... break your mother’s back

Nov 27 2013

The crack in the sidewalk

is filling-up with sand.

Sturdy ants

fanning out, scurrying back,

on invisible paths

that twist and turn

inexplicably.

Thin ribbons of black

flowing briskly.

Scent-maps

that lead them blindly to the verge,

where they vanish from sight

in a wilderness

of dusty weeds, neglected grass.

I’m walking home from school, looking down,

carefully keeping

to the flat concrete slabs,

avoiding the cracks

filled with broken tar.

Industrious ants, who never look up,

utterly oblivious

in their little patch of wild.

Even in the heart of the city, you can find little patches of wilderness. We think of charismatic mega-fauna, and long unbroken tracts. But in microcosm, wild things are everywhere.

I've written on this theme before: how we can occupy utterly difference frames of reference and orders of magnitude, and so remain oblivious to both the very small and very large. You don't need esoteric physics or metaphysics to realize that parallel universes actually do exist. ...Or that beauty and wonder can hide in plain sight. The self-absorbed kid walking home from school is as focused and unseeing as the ants. If not blinded by lack of sight, then blinded by inattentiveness and superstition.

I like the brevity and compression of this poem. Because, hard as it is to believe, I start off every poem with the hope it will finally turn out to be what I really want to write: a perfect jewel-like 6-line masterpiece of allusion, ambiguity, and plangent truth. I think everything I write is too long. So for someone as prolix as me, even 22 lines (now 24, already up 2! since I wrote this blurb) seem a kind of success.

I've also repeatedly said I'm attracted to poems of microcosm and close observation. (Which means an odd affinity for insect poems -- even though I'm pretty squeamish!) This one succeeds at that, as well.

There is a lot of rhyme, here. I love word-play; but inherent in that is the risk of over-doing it, and of making the rhyme sound shoe-horned in. Because every word has to sound inevitable, natural: just the way you'd say it in real (not poetical!) life. If showing off your cleverness gets in the way of the reader's flow, the rhyme is serving your ego more than the poem. I think here, I've hit the sweet spot. Or come close, anyway. This also pleases me.

So all in all, a pretty good effort. Hope you think so too.

Field Trip
Nov 26 2013


We couldn't get enough
of the mummies, and dinosaurs.
Kids at the museum,
terrified
at the world that existed before us.
Back when dinosaurs were only bone,
before we knew
they were feathered, colourful, warm;
more like us, only bigger.
And mesmerized
by this dusty desert after-life;
not heaven, which we knew existed,
but those simple Egyptians
convinced they had cheated death.

But even more,
it was through the steamy windows
of that rowdy yellow bus
we were opened up,
a world we had never imagined
going on,

outside the walls
of our classroom home.

Looking out, nose-to-glass
at storefronts, grown-ups, traffic,
an alien earth
all hustle and bustle,
utterly oblivious to us.

We wished to reach through, and touch
the giant lizards, petrified mummies,
as if handling would make it real.
Not understanding
how soon we would stand
on the other side of the glass.

Find ourselves
watching a school bus pass
some dull Wednesday morning,
trailing diesel
the chatter of kids.
Already nostalgic
for innocence
and field trips.

Who would learn, that day
how small they were,
how little they knew of the world.


This poem uses the solipsism of childhood as a metaphor for the solipsism of narrow world-views.

Here is what I mean by solipsistic world-views. We used to see dinosaurs as lumbering clumsy creatures who were out-competed by our nimble mammalian ancestors. Actually, they were incredibly successful, diverse, and resilient; and their demise was purely the result of a cosmic collision (which, by the way, almost did in our diminutive ancestors as well). So our triumphalism and "speciesism" has been disabused by science ("more like us, only bigger"). We are condescendingly amused at the ancient Egyptians' bizarre belief in the preservation of dead bodies, to be resurrected in some imagined after-life. But these same condescending moderns privilege as certainties ("not heaven, which we knew existed") their own superstitions about heaven and afterlives and divinity. (The snarky atheist in me once again getting the last word!)

It's also a commentary on formal education: because we don't retain much of the information we're crammed with (the view of education as a process of filling an empty vessel with knowledge); and we aren't transformed simply by exposure to high culture. Rather, our education comes in unexpected places, and from the cultivation of receptivity and curiosity. And it's as much about process as content; as much about socialization and self-regulation and habit of mind as it is about formal instruction. I always bristle when I hear the expression "go to university and get an education." This is the perfect model of the "empty vessel" I so dislike. If you're fortunate, you may get a diploma, a credential; but the whole point of the exercise is to become educated. In the poem, it's not the institution of high culture that stays with this child; it's the incidental bus trip that gets him out of the comfort and self-absorption of the classroom's 4 walls, where he is humbled by his new perspective on a grander world.

Kids continue to be unaccountably fascinated by dinosaurs. I think the Egyptian artifacts and giant lizards are still the highlight of any trip to the museum. (Suits of armour, too!) We grow up quickly ...more quickly, these days. How nice it would be to recapture the excitement of those childhood field trips, when we found ourselves out in the world, liberated from the deadly routine of the school day and those stuffy over-heated rooms.

Street Life
Nov 24 2013

Before the plough
belched down the curb
churning-up walls of snow.
That will soon ice-up

pack hard enough
to last the winter.

Before the first tentative cars
inched and slid and spun,
turning snow to slush
and white, a muddy brown.

Running cold

and topped with mounds of snow

they looked like slow-moving floats
in the Christmas parade.

Before the street-lamps were snuffed,
and a necklace of light

running down each side

warmed the street with gold.
Perfect flakes
swirling in amber snow-globes.

Before huddled figures
dodged sidewalk drifts

leaning into the wind.

Hunkered-down
in parkas and scarves
in a fog of frozen breath.

When snow softened everything.
When the sky hinted of pink.

When I stood outside,

in the unnatural stillness

and disconcerting quiet

like the last man on earth.

Or the first.
So sorry to have disturbed
such virgin snow.

I chose Street Life hoping it would resonate with “still life”; and that “street” would convey a kind of urban sensibility.

There are these early morning moments, even in the downtown of a big city, when everything seems on pause and preternaturally still. Especially after a paralyzing overnight storm, in the muffled softness of freshly fallen snow. 

In The Fullness of Time ...
Nov 22 2013


When it came last fall
the load of fresh-cut birch
had the dull thud
of wet wood.
The spicy smell
of that thin brown layer
beneath the silver bark,
where dark velvet
will dry to dun,
stiff sheets, come clean away
turn crumbly.

The load seasoned under cover,
a damp spring, hot summer
redolent of birch.
And in the fullness of time
will burn well,
the hot fire, clear flame
of seasoned wood.
Rough length, 16 inches

cleanly split.

In the fullness of time
a sturdy tree has grown.
Over 50 years
slowly absorbing the heat of the sun,
captured
in its fibre, its cells
its structure.
Then released, all at once,
for a few short hours
in an inferno of heat and light.
The natural state of disorder
restored,
the levelling force
we rage against
all our lives.

My wood-stove blazes,
its hypnotic flame

soothing heat.
And on the wall behind, my shadow flickers
larger than life.
My first half century
also done,
simmering steadily
at body temperature,
imperceptibly ebbing
to my certain end.

When, in the fullness of time
I will be buried
at the base of a tree,

a slender sapling

of aspen, or birch

in hard thin soil.

Which grow slowly, here
send their roots deep,

extract what they can

from marginal land

so far north.

When, in the fullness of time
I will blaze fiercely
if brief.
As if time
were ever complete.

Many Times Removed
Nov 19 2013


Sound carries, at night.

When the wind dies.

When the air is dense,
like a cool room
with a hard reflective surface.

Especially now,
when leafless tress, crusted snow
close distance;
as if just beyond
the circle of light.

The wolves are howling again.
They strike a minor note,
shivering down my spine
clenching my gut.
They join in chorus, one by one,
as in the hunt
where escape is hopeless.
They ululate, bray, and yelp
but do not bark.
Only wolf-pups bark;
as do our dogs
whom we keep
infantalized, and dependent.

Direction is hard to tell.
But I feel encircled, weak,
and understand why people have always feared
the dark,
demonized
these noble creatures.
Night, when the world is possessed,
our kind
unwelcome intruders.

I call in the dog,
who was busy barking
until the last few minutes.
In the sickening pause
before she appears
  —  tail wagging, bounding into my arms   — 
I consider the wolves
and my loyal companion
many times removed,
a common ancestor
who also ruled.

My dog is as soft as me, I think
retreating into thick-walled silence
the brightly-lit house.
When she begins to growl,
tuned in to some frequency
far beyond my hearing,
where she and her brethren
still co-exist.

And where I am at best, incidental,
at worst, easy prey.


This is another of those poems I can say I've already written. I long ago stopped worrying about repeating myself. I actually quite enjoy revisiting the same subject. There is the challenge of saying something new, or in a different way. But more than that, there is the challenge of coming up with a better poem, of testing myself. And what better gauge of progress than playing around with the identical theme? Because there is no point in continuing to work at this if my writing isn't improving, if I've just gotten stuck. So I would hope that I'm not really repeating myself after all.


As I recall, in the original poem, it was a cold winter night, and I was out walking the dog, and I observed how oblivious she remained to the wolves howling in the distance. I didn't set out to repeat myself, but it appears I've ploughed pretty much the identical furrow. Although then, I think I was disappointed at how far my domesticated version had strayed from her wild ancestors; while now, there is a sense of respect tinged with alienation, a recognition of the atavistic urges that persist beneath her civilized exterior. I'll have to revisit, hoping the new poem somehow works better, and seeing if I can figure out what I've done to accomplish that. (I just had the chance to look it up. Easy Prey is the title. And it was summer, not winter! Now that I've had a chance to read it, I think I like it better. ...Which doesn't say much for my progress, does it?!!)

Perhaps I re-traced my steps because in this case the poem is autobiographical. In fact, she is up barking right now at some imperceptible sound. just as I was proof-reading the final stanza. Easy prey, indeed. I think I'll keep her in!

The Greater Good
Nov 18 2013


The ice is think enough to walk.
Though still open, in the narrows,
disconcertingly soft
under drifted snow.
I feel slow
on the broad expanse of lake,
as if stuck in place
on a perennial motion machine.

But on the winding path, through the forest
I feel quick.
Despite the heavy-going,
ducking under branches
stumbling over roots.
Because without a frame of reference
you feel at sea,
progress imperceptible
and you, terribly small.
How discouraging,
going through the motions
yet going nowhere at all.

We are told the Inuit, when they were old
would be left on an ice floe to die,
freezing to death
for the greater good.
It seems a mercy
to succumb to cold,
drifting out of consciousness
and then no more.

Time accelerates, with age,
while the trajectory of life
slows and slows.
Until it stops,
and you are left with an unobstructed view
too far from shore
to bother.

As the sun sinks
beyond the far horizon;
a dark line
of unexplored forest,
a pink hallucination of sky.


It was as recent as my last entry when I said I would refrain from writing about death. But when I turned my stream of consciousness loose in this poem, that's where I ended up. And since I like to trust these intuitions, that's how I left it.

We all struggle at times with a sense of futility. I can't say I feel particularly overwhelmed these days by angst and ennui (or at least no more than usual!), so I can't really explain the dark tone here. On the other hand, the poem does present a consoling view of the end of life: of going painlessly; of going when you're ready; of having achieved a certain wisdom (the "unobstructed view"); and of finding meaning through those who will come after you ("the greater good").

The "unexplored forest" may mean regrets, the things undone. But the "pink hallucination of sky" seems to be an act of faith: of curiosity in the great mystery of what, if anything, comes after death.

Going Under
Nov 15 2013


There was no revelation.
No life
flashing before my eyes.

When I almost died
there was only disappointment
at passing so young.
A detached sense
that it all could end

with such banality.
And compassion
for loved ones, left;

who will imagine my suffering

when all I felt was regret,

and how much I would give

to comfort them.

When it was simply giving up.
How odd
the life-long struggle
was so suddenly done,
how unexpected.
And how easy it was
going under.

But now you know
I never went.

With burning lungs,
my strong desire
to overcome,
one final mighty kick
found the surface,
the most heavenly air
on earth.
Dropped into troughs of monster waves
gulping water, wracked by coughs
I craned my neck,
up enough for breath
treading hard.
The cold clutch of fear
constricting harder.

Every second of every day
we are all near death,
one distracted step
into traffic,
3 minutes of breath
away.
All, as contingent as the thinnest thread
a quick mistake.

There will be no bright light
no face of God,
no great destiny
or completion.

Just a colossal sense of waste,

a glimpse
into the dead weight
of fatalism.

Surrender

urging us on.

Which is when I refused
its warm embrace,

emerged
into the storm.


I was listening to an interview with a ground-breaking (no pun intended!) Canadian cave diver (Jill Heinerth). Apparently, this is the most dangerous sport in the world: scuba diving in pitch-black caverns and caves, in subterranean rivers and lakes, in the seams of the earth. She said her closest brush with death was swimming down through a giant iceberg, newly calved off the coast of Antarctica, where a reversal of flow made it a 3 hour struggle back to the surface; and where, an hour after they emerged, she watched the entire mass of ice disintegrate into a mountain of slush.

She recounted her emotional state much as I recall mine. I've had maybe 3 such experiences: tipping my canoe in the middle of a lake when the waves should have kept me onshore; white-water kayaking (actually, probably more than one!), when I missed my ferry and dropped backwards into a giant churning hydraulic; and -- compressed into mere seconds -- when I slid off a winding winter road, rolled 11/2 times down the incline, and ended up suspended by my seatbelt half-buried in snow. I recall that looking out the windshield was like looking through the window of a laundromat dryer: everything in my field of view turning, while it felt as if I was sitting still. In all three cases, panic was quickly replaced by a sense of calm, mild regret, and resigned detachment: a brief interval -- that seemed forever -- suspended between surrender and struggle. And then, my ambivalence gave way to agency, focus, and a determination to do what I could.

The near death experience has been much written about. There is the cliché of one's life flashing before one's eyes. There is talk of transcendence, re-birth, revelation. And some have referred to a preternatural feeling of calm, of being embraced and comforted. All re-tellings are usually coloured by culture and belief and world-view. My experience is far more mundane. In a way, it removes some of the fear of death itself. Although if it does nothing to allay concerns about the actual process of dying: of pain and suffering; of the prolonged over-medicalized death; of indignity and dependence. I've said before that, if I let myself, I would write a lot more "death" poems than I do: the one great mystery; the one thing we all have in common; and -- paradoxically -- the thing that most gives meaning and urgency to life.

Most of my poems are acts of imagination. This one is closer to autobiography. I suspect the experience may be more common than one would be led by popular culture to believe.

40 Words ...
Nov 13 2013


Perfect packing snow.

The wet glumpy stuff,
which soon freeze-dries
lightens to crumble
loses height.

The dry dusting.
Wind-driven,
in arctic cold, in painful light.
In shifting veils,
skimming clean
across a polished surface.

Snow, in layers.
Like an excavation
in geological time,
compressed
into one winter.

When it was ankle high,
my footprints staggered

walking erratically
back, and forth,

the starting, and stopping

the anguished pausing.

Beneath fresh falls, and sculpted drifts
past lives persist,
like frozen tracks
of ancient fossils.

In spring
when all my paths emerge;
the comings, and goings,
the stumbled strandings
in knee-deep snow.
Where a snowman, sagging
tips toward the sun.

And I am where I began
in this off-again thaw.
Perfect packing snow,
where giddy children
are falling backwards, fanning arms.
In their mock battalions,
making angels
making war.


A reference to the notorious (and inaccurate) quote -- "40 words for snow." I started off thinking I'd write on the intricacies and variety and changing nature of snow. (If you haven't noticed, even old snow can changed dramatically from day to day.) Perhaps addressing it to someone who has never seen snow, and thinks it's only one thing. Or perhaps to my own first experience; vanished from memory, but still imagined.

Instead, the poem took on a tone of wistful regret. I think it conveys a sense of purposelessness and indecision; has an air of futility in a life that feels more like unresolved circling than progress. It alludes to things badly hidden from sight. And then, at the end, startles the reader with a sharp revelation of menace.

Remembrance Day (I think it's called Memorial Day in the US) has just passed. I wonder if that insinuated itself into the ending: images of all those young men -- almost boys -- falling on the battlefield in the hundreds of thousands; the innocence at the beginning of the great adventure of the "war to end all war", and the deep cynicism at its end. And maybe that minor category of movies about "snowball wars" intruded on my image of kids playing in winter: how tribalism and the drive to win turn innocent play into a deadly game; how the veneer of civility is so easily stripped away to expose the inner warrior. ...Lord of the Flies stuff, but in snow.

Or not. Make what you will of it. Either way, depending on how you count, I may have covered 7 or 8 of the so-called 40. So the poem can be read as a simple glossary of snow; and at least for those to whom snow is faraway and exotic, I ended up doing just what I intended, after all!

Chaos Theory

Nov 12 2013

The trouble with history

is we know how it turned out.

We read the past

through the lens of inevitability,

with the smugness of now

harshly judge

they’re lack of vision.

What could they possibly have been thinking?

should not be merely rhetorical.

Because this

is what we need to know

if we are to learn anything;

their world-view,

their innocence, and ignorance

and utter certainty.

If only we studied history, said Santayana

we would not be condemned

to repeat it.

But then, when we do go back

we end up fighting the last war;

drowning in rat-filled trenches,

protecting the Negro

from himself.

As if there was such a thing as “the past”,

when there are many, and you choose your own.

Every nation, creed, and tribe

writing, and re-writing

their own revered version,

a history of victory, humiliation, and pride

and carefully nursed grievance.

The definite article

does not apply.

But for all of them

it was better, back then,

when life were simple

and purposes clear;

memory’s rough edges

sanded down.

While how troubled

the state of the world

here and now,

the bias of recency,

when it’s always a crisis

and we always inhabit

exceptional times.

For millennia

there was no future.

When we trusted in providence, not progress,

and life went on, much as it had  –

birthing and dying, working the land,

as did our forbears

and theirs, before them.

And if “the past” is a lie

then so is “the future”.

Because there are infinite futures,

that, like parallel worlds

exist at once.

So we proclaim “the future”

then all head off

helter-skelter

in different directions,

so sure of ourselves.

As if cause and effect

were perfectly linear,

the future

a straight line from now.

But destiny changes

each fork in the road,

and there is no proportion

of cause.

Like a butterfly’s wings

the 100 year storm,

an asteroid

plunging from orbit.

Opening Day
Nov 11 2013


November appeared,
as if the calendar
had been shuffled like a deck of cards.
I looked up
and the world was white,
with winter's bluish tinge
impending dark.

The long distending shadows
that sharpen
snow blind light.

I flip through Sports
in the daily paper
to find baseball has vanished.
As if I'd just imagined
the boys of summer,
sprawled in the outfield grass
jawing tobacco, shagging balls.
Like some vague memory
in ancestral DNA,
a diorama
of some prehistoric world
in its greenly steaming newness.

In a month
there will be news
of salaries, free agents
strategic moves.
But not the game itself.
Which never ends
until it's over,
leisurely unfolding

to the final out
on its verdant field of dreams.

Which, in theory, is also endless;
or at least as far
as a man can hit a ball.
A laser, a frozen rope,
a moon-shot
that never comes back to earth.

I thought summer would be as endless,
with the radio's southern drawl
purring into my ear.
And the lush green field

a glowing jewel

in the cool gloom

of night.

In the Dominican, or Venezuela
they're still playing ball.
Grown men
as intense as boys,
trash-talking, glaring at umps.
Old enough
to honour the game
by running out the lazy grounder,
to be schooled
in the home run trot.

Taking care of business

with manly restraint

no showing-off.
But still so achingly young,
sprawled in the dugout
kissed by the sun.

While I will haul wood, shovel snow
in afternoon darkness.
And think of next year
bright with promise,
beginning, as every season
tied for first.
Opening day
is marked in my calendar
in bold red ink.
If I can only find the page.

Baseball poems are like dog poems: if I'd let myself, I'd write one every day. To my credit, at least, I've shown a lot more restraint with the boys of summer than I have with man's best friend.

There are many reason baseball is the most literate of sports; that the quality and quantity of writing eclipses the other major team sports, played for money by men. It's a game of anticipation, suspense, and sudden intense release; rather than continuous action. So there is a lot of time to fill, and we fill it with talking: speculation about the infinite possibilities and subtle strategies of the next pitch, the positioning of the men in the field, the base-running cat and mouse. It's a game that honours tradition and celebrates its history: more to talk about. It's a game in which the small man can be heroic; and what is more literary than that? It's pace is leisurely, without the time clock or military precision of other games; which suits the unstructured life of letters -- the louche poet, the unemployed novelist. It's a game of subtlety and imagination, rather than of collision and concerted movement and whistled stops. A game in which the defending team has possession of the ball: an unexpected plot twist, if ever there was one. And there is, of course, the drama inherent in all sport. I don't think I've ever seen a game in which something completely new and utterly unexpected didn't happen. The attentive reader may notice that I've paid homage to two classic baseball books (or plagiarized, if you're in a less generous mood): Field of Dreams, and The Boys of Summer.

My life is very regimented, routine and boring. It's hard to find material suitable for poetry. But when I went once again on another unfruitful search through the sports pages for anything on baseball, I thought this is as good a topic as anything; not to mention a good way into the baseball poem I've been resisting for months. Not only is it authentic and personal -- and first person poems always work the best; it's also small and diurnal -- and I've found the most powerful poems rest on the close observation of microcosm, on inconsequential events.

On October 30 it was the World Series in a golden fall. Now, the second week of November, and it looks like the middle of a long winter. If I was ever going to allow "suddenly" in a poem, this would be it. In the end, I did manage to avoid that scorned word. But the seasonal contrast was a good way into the poem; and how I found my way out, as well.

There is so much about this beautiful game that lends itself to poetry, the hardest part is what to leave out. I hope I got the balance right. And that the non-aficionado will not glaze over and turn the page before he's done.

Favourite Chair
Nov 1 2013


My father had a favourite chair.

Back when there were evening papers
with yesterday's news,
and you knew what sort of family it was
by which competing daily --
the dense grey Globe
the shamelessly racy Sun.

He was a serious reader,
and that chair, a refuge
after work.

We rarely sat

on the living room furniture,

faux-French

reserved for guests.

But the den was perfect.

Cozy, not cramped,

with warm wood wainscotting

and a big puffy couch

we called a chesterfield.

Before TV

overwhelmed our Britishness,

American sitcoms, breaking news.

Now, I have my own favourite chair
and my own comfy den
to read in.
I don't mind old news;
you can sort out what deserves attention,
settle in
to the measured perspective
of print.

His old chair

vanished into landfill,

or in some mouldy basement

threadbare, sagging.

His new one

sits empty,

newspapers gathered-up

ottoman lost.

Showing its wear

where his feet once rested.

We become our parents;

all we know as children

imprinting on them,

little goslings

around their legs.

Forbidden
to sit in his chair,
the one by the window
cigar-scented air.
Which, in that golden hour
before family dinner
was his, alone.

Mine, too, is my own,
a sanctuary
that carries me out into the world
from the safety of home.


That was family life for me as a child: sitting in the den on a Saturday afternoon, weekend papers scattered about, all reading. There is a family culture that sets your life trajectory at an early age. Like naïve goslings, we are easily imprinted, and eventually grow up to become more like our parents than we ever thought.

My 91 year old father has been in the hospital for over a month, now. His chair waits at home for him -- a different chair and a different home than where I grew up, of course. Although now his mind is slipping, and reading newspapers is no longer possible. But it's still a chair in which to doze; even if it's in front of the TV, and even if he may be too far gone to even follow that.

I have my favourite chair and a cozy room in which I read. Come to think of it, the room is about the same size as that old den. And I'm still a daily reader of the good old Globe and Mail. Except now there are more pictures, and colour instead of black and white, and a cleaner more modern lay-out. And I gave up print for my iPad -- although the electronic version looks exactly the same.

The last 2 lines say a lot about me: that I'm a shameless homebody; that I'm good at living in my head; and yet despite all that, hardly feel limited. It may seem odd that some people decompress with the news, as depressing and demoralizing as it usually is. But I think it's more the reassurance of routine than it is the content; and more the features and long-form journalism than the daily grind. I'm a newspaper reader (an apparently aging and diminishing cohort!): Twitter's 140 characters seem laughably inadequate, and instantaneous news feeds hardly satisfying. Because a good read is about going deep, not about speed. 

A Simple Gold Band
Nov 9  2013


A simple gold band
on the ring finger
of the left hand.

I'm not a fan of ostentation.
In fact, this is all I've ever worn,
something sure of itself
unadorned.
Like all the classics,
understated
immune from fashion
sure to last.

We become more comfortable, with age;
softer in the middle, settled in,

ambition, giving way

to complacency.
And even fingers thicken;
the modest ring
20 years on
fixed,
as permanent as the digit itself.

While the solemn vow
it consecrates
is irrevocably gone.
If only the feeling of loss
would go, as well;
this amputation,
with its phantom limb
and hollow pain.


          ~~~


And when the ring
was finally pried-off
the naked finger remained,
leaving a deep pale impression;
a circle, completed
a journey
an end.

In only a day
the finger was smooth, virgin
unfettered.
As if a jeweller
buzzing into soft malleable metal
could expunge 2 decades
of life together
promise revoked.

As if 24 carats
in a bureau drawer
was only worth
its weight in gold.


Another poem that has nothing of autobiography. I've never been married. Never engaged, or even co-habited. And I wear no jewellery, not even a watch.

In fact, this piece came from a Stuart McLean story (of CBC Vinyl Cafe fame): the one where he gets his tight wedding ring re-sized, it slips off, he thinks it's been eaten by a duck, and hilarity and hijinks ensue. The poem has a diametrically different tone, of course. But what stuck with me was the image of the bare finger with its impression of the freshly removed band; and, even more, its priceless value. (Especially since any ring I've ever tried to wear gets immediately and irrevocably stuck. I have thick proximal inter-phalangeal joints (knuckle joints) that act like one-way valves: rings go on easily enough, but don't come off.)

I very much prefer the plain gold band. I find beauty in simplicity: the unornamented and unadorned. I like the symbolism and reciprocity of this elementary act: the exchange of identical rings; both partners quietly proclaiming to the world their lifelong allegiance. I like the idea of a concrete symbol of something spiritual, and of its 24 hour-a-day constancy. So while weddings may have become horrendously overdone, the custom of the ring still feels true.

Other than that, this is a plain-speaking poem that needs no elaboration. I almost always aspire to the prose poem and its easy conversational tone. Which is essentially a free-standing paragraph of unerring cadence, and word perfect -- no excess, nothing left out. Yet does so without the constraints of formality, depending purely on the writer's ear. This is hardly that; but at least closer than usual.

Breaking Bread
Nov 8 2013


My first loaf failed.
My kitchen is too cold
for bread,
its frigid air
and white hygienic surfaces
inhospitable, at best.

And where slower is better
I am too impatient
for bread.
Between the mixing and proofing and kneading,
the miraculous rise, and the final golden loaf
redolent of yeast

and winter wheat
and caramelized sweetness,
is the alchemy of time.
Appetite
whetted by waiting.

And even then, must sit,
setting the crust
firming the crumble
of its sweet spongy interior
before the first steaming cut.
Melting butter,
or nothing but
unadulterated bread.

And to think, the air is filled with yeast.
As grapes, untended
will naturally ferment.
As bread
reflects its place.

So, despite careful measuring

and rigid recipes
and the expert touch
the master baker
can only show, not explain,
there is magic
in the science of bread.
In the sorcery of time
the virtue of patience.
In invisible things
like temperamental yeast
at which the ancients

could only wonder.
Fresh-baked bread,
object of worship
gift of the gods,
equal parts
reverence, and gusto.

The heady smell
of a living thing
in a warm welcoming kitchen,
of earthenware bowls
and wooden slabs.
Where we bake together;
and even enemies
break bread,
seasoned with the salt of the earth.

This poem was directly inspired by a terrific Adam Gopnik piece from the Nov 4 2013 New Yorker: Bread and Women. The only bit I regret not stealing (and not for lack of trying!) was his thoughtful double entendre on "mother" (literally the sourdough starter, and metaphorically self-evident).

Anyway, the article made me think of my one and only -- and spectacularly unsuccessful -- attempt at bread-making. I suspect the kitchen was too cold. And since I still keep my house that way, I've never thought it worthwhile to repeat the experiment.

But aside from the personal history, I think a cold kitchen can be as much a metaphor as Adam Gopnik's "mother", since the kitchen is the centre of life and hospitality in any home. I don't dwell or elaborate on this, and had no intention for this to be a deep introspective and confessional piece; nevertheless, the kitchen does provide a useful framing device. I especially like the contrast between the coolness of "white hygienic" in the first stanza and the warmth of "earthenware" and "wooden" in the last. (Gopnik’s wife’s long forgotten recipe requires both, btw. Something else I lifted!)

"Bread and salt" is there for a reason. It was the traditional greeting, a symbolic way to extend hospitality, for even enemies to enter into truce. Where salt was wealth. And where salt has this powerful connotation of permanence, earthiness, and gravitas; as well as the ambiguity of a rock we eat …a solid that disappears into liquids …of something that preserves the perishable …and something that you wouldn’t eat by itself, but makes better everything it accompanies. And bread, of course, is the staff of life, made all the more magical by the alchemy of leaven. Which is the essential uncertainty of bread: as much art, as science.

Driving Song

Nov 7 2013

You could just make out my head

in the back row

of the grade school choir,

where I was eventually told

to mouth the words.

Look like you mean it, she said.

Now, at home games

I fake the anthem,

my pinched voice

vaguely wavering

in a rough approximation

of notes.

But in my sound-proof box

on cruise control

I belt it out, full-throat,

a back-up singer, in perfect voice.

In the thin traffic of farm country

when a driving song comes on

all is harmony,

making long lonesome notes

around a single microphone

with Bill Munro, and the Blue Grass Boys,

or a Red Rider

on Life is a Highway

high-fiving Tom.

If you happened to pass

my glass-walled studio

you’d see me in song,

mouthing along

my inaudible words,

one hand

absent-mindedly drumming.

Accompanied by the white noise

of rushing air

the thrum of rubber

the engine’s steady hum;

muffled sound, out-run

as I throttle up.

I crack a window

to a blast of wind

so I can’t even hear myself.

This is fabulous, I think,

singing with all my heart.

There are some songs that are perfect driving songs; and the best example I can think of is Tom Cochrane’s Life is a Highway. I’m not a big fan of rock or pop; but that would lift anyone. I wonder how many speeding tickets that one song is responsible for?

For those of us who are singing-impaired, the car is the safest place to let loose. I may be badly out of tune; but cruising down the highway, it sounds like perfect harmony to me!

Element
Nov 5 2013


There must be water

brooding darkly,
in dense grey bodies
impervious to light.

Or froth, and ice
and pure transparency.

And fog
flowing in from the sea.
In streaming ribbons, and wreaths,
silent drifts
of stealthy mist
enclosing me.
Cool air, burdened with water,
settling-in
to bottomland.

And warm, heavy, abiding,
mother earth
conferring life.
Roots, tenaciously holding

to rich black soil

a sense of place.
Where all bodies return,
swaddled
in her warm enveloping weight.

While break of day
brings fire.
And night
with a billion points of light,
blazing comets
shooting stars.

Imagine art
without fire, earth
air and water.
The elements of beauty
on a dull grey day
full of breeze, and bluster.
A still life
of November grass

where leaves lie scattered

cold and damp;
matted rafts, drained of colour
plastered down,
in the short brown stubble
of fall.

The ancient Greeks may not have understood high energy physics, or grasped the idea of fundamental particles. But they had the four basic elements, which is roughly an equivalent concept in its  reductionism, simplicity, and commonality. (Or does "universality" express this more clearly:  that everything is made of the same basic stuff, re-arranged?)

I think the most pleasing landscapes contain all four elements. Which goes for landscape art, as well. When I gaze out my window, even on the most aesthetically challenging day, these are what I see: the brooding lake; the forest of trees and earth; the evidence of wind and changing sky. And even when it's obscured by cloud, there is everywhere the heat and light of the sun, giving life.

On a dull grey day, I look out at the landscape framed by my picture window and consider how beauty can be reduced to the same four fundamental elements; by definition, both necessary and sufficient: earth, air, water, and fire. So I decided to paint pictures, riffing on these. But rather than making them the fundamental elements of matter, I made them instead the fundamental elements of art and beauty: what, at its simplest, is pleasing to the eye.

One-of-a-Kind
Nov 2 2013

The sign says
5 bucks a page.

He sits

in cool shadow

in the heat of the day.
Amidst just-picked apples

like deep ruby wine,

fresh avocados
in dark green rinds.
Heritage tomatoes
in purples and reds,

and homely carrots

on long leafy stems,

radiant orange
flecked

with wet black dirt.
The luscious rainbow
of another harvest
sweetened by frost.

He sits

in self-contained quiet

on a tranquil island

in this busy place,

3-day stubble

turning grey.

Sits

in faded jeans, washed-out shirt,

on a folding chair
at a wobbly desk
where a Smith-Corona
letter-by-letter
pecks out verse.
As temperamental
as letter-jams, and ribbon-twists,
as idiosyncratic
as fingerprints.

A computer would produce
more perfect words.

Regular Helvetica

like mechanized vegetables
from industrial farms.

A ransom note, or blackmail threat,

in generic letters

a gum-shoe detective
could never trace back.

Who knew

there were street poets peddling their wares

in farmer’s markets

in open air?

Who will take your subject

and make it their own,
artistic licence

unencumbered --

5 bucks

to surprise, and delight.

Then, like any poem

send it out into the world.
Where it keeps on growing,

re-imagined

each time it’s heard;

just as plants
pulled from the earth
are still alive.

Except poems never die
once they are learned by heart.
This infuriating art,
which is not an object
cannot be bought
or owned.

So at 5 bucks a pop

you should leave an offering

for the starving poet,

from the cornucopia

of freshly gathered fruit.

His hand-crafted art, written to order,

not for commerce

but love.

I was surprised by a small article on the Atlantic Wire about "street poets". Who knew?!!

But I understand. Because hardly anyone makes a living writing poetry. For most of us, simply being read is enough.

And I can see the excitement of stream-of-consciousness writing, unimpeded by fear of failure. And the challenge of the unexpected request. Especially since coming up with a new subject can be the hardest part.

So I pictured setting up at a farmer's market, like a vendor of some home-made craft. Using the produce as metaphor came naturally from that.

The typewriter comes directly from the article. I love the sense of something arcane, temperamental, idiosyncratic. Something slow. Something one-of-a-kind.

There is something naive and childlike in that 5 dollars (which also comes from the article): I picture a kid at a lemonade stand; or a pay-as-you-can charity.

He's a bit of a hipster; maybe too self-consciously bohemian. But the main idea in highlighting the contrast between him and the bright rainbow of fresh produce was to evoke the same sense of surprise and incongruity I got on first reading "street poet"; on first seeing the photo of the scruffy fellow sitting out in public at a rickety bridge table with its antiquated machine. So there is a cornucopia of colour, contrasting with "shadow", “grey”, "faded", and "washed-out". And, amidst plenty, the starving poet.

There is a quality of mutual trust in this transaction. The poet will take his patron's idea and run it through his own sensibility, coming up with something unexpected, something that will both surprise and delight. And -- like all poems -- the poet must understand that once he lets it out into the world, it will be transformed according to each reader's personal experience and world view: that it's no longer his.

That you might change a life with a few words is a powerful idea. Maybe this is why street poets persevere.