mist,

razoring away
on that familiar face

above the wasted frame,

the tell-tale stubble

as grey as his.
Who sits

most of the day
in a stained terry-cloth robe,
dozing

in his favourite chair.


I know that if I wasn't consciously restraining myself, I'd write a lot more about death and dying. Perhaps I'm more morbid than most. Or perhaps it's my lack of religious faith: the consolation of faith in an after-life, of faith in ultimate justice. (Although I've observed that the kind of deep abiding faith that can truly console is far more rare than mere professions of it. So it's not just atheists who are troubled and wondering.) On the other hand, I can't conceive of a more intriguing question, and find it hard to imagine people going through daily life and rarely reflecting on death.

I must have lost a bit of weight recently. Or maybe it was the light. But I glanced in the bathroom mirror, and saw myself turning into my father. I know this is a common feeling. If it hasn't to do with appearance, then it does with behaviour: noticing we're doing what our parents did, saying exactly the same things to our kids; the sort of things we scorned when we were young and foolish. As I said I'm always very conscious of mortality and contingency. But this fleeting look brought me instantly closer to the end.

My father has grown thinner, shorter, more stooped. He favours one leg. He sleeps a lot, frequently nodding off in front of the TV. It's a challenge for my mother to get him dressed and out every day. His personality is unchanged; but he is losing cognitive and executive function. So their dilemma shouldn't be about me. And I apologize if this poem seems an overly solipsistic take on a bad situation. But a poem works best when it's told from the 1st person. And this is how I felt, the instant I saw that fleeting resemblance: a doomed sense of fatalism, as if I'd suddenly seen my destiny fixed, right there before my eyes.

(And a brief apology to my mother. She would never dress my father in an old robe, or something unwashed. But I needed to reinforce the image of decline; so it somehow had to be a terry cloth robe, and it had to be either stained or threadbare. The single syllable of "stained" simply fit better.)

Wal-Mart

July 26 2013


The parking lot, outside Wal-Mart
is crammed with cars.
Family vans,
windows smudged

with sticky hands
noses, pressed to glass.
Practical sedans

suspension sagging,

rusted dents
from backing half-asleep.
No Audis or Jags
to speak of.

In the furthest reaches
pick-ups, hauling campers
RVs, guzzling gas,
scattered, haphazardly.
Some big diesel rigs
idling smoke.

It feels like the crossroads of America,
with license plates
from distant States, and Provinces,
motoring off
on the ritual summer road-trip.
The asphalt is old,
with cracks and folds
where every depression is obvious,
topped
with standing water
from the recent storm.
When rain pounded down
as if shot from nail guns,
thunder that could loosen dental work.

Steaming pools
with floating coffee cups, drunkenly tipped,
rainbows of oil
glistening slickly.

At the 3-way stop
drivers are courteous, take their turn.
Until a nice lady
from Tennessee, or Mississippi
finds herself paralyzed

by indecision,

making everybody testy.
Meanwhile, shoppers cross,
carts over-topped
with the frugal necessities.
Which a mom navigates one-handed
in a gymnastic tour de force,
the other straining to stop
her chubby toddler
straggling into traffic
a heartbeat away.

I find a spot
at the far end of the lot,
watch the stop/start procession of cars

cruising the rows.
Decide to shop later
                                       ...somewhere else
                                                                           ...make do,

                                                                                                 full-speed down the freeway
                                                                                                                           anywhere new.

A confession: yes, I do shop at Wal-Mart. Their fresh produce is surprisingly good. The new one is right on my way, twice each day. I know that abundant cheap stuff at rock-bottom prices squeezes producers, homogenizes the civic square; and that the best this race-to-the-bottom capitalism can produce is low quality obsolescence. Nevertheless, and despite my sneering superiority, I've allowed myself to be seduced by convenience.

It used to be a Zellers. The parking lot betrays the age and neglect of that defunct and not much lamented chain. But where it used to be a desert of crappy asphalt, it's now bustling and humming with traffic: evidence of savvy marketing and a ruthlessly efficient business; which, however reluctantly, you can't help but admire. In summer, of course, that means lots of interesting license plates ...a hint of the wider world. Most of the cars suggest harried family life, as well as the lower middle class: nothing too new or high end, and in which only the needed repairs -- not the cosmetic ones -- get done.

Each stanza seems objectively descriptive. But toward the end of each there is a small caution of darkness: the dented car; the diesel exhaust; the discarded cups bobbing about in an oil slicked pool (OK, that one may lack the desired subtlety!); the heartbeat away from disaster. The storm -- although only briefly alluded to -- is a kind of pathetic fallacy, reinforcing the sense of malign undercurrent: perhaps through our disconnection from a discontented nature. The final stanza, with the words "freeway" and "new", not only calls back to that "ritual summer road trip", but hints at the powerful American trope of the open road: that is, the trope of of the frontier; of escape; of re-invention.

Wal-Mart -- with its handy implication of mass consumerism and lowest-common-denominator -- is an easy target, I know. In my defence, this poem came from experience: the Wal-Mart of the poem wasn't just a heavy-handed symbol conjured up in the service of a pet theme.

Becalmed

July 23 2013


The road crests
and troughs.
Rising
from the water's edge
into clear night air,
then drops again
becalmed in fog.
Tendrils, wisps, and hints,
then dense;
a solid wall of white,
reflecting my lights,
condensing out
in heavy mist.
Wipers slap
at cool glass
ineffectively.

Existence ends
a foot, in any direction.

The edge of sound
smoothed-off.
The softly glowing opacity,

the world

vanishing.

And the asphalt -- unlined, unmarked
has also gone.
But I cannot stop,
mesmerized
by the permutations of fog,
shifting, drifting
infinite.

The road lifts, and drops,
undulates over the spine of the earth
like waves of rock;
frozen, for tens of millions of years
and as long to unspool,
unthaw, re-heat, re-cool;
magnificently indifferent
to me.
But for an infinitesimal instant, I was here,
dipping in and out
of standing pools;
from hilltops
like uninhabited islands,
to valleys
feeling bottomless
swamped in fog.

Which appeared
out of thin air
and will be as suddenly gone.
When I hit the invisible wall
that guards the sunny uplands.
Out of reach
of the still black shore
of that glacial lake
that goes down deeper than light.


I like the contrast between transience and permanence. There is the insubstantial fog, which appears and vanishes. There is the landscape, which has the reassuring permanence of geologic time. And then there is me, riding its crests and troughs, but almost as fleeting as the fog, and too insignificant for the earth to take notice. And where "hit(ting) the invisible wall" of the final stanza could just as well be mortality as it is the boundary of invisibility: especially since I appear to be tempting death with my foolhardy driving.

The freezing lake of the final stanza calls back to the rocks, emphasizing this contrast of great age with impermanence: it is preternaturally still, glacial, impenetrable. And its reach encloses me, even at a distance; which reinforces the idea of my insignificance -- both helpless, and small.

Water runs through the poem: the mist; the waves of rock, which will later unthaw; the uninhabited islands; the pools of fog; the big cold lake. It's a bit of a unifying device; but I also hope it conveys the fog's cool chill.

Ii also wanted to convey a sense of claustrophobia: the muffled sound, the softly glowing opacity, the world vanishing. And one does get mesmerized: gazing at the beauty of the shifting fog, while forgetting that the road just disappeared! Which is especially dangerous out here, where the shoulders are narrow and soft, the road twists and turns, there are always deer, and the surface is unmarked -- so there isn't even a reflective line to follow.

The poem began as simple description. I wanted to convey the sensation of driving on this rising and falling road, into -- and out of -- these wallowing pools of fog. And I wanted to express the infinite permutations of fog. Because it's not uniform: it moves, and drifts; it thickens and thins. The rest came later. Because a poem will have no interest if it's just a stylistic exercise in description. It needs to have some dramatic or narrative quality. And it need some larger resonance, enough ambiguity to allude to something bigger.

Higher Ground

July 16 2013


You occupy the high ground.
The commanding heights
from which armies rush,
standing in stirrups

in clouds of dust;

hooves, thundering.

Up Olympus, a lesser god,

who toys with us, tests our trust

sneering down

yet craves our love.

A deity, in our own image,

hurtling lightning bolts

seducing our women,

cursed
by jealousy, lust

conviction.

The invincible view

that confirms your omniscience.
And gravity
the castle moat
protecting you,

your sheer fortress of rock.

You are a grizzled old man

on the mountain top

just as we expected.

The long beard, the humble rags

sitting

with your legs crossed.
But you never possessed
the meaning of life
the answer to death,
the shibboleths
we question.

In the rarefied air
of altitude,

cold and wet

and short of breath

and no one left

but you.

Too weary to descend
to the valley
you barely recall,
lush, with rushing streams
and soft warm sun.
Where people stop
and idly talk
about the weather, their children
and nothing much,
catching-up with gossip.

Who rarely look up,
pay no mind to gods.


I suppose a poem about narcissism, self-aggrandizing delusion, the preoccupations of power, and the fallibility of ambition.

I say "suppose" because I let the poem take me by the hand and guide me, blindfolded. Actually, most poem start like this. Because setting down the first line is always an act of faith: in being receptive; in suspending the self-criticism that fears failure or embarrassment. And then, after the opening line, they continue that way: where writing feels like channelling more than it does artfully composing something fully my own.

This one began when I kept encountering this idea of "the high ground": the place where generals want to be; where we situate our gods; where we find our prized real estate with those grand exalted views; and where we sit in self-righteous moral certainty. I think of the trope of that classic New Yorker cartoon: with the wise old man sitting serenely at the top of the mountain; and where the punch line is the cleverly inevitable disappointment of the seeker, having painfully clawed his way up seeking the meaning of life. Most directly, it was all the recent flooding that had me thinking of the "commanding heights": the folly of building on flood plains, and how well this illustrates our disconnection from nature, where waterways disappear under concrete -- out of sight, out of mind. I thought of my own unfortunate experience with flooding (4' in the basement!), and how smug I feel now, occupying the high ground -- on top of a hill hundreds of feet up.

I was most pleased when I came up with "shibboleth". Because it fits perfectly in terms of rhythm and rhyme. And because it's much more than simply a filler word: not only in its Biblical resonance, which works nicely with the pagan god; but in its meaning, a code word that allows you to cross a border -- in this case, the border into enlightenment.

"Sheer" is also a useful word, with the inherent tension of contradiction. Because it's not only steep and absolute, but gossamer and vaporous. A poet must repeatedly give thanks to English, in which words can mean almost their exact opposite!

I like "conviction" just as well. Not only because it gave me the gift of a nice rhyme, which was actually closer to what I meant to say (I originally had "vantage point" and "commanding view", before it became "invincible view" and "omniscience"); but because I think conviction is the root cause of much that is wrong with the world: the absolute conviction that underpins religious faith, moral certainty, ideological truth.

And while I'm getting my usual barb in at religion, I might as well comment of the line "craves our love". Because I always wonder about this omnipotent and imperious God who can also be so darn needy, in such constant need of validation: that we worship Him, that we constantly pay obeisance, that we have no other gods before Him. And who, when we fail to pay sufficient attention, flies into a rage. Of course, I fully understand this teaching if it's taken -- as it properly should -- as literary and allegorical: where the "other gods" are things like pride or possessions. But that's not the kind of religiosity I despise. It's the literalist, fundamentalist, dogmatic version I find not only intellectually repugnant, but dangerous.

Who wouldn't want to occupy the high ground? But sometimes, grandiose ideas and pretentious philosophy have less to offer than the simple pleasures; than the home truths and practical wisdom of everyday life. And as it turns out, compared to the top of the mountain, the lowly valley is a much more pleasant place to be! Which is why "pay no mind" works so well: so cogently dismissive; so confidently plain-spoken.

All The Begats

July 14 2013


All the begats
going back a hundred thousand years,
the accidents, and intersects
and fleeting sex
and fierce animal love
that led to this,
the hit, and miss
of contingency.
When all depends
on the delicate thread
of chance.

And so, I am.

Or not.
Because a second's
inattention
and all is lost.
But then
without error
doesn't progress stop?
The fateful mistake
on which nature depends,
her DNA
unravelling.

I do not believe
in Providence, the grace of God.
But still, am in awe
at such magnificent randomness,
staggered
by the singular self.
Fork after fork
on a zig-zag track
on a road, unmapped
going all the way back
to then.

And forging ahead.
Where it gets better
I'm told.
Because hope
is never false.

And perfection
the death
of us all.


This is the kind of philosophical poem of which I'm suspicious. Because that sort of poem so easily gets pretentious, turgid, and dry. So I'm pleased with the fun word-play and light imagery of this. And with its restraint: how it hints at complicated issues, while trusting the reader to go deeper.

If you're wondering, this is how an atheist contends with meaning. His world view is not utterly reductionist and rarefied. Because even without all that superstition and ceremony, it still admits of mystery and wonder and awe; notwithstanding the whiff of nihilism.

The contingencies, of course, go back billions of years: all the way to this planet's distance from the sun (the Goldilocks temperature for an atmosphere and for liquid water) and its molten iron core (a magnetic field that protects us from cosmic rays). The fact that generation after generation of ancestors met is unthinkably random, and hundreds of thousands of sperm even more so; but only if you try to make sense of it by projecting backwards, as if there were purpose and direction to any of it. (There's that whiff of narcissism I mentioned. Sorry, you're not so special after all. Turns out, the universe is utterly indifferent to your existence.)

And while God may be infallible, nature depends on error: evolution can only come about if mistakes have consequences (on both survival and reproduction); and even then only if DNA is inexactly copied, as well as susceptible to being both turned on and off.

I start off with a reference to those obscure and annoying Biblical "begats"; and then introduce the essential tension by ultimately rejecting all that God-talk.

Of course, I only briefly allude to the greatest most enduring enigma of all. This is the mystery of consciousness; of the ineffable and inscrutable conviction of the singular "self"; how a few pounds of fatty gelatinous brain beget mind. The religious respond by begging the question: the familiar hand-waving, circular, teleological assertions of the divine plan and the unique soul. That is, they answer the question with a version of the question that leaves it essentially unanswered. As a scientist, I have no answer, and am content to proclaim ignorance; but ignorance infused with gratitude and wonder at the brilliant unlikelihood of "me", in this fleeting moment of time, teetering on the pinnacle of billions of years of contingency and error and random chance. (And please don't put me on the spot with the mischievous question: "gratitude to whom or what?!!" Can't gratitude simply exist, without an object or agent; as a pure expression of humility and thankfulness?)

And even if you find much of this world-view offensive, the poem will at least leave you with a welcome consolation: that perfectionism is not only pointless, but unnatural. After all, evolution absolutely depends on mistakes. And we're only here because of an unimaginable series of mistakes; so why aspire such a misplaced ideal as perfectionism, or beat yourself up about falling short? ...Remembering that a lot of those "begats" were probably impulsive, regretted, youthful mistakes! And acknowledging that if you believe in an all-merciful and forgiving God, all the better to err!

Cold Front

July 7 2013


Humidity breaks
first with thunder, then with rain
falling hard, all day
cooling the earth.

In 10 minutes, I'm goose-bump wet.
A drowned rat

with slicked-back hair
clothes plastered to skin,
who squish-squish walks
in sodden socks
where water mercilessly drips.

On orderly streets

torrential gutters,
rivers, free to run.

And culverts, spouting up
small lakes

the colour of mud.

The ruts across the field
are swamped.
Cut
by teen-aged boys
in love with squealing girls,

fish-tailing punks, in pick-up trucks
gunned
under cover of dark,

one sultry summer night.

Hard-pan soil
is saturated, soft.
So as I walk
a meandering path
is filling-up fast
with small boot-shaped pools.

And after the dam has burst, the land's in flood,
it is foggy, windless
deliciously cool.
Grey light
is the same in all directions,
the world almost reverent
in its stillness.

Tomorrow
will dawn warm and bright,
when the great engine of the sun
will dry out the land,
lifting water
like a colossal pump
until the ground is firm,
the earth
restored.

Where my footprints
have left a small impression
on a spongy field;
the wavering path
of a rain-drenched man
in summer storm.

Out walking the dog. And who wants to be stopped by rain? We're water-proof, after all. No one melts in a little rain. Except it wasn't as little as it looked. And my raincoat leaked. Soon, my pants were plastered to my skin, and dripping down into the tops of my boots. And once my socks were drenched, I let go of any notion of staying dry. On the other hand, once you have cold wet feet, it really can't get much worse! The dog, of course, was utterly oblivious, and having her usual delightful time.

A cold front wedges in under the mass of lighter wetter hotter air, leading with lightning and thunder, and leaving a soaking all-day rain. Hardly breaking the humidity!

The second stanza was originally the very literal (and literally true) "soaked to the skin." But, like most clichés, I worried it would be glossed over. No one wants this in poetry, where the power comes from concentration and distillation: where every word should demand attention. (Although I do find cliché useful. There are times I intentionally use it ironically; or as a way to interrogate language, by re-imagining a tired expression.) So when I re-wrote this, everything else ended up coming under the microscope as well. And that's how I ended up with my favourite part of the poem: that small tangent into teen-aged punks and squealing girls, whom I can easily see fish-tailing around in dad's purloined pick-up on that nicely manicured field. I'm especially pleased with "sultry", which only came with the final revision. I like the conflation of libidinous summer heat with the urgent sexual desire of adolescence.

I also like "engine of the sun". You really feel its power --and its closeness to earth -- when the summer sun re-appears, and begins to suck up all that water like a super-powered celestial pump.

This poem doesn't have much to say that's really meaningful . And as with most purely descriptive poems, I fear losing the reader. So I think it might be enjoyed by one who appreciates close observation; a judicious economy of language; the occasional surprising tangent; and the sometimes vertiginous telescoping in and out from the micro- to the macro-scopic. In other words, it's more about technique and language than it is about theme and significance; about delight, more than meaning.

Milk-Fed

July 5 2013

The soft pink faces
and coiffed white hair
of comfortable men
who are gracefully aging
look much the same.
Puffy-eyed, and jowly
laugh-lined, and proudly
2 days unshaved,
the snow-white bristle
that looks manly, but states
I am slightly risqué,
no longer a slave
to the 9-to-5.

They look well-fed,
prosperous skin
that nicely resists
the wrinkles and hints
of hard-living men
who are wearing their years
far less gently,
toothlessly grinning
as tenuous pensions thin.

There's the retired exec
who grew used to power and wealth,

expects

to live long, and well.

And the sleek politician
still missing pressing the flesh,
an old Irishman
irrepressibly spinning his tales.

The milk-fed faces
of self-made men
are pink and white and smug.
Who sincerely believe
we deserve what we get;
the poor
can only blame
themselves.

I saw a recent picture of a grinning Brian Mulroney (a former Prime Minister, for any non-Canadian readers.) And also of another former politician of a certain age (and, rarely, a well-respected one) Bob Rae. I was reminded how some age well and some don't, but how pretty much men all start to converge in late middle age: the puffy pink face, and sagging features; the startling whiteness of hair (when there is some, that is!); the calculated 2-day bristle, that seems to say relaxed, but not yet given up. (I've always had a fat pink face and been negligent with shaving; so I guess I'm off the hook!)

It's so easy to see the prosperity and money in these aging faces: you can't help but think of the stereotype of the powerful old white men who run the world. But as an ageing white men who feels relatively powerless, and who never ran anything -- much less the world -- I more than most know how ridiculous is this cliché of a complacent patriarchy, in charge.

Life is a genetic lottery; and after that, determined by contingency and luck, as much as wisdom and skill. When you're lucky enough to have easy money, you get to age milk-fed and pink and puffy. But what you don't get to do is feel smug and self-satisfied; justly rewarded, and entitled.

(Which is to say that our system of crony-capitalism is rigged by and for the winners, in which the rich get richer, and most of the rest don't. But that's a whole other poem. Or maybe too political and ideological for poetry at all, since I don't think poetry is the form best suited to advocacy or agit-prop. Actually, this poem probably came out way too political for my taste, as it is. But I suppose once in awhile a little harder edge is satisfying; if not for the reader, then at least for the self-indulgent writer, getting it down.)

"Self-made men" is, of course, used ironically. "Milk-fed" is even better: I think of milk-fed cattle, lined-up for slaughter, as a metaphor for conventional and complacent; and of babies, who are also pudgy and pink. You can see the hard-living in the faces of old men. And in the others, the soft pudge; almost as if in their dotage, you can see them slowly regress into infancy, swallowed up by baby fat!

Bachelor Apartment

June 30 2013


The neighbours
are making love
on the floor above me.
Joists groan
she screams, he moans,

springs frantically squeak.
In the dregs of night
in the cold grey light
of just-before-dawn,
when regular people
sleep tight
beside bedside ticking clocks.

I listen-in
again
to the intimate friends
I have never met
face to face.
I flush, resent
try to suppress
envy

I can't help but feel,
the embarrassment
as if I'd walked right in
and watched.
My mind races
with plans to relocate,

the complaint

I rehearse in my head

over and over again.

The neighbours
in the place beneath
do not know I exist.
Yet they might as well be here

in bed,
each clenched defensive voice

sharp sarcastic barb
icily clear.
So close
I feel the chill
seeping up from below.

Behind thin walls

we live out private lives

even more alone.

Pass our neighbours by

nodding politely.