Madiba
Dec 29 2013


When Nelson Mandela died
there was nothing I could write
that hadn't been said, already.
The obituaries, long since written
that were rushed into print.
The oratorical tributes,
and the whirlwind
of official events.

Along with heads of state
shuffling past
an open coffin,
the multitudes
who thronged to see him off.
And all the beautiful children,
voices raised
in gorgeous African song.

But I wondered
if I, too, were to write something down
not that it might drown
in an ocean of praise,
but if I needed to explain
just who he was.
To the future generations,
who will forget great men
as we have forgotten ours,
fascinated
by the bad, and the mad

the shills, and the braggarts
so unself-aware.

And who simplify the past
to suit the present,

history rendered

as myth, and pageantry.

That he was a man of action
who doggedly persisted,
a victim
whose dignity
shamed his captors.
That this reluctant warrior
chose peace, and forgiveness,
with the grace to resist

the eye-for-an-eye
that leaves everyone blind.
That he was wise,

understanding

that freeing his people

would free their masters as well.

This humble man,
with the gentle smile, and twinkling eyes
who laughed long, and well
and most easily at himself,

almost led me to believe
there can be justice in this world,

the wages of heaven, and hell

felt

right here on earth.

Who found true love

much later in life,

giving all of us hope.

Who would have willingly fought to the death,

but lived

to an old and graceful end.

He was born a chief
with the heart of a lion.
And when he died
the entire world looked on,
this worthy man
among all the false, and fallen, idols.

I think this is my first elegiac poem. But if anyone is deserving of praise, Mandela is. Although as the opening suggests, I didn't rush into it.

In the original version, it was "godly" in the final stanza, not "worthy". I was reluctant to let that word go, not only because it gave more coherence to the smattering of religious allusions (the eye-for-an-eye, the heaven and hell, the false idols), but because there was so much hagiography around Mandela's funeral. He was made into a secular saint; so instead of being a flawed and complicated human being, whom we might try to emulate, he was rendered unattainable. Something similar happens when we demonize evil. For example, when we relegate Hitler to some sub-human category of being, it's too easy to exempt ourselves of any moral complicity, to avoid acknowledging our shared humanity: that if exposed to the conforming social pressure and propaganda of Nazi Germany, we might have behaved as badly. In both cases, it's important to acknowledge our common -- and flawed -- humanity.

Anyway, Mandela's remarkable capacity for forgiveness is almost superhuman, and it's this generosity and self-restraint that for me stands out above all the other fine attributes of this singular man.

I'm a little concerned that I've veered perilously close to cliché several times in this poem. There's "drown/ in an ocean of praise" and "eye-for-an-eye" and "heart of a lion", not to mention "man of action" and "(fight) to the death". On the other hand, there is something to be said for plain speaking as opposed to language that gets in the way; that tries too hard just for the sake of originality.

"Madiba" is Mandela's familiar name, the traditional African pseudonym by which his friends and followers fondly know him. I took the liberty of using it; not to presume any personal familiarity, but rather to show how loved he was by average people, and how accessible he felt to them.

Ashes to Ashes ...
Dec 24 2013


There is give and take
a little play
no hard-and-fast ending.

In the grey
inexactitude,
where before-and-after
intersect.

Where you can still imagine
agency, meaning
transcendence
over contingency, fate, surrender.
Where even death
seems inconclusive,
because effects outlive
and memory persists
in recollection's pleasant blur.

At least until
friends have forgotten, descendants moved on
the telling of stories stopped,
your digital self
got lost
in the electronic babble.
Until your granite slab
weathered, tilted, toppled,
a supernova
blotted out the sun.

In a thinning cosmos,
when posterity has had its run
and at last, there is nothing but
cinders, atoms, dust.

And you
the stuff of stars.

"Give and take" was seasonally inspired: by the time of year most people give and receive presents. When I started to write this poem, I was thinking in particular about the truth behind the cliché that it's better to give than to receive. Brain science has shown that giving -- material generosity, acts of altruism -- evokes a big response in our reward centres; an addictive rush of feel-good neurotransmitters like dopamine. (The elegant rationale offered by evolutionary biology I'll leave for another time.) Aside from that, I'm not a very gracious gift-reveiver. Probably because I really don't like stuff: there is nothing I need or want. So another bit of stuff becomes not only a dust collector, but also a remorseless little eye staring me down with guilt for not using it well, for letting something go to waste, for dishonouring the gesture as well as the giver. Stuff becomes clutter, a burden that complicates our lives and requires work. Not to mention the implied obligation to reciprocate, or the guilt for having reciprocated less well. And not to mention the guilt of having too much, when most people in the world are impoverished. And not to mention the guilt that our material greed is destroying the environment. ...And yet despite all this, the most generous thing one can do is to receive graciously, allowing someone else the joy of giving!

All of which got me as far as the opening line, after which I let my stream of consciousness take me by the hand and have its way. And as it turned out, the poem took a far more philosophical direction. But not before I ignored another inviting cue, the one offered by "play". There is something very mechanical in this idea of "play", of a mushy ending -- like a well-worn toggle switch. And lots of possibility in setting that against its other meaning -- the idea of play as unstructured recreation, child-like and impractical. Of course, the word is still there, and at the end of the 2nd line does offer a mischievous bit of misdirection.

...But so much for what the poem is not! What the poem does do is move from hope to nihilism to a kind of new age mysticism. I have no idea why I went this way (or why I seem to have more of an idea on what I might have written than what I actually did write!)

Although to call this poem mystical is wrong; it's actually physics. We are all star dust, and an ever-expanding universe may very well thin to nothing. And in this cancelling out, there is the perfect symmetry to the Big Bang: a paradoxical proof that something actually can come out of nothing, without violating basic physical law. (I won't elaborate on this idea of something being equivalent to nothing, and only say that the proof involves concepts like dark matter and dark energy, and might seem more like metaphysics that hard science.)

For those who wish to believe in an after-life, this physics offers little hope. Because while our matter may never be destroyed, the complexity of organization -- the singularity that gives rise to consciousness and then self-consciousness -- is destroyed when we die. And while we may live on for a short time in the memories of others and in the acts we have done (" ...the telling of stories ..." etc) this is the briefest of after-lives, and hardly a consolation. I often hear the phrase that something on the internet ("your digital self") will last "forever". Hardly! That we could have any access at all to something called "forever" is an absurd human conceit, considering that in a few billion years a supernova is absolutely certain to end all of everything we are and know. Not to mention the technological hubris of "forever", considering that the internet -- the cloud; the array of servers and cables and the power plants that keep them alive -- will not last even a fraction of that. And even if it does, the deafening noise of so much data renders the "needle in the haystack" analogy laughingly inadequate: what better protection for personal privacy than to be a drop in an ocean of data? This is what's behind my "electronic babble" (which might just as well have been "Babel"). No need to worry abut the NSA listening in. They must be so overwhelmed by such volumes of data all I see are vast stadiums filled with listeners huddling over desks, all covering their ears and crying for it to stop! (I know, I know; there are sophisticated algorithms and bunkers full of light-speed computers ...but still!)

The title is the beginning of the iconic Biblical phrase, which is left suspended in ellipses until the penultimate stanza, when "dust" finally completes it. I think this is where the power of the ending comes: there is the call-back of "dust", the release of tension; and immediately after that there is "the stuff of stars", wrenching the reader in a completely different direction. 

The Art of Listening
Dec 22 2013


I do not listen well.

It's hard to say this about oneself,
because who doesn't think
he listens well?
Just as we all think
we are above average
good drivers
misunderstood.

We all think we heard;
because the words were clear,
and we patiently waited
taking turn.

My dog pays attention,
ears cocked, eyes locked onto mine
as I go on
making sound,
brightening
at "eat" and "walk".
Just as something you said
can send me racing off, missing the rest,
while I fetch, dig, chase
circle madly after my tail.

In the art of listening
you must be fully present,
as if she
were the only person in the room
and there was all the time in the world.
Which works well for dogs
who live in the here-and-now.
But I am past and future tense;
ruminating, regretting,
or thinking of ways to impress
with my wit, and grace.
As if your talk
were a convenient pause
for me to order my thoughts.

So when I heard you say
you needed to take
some time alone,
it came out of nowhere;
like a familiar word
emerging from noise.
And only then did you become my sun;
at the very centre,
blinding me
to everything else.

Which is the first lesson
in the art of listening
I wish I had learned.
To be utterly rapt.
Locked in, like gravity.
The moon to your planet
so nothing else exists.

Successful politicians like Bill Clinton are masters of the art of listening: You're the only person in the room when he locks eyes and grabs your hand and exchanges the usual pleasantries. You're certain he heard.

I get hung up on a word, or my own thoughts and incessant mental chatter. Or get anxious, self-conscious, bored. And end up tuning out. Listening can't be passive: it involves work, concentration, practice.

It's hard to admit you're not a good listener. So I think the first line reads like someone standing up at Alcoholics Anonymous for the first time and choking out: "Hi, my name is so-and-so, and I'm an alcoholic." And when I hear the line " ...Just as we all think/ we are above average ..." I immediately call back to Garrison Keillor's delightful refrain about his fictional Lake Woebegon, where "all the women are strong, all the men good-looking, and all the children, above average".

Anyway, when I decided to write something about the art of listening, there had to be something important to hear. Romantic disappointment was the obvious way to go. So while this isn't at all autobiography, it should be universal enough to work for everyone.

The Day After Solstice

Dec 20 2013

The pretty Christmas lights.
Garlanding trees, tacked to the eaves
encircling the door.
The kind that blink and zip and fade.
Are shaped like prancing deer
and neon wreathes
and jolly elves,
mostly red and green
but multi-, as well.
The spotlights, and porch-lights
and highlighted bells,
the electrical smell
of makeshift wiring.
Along with a roaring fire
and all the lights inside
ablaze
on the darkest day of the year.
As if we were superstitious
as if sending some signal
to forces greater than us.
As if still not quite sure
of the sun's return,

waning in winter sky.

To work before dawn
back home in the dark
in artificial light.
And within its narrow cone, diminishing pool
the visible world
has been constricting steadily in.
So the vast universe
beyond the perimeter
might just as well not exist.

But tonight
the sky is clear, the moon is full,
and in the reflection of freshly fallen snow
sun seems superfluous,
the desperation
of the gaudy display
merely decorative.
Both the ostentatious neighbours
and the guy next door,
whose house is dark
whose blinds are drawn
who keeps to himself.

Still, the day after solstice
we are reassured
to see a minute of daylight more,
which you'd think we'd hardly notice.
But enough
to restore our faith;
that the universe
is unfolding as it should.

I thought a solstice poem (yes, yet another, he said wearily) was in order today. The season of darkness, which we paradoxically call the season of light, is just that:  a reaction to the long winter night. And perhaps still represents a supplication to the impenetrable forces of nature, just as our superstitious ancestors would have done before there was any inkling of planetary physics, or of the futility of prayer.

The opening stanza is all about excess. And about the veneer of civilization that barely disguises these ancient anxieties and fears. So the excess begins to look not like bad taste, but more a kind of frenzied desperation.

I don't think the sense of claustrophobia in the 2nd stanza is necessarily a bad thing. There is a cosiness to the cone of warmth and light, like the secure feeling of being snow-stayed at home (provided, that is, the power stays on!)

I'm the guy next door. Which isn't to say I don't enjoy the Christmas lights. Although not the ostentations and over-done displays. I'm more partial to tasteful restraint. I think my dark house is not only an expression of my very private nature; it's a way of proclaiming I'm not superstitious, that I'm rational and enlightened, and that I abhor waste and excess.

The Baby Jesus

Dec 19 2013

It snowed in Jerusalem

the week before Christmas.

I saw the stranded cars

grid-locked, nosing into ditches,

glopped with festive icing

still freshly white.

The children are delighted

at the miracle of snow.

While grown-ups wander the streets

in quiet shock,

waiting for winter sun

to melt them off.

In the land of the Bible

Santa Claus has arrived.

In the season of peace and forgiveness

the Coca Cola elf

and the baby Jesus co-exist

with nothing in between.

Like everywhere else unholy

the fiery prophet has been lost

in the rush, and the jollity,

the man cum God

reduced to porcelain doll.

But in this sanctified place

traffic has stopped

and motorists walk

and people look dazed and perplexed.

Such unnatural quiet

in the old walled city

in fresh white snow,

this unseasonable winter

in the week before Christmas

in this year of our Lord.

Where sleigh-bells, and reindeer

would seem truly ridiculous,

except for the miracle of snow.

The poem began with a small picture I saw in the paper: a Jerusalem street scene of stranded cars glopped with fresh wet snow. All I could think of was the stark juxtaposition of stereotyped Christmas with the actual land of Christ -- the Jewish prophet (or, if you're a believer, the son of God), who had a lot of good things to say.

I wanted it to be a different take on the easily clichéd condemnation of the holiday's commercialization. And a take on how the true Christian message is lost amidst the glitz: the revolutionary Jew reduced to a smiling baby; the actual man overshadowed by the odd bastardized creation that is Santa Claus.

Coca Cola took the Dutch myth of a skinny elf and helped turn it into snow and sleigh bells and Rudolph's nose. So to see this Northern European version of Christmas suddenly super-imposed on the Biblical city of Jerusalem can only illuminate its absurdity. Although here, instead of Santa Claus, the snow brings unexpected peace to the frenetic city.

Traffic is heavy all day these days. There is too much rushing, too much frenetic buying, too much stuff. You don't need to believe in peace and love to feel revulsion and disgust. Of course, words like "revulsion" and "disgust" would have been far too strong, too unequivocally judgmental, to work in the poem. But at least I get to say them here!

My original title was The Miracle of Snow. But I think the key to the poem is "the baby Jesus". (Not to mention that The Baby Jesus will do a lot more to perk up the ears of any prospective reader!) Why is the nativity the centre-piece of this most important holiday? (And if not theologically important, then culturally.) I think because the smiling mewling baby is so much easier to take, so much less demanding, than the actual man. This is a childish theology meant for children; but unfortunately, one too many of them don't grow out of when they grow up.

Well Rooted

Dec 17 2013

An early snow
and frost barely penetrates.

In the constant soil

in the restful dark

roots lie dormant,
their probing tips
hardened, blunted.
Like exposed nerves
temporarily numb.

While above the snow, on our side
the green earth
has turned sparse, brown

lifeless.
Scarred trunks
rise up into cold dry air,
scarecrow skeletons, with sharpened elbows
frozen through.
Like dead bodies, cryogenically preserved
awaiting
some miracle cure.

I forget that most of the tree
might just as well exist
on an alien planet
we have not yet visited.
Or imaged, even
with some unmanned probe,
some Voyager
to inner space.

Because just as the trees' visible tips
taper up
its roots spread down and out,
a vast network

convoluted, interconnected
intricately knitting the soil.
Which apparently talk,
trade nutrients, signals
direction.
Are chemical warriors,
who can work together
fight to the death.

Ask an artist to draw a tree
and he will miss

most of it.

Even more, the poet,

whose dreamy version
would let them die of thirst,
topple
in a minor breeze.

How little we see,
how much
we think we have mastered.
But come spring
resurrected trees
will be green, and full.
Just imagine,

escaping winter

while stripped to the bone

immobilized.

A subterranean creature
that makes its living

eating light.

I wrote this after reading Michael Pollan's brilliant piece in the latest New Yorker, The Intelligent Plant (Dec 23 & 30, 2013).

He talks about the amazing abilities of plants, only recently being recognized (Charles Darwin's usual prescience notwithstanding). He talks about he nature of neural processing, which leads him into more metaphysical speculation about intelligence, learning, intent, self-consciousness, and even free will. (I loved his line "the epiphenomenon of consciousness that we call 'free will'".)

Toward the very end of the piece, he refers to the UBC forest ecologist Suzanne Simard's work with networked intelligence in the form of the "underground web of mycorrhizal fungi which connects their roots to exchange information and even goods ...the wood-wide web(!)". This hidden world of trees was the start of this poem.

Our blindness to this subterranean world is a perfect metaphor for our resistance to new world views. And in this particular case, the resistance of conventional scientists to accept a radically different way of processing information: one that is modular and networked, not brain-centred; that operates on a time scale that makes it impossible for us to see; and that somehow learns and remembers and communicates more like the autonomic nervous system in our gut than the collection of neurons in our brain. Which reminds me of another great line, one among many I could quote from Pollan's article: "He (the Italian plant physiologist Stefano Mancuso) estimates that a plant has three thousand chemicals in its vocabulary, while, he said with a smile, 'the average student has only seven hundred words.'" (I wonder if the usually meticulous New Yorker fact-checked that one. Really, just 700?!!) The pitfalls of anthropomorphizing are well demonstrated in my shift from "which" to "them", and then to "who" and "creature". Although as a poet and not a scientist, personification of inanimate objects is hardly controversial, and so shouldn't be with trees.

This is another of my many "tree" poems. In fact, I recall a version of this particular tree/root poem from a few years ago. It was about a kid drawing a picture of a tree, who typically forgets that most of it is underground: in which this blindness becomes a metaphor for childhood naïveté, as well as for denial in the complexities of family life. Or, more broadly, it was a poem about hiding in plain sight.

My ending is lifted from a quote contained in Pollan's article: “'Why would a plant care about Mozart?' the late ethnobotanist Tim Plowman would reply when asked about the wonders catalogued in The Secret Life of Plants. 'And even if it did, why should that impress us? They can eat light, isn’t that enough?'”

Endgame
Dec 14 2013


In the ancient game of chess,
with its squares within a square
and strict rules of engagement,
I always pictured the King
as an infirm old man,
pale, and stuttering.
Who can only shuffle
side-to-side,
dithering, indecisively
as the noose slowly tightens.
Whose imperious Queen
is the power behind the throne.

Towering, in the back row
they can see across the moat
of no-man's-land,
like the blasted mud
in the war to end all war.
Watch sacrificial pawns

marching off to slaughter,

a tactical loss, for the greater good.
See the black knight, hurtling obstacles,
his rearing steed

on pounding hoofs.
Glimpse slippery bishops, who act at a distance

playing the angles, cutting diagonals,

sycophants

to the royal pair.

And stalwart rooks

who anchor the square,

steadily advance

in ranks and rows.

In the endgame
you know you're done.
Some graciously concede,
while others fight
to certain defeat,

drawing blood.

The King as exposed
as the naked emperor,

goose-bumped, defenceless;

his fallen Queen
deserted court.

In the real world
the game is rigged, the rules shift.
You learn to improvise,
and most things end
in indecision.
But in the checkerboard world
of black and white,
order prevails
for as long as you play.

Where impotent Kings
never die.
And fallen pieces
come back to life.

A reference to Beckett's Endgame came up, and I thought I'd play around with the word.

In life, the endgame is never clear. This is the consolation and attraction of a game like chess: the fixed geometry of its surface; the inviolability of its rules. And the lack of consequence, if you don't count the loser's bruised ego.

I could hardly talk about chess without commenting on its unexpected hierarchy, which I've always found a little odd: that this venerable game, this surrogate of manly war, should be built around a subversively feminist Queen and a relatively helpless King. And, of course, I couldn't resist my usual snarky shot at religion: those slippery bishops, who play the angles and operate manipulatively, invisibly. I also didn't want to talk about a sanitized version of war without talking about the real thing, which explains the reference to the stalemated trench warfare of the 1st World War. "Stalemate", of course, is an ideal word for a poem about chess. Unfortunately, I didn't find a way to slip it in.

Sophie Miriam

Dec 12 2013

My nephew

is a new father.

A baby

who has thrilled everyone,

placid amidst

all the flutter and fuss.

A girl, in a family of boys,

full of wonder

that such a strange creature

has appeared among us.

So we recalibrate our identities,

as the generations

ratchet up a notch.

My delighted older brother,

who feels too young

to be the grandfather.

His other sons,

now uncles

but hardly avuncular.

And I, a great uncle

who wasn’t much of an uncle at all,

proclaimed “great”

by simply waiting

while everyone else grew up.

I realize

she’ll be a young lady

when I am old and frail.

When I will be a vague presence,

a shadowy planet

in irregular orbit

in the outer reaches of her solar system,

and she will know, in some out-of-focus way

we are related,

but not quite sure.

Like my parents’ aged relations,

who visited rarely

and whom I never quite placed,

living faraway

somewhere west.

Of whom all I remember

is old people smell,

the cloying sweetness

of too much perfume.

The fastidious nose

of solipsistic youth.

A newborn child

is like a cooling planet

at the beginning of time,

unformed

and infinitely malleable.

A primordial earth,

with all the makings

of intelligent life.

While for me, if not the rest

gravity is waning.

Pushed closer to the past, than the future

I feel left behind,

a background grey

to her brilliant newness.

My joy, tinged with sadness

to be a minor asteroid

around a golden sun,

circling even further out.

I apologize for this poem. Talk about solipsistic! It seems terribly unworthy to write a poem about my beaming nephew's newborn daughter, and then descend into self-pity over my age, which is merely a state of mind; or over my peripheral involvement, which is wholly self-inflicted.

(Not to mention I may also be guilty of torturing that astronomical metaphor!)

Still, I think "tinged with sadness" is generally valid, if left mostly unsaid. We all re-calibrate. A new generation slightly displaces the last. And I know my brother does not want anyone to refer to him as a "grandfather", delighted as he is to be one.

Anyway, this is where my stream of consciousness took me. So as unflattering as it may be, there must be some truth here. I vaguely remember great uncles and aunts. Or second cousins. Or whatevers once removed. They infrequently visited on important family occasions, but I never really knew where they or I fit in. All I remember is they were usually quite old (which doesn't seem nearly so old now!), and a bit alien. So the realization hits home that I will be a vague presence somewhere out in the dark reaches of her outer solar system. That I will be an old man when she comes of age, and this is the only way she will know me. (Although I will try hard not to smell bad!)

I actually think this is a generous exercise, as much as it is self-involved: that is, to momentarily displace oneself from the centre of the universe, and inhabit someone else's world view. And it’s not that I resent the young, or envy them their youth: because we were all young once; because we all briefly got to be the apple of everyone's eye; and because in the long view of a nihilist like me, we are all contemporaneous -- the distinction between young and old is a mere conceit, so fleeting as to be meaningless. And ultimately, in taking joy, I get to inhabit her newness as well.

So while my descent into solipsism may seem churlish and self-absorbed, it is only one small part of how I feel. But the part worth writing about; since the shared joy is so obvious and universal that it's all been said before. And anyway, I'm not sure I can write a celebratory poem (the "occasional poem", as it is formally called) without becoming overly-sentimental and clichéd. In my hands, it will probably come out more like a Hallmark card than poetry!

Unseasonable
Dec 10 2013


In the cold snap
the sound of ice
tightening its grip.
Sharp resounding cracks
wrack the frozen lake,
the immense weight
of its congealed surface
settling, flexing
testing its strength,
compressing
its inelastic container.
Everything turns brittle,
as plastic shatters
and even metal
seems fallible.
What a mercy to die
in this frozen Valhalla,
sink
into painless sleep.

In the heat wave
land shimmers,
baking air
bending light.
The sun
sweeps directly overhead,
where it hovers, but doesn’t break;
the thermometer, peaking,
by evening
barely falls.
Heat
pouring down
on the ocean of air;
so thin, I feel I might drown
gasping for breath.

In December
it's never this cold.
And Summer will come too soon,
the succulent greens
and luminous blooms
snuffed-out by heat,
parched
in nascent Spring.

So by Fall
the whimpering end,
stunted leaves
and withered fields
in a brown and barren earth.

It's unseasonably cold for early December. Especially since the grim reality of climate change has led me to expect warmer wetter winters. So I thought I would try to write something about extreme cold.

"Cold snap" quickly came to mind, and I soon found myself wondering about its opposite, the "heat wave". And the metaphors indeed seem to work: this is very much how the highs of summer and lows of winter seem to materialize. So the imagery of the poem is an attempt to make these metaphors concrete: the brittle cold, the crack of ice; and then a watery theme, with its super-heated ocean of air, relentless waves of heat.

Which -- in the spirit of completeness --led me to spring and fall, where I again play around with literalisms: in which the turgor of spring's early shoots turns flaccid; and in which fall becomes an actual denouement, a morality tale of a warming planet and a Biblical fall. The capitals were intended to reinforce the misdirection: to emphasize the formal name, before the proper noun is transformed into its utilitarian verb.

The first 2 stanzas are descriptive, detached. But they both end on a more personal and emotional note. And end, respectively, in death and drowning; a morbid foreshadowing that keeps the poem coherent, and helps the final ending make sense.

I'm not sure if I should preen over, or apologize for, the clever (shameless?) rhyme of "fallible" and "Valhalla". (Not an exact rhyme, to be sure. I think this is what's called a "sideways" rhyme.) All I can say is I'm endlessly grateful for the many unexpected gifts of the English language, for which I take neither credit nor blame!

Vista
Dec 9 2013


I was disappointed
when I saw it from a thousand feet.
Shouting over the engine
in the cold cramped Cessna,
suspended between gravity, and lift,
headwind, and speed.

The towering evergreens
were reduced to stunted stubs.
The commanding vistas
seemed insignificant,
thick valleys
shallow, less lush.
My vast topography
had flattened out
into minor gradations
of earth-tone, and dusty green,
my sense of place
irrevocably shrunk.

And the house
in its seclusion of trees
appeared exposed, unprotected.
And far too close
to all the others
to ever offer refuge again;
the illusion of escape
so essential to me.

We prefer landscapes
that tower over us,
to feel dwarfed
by magnificence, and age.
That these unassuming hills
were sheer verticals, gleaming Matterhorns,
these spindly trees
giant redwoods
millennia old.
We want to disappear
into nature's tiny folds,
with vistas vast enough
to take our breath away
each time we look out.
Or to at least
imagine it so.

I wish I had never flown.
Had remained
in the dappled shade
of my lofty canopy,
dark green trees
rising high overhead.
Had broken trail,

hauling myself
up and down my slopes.

The frame of reference
suitable to mostly hairless
2-legged mammals
is on the ground.
To pretend we are gods, looking down
can only leave us diminished;
too big
for the world,
too small to count.

This memory of a local low-level flight -- an unexpected offer from an acquaintance at work -- still leaves me disappointed. It's been well over a decade; but I think back to that rarefied view, and how it diminished my sense of place, how it shrunk the beauty of my chosen landscape, modest as it is. Which need not be a west coast rain forest or alpine redoubt; a carefully nurtured illusion of beauty and seclusion will do well enough. 

We are inconsistent creatures. We relentlessly dominate nature, or at least imagine ourselves exempt. But we also love the awe-inspiring view, and seem to love how a vast timeless landscape makes us feel small: as if we need our insignificance reinforced, our hubris corrected.

Anyway, this experience intermittently comes back to me. I thought it was about time to try to make a poem out of it. 

Pictures From the Year of My Birth
Dec 6 2013


These were pictures from the year of my birth.
They are in black and white.
They show a simpler time.
They are a foreign country,
where I'm told I once lived
but find hard to believe.
And simpler, only
because this is how memory serves.

For most of time
there was no shock of the new.
But more to the point

no photographs
and no need to go back,
because in the span of a single life
nothing much changed.
A man died
in the very same world
in which he was born.
Never felt useless, or old,
that things had passed him by.
Never felt angst
at the future of mankind;
or for the sanity of his own
daughters and sons,
running so fast to keep up.

To have lived
in the 2nd half of the 20th century
is to be desensitized
to exponential change.
To inhabit
some futuristic tomorrowland,
yet feel exactly the same
as a hunter-gatherer
on the Serengeti,
the newborn child
in that old-fashioned bassinette.

As I write this
the world has temporarily stopped.
A clock ticks
the wind chimes,
and the room is warmed
by incandescent light,
steadily brightening
as dusk imperceptibly falls.

The fleeting present
held barely at rest
for as long as I hold this pen;
my focus, intense
on the half-filled page.
As if the empty space
were already written,
and I, a stenographer

dutifully taking dictation.

Should I snap a picture

to remember this by?

Or let my words stand;

the passage of time, not nearly as fast

in ink on paper

black on white.

This poem is all about too rapid change, the conceit of "presentism", and how nothing essential really changes at all. 

It's also about the process of creativity: what is often called "flow", in which writing feels more like channelling, and in which process is so immersive it annihilates all perception of time. So the poem plays with time on both a conceptual and personal level.

In the deep past, there was no such thing as history, no need for concepts like past and future. Life was cyclic, and the stress of exponential change non-existent. But our modern world view is of linear time, and belief in progress the water in which we swim. I think much of this is a superficial conceit, where technology and speed and cosmetic newness distract us from the more abiding and important foundational truths.

Eyes Front
Dec 3 2013


The best conversations with my dad
happened on the way somewhere.

He would be watching traffic,
feathering the brakes
steering deftly,
punching it hard
from a standing stop.
As if releasing
some pent-up aggression.
As if he'd have preferred
something sportier, sexier.

I also sat, eyes front,
belted-in
at the other end
of the long bench seat,
his looming presence
in my peripheral vision.
Like talking long distance
but you couldn't hang-up.

Between us
the rearview mirror,
where a glance might intersect
meeting half-way.
And the radio's green luminescence,
the intercession
of play-by-play,
a baseball game
on some faraway field
filling the awkward pause.
I still love listening,
transported, in the car.
After dark, especially --
the aural balm
of the announcer's folksy drawl,
the unrushed pace
of the game without a clock.

This is as close as I came
to intimacy, confession.
The purity
of the spoken word,
detached
from body heat
facial expression.
And from eyes
that can penetrate a boy's
excruciating self-consciousness.

The big V8
was like a sensory deprivation chamber,
smoothing over broken roads
muffling the outside world.
It didn't lean into turns, adjust to the curves
like some elegant foreign machine;
it powered through.
And I felt protected
under its steady dependable wing.

It was a good car
for a self-made man.
Who wore a suit to the office,
and infrequently took
even Saturday off.
Who effortlessly sported
a dapper fedora,
even long after hats
were no longer worn.
The kind with a small feather
in its black silk band
angled jauntily back.
Which I've always considered
an oddly flamboyant touch;
the inner peacock, perhaps,
but well enough subdued
to not be thought unmanly.

I'm not sure
how well he understood,
held
his judgement.
But when I talked, he seemed to listen
thoughtfully enough,
concerned, if unsure
just how to respond.
And I probably said too much
to my captive audience
in that secluded car.

Where eye contact
would have seemed unnatural
and it was easy to talk.
As he watched the road
and measured his words
and steered us safely home.


A driver and single passenger conversing in a car has a special dynamic: the difficulty of eye contact ("eyes front") conspires with the confessional seclusion of that privileged space, in the soft glow of the dashboard light, to create its own intimacy. It's a space that gives permission to talk about sensitive things, informed by the unspoken rule that what is said here stays here. This is where the poem began: trying to re-create that feeling, that flash of recognition in which my voice becomes the reader's.

There actually wasn't much one-on-one between my father and me. And not particularly in the car: we weren't chauffeured around, like kids are today; and if we were, it was my mother who did the driving. But I do have a persistent memory of something like this; and in the poem, a single incident becomes a vehicle with which to explore the past.

It was a big blue Mercury Marquis (notwithstanding my recurrent trope of the Buick Roadmaster!) And it was probably CBC radio (which would have been my choice, not his); but I couldn't resist baseball, since driving at night and listening to a ball game -- from anywhere -- is one of the great pleasures of life.

He wasn't taciturn. But the home front was my mother's job. And he worked a lot. (Yes, also half-days Saturdays, for many years. Which is what you do when you're starting a business and have payroll to meet. Although I suspect he lost the tie and jacket that one day of the week!) And -- as were most men in those days -- he wasn't particularly comfortable with emotion, hardly demonstrative: we were (are) not a "touchy-feely" family. (Our nuclear family, that is. My brothers' families are very much so, and they deserve all the credit in the world for that.) It's only natural that my mother and father learned how to parent from theirs, and both of their families tended to be distant, rigid, old school. I also think my parents derived more pleasure from their friends than from their children; and with them, he was outgoing and effervescent. This may seem odd, in our highly child-centred culture. But in those days, I think this was much more common.

As for me (equally complicit; because if I were different, I might very well elicit a different response), I either was, or learned to be, very emotionally self-sufficient: I didn't easily share; and still don't. (Or if so, in writing only!) I console myself. I intellectualize, re-frame, introspect. (Although "self-sufficiency" may be more conceit than accomplishment. Perhaps suppressing/denying my neediness is closer to the truth.) ...Anyway, it goes without saying that a heartfelt one-on-one was rare.

I like the oblique way the character of the father emerges through the eyes of a child. Who can dscribe, but lacks insight. Who might observe his father, but is still too young to see him as an autonomous human being: with an exterior life not defined exclusively by fatherhood; and with the unknowable interior life of a middle aged man. Or perhaps the child looking back from his own adulthood, and for the first time considering that actual man. So there's the sympathetic realization of "pent-up aggression", the "sportier, sexier"; of a seemingly conventional man, whose small plain feather becomes a restrained subversive act; and of suppressed frustration from having chosen duty. There's the somewhat perplexed concern of a taciturn man (who "(holds) his judgement" and "listen(s) thoughtfully", "unsure ... how to respond".) And there's the larger-than-life father of memory through the metaphor of the car, who fixes what's "broken", "smooths (things) over", "powers through", and "protect(s)"; who is "steady" and "dependable".

I think the last three lines really nail it: the manly attributes of quiet stoicism and strength and constancy come clearly through "as he watched the road/ and measured his words/ and steered us safely home." I'm really pleased that the poem ended with "home", a word with such powerful resonance of safety ...familiarity ...origin.

Sense of Place
Nov 30 2013


The small bungalow
on a modest cul-de-sac
abuts, back-to-back

with another pleasant street,

the planned community

of 1954.
Where soldiers, returned from the war

would marry their sweethearts

raise 3.5 kids.

Living the dream,

while sweat-soaked terror
stalked their sleep.

The dividend of peace,
was a one-car garage
roughed-in basement
unfenced yard.
A few scrawny trees
strapped to poles
on bull-dozed lots.

Cities accrete
in archaeological layers.
On ancient ruins.
On urban renewal.
On the demolition
of wrecking balls, conquest

neglect,

the resurrection
of the tenderloin, and derelict.

Where the artifacts
of disposable life are buried

in compacted city soil.
Where you hit

a strata of ash

no matter where you dig,

the last remains

of The Great Fire.

But the only history here
is my elderly parents
in their empty-nest.

Which could use some work.

The family home

renovated in the 1960s,

when the future was plastic, and sleek,

deep shag, burnt orange

the height of chic.

And where the cul-de-sac is lifeless,

no kids taking slapshots

until well after dark,

the dogs are all buried
in quiet backyards.

Without a car
the Arcadian ideal of suburban life
has become a comfortable prison,
lit up
at Christmas, Thanksgiving
by visits from downtown,
the prodigal children
with kids of their own.
Who love the city,
its history
and sense of place.

And this home
which will be sold
when the folks are gone.
If anyone's buying houses, then
that far out.

There was a terrific article called Out of Eden in the Dec 2013 National Geographic. The Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Paul Salopek is reporting on his ambitious walk around the world, which has started in the horn of Africa, and will then follow in the footsteps of human migration (7 years, 21,000 miles, 4 continents!) Among numerous beautifully written passages, this one stuck:

"Humanity remakes the world in an accelerating cycle of change that strips away our stories as well as the topsoil. Our era's breathtaking changes collapse collective memory, blur precedence, sever lines of responsibility. (What disconcerts us about suburbia? Not just its sameness, but its absence of time. We crave a past in our landscapes.)"

From the ancient dusty landscape of the Afar Triangle, the idea of a landscape with a past has great resonance.

I've been reading quite a bit about the new urbanization; and how lifestyle, demographics, and the necessities of energy economics as well as climate change will hollow out the traditional suburb. The quintessential North American suburb -- a place that, to me, has always existed as the basic template of how one lives -- may ultimately end up as a minor unremembered blip of human history from the second half of the 20th century. Despite its promise of healthy living away from congested downtowns, and its ideal of the wholesome nuclear family, suburbia is betrayed by its essential homogeneity and geography: a spread-out landscape that isolates people; an unwalkable locale where you're left stranded without a car; and -- as per Salopek -- a spiritually empty location with no sense of place or history.

Of all the practical criticisms of suburban life, I really like this idea that it lacks a "sense of place"; and how the rootedness and identity conferred by a sense of place is a big part of human happiness. So if suburbia does end up a relic, a curiosity, a strange innovation rooted in a particular time and place, perhaps this poem can stand as its ambivalent eulogy.

Although in a way, the poem refutes Salopek's contention. Because as individuals, our personal history can become deeply and intimately entwined with a brand new landscape. In a single generation (in this case, the self-absorbed and self-referential Baby Boomers, of which I'm one), an unlikely place can acquire unexpected weight.

(Although I hasten to add -- once again -- that this poem is not autobiographical. I don't have kids. I don't customarily go home at Christmas or Thanksgiving. I grew up in a big back-split on a ravine, not a bungalow on a cul-de-sac. Where I live it's more rural than suburban (or even exurban), and I would find city life quite unpleasant. There was no "Great Fire" in Toronto; that's Chicago, or San Francisco. My father never fought in the war (wanted to, but couldn’t fake his way through the vision test). And my sensible parents have not remained stuck in suburbia: they live in a condo, on public transit, on the fringe of the urban core.)