She Lives to Run
Oct 30 2013


When I was a runner.
When I was young
and time would never run out.
I performed a daily meditation
of hard breathing
feeling the burn.
Transcending, on that rare occasion
into disembodiment,
while I went along for the ride.
My body
an auto-pilot machine;
distanced, effortless
sometimes even bliss.

I preferred running alone
after dark.
When I seemed so much faster
as if the world had contracted
down to just me.
Up on my toes,
shrugging-off gravity
in the cool night air.

Back when my cartilage glistened
like smooth mother-of-pearl.
My muscles

were lean and sinuous,
elastic tendons
attaching them
to dense indestructible bone.
And my joints
buttressed by ligaments
that cinched them taut.

Now all I do
is watch,
tossing balls for my dog
who lives to run.
Who has no small talk
or second thoughts
of existential angst.
She is pure physicality,
all touch, and movement
and fierce pursuit.
Her vocabulary
consists of body parts
at all-out-speed.

While her inner life
is a mystery,
at least to me.
Although looking in
to her soft brown eyes
I get an inkling
of the unknowable other,
and wish
for the lingua franca
that would let us speak.

Unlike me
she will run until she stops.
An old arthritic dog
chasing rabbits in her sleep,
legs twitching
emitting sharp excited yelps.

Every once in a while, I indulge in a "dog" poem; inspired, of course, by my beloved Skookum.

As much as we resist, we often end up anthropomorphizing our pets. But when I see the pure joy she has in running, I am reminded that we inhabit parallel universes that hardly intersect: ours, where most things are intellectualized and abstracted; and hers, where everything is pure physicality. When you live without language, there is no other way to express yourself. And language becomes a metaphor here: in "small talk" and "vocabulary" and "lingua franca".

The current version of me, with my querulous knee and hip, envies the smooth pearl-like cartilage of my younger self. And recognizes the truth in the old cliché about youth wasted on the young. Although while I may have given up running, I still walk and swim and paddle. Anyone who does regular exercise should identify with the first stanza: when you cross over into effortless bliss, fatigue and pain disappear, and you feel you can go on forever. When I'm lucky, I still get that; but in the water, these days. The feeling is somewhat similar to the immersive flow I get when the writing is going well: time vanishes; and it's more like taking dictation than coming up with anything original.

Skookum will sleep on the couch beside me, and dream. Her legs twitching, emitting little yelps, she is clearly running: chasing rabbits in her sleep, I always think. Even when she can no longer run, she will still have an inner life in which she never stopped.

Take-Out
Oct 29 2013


The dark stain
on the cardboard bottom
is slowly soaking through,
seems to bloom
like a mutant flower.

The box littered

with hardened crumbs

and greasy crusts, half-chewed.

Clumps of industrial cheese

yellow, congealing,

that taste of rubber and salt.

There are crumpled bags

like the derelict man

camped by the corner store,

you step past

deftly.

And smudged cups

with stagnant puddles

smelling of sticky barroom floor,

before the fight broke out.

How forlorn

is the empty package

the morning after

the night before?

When the food arrived
in its sturdy box
hot and steaming,
we tipped him like guilty liberals
who feel ill-at-ease
being served.
We gave him a look
as if to say we normally cook
with fresh organic ingredients,
sweet-smelling pot
wafting out the door.

How on Sundays at noon
we seek forgiveness
from the sin of convenience
and take-out food.
In the Church of Brunch
we make ourselves.


I was reading The New Yorker's annual "food" issue, and they had the usual 5 short personal essays that typically enliven these theme-based editions. And, also as usual, the contributors run from the famous to the infamous to the unknown. The pieces are typically a delightful mix of confession, humour, and pathos. (I especially enjoyed Akhil Sharma's Butter.)

I'm not sure if this was intention or coincidence, but all of them had in some way or other to do with take-out food. Which, I suppose, is as natural in New York City as light and noise. I never eat fast food or take-out (I don't mean this in a smug or judgemental way; it's just a statement of fact), so this poem is purely an act of imagination, not at all biographical. But there is something unforgettable about the derelict and forlorn detritus of a take-out meal that called for me to try my hand.

I'm thinking in particular of Pizza Hut pizza, which I absolutely detest. How something could be so disgustingly greasy and salty, yet still taste like cardboard, is a mystery to me. Akhil Sharma specifically mentions Pizza Hut. Maybe this is how it came to mind.

I'm still undecided about "...morning after/ the night before". It's a pretty tired cliché, which I suspect any decent poetry editor would zealously excise. But the rhyme works; and the feeling of enervation, vague remorse, and incomplete memory it conveys is pretty hard to duplicate in so many words. After all, clichés become clichés for a reason.

Impasto

Oct 28 2013

I move in closer.

Where the finished brush-stroke
slurring of colour
simulation of light
seem unrefined,
like a rough-and-ready

first draft.

The keen edge of the trowel,
its smooth flat surface
slashing/layering/patting paint,
makes the illusion even more uncanny
when I step back
and the work resolves.

I know nothing of method,

but the violence seems barely contained;
the intense passion

preserved in the lavish thwack of paint,

the canvas loaded

and cocked.

Behind everything, close up
is the fine-grained machinery
of real life,
down to molecules, and living cells.
While we dwell
here, on the pleasing surface,
the self-evident world
of home.

Like Oz, behind the curtain
a little bald man
is pulling levers
altering his voice.
And I am content
not to sweep it back,
the deception of distance
the witless suspension
of disbelief.

My willing surrender
to the magic

of landscape art.
The wilderness I inhabit
I may have imagined
as well.

A contemporary landscape artist named Kim Dorland was featured in the Arts section of the weekend paper. His work is reminiscent of the Group of Seven. The article featured a beautiful reproduction of one of his signature pieces, a triptych entitled French River. I know the place well, and loved it. I wanted to have one of his pieces on my wall. (As if!)

I also learned a new word -- impasto; which is the thick application of oil paint. (Untitled (Painter in a Canoe), which was featured not in the article but in an ad that accompanied it -- for his current exhibition at the McMichael Gallery -- illustrates this beautifully.) I've always been amazed and mystified at how visual artists create their 2-dimensional illusions. And when I looked close-up at the fine detail of his impasto, it reminded me of how reality -- not just art -- is mostly illusion: how we are unable to see the orders of magnitude beneath the surface of things; how even our own workings remain mysteries to most of us, from the molecular plumbing of the kidney to the conundrum of consciousness. But step back, and the world resolves into its familiar order.

Look too closely, and you may be surprised at how easily you're fooled. I intentionally use both "witless" and "willing", because the truth lies in this contradiction: between our inability to see, and our refusal to. The use of the word "imagined" in the 2nd last line is important as well, because reality is constructed mostly from the conflations and confabulations and denials of memory; and we all know (or should) how unreliable memory is.

Predictions of Winter
Oct 27 2013


In the vestibule
I stamp snow from my boots,
toes dead as blocks of wood
breath still visible.
I stand helpless
in the small unheated room,
frozen fingers too weak
even to grasp
the stiffened laces.
All my concentration
is on the zipper's little tab,
the heels of my hands

grasping numbly;

buttons, impossible.
I feel like the lethal cold
of Jack London's fire,
that final precious match.

The glass door
slapping shut at my back
has instantly bloomed
to a hard white frost.
Only the frozen snot
on my upper lip
is thawing,
dripping salt and mucus
into my mouth.
And I think of oysters
slipping down raw,
an oil-slick sea.

The fist blast of arctic air
had been clear, dry, astringent,
as if the cold
had distilled out all impurity,
as if oxygen thrived
in sub-zero conditions.
I teared up
in the blinding light
between high blue sky
and icy surface.

We tend to remember winter
as a fond abstraction,
an invigorating pause
in the headlong passage of time.
But forget
the frost-bit blisters
and bitter cold.
Fingers and toes
dropping-off,

marrow-deep freeze.

Like icicles
that cling to the gutters
and randomly fall to earth.
If you're lucky

shatter on the concrete walkway,

tinkling like glass
in the cold black stillness
of night.
And if you’re not
catch you unaware
taking the air
below.

I have Reynaud’s syndrome. Even in the relatively mild temperatures of fall, the small arteries of my fingers and toes will spasm; so my fingers become purple and white, stiffen with cold, and can take forever to come back to life. With all the lacing and layering and numbing of extremities, the reality of the impending winter comes back to me.

I was just reading about Jack London, and of course his great story about the freezing man and his last match inevitably comes up. I feel his plight with intense empathy. I think especially about that precious match when I’m standing in the vestibule, fingers too frozen to even exert the pressure I need to grip my bootlaces, waiting out their slow painful thaw.

The poem flirts with death:  the dead toes; final precious match; the oyster eaten alive (yechhh!); the suffering of the penultimate stanza. So I don’t think the lethal icicle comes out of the blue. 

Think Tank

Oct 23 2013

Turns out the think tank

is a big glass aquarium.

Intellectuals are thrown in,

gang-up like piranhas

on contrarians.

Free thinkers can’t swim

especially vegetarians.

They haven’t learned to breathe,

too pleased

with the sound of their own voice.

There is a slick of chum

red-meat conservatives

whet their teeth on.

Prick the bubbles, gurgling up

and there’s a fishy smell.

Which can’t be helped

when you piss where you swim.

The tenured professors school.

While the government men

tend to the coral,

gleaning little morsels

where no one will notice them.

Free-market fundamentalists

are stream-lined barracuda.

Who preen in the myth of the self-made man,

while gobbling up the food

that drifts down from heaven.

.

And CEOs, cruising through

like imperial tuna.

You can put the big kahuna

in a little pond,

and he’ll still thunder on

about maximizing profit.

There is only so much air

in this self-contained world

of flat stagnant water.

Confused faces

smushed against the glass,

doleful fish eyes

peering out.

But we hardly notice

as we hurry past,

racing for the shark tank.

 No reason why I wrote this poem, except to have a little fun. I came across “think tank”, and the image I usually get when I read those words flashed momentarily. Which seemed to me a perfect starting point for some kind of mischief. If I’m being serious about anything, it’s my implied criticism of those more ideologically oriented think tanks and their tiresomely predictable results.

The Thermodynamics of Frost
Oct 21 2013


The first snow
is more about time, than matter.

The thermodynamics of frost,
perfect flakes
on the tips of blades of grass
dematerialize, as I watch,
according to the speed and mass of falling.
The volume of snow
the latent heat of earth.
A feeble sun
somewhere in the overcast
diffusing its equal light,
the milky distance
equivocal.

In a month, the balance will tip
ever so slightly,
the world turn white.
Ancient glaciers began like this,
layer by layer
with the inexhaustible patience
inherent in nature
building-up.

Time frozen
in the mountainous weight of ice.
That continue to hold
their paleolithic secrets,
extinct species
and freeze-dried man.
In clawed hands, like tanned leather
a hunter clutching his bow,
precious possessions intact
down to his last meal.

But now
my front lawn is straw-like grass,
with a delicate frosting
of evanescent snow.
The beauty
of things that barely last.
Diamond-cut crystals
a hand’s unable to hold,
instantly vanish
the moment I watch.

Today, I looked out the window at the first snow of the season. I was reminded of my very first poem, which was written 12 years ago to the month, and was called exactly that: First Snow. So the rumination on time seems even more pertinent.

It was the realization that it would be at least a month before the snow "stuck" that led to the poem. This is the time of year when we can enjoy the aesthetics of freshly falling snow without worrying about all the rest: the driving and shovelling and downed hydro wires.

I watch the physics of energy exchange and volume and temperature and heat capacity play out like a laboratory before my eyes, and think not only about frames of reference in time, but about tipping points: when things are in critical balance, and can go either way. I seem to write a lot of poems about physics, and this is one more. I really enjoy the challenge of keeping the science reasonably accurate without letting the distinctly unpoetic technicalities get in the way.

The reference is to the body of an ancient hunter that was spit out by a melting glacier in the Alps (as well as mammoth tusks in Siberia exposed by global warming, which are being hastily excavated before the elements can take them.) He was so well preserved that they were even able to examine the contents of his stomach, forensically recreating his last meal. I think the image of a hand -- first clutching the bow, then trying to hold melting snow -- connects him to the writer/reader, and reinforces the tension between transience and timelessness. I also like the inherent tension in "diamond-cut crystals ... that instantly vanish", which does much the same.

...Although now I look up from the page and notice, in the dwindling light, that the snow is accumulating! It won’t last, of course. But it looks as if that infinitesimal tipping point has gone and tipped the other way. …Lucky I took my first look when I did. 

Green-Thumb

Oct 20 2013

There must be a word

in every language

for green-thumb.

It will do with the virtue

of manual labour, the human hand.

The resistance of fertile earth

in its certain grasp,

the feel of sun-warmed soil

oozing out.

She hugs trees, talks to plants.

Runs a leaf

between finger and thumb,

like a seamstress

examining fabric

for tiny flaws.

Stops to feel the sun, looking up,

skin aged

to a kind of bark,

as dark and intricate

as rich mahogany.

And her arms, sinewed and veined

are thin, but strong,

like the tough green vines

that climb her trellises.

Her touch seems capable

of giving life,

but gently

and fully expecting

that nothing might come of it,

resigned

to the vagaries of weather

infestation

rot.

But invariably

her garden flourishes, no matter what.

This is clearly an act of love

as willingly received, as given.

She shares her harvest freely,

pulling living things

against well-rooted resistance.

So fresh

bits of soil loosely cling,

like beautifully set jewels

rich black

on luminous green.

I brush them off

and eat.

I know part of it came from raiding (with permission!) Connie Latimer's vegetable garden (my neighbour) for some fresh organic kale. Or was it from just reading about the remarkable botanist Diana Beresford-Kroger in Friday’s Globe and Mail?

“Manual” is derived from the Latin root for “hand”:  as in mano a mano and manipulate. So I quite like the movement from manual labour to the hand imagery.

I think the unnamed subject had to be a “she”, with its connotation of nurturing and maternal care.

The frustrating thing about green-thumbs – for those of us who aren’t – is that the garden invariably does flourish. They are like horse whisperers and mystics:  somehow attached to the great and mysterious forces that elude everyone else.

Connie’s kale was  indeed dotted with bits of soil. (Woops, I almost wrote “dirt”; which I now know is anathema to horticulturalists!) And there is the very real sense, pulling something fresh, that it is still alive. Which is true:  the cells don’t die instantly; and attached to its roots, the organism will continue to function.

I was going to end it “I brush them off/ and gratefully eat.” I do like getting the idea of gratitude in there. But in the end I decided to go with the simpler “eat”.  First, because I like to avoid adverbs. And second, because I like the punchiness of the short version:  after all that verbiage and over-thinking, it’s as if the writer’s full concentration is now free to focus on this one all-consuming activity, making it the perfect time to turn the poem off. And anyway, the transport and absorption of this singular act is itself an implicit expression of gratitude.

Short of Oxygen
Oct 18 2013


I day-dreamed all through school.

Classrooms were confined, over-heated

and my mind wandered,

carbon dioxide, building-up

in stifling space.

Like Apollo XIII

running out of air.

When back in the day
sedated dogs orbited earth,
a frantic monkey
strapped into Sputnik
would never return.

So, short of oxygen
to escape velocity
I floated free.

The droning voice, grid-locked seats,
the smell of freshly waxed floors.
While sealed windows
thick as space-stressed Plexiglas
allowed a glimpse of bright blue earth,
that must have seemed pure
hallucination.

When I found myself jolted back
by a full face mask

of oxygen,

the rubbery scent
of bottled gas

hissing out.
The whole class

turned my way,
teacher's icy gaze
as if I could answer him.

It was cramming
got me through.
And after the exam
I was a punctured pressure suit,
jetting-out facts

into the cold black vacuum

of trackless space,
blasted, and atomized.

I did learn to type,
the only useful skill
and all I remember.
Except the tap-tap-tap of the keyboard
has replaced the clatter
of the old IBM
with its dancing electric ball.

And now, I spend most of my day
imagining,
wasting time, lost in space.
As if poems were simply given,
and all I did

was take dictation
channel words.

If not a writer, at least a typist,
at a cluttered table
in a lovely room
where nothing sits

in fixed straight rows.
And where an open window
admits a cool breeze,
smelling of cedar
and balsam fir,
sunlight on mulchy soil.

Good to know I've returned to earth

for now.

I was going to write about idleness and creativity: how unstructured time and what appears to be aimless waste are really an essential part of that mysterious subconscious process. I also thought it would a great chance to use that wonderful word "flaneur". I imagined something beginning with a sidewalk cafe.

But somehow I veered toward "day-dreaming"; which led me back to school, where my mind sometimes wandered; and then to what an inhospitable learning environment it was for me, and how I admire my younger self for so valiantly toughing it out -- something I doubt I could soldier through again!

Actually, I was hardly the distracted student of the poem. Most of the time I was present, diligent, and a high achiever. But still, and as we all come to know, most of what we learn in formal education is not only forgotten, it's useless. The only worthwhile part may be process: self-discipline, deferred gratification, social skills. And, one hopes, critical thinking. Only if we're lucky is the natural curiosity not squeezed out of us. Who knew that typing would be the one skill for which I'm grateful? And that keyboards would become even more essential in this digital future? So it's true I've often found myself saying that typing is the only useful legacy of high school.

Once I was back into the stuffy over-heated unbreathable air (although I'm actually picturing my Grade 6 classroom, not high school), lost in space was the obvious metaphor. As well, the era of early space exploration was a pretty good fit with my educational career. If anything, the poem is an expression of appreciation for my freedom and privilege now. And while I did end up writing about idleness and creativity, "flaneur" will have to await another poem!

….I’m writing this paragraph a couple days after posting the poem. Today I came across this article, on the Atlantic Wire, about exactly the same thing: daydreaming, and idleness. What a coincidence!  So, does it confirm the old adage “great minds think alike? Or is it closer to “fools seldom differ”?!!

Teach Kids to Daydream

by Jessica Lahey                   

Today’s children are exhausted, and not just because one in three kids is not getting sufficient sleep. Sleep deprivation in kids (who require at least nine hours a night, depending on age) has been found to significantly decrease academic achievement, lower standardized achievement and intelligence test scores, stunt physical growth, encourage drug and alcohol use, heighten moodiness and irritability, exacerbate symptoms of ADD, and dramatically increase the likelihood of car accidents among teens. While the argument for protecting our children’s sleep time is compelling, there is another kind of rest that is equally underestimated and equally beneficial to our children’s academic, emotional, and creative lives: daydreaming.

I’ve been reading about daydreaming extensively lately, and it has caused me regret every time I roused one of my students out of their reverie so they would start working on something “more productive.” Daydreaming has been found to be anything but counter-productive. It may just be the hidden wellspring of creativity and learning in the guise of idleness.

Not all mental downtime is alike, of course. Downtime spent playing a video game or zoning out with a television show may have its charms, but the kind of downtime I am talking about is different. I’m talking about the kind of mind-wandering that happens when the brain is free of interruption and allowed to unhook from the runaway train of the worries of the day. When the mind wanders freely between random thoughts and memories that float through our consciousness, unbidden. Television, videogames, and other electronic distractions prevent this kind of mental wandering because they interrupt the flow of thoughts and memories that cement the foundation of positive, productive daydreaming.

Legendary cognitive psychologist Jerome L. Singer goes so far as to call daydreaming our default mental state. Singer proposed in his 1966 book,Daydreaming: an Introduction to the Experimental Study of Inner Experience, that we have two mental networks, working memory and daydreaming. The two cannot operate at the same time, so when we engage our working memory network, we shut off our daydreaming network.

The two forms of thinking may be different, and mutually exclusive, but they are both necessary to our emotional and intellectual health. Scott Barry Kaufman, cognitive psychologist and author of Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined, argues that while this dreamy, reflective state might look like idleness to an outside observer, daydreaming kids are at work. “Ode to Positive Constructive Daydreaming”—an article Kaufman cowrote withRebecca McMillan—reads:

There is, however, another way of looking at mind wandering, a personal perspective, if you will. For the individual, mind wandering offers the possibility of very real, personal reward, some immediate, some more distant.

These rewards include self- awareness, creative incubation, improvisation and evaluation, memory consolidation, autobiographical planning, goal driven thought, future planning, retrieval of deeply personal memories, reflective consideration of the meaning of events and experiences, simulating the perspective of another person, evaluating the implications of self and others’ emotional reactions, moral reasoning, and reflective compassion.

In other words, daydreaming only appears lazy from the outside, but viewed from the inside—or from the perspective of a psychologist, such as Kaufman, or a neuroscientist, such as Mary Helen Immordino-Yang—a complicated and extremely productive neurological process is taking place. Viewed from the inside, our children are exploring the only space where they truly have autonomy: their own minds.

Immordino-Yang’s work on the virtue of mental downtime includes the paper “Rest is not Idleness: Implications of the Brain’s Default Mode for Human Development and Education.” The title quotes a 19^th-century British banker named John Lubbock, who wrote, “Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.” Lubbock, according to Immordino-Yang, was way ahead of his time in understanding the value of idleness to our essential neurological functioning. What Lubbock called rest, Immordino-Yang calls “constructive internal reflection,” and she considers it is vital to learning and emotional well-being:

[I]nadequate opportunity for children to play and for adolescents to quietly reflect and to daydream may have negative consequences—both for social-emotional well-being and for their ability to attend well to tasks.

One aspect of Immordino-Yang’s paper is particularly relevant in today’s educational climate. She describes a study that shows mental downtime can alleviate the stress of standardized testing. The burden of periodic high-stakes testing is a source of stress for educators and students alike, but for students with test anxiety, these tests are particularly onerous and anxiety-provoking.

When researchers sought to find ways to alleviate the anxiety caused by high-stakes testing, they found that simply giving students a few minutes to think about and write down their thoughts on the test significantly increased test scores, particularly for students for whom test anxiety had become a habit. In the researchers’ words,

Expressive writing eliminates the relation commonly seen between test anxiety and poor test performance. Moreover, it is not any writing that benefits performance, but expressing worries about an upcoming high-pressure situation that accounts for enhanced exam scores under pressure.

How should parents and teachers respond to all this research about the benefits of mental downtime? For one thing, we should stop snapping our children out of their daydreams. Instead, we should protect this time much as we protect bedtime. Kick your children outside and close the door behind them. Encourage them go for a walk around the neighborhood without an electronic device. Tell your child what I have told you, that that silence and daydreaming are as important to their health and learning as sleeping and studying. Take a serious and objective look at how much time your child spends playing video games, responding to texts, messaging, watching television, or messing around on the Internet and carve out some of that time for daydreaming.

Model this behavior for them and re-discover your own love of daydreaming; don’t snap out of it, fall into it, and encourage your children to do the same. I have incorporated opportunities to daydream into my daily life, because they feed both my teaching and my writing. First thing in the morning when I am awake, but have not yet opened my eyes. On walks in the woods, free of earbuds or an agenda. The otherwise onerous and repetitive task of weed-pulling and raking has also proven fertile ground for this kind of mental meandering. The activity does not matter: Any place or occasion or task that allows the brain to wander will do.


Teach your kids how to just be. How to value silence and be at peace with nothing but their thoughts to occupy them. Make the romantic notion of laying back on the soft grass with nothing to do other than to watch the clouds pass overhead a reality. Teach them that, as Michael Pollan writes, "daydreaming is its own reward. For regardless of the result (if any), the very process of daydreaming is pleasurable." To paraphrase two of my favorite dreamers, William Shakespeare and W.H. Auden, round out our children’s days with sleep and allow them to build their air castles undisturbed. 

Lost Socks

Oct 16 2013

Will this desk
with its broken lock
scuffed top, pocked with coffee rings
be the first thing
I save in a fire?

So many manuscripts
stacked in bottom drawers.
Unpublished poems,
like socks, neatly folded
no one else will wear.
My cherished work
no one will chance,
hand-me-downs
shoved to the back
in sadly spurned pairs.

I become attached
to a word, or clever phrase.
When my better judgement
says black, calf-length
I want red argyle
white athletic.

Footsie-pyjamas
on days I never got dressed.
Cold coffee
as I fix on the empty page.

Found poems,
like the single sock
you find in the dryer
static-charged.
And the brilliant idea,
like a lost sock
gone
in the groggy fog
of awakening.

Cold feet
and I freeze.
But unpublished poems
keep this writer warm.
Like a glass lens
that concentrates light
to a single point,
magnifies
the insignificant.
Sunlight
brought to ignition
in a burst of flame.

The slow smoulder
of yellow paper
consumed by time.

The charred smoke
of old manuscripts
I will set on fire.


The poem began as a bit of indulgence: that is, writing about the process of writing. Which is probably too much "inside baseball" and of no interest to the usual reader. I read a description of a man that went something like "he's a writer, although no one has seen any reason to publish him". Apparently, any prospective publishers aren’t shopping for socks these days. Is self-definition enough to style oneself a writer? Is external validation necessary? Is the compulsion I feel about writing sufficient?

I had also recently written a note defending my use of a phrase, in which I acknowledged how I can become attached to a word, and how I can stick with some self-indulgent over-writing in spite of knowing that "less is always more" (as in the totally inappropriate "red argyle" in place of unobtrusive dress socks!)

I don't know how a desk drawer stuffed with unpublished poems became a sock drawer; or how the metaphor of fire ended up threaded through the piece. Perhaps this handing-off between two unrelated metaphors bogs it down. But I must say I do like way the unexpected ending -- with its combination of defiance and defeat and sudden strong feeling -- calls back to the "what I saved in the fire" trope of the opening. Fortunately, it's in the nature of human memory that a strong ending -- if that's indeed what it is (hard for me to be sure) -- makes up for a lot of mediocre in-between!

Black Coffee
Oct 13 2013


A fussy child
strictly quarantines
peas, and mashed potatoes.
Where does he get
this precocious sense
of purity?

Will he grow up to be
a white supremacist
jack-booted skinhead?
To turn up his nose
at the new, and complex?
Or to simply prefer
black coffee, plain toast

made with white sliced bread,
vanilla ice cream
sans syrup, or sprinkles?

We come together

at the festive table,
sharing our food
eating with fingers.
Dip motley spoons
into big communal pots.

Save the eyeball
of the sacrificial sheep
for an esteemed stranger
from some Western Shangri-La,

a prized offering
for an honoured guest.
Who feels the weight
of all eyes upon him
like daggers drawn.

I called this poem Black Coffee because that's where it began: that I'm a purist when it comes to eating, preferring simple preparation and staple foods. Kids are especially sensitive to this idea of "contamination". It's probably rooted in biology: before they are old enough to learn what is safe and what isn't, evolution has equipped them with a wary gene and hyper-sensitive taste.

I was planning to make a short amusing riff on simple foods, a word-play poem with lots of colour and smell and taste. But it's Thanksgiving, and the idea of communal eating, of the festive table, subverted that intention. The occasion reminded me of food as the common denominator of hospitality; as something incredibly intimate that can be both alienating and unifying. And I thought of our generally reserved Western ways in contrast with cultures of extreme hospitality (that is, more communal shame cultures, in contrast with our more individualistic and guilt-driven morality), in which a man's esteem is rooted in how well he treats a stranger, even to the extent of impoverishing himself.

I hope the "eyeball" shocks, suddenly materializing in a way that blindsides the reader. It's also a nice counterpoint to the bland food that precedes it: white food like mashed potatoes, sliced bread (even if it is toasted!), and vanilla ice cream. I must have read this someplace like the National Geographic:  the prized delicacy of an eyeball reserved for the most honoured guest. "Shangri-La" works well with the rhyme (motley ...pot ...offering ...honoured ...upon ...drawn); but I also like how its tension in combination with "Western" flips our point of view, illustrating that we probably seem as exotic and mythic (in the sense of material wealth, anyway) to them as they seem to us. And it's a wonderfully evocative word, full of the fantastic East.

Overflow
Oct 10 2013


At first, I judged,
about standards falling
giving up.
I could never live like this, I thought,
a minimalist
used to cool order.

But then I sensed the warmth, the joyful noise,
and the clutter seemed rich
with lives well-lived;
neatness
will not be anyone’s

death-bed regret.

Still, I felt anxious

at so much happening

all-at-once.

As if I were the thin white line

before order fell

to the cheerful hordes,

with their stuffed toys

and tiny mismatched shoes.

While she caught me off guard

with bemused envy,

wistful that anything

would be just where I left it

in a week, a month.
Yes, there is a place for everything, I fussed,
as she tucked into my lovingly tended chair

creasing its brushed suede leather,

no coaster, her cup.

The one bedroom condo
on the 25th floor
is a showroom

of clean design.
Her Victorian
brims over.

In the great room

a sprawling sofa, to wallow in

paint, smudged with fingerprints

and hard plastic toys,

like booby-traps

for unsuspecting guests.

And how quickly kids grow.
A life-line
in magic marker
on the living-room door,

as a little boy squirms
stretching tip-toe.

While in the kitchen
a delicious smell,
as cast iron sizzles
pots overflow.


This is a quote from the author Jhumpa Lahiri, who was being interviewed about her new book The Lowlands: "I was always fascinated, going to the homes of my American friends,” she says. “They were messy, there was stuff everywhere, there were so many books, things, you know – a life lived fully, in every sense of the word, and I was very aware of this, and I remember my own family’s life had this sort of barren, strange quality." Her words reflect a particular immigrant experience; but when I read this, it brought back a sudden memory of a similar feeling from maybe 15 or 20 years ago, a moment when this whole cascade of self-doubt and angst-filled emotion overcame me; especially so when I read "life lived fully" (which I've brazenly lifted, morphing it into the weakly disguised "lives well-lived"). I was quite a neat-freak back then. Not so much now, I'd say. It was -- and is -- perfectly clear to me that I need a calm well-ordered environment in order to feel in control.

But I also realize that living like that means you have to sacrifice a lot of potential richness, the clutter and chaos and well-upholstered warmth of family life. And the kitchen is at the heart of this. So I chose to end the poem with the smell of food, while the physical act of a pot overflowing calls back to over-stuffed Victorian bric-a-brac, a home brimming over, and lives fully lived.

The 25th floor condo is a fabrication. Mine is a small bungalow that is more suburban than cosmopolitan: hardly the proverbial "bachelor pad"; but I did -- and do -- live alone, and as in the poem, much prefer austere minimalism to tchotchkes and clutter and dust collectors. Other than that, the essence of the story is very much true.

Bitter Greens

Oct 8 2013

Root vegetables

bitter greens.

The lush orchard, overrun with weeds

plucked free.

Succulent fruit, slightly bruised

rotting where it fell.

Blood orange,

cutting through its smooth dimpled jacket

into crimson flesh.

A potato, freshly pulled,

dirt

still clinging to its skin.

Smelling of sunless earth, disinterred,

squinting eyes

fixed inward.

Ginger, like some little man

with twisted limbs, stiff back.

The wages of sin

or lived too long?

Still alive, cells divide

when I pick ‘em fresh,

disconnected

from life support.

Fertile soil,

stinking richly

of decomposition

wiggling worms. 

I'm unusually pleased with this poem. It's so much closer to what I've been trying to do, and badly (very badly!) missing.

Most of my recent work has been too talky, too wordy, too linear. This, on the other hand, seems simpler and looser; less formal. It has the compression and distillation I admire in my favourite poems by other writers. It is rich in delicious word play and sensation. There is a unifying line running through it; but that line leaves ambiguity and room. The poem is very small, dealing in microcosm and close observation. And finally -- and perhaps most important of all -- It works out loud: the mouth-feel the, cadence, the music.

Finally!!!

It started with the title of a poem I just read in The New Yorker: Kale. (The poem, btw, had nothing to do with kale, as far as I can figure out!) That somehow led me to think of bitter greens, and I thought the poem would move in the direction of bitterness, virtue, smugness. Luckily, I resisted that kind of intellectualization, and went instead for the sensory and the whimsical, writing less in the mode of thinking and more in the mode of stream of consciousness, with a carefully cocked ear. Which may be the secret to all good poetry: less thinking; more feeling and flow.

I could have picked pretty much anything as the title. But, in homage to its obscure origins, I went with Bitter Greens. As with all my titles, I try to visualize a reader scanning down the title page, and like a connoisseur gleefully plucking a fine chocolate out of its box, lighting on an irresistible morsel he hopes will reward him with something delicious inside. So titles that work can be are playful, evocative, ambiguous, highly sensory, double-entendres, and humorous. Or even hopelessly clichéd, because who wouldn't want to look to see what he could possibly do with something so ridiculous. (Some titles are also necessary to the poem: either helping point the reader in a certain direction, when the poem is tangential and discursive; and other times intentionally misdirecting, in the hope the poem will blind-side and surprise the reader.)


(Here's Kale, by Jordan Davis, from the Oct 14 2013 New Yorker:

I hear James but can’t see him so
I call out his baby name, Jamey-James,
and he pops up from behind a plow
bank. We walk down the driveway
past the barn to the fenced-in
garden, iron rail, green metal grid,
red thread for the deer. The black
mama cat with the extra toes comes
running past us.

“The ones buried
in snow are insulated,” James
tells me, as if quoting from
“The Pruning Book.” He might be.
“If you cut a butterfly bush
down to nothing it grows back
the next year twice as high.”

There are five or six tall stumps
of the flat variety, and eight or nine
low curly ones. We fill a plastic
popcorn bowl and leave as much
behind still growing.)

Fellow Travellers
Oct 7 2013


In the off-hours
there are empty seats.
No strangers, knees clenched

pressed against each other.

When you can feel the heat

of human bodies,
skin-to-skin
but for cotton sleeves
thin pants. 

Eyes downcast,
or looking up
at back-lit ads,

expertly tuning out.

Like a well-rehearsed ensemble

we all sway

with the subway car's motion,  

leaning in, letting go

like swimmers lolling

in ocean swells.
Fellow travellers, for now
in this small hermetic car.

In the big city
the weight of anonymity
frees me
as much as it oppresses.
Each commuter
lips sealed

with the thousand mile stare.
And each impassive face,
unknowable

and never seen again,
as if to say
there is no consequence

do as you please.
Freeing me
to reinvent myself.

Or, taken to extremes
might just as well
not be,

a drowning man

who simply slips beneath the waves

without a struggle.

But behind averted eyes, inscrutable face
is a parallel universe
of rich emotion

bottomless pain.

And I remind myself
that every one of them
no matter how unlikely
is loved,

that someone, somewhere

hangs on their return.
That when I hunger for air
beneath the depth of feeling,
just imagine a million times as much
in the cruel city.
It overwhelms me to think
of a universe that is infinite,
when even this tiny sliver
is too much,
borne down

by such unbearable weight

of suffering.

Which is why I re-read the ads,
sit, like a small Pacific island
in its coral reef
flanked by empty seats.
And why my fellow travellers
sink without a trace.
Mercifully vanish
as I head for the platform,
await the silky hiss
of the sliding doors.

When I'm in the big city, emerging from the Island airport into the noisy heart of downtown, I find myself overwhelmed by the immensity of crowds, the powerful sense of alienation and unreality, and the way the feeling of anonymity both extinguishes and frees me.

Thrown together for a few minutes on the subway with total strangers, there is the odd intimacy of fellow travellers, accompanied by a sense of absolute social isolation. When I resist the urge to see “the other” not as cardboard outlines and obstacles but as loved and valued people, when I allow myself to imagine the depth of feeling of a single person multiplied millions of times, the accumulation of suffering and pain overwhelms me utterly. I immediately step back into the bearable solitude of the self. One can experiment only so long with extreme empathy, with a Zen-like dissolving of personal boundary and ego, before retreating back into the safety of solipsism.

This is a good example of how differently poetry and prose go about doing the same thing. Because the 2 preceding paragraphs say what I wanted to say with clear exact precision -- as when I was first taught the proper way to write an essay:  say what you’re going to say …say it …then say what you said. While the poem, far less direct, doesn't say so much as show. Which I think is more powerful. Because the reader experiences it as narrative rather than assertion. And because, in the distillation and compression of poetry, as will as in its music, there is a good chance a telling line might stay with the reader, keep doing its work well after the poem's been heard. 

Past Noon
Oct 6 2013


It is past noon.

I roll over
to painful light,
thick-tongued, and foul.

On the kitchen counter
crusted plates are hardening,
and a sink-full of cups, rims smudged
are halfway up
with warm cloudy stuff.
Brown scum
on scuffed stainless steel,
where swampy water
receded.

Under rumpled covers
it is sick-bed warm,
something ripe, even growing.
A trail of empty clothes
where they were shed, on the floor
by feel.
And the air is close
from too much re-breathing,
in need of oxygen.

I roll over, again
bury my face in the pillow,
its white synthetic case
now permanently unpressed.
Like the mess
of badly wrinkled sheets
gathered round my feet

even bleach cannot restore.

The morning after
the night before
is afternoon, already.
Mid-winter
and soon the sun will set.
Merciful rest
for the living dead,
the good, and the wicked,

the damned

the blessed.

Garden Park
Oct 5 2013


A small park
that ends in a low stone wall,
where a steep drop-off

over-looks the brightly lit city
and in the distance, the lake,
its slate-grey depths
brushed with moonlight.

Where after dark, cars park
like boats pointing out to sea,
straining against the pull
of this small northern place.
I cannot see
behind the tinted glass,
radios thumping

eruptions of laughter.
But I can see the glowing ash

of cigarettes
in nervous hands,
hear suspensions squeak.
The things that have always gone on
Saturday nights
in bucket seats.

Like flocks of small birds
who seek safety in numbers,
swooping into turns as if one
breasts lighting up

in unison,

young women and men

are drawn together

here, on the edge of the park,
cruising, idling

steaming-up cars.
When everything is new,
and they will always be beautiful
indestructible.
And who would resent the comparison
if I told them their parents
had also met
in the back of a vintage car,
here, on the edge of love.

We all think
we have discovered sex
for the first time ever.
But like the fluttering hearts of tiny birds
their all-encompassing heat
is nothing
compared to the ancient lake,
that sits, impervious,
cooling the still night air.

On a recent Saturday night, I walked the dog right instead of left. We ended up in a nearby park that is just as described, and is apparently a hot make-out spot: idling pick-up trucks trading places, the kind of cool cars young men yearn to drive, and low-slung sedans cruising by. I was struck that despite this being 2013 -- an era of social media and sexual freedom -- it could just as well be 1950. It was the old cliché of the more things change, the more they stay the same.

On display was the transience of youth and beauty, the solipsistic hubris of the young. But in sharp counterpoint was a powerful sense of timelessness: the generational repetition of the familiar rites of passage; the brooding permanence of the ancient lake.

Men at Work
Oct 3 2013


I watch the men at work.

They clash,
in yellow hard hats
orange vests.
They chat, talk with their hands,
waving cigarettes
leaning back against
rough concrete piers.

A belching crane
that could squash them like bugs
unspools steel cable
as thick as a weight-lifter's chest,
the diesel revving
deafeningly
against the compression of weight.

I see drones
slouching, lounging,
determined workers, beetling around.
Each man, going this way and that
is a single ant
at some minor task
in a vast chaotic collective.
While I look on, suppressing envy,
as if a boy's dream machines
were their private playthings.

Like a badly choreographed dance,

its conductor stuck in an airless trailer

peering at plans

only he understands.

Or a mismatched ensemble
cacophonous jazz,

all flinching minors, a screeching sax.

Until the final note,
when the racket resolves, nearly miraculous
in a pure sweet chord.
A work of art
in glass and steel,
like music, taking form.


A few times over the last year, I've flown in and out of Billy Bishop Airport, in downtown Toronto. It occupies a small island, separated from the mainland by a narrow gap. So I've been able to catch an intermittent glimpse of the vast underground tunnel that's being built to replace the ferry.

The workers seems almost haphazard and random in their chores. They seem to spend as much time standing around as actually doing something. Which is an impression -- probably thoroughly unfair -- I seem to get at every construction site. The project management and engineering of something like this is a gargantuan and exhaustive task. But slowly, out of this chaos, an incredibly complicated project is taking shape: until all the small details converge; until both ends of the tunnel merge in the middle, not missing even by inches. In a year, when I'm able to walk through a finished tunnel and all signs of disturbance on the surface have been converted to grass and trees (or, more likely, parking lots!), the utter chaos of its gestation will be forgotten. The poem, on the other hand, remembers at least a little of it. Although here, the tunnel becomes a skyscraper. Because you have to admit that a soaring building of glass and steel makes a lot more uplifting image than buried concrete walls.

One metaphor is of small insects: a pretty natural (and hackneyed?) one when you consider flying, and the tired old cliché about ant-like people seen from the air. Although I hope I managed to keep it fresh.

The other metaphor, of music and dance, conveniently leads to the ending, which is simply a different iteration of the quote attributed to Goethe comparing architecture to frozen music.

But I could easily dispense with literary devices, with showing-off how clever I am. Because the 2nd stanza -- which is purely descriptive and pretty much linear -- is actually my favourite. I like the "unspooling", the simple analogy of the weight-lifter, the solid language of "squash" and "bug", and the muscular sound of the diesel compressing.

I wonder if this is the first poem ever that's a paean to project management?!! ...Not to mention comparing civil engineering to the miraculous!