Brown
April 27 2014


Out here
the palette of winter
is blue and green.
Sky and trees, on white so white
your eyes tear up
lashes freeze.

The city stays brown.
Churned-up slush
and salt-stained boots
and people walking grimly.
Buildings hunkered down,
boxy, rooted, burning fuel
hunched against the wind.
Dull brick, and masonry
high-rise, breathtakingly
clad in tinted glass.
All eyeless,
impassive monoliths
unmoved
by the world outside.

A rabbit dashes by
in camouflage white,
a synapse, flickering
in peripheral vision.
And the dog is off
porpoising through the drifts,
then belly-deep
like a ditching machine.
A shock
of thick brown fur
across the virgin field.

I find myself returning to this theme: where nature embodies purity, and the city contamination; a simplistic anti-urban screed, I know.

I love winter and find it beautiful, but there is no denying the poverty of colour in a landscape that's primarily white. On the other hand, there is something terribly bleak about a city in winter: where fresh snow at dawn quickly becomes slush; where the feeling is inward-turning and hunkered down; and where wind-tunnel streets feel extra cold. Its palette is browns and greys; if not literally, then emotionally.

I push the trope of purity even further here, where even the dog -- a domesticated creature, a creation of man -- does not belong. Other than that, the cityscape is static, rooted; the country fluid and quick. The city is dull brown; the country blinding white, brilliant blues and greens. The city is eyeless, indifferent; the country vigilant.

The poem begins with sight, and each stanza hinges on the eye.

Orange
April 30 2014


The loose soil
in the dry heat
gave it up easily,
plucked from my weed-infested garden.

It seemed to be shivering
in its thin orange skin,
stripped of sun-warmed earth
flecked with dirt
gripped
by its tough tousled greenery.

Do vegetables scream
when harvested?
Because they are still alive, if unselfconscious,
sending out
chemical calls of distress,
to which we are blind and deaf
dumb as rocks.

Tiny rootlets
along its length
are translucent white.
Almost embryonic
in their exposed state,
too naked, delicate
for air's cool dryness
day's harsh light.

We will say grace
to no god, in particular,
looking down at the table
mumbling under our breath.
Recognize that life and death
go hand-in-hand,
and that gratitude
is the greatest reverence.

It was sweet, fat, fresh,
an act of creation
of soil, sun, rain.
The carrot I didn't tend
but grew, anyway.

It looks as if the "colour" series continues. Which is extremely helpful, finding myself in the mood to write, but short of subjects in my uneventful life.

Here I shameless personify a vegetable. Especially the 4th stanza, which evokes for me a fetus, as well as the moment of birth. There are allusions to lots of deeper things; but to me, the most important message is the one about gratitude. Otherwise, I think the poem is a celebration of life: its irrepressible fecundity, basic commonality, and cruel struggle. And, as usual, I'm always attracted to poems of close observation: the smaller and more diurnal the subject, the better.

But I have to admit that what most pleases me is having found a word that resonates with "orange", reputedly impossible to rhyme. (Which, in case you think slightly sideways rhymes don't count, is "warmed".)
.

Beige

April 29 2014

I am painting the room.

An indeterminate beige

that, I am told, will dry darker.

Like black and white,

not so much a colour

as a measure of light.

The roller rolls easily.

No need of precision

on the blank expanse of wall,

the pleasant repetition

of bend, and dip

drain, and roll.

I have assigned the chattering part of my brain

to this mechanical task,

like letting the car

drive itself home.

My mind wandering,

until the leash tightens

and I’m brusquely pulled back,

brush in hand

back and forth, back and forth.

To the woozy smell

of that small contained room,

the glossy finish

that will dry flat.

The ceiling, the baseboards

will be the same

inoffensive beige

a few molecules thick.

If only transformation

always took place

from the outside in,

that surface

could be so determinate.

The rough strokes

that bled thin, at the edges

have blended nicely in.

The familiar room

is even, stressless.

How satisfying

to complete a finite task,

begin with beginning

and end when it ends.

The ratio of change, to effort

is vast, with paint.

Painting myself in

until it dries.

Wondering,

will I live in darkness

or light?

A poem about the subtle pleasures of manual labour: of completing a physical task, from which you can stand back and see, measure, touch; and of muscle memory, which feels like autopilot.

When the writing goes well, I find myself in a similar state -- of relaxed flow, kind of like channelling: the mind is taking dictation, while the hand is automatic. A repetitive task has the same tantalizing quality, occupying your brain, as it frees your mind to wander. Although when a room is painted, or the rocks piled, the thing is done. Writing never seems finished: there is always something to tweak, something you wish had never been read.

It's also about painting over: illusion, surface, deferral.

And about fear: the inoffensive beige, for someone who is afraid of colour; and the reassurance of an enclosed familiar space. Not to mention the vaguely unsettling fear of imminent change: of glossy paint, drying flat; of soft beige, inexorably darkening.

Opening Line
April 20 2014


Even old poets
are full of promise.

Because there is nothing chronological
in taking delight
in creation.
And fresh eyes, trained on the world

still dance,

in the dim light of frailty
shine just as bright.

The laugh-lines
deeply etched in his face
are the residue of practice, not age.
The art of being a child
is his discipline,
no less a regimen
than the ascetic, the monk
the samurai.

While the craft of words
is the muscle he's learned
to hone;
language as taut
as the stone-age patriarch,
fit as a welterweight.
Because good poetry
is all lean, no fat;
its substance
matters less than its space.

Although in late middle age
he permits himself
more sentimentality
than the angry young man,
writes sentences
with beginnings and ends,
sometimes tending to ramble.

Too old
to be precocious, anymore;
but the opening line
on an immaculate page
is just as promising,
offering
to accompany you
without taking you by the hand.
Like cracking open the sky,

a shaft of light

slanting off thunderclouds.
Or too high to see down,

climbing hand-over-hand

forking your way out
to the thinnest branch.

The same expectant thrill.
As electric as sex
as wired as lust,
as hopeful
as falling in love.

There is a lot of this, in literary criticism: the promising young poet, the best 30 under 30, the old soul in a young body. I started writing relatively recently, but in my late 40s. So in late middle age, am I still a "young" poet? Or, as so much in our culture, does being of a certain age make one less worthy of attention?

There is a good argument to be made that we may be more ferociously creative in our youth. It seems to be true that Nobel laureates in science did their best work before the age of 40. On the other hand, many continued to shine long after. In poetry, the explosive originality may burn out, but I think the craft of writing improves with time and practice. Anyway, the essence of poetry is to see things as if for the first time; a discipline which keeps one young, whatever one's chronological age.

One thing that does not dim is the thrill of the first tentative line on a blank page, the excited feeling of expectancy and possibility and infinite creative power; that is, as long as you have the confidence to just put it down and riff, and as long as you're willing to fail. You are never too old for poetry, when all it takes is a piece of paper and the strength to hold a pen. Or simply a tongue, and a willing amanuensis. Or just a good memory.

In "offering/ to accompany you/ without taking you by the hand", the "you" is the reader. (The voice changes from "he" to "you", directly addressing the reader. So it should be clear; but I'm not sure it will be read as a personal "you", as opposed to a more colloquial version of the 3rd person "one".) Just as I said earlier in "sometimes tending to ramble", this is the hardest part for me: writing too much; patronizing the reader by thinking I have to do all of the work. The most satisfying poetry to read is when the writer gives you just enough to point your imagination in the right direction, and then lets you do the rest. The power is in what isn't said -- in the space between the words. So the poet accompanies you; but without narrowing your vision, without all the wordiness and the hand-holding. In this way reading becomes a creative act as well: the reader as the poet's collaborator and accomplice. The real truth in this becomes clear in how varied readings can be. People will find all sorts of things in my poetry I never imagined, let alone intended. (And, as I've said before, I'm never shy about taking credit! While it also makes me wonder if I've failed. Was I that unclear and ambiguous??)

The rest of that stanza is as much about poetry in general as it is about opening lines. The first image tries to convey something akin to cracking open the lid of a black box full of light in a dark room: a sense of sudden illumination; of the heavens opening. And the second gets at ambiguity: the idea of all the possibilities suggested by a well-written line, and the reader choosing where to follow. There is also the implication of faith: making the investment in starting to read that opening line, having trust that the poet will reward you. So it could just as well have been a blindfold, but it ended up being too high to see the ground.

I wonder if the imagery in the first few stanzas seems a bit arbitrary and scattered. There actually is some coherence here, in jumping from an old poet with cataracts to a samurai to some fit hunter/gatherer in Borneo who looks half his age. The unifying thread is body parts: from dimming eyes to a wrinkled face to muscle. And the poem ends with the same sense of physicality. Except here, it's more shocking, because -- like the myth of the "dirty old man" -- conflating sex and old age is not only unexpected, but somewhat discomfiting.

A poem about writing poetry. Which might seem more like navel-gazing than legitimate poetry; and certainly not a topic you can too often return without appearing to have nothing much to say! But I think it will reward the attentive reader, even one who has never tried to write even a line of his own.

Islands
April 17 2014


Marooned,
a desperate man, a speck of land, an endless sea.
The wretched thirst, the blasted sun.
Raw fish, trailing guts
that reek of salt and blood.

He hallucinates
out of oppressive sameness
time's terrible weight.
Imagined voices, enchanted sights,
ghosts of ships
in tricks of light.

Like a parched and wasted castaway,
whose rudderless boat
bumped-up against the shore,
the solitary man is ship-wrecked
trapped inside his head.
His recurring thoughts
go round and round
feverishly eating their tails.
He circumnavigates
his small principality
over and over again;
like that zoo-raised bear
in its shabby cage
pacing the concrete floor.

Islands, containing islands.
A single man
on a spit of land
enclosed by trackless sea.
On a minor planet
in the vast ocean of space,
circling, circling
inescapably.

The oddly comforting constancy
of a small familiar place,
where his is self-proclaimed god
master of all he surveys.
Or king of darkness, fallen angel,
rattling the bars
of his own creation
he alone can hear.


I know this poem sounds very autobiograhical, in the sense that I'm introverted in temperament, solitary in habit, and susceptible to an unbecoming misanthropy: in other words, a kind of castaway on a desert island of my own making. But I'm not tormented by any of that; perhaps disappointed in myself, but certainly not the castaway of this poem. And it's certainly not the sort of thing I'd set out to write about, either as validation or confession or cry for help.

Actually, what started me writing this was a single sentence in a recent New Yorker article: Geoff Dyer's Shipmates ....life on an aircraft carrier (April 21 2014). He writes:

The ramp hatch at the back of the plane lowered slowly to reveal that we had landed in another world—albeit a world with the same pure-blue sky as the one we had left. Rotating radars, an American flag, the bridge, and assorted flight-ops rooms rose in a stack on the starboard side of the deck: an island on the island of the carrier.

I loved that idea of islands within islands. And also the cozy feeling of self-sufficiency you get on a boat out of sight of land: where everything you need is contained, and all the stuff of daily life is miniaturized and clever and stows as neatly as a jigsaw puzzle. I get a bit of that feeling on a canoe trip, in which you're a virtual island cut off from civilization: as self-contained as a turtle, carrying its house on its back (especially under that canoe, slogging along the portage!) ...Although very little of this got into the actual poem. Except, perhaps, in the last stanza: in the "comforting constancy/ of a small familiar place" and "master of all he surveys".

That it took such a serious turn -- with its physical suffering; not to mention intimations of John Dunne, spaceship earth, virtual prisons, delusions of grandeur, and self-made hells (the devil is an angel who fell) -- I cannot explain. I suppose the facile answer is that my subconscious was speaking. But not necessarily, since once you have the castaway in mind, the desperation and dire straits inevitably follow: as much Tom Hanks as yours truly.

I really disliked the first draft of this poem. It was only my usual frugality that compelled me to try to rescue it. So the poem may not be great; but considering I was that close to throwing it out, I'm very pleased that several version later it ended up as good as it is -- at least reasonably OK.

Augur
April 13 2014


A closed loop
downward spiral.

It bites in, circling smoothly
binding briefly, working free. 

Easy as butter, tunnelling down through ice
3 feet thick.

The single helix
was beautiful, in its symmetry.
Like a perpetual motion machine,
around and around
narrowing down
to its point. 
Hand-driven,
its carbon steel is bluish smooth
sharp-edged flange
undulled by use.

Then breaking through.
A cold clear geyser
turning the snow
wet, grey, dense,
flooding my feet
as it urgently spread,
released
from black compressed stillness.
As if the pent-up lake
were greedily breathing in.

Like false spring, an augury of summer.
Before the freeze
hammers it shut.


I read a poem by Brecken Hancock called Winter, Frontal Lobe, which hinged on the image of an ice axe breaking through. The unusual word "tarn" was used. I know a dog called "Tarn", and remembered that this meant mountain lake. Somehow, the combination of these images -- the axe, the glacial lake -- made me think of an ice augur. Which is where this poem began.

I don't ice fish, and I've never used an augur. But I can picture that sudden release of water; sense the suffocating weight of ice and the hungry breath of freedom. And then the frozen hand of winter, clamping down again.

The weakness of the poem is that it's purely descriptive and rather impersonal. And certainly a lot more linear than Winter, Frontal Lobe. On the other hand, there is something metaphorical about this feeling of suffocation and over-powering weight: of being repressed, held helplessly down, rendered powerless, by the irresistible forces of fate.

The play on "augur" and "augury" is either obvious and heavy-handed, or cleverly inspired. I'm not sure which!

Intersect

April 9 2014

She was like a racehorse

without the sweat-soaked sleekness

single-minded breeding,

the crouching rider, in his jewelled silks

squeezing speed.

The same barrel chest.

The same taut tendons,

on legs that seem too thin

flat-out stretched.

Nose reaching, nostrils flared

for the other side of the road.

A the end of a hard winter

her coat was mousy dull,

ragged patches of fur

in matted tufts.

From this side

I could see one big brown eye

dilated wide.

Which I took for fear

but may have been concentration,

a creature of prey

who calmly accepts

her fate.

Here, in fall and spring

the deer are rampant.

The few who achieve old age

must have learned to wait

for passing cars.

The rest spook,

leaping into the road

in a blind-side instant;

creatures of flight,

of startle, and chase.

Our unlikely intersection

in time and space,

me braking hard

as she barely grazed

the smoothly sculpted steel.

Because in the series of contingencies

that is life

it's always a fraction of inches

the split-second difference.

Now, I imagine her grazing

in some secluded wood,

pawing at crusted snow

for newly greening grass.

In the quiet stillness

hair-trigger alert.

And I am back at my desk

scrabbling for words.

Thinking of all the chances

taken for granted

in long eventful lives.

Another poem about contingency, something I’ve written about in other poems with the metaphor of frail or gossamer threads. And another deer poem, which have become almost as tiresome as the dog ones! But in what’s actually a mostly uneventful life not worthy of autobiography, I take what’s given.

Lost in the Snow
April 3 2014


Walking the dog
through the schoolyard, after dark.
Over hard-packed snow
pocked with little feet.

I feel like an intruder here,
with no permission slip
from the principal.
While she is off-leash
charging from smell to smell,
reconstructing recess
with the precision instrument
of her forensic nose.

Where the pent-up energy of kids
persists
in the frozen air,
shouting, bad-mouthing
stampeding the field.
The exuberance, and cruelty
of the playground;
the bullies, and those who watch,
the solitary kids
slouched against the fence.

The jungle gym is icebound.
Its frozen surface, unsafe.
Its tubular steel,
where wet gloves
curious tongues
freeze fast, and quick.

The plough has piled mountains
of ice-slicked snow.
I can see the king of the castle
holding court,
queen bees
tongue-lashing their followers.

The janitor left some lights on
to keep the riffraff away.
But we all know no one's inside
this time of night.
Just the dog and I
in the ghostly whiteness
of streetlights,
feeling watched
in their unwavering eye.

We are walking by the soccer net,
where an orphaned mitt
rests on the crossbar
tiny in pink.
A child, arriving home
with frostbitten fingers,
and was scolded for losing track.

But kids always lose things.
The ones who grow up fast,
and the innocents
who will
soon after.


We do this almost nightly. In the cool light of the streetlights. On the hard-packed snow of the schoolyard, where the residue of bootprints conjures up a playground of active kids.

The poem is about our illusions of childhood innocence: the cruelties and the testing, the exclusion and the cliques that we grown-ups both forget and overlook.

There is an undercurrent of menace running through the poem. It starts with "intruder" and "forensic", and then becomes more obvious with the bad-mouthing, the cruelty, the bullies, and the loners. The playground equipment has become dangerous. There are mountains of snow, where battles for status are fought. There is riffraff and prying eyes. And then what was lost in the snow.

There is something terribly poignant and melancholy about a child's orphaned mitten. I've used this trope before, and couldn't resist returning to it. The lost mitten, and the lost innocence that soon will follow: no turning back from adolescence, let alone adulthood.

(Although I may have no idea what really goes on at recess. The way we bubble-wrap kids these days, the jungle gym is probably cordoned-off, the piles of snow are out of bounds, and no one is allowed to throw snowballs or call anyone names. They probably won't even let them outdoors when it's cold!!)

Culvert
April 1 2014


The culvert tunnelled under the road,
enough asphalt, gravel, earth

to silence the world.

Like a diving bell

in the ocean's crushing depths,

a hard metallic case

our blinkered senses.

It was heavy corrugated steel
like a buried Quonset hut.
With massive bolts, dripping rust,
and a claustrophobic echo
that amplified each whisper
but made it hard to hear.
So even if we'd had the nerve
to share our fears
we would have been spared;
boys, of a certain age
practicing their manliness.

We hopped from rock to rock
negotiating the bottom
of standing water, fusty mud.
Shivered
in the dampness and dark,
intent on the circle of light
beckoning us on.

In spring thaw, water poured through
like an angry Colorado,
a black churning torrent

it was too small to hold,
backing-up above, gushing-out below;
a drowning machine
that kept its bodies
to itself.
So even in summer, well out of flood
the danger thrilled us.
Like a long rickety trestle
and an oncoming train,
we were tempting fate
in its own subterranean lair.

Ran out the end
with our sneakers soaking wet,
laughing giddily
and talking too quickly
in voices light as air.


I really have no idea where this poem came from. The image of this culvert came to me, seemingly out of nowhere. Maybe it was thoughts of spring (despite the unseasonable blizzard, freezing temperatures, and 4 feet of snow!!) that led me to the culvert under the causeway I canoe through in summer; that led me to my previous life as a whitewater kayaker, with its memories of scouting rivers in the high water of spring, low-head dams (relatively benign-looking "drowning machines"), man-made obstacles, and unexpected sweepers. I remember the transgressive feeling of walking through culverts that may not have been explicitly foridden, but should have been. I remember them searching Mackenzie Falls last year (the year before?) for a dead body, the predictable result of young men testing themselves: the fatal combination of bad judgement and male bravado.

Anyway, once I came up with "tunnelled under" I liked the sound of it too much to let it go, and carried on to see where it might take me. Although I didn't set out in that direction, the poem ended up being about the universal rite of passage in a boy's life: the testing, the physical challenge, the social pressure of dare and double dare.

I like the subterranean location. It evokes Dante's circles of hell, the river Styx, buried alive. The cold claustrophobia of being underground is a special category of fear, more innate and primeval than the oncoming train, the fear of heights.

I think the ending works well. There is this sense of decompression that plays nicely off the image of the water bursting through the culvert; there is the implied contrast between the lightness of the warm bright world with the dark dank subterranean weight of the steel enclosure. The boys have given into their fears, the urgency of speed over-ruling dry feet. I usually despise adverbs. Yet here, both the second and third last lines end that way; and both (so far) seem to work!