Mother Earth
Aug 25 2014


On the cusp of lightning
you can feel the charge
building up, and up.

Like a mile-high dam

about to fail,

shuddering

with uncontainable pressure.

Every molecule, on edge,

scalp tingling

hair on-end.

The acrid smell

of ionized air,

so your nose quivers

nostrils flare.

So when that jagged bolt
illuminates the earth
like a brilliant blue-white strobe
you're flat on your back,
limbs, spastic

brain, sparking madly.
The image, frozen in its flash.
And the sky, cracked by thunderclaps
you never heard.

Lightning does strike twice,
the same high ground
same sultry July.

And travels up, according to science.
Not whimsical gods, in drunken revelry,
hurtling down random death
from their heavenly perch.
But erupting
from under your feet.

Solid ground
feeling suddenly treacherous.
And wondering ...
can mother earth
ever be trusted again?


There was a story in the local news today about an amateur photographer who, while photographing the sky during an electrical storm, was stuck by lightning -- fortunately, just a glancing blow.

My immediate thought is how complacent we become. If lightning wasn't commonplace, and deaths so infrequent, it would be utterly terrifying: something with the force of atomic bombs, going off every few seconds, randomly touching down.

I also thought of a few misconceptions: that it starts in the sky and travels down; that lightning itself is silent; and that it never strikes twice. Lightning actually travels up. And if it's close enough -- as in the case of our unfortunate photographer -- not silent at all. And it's more likely than not to strike in the exact same spot: the conditions that made it strike the first time haven't changed, so why not a second? It becomes more a case of probability that utter randomness.

I wanted to make an analogy with an earthquake: how the ground shaking, the ground opening and swallowing-up, contradicts all our illusions about permanence. How it must ever afterward feel as if even the ground cannot be relied upon, mother earth can no longer trusted. I tried hard; but the whole earthquake thing seemed shoe-horned in and out-of-place, so I let it go.

I've written a lot of lightning poems. Although not at all recently. Not that I haven't been tempted, since electrical storms are really fun to write about, and contain all sorts of possibility: about death, randomness, complacency, beauty, and power; about the magnificence of nature and the insignificance of man. But I felt I'd already said more than enough, and would be pretty much just plagiarizing myself from here on in. I think I let this one slip by because it has a slightly different take. And because it's been awhile, so the subject seems fresher. And because ideas can be hard to come by, so there are days when I'm happy to come up with anything at all!

The Sounds of a House
Aug 24 2014


The fridge rumbles to life.

Something creaks, drips, chimes.

Fans whirr, a mouse scurries,
the furnace
clicks, and ignites.

A wonky shutter

slams shut
with a heart-stopping thud.

The sounds of a house
when no one's home
carry on, regardless.
And like the fridge
purring along, inaudibly,
we only hear them
when they stop.

It's absence
we notice
most of all.
Like after somebody's gone,
and we sit, vigilant
in an empty house
on the lip of an unbearable void.
Waiting
to feel it filled.


Wow! I had absolutely no idea where this poem was going to go. I sat down, in the mood to write, but with nothing in mind. Which is not at all unusual.

"Wow" not only because the ending snuck up on me, but because I quickly lost that mood, had trouble getting started, and then felt like forgetting the whole thing because it was going nowhere fast. But I've learned not to worry about good or bad, keeper or reject. Just put down on paper whatever comes to mind: I may manage to salvage it later, or it may open me up to something better.

I heard some fans whirring. I wondered if that was the wind picking up, perhaps a harbinger of storm. The fridge rumbled off, and suddenly what had seemed perfectly quiet was now deathly still: the way we habituate to sound, until it disappears. So I had this idea of "the sounds of a house" -- perhaps the house as a living thing, personified -- and went into automatic writing mode. Which sounds mystical and supernatural, but isn't at all. It's just how, when you're in a creative space, that lovely sense of flow feels: focused, oblivious, immersed.

It was the fridge stopping that led me to "absence". And I think it was the contrast between "house" and "home" -- where "house" has the indifference of a building; and where "home" signifies comfort more than place -- that led me to the emptiness of departure: perhaps a lost love, perhaps a death. "The sounds of a house/ when no one's home" was the first thing I put down on the page, so that distinction was present from the beginning: that it's not truly a home when no one's there.

Looking back, the opening stanza contains some unintentional foreshadowing. The creaks and drips and wonky hinge, the scurrying mouse, the stopped heart: there is a premonition of something slightly off.

In the middle stanza, "indifferent" is a very inviting alternative to "regardless". There is, for one, an easy rhyme with "fridge". And I suppose it expresses the idea more explicitly. But for some reason, I keep coming back to "regardless". Perhaps it's the implicit shrug I hear in it, the slightly apathetic quality it shares with a resigned breathy whatever.

I suspect the poem would be more powerful in a singular voice: I instead of we. But there is also power in the appeal to shared experience, to commonality: we all notice the fridge only when it stops; we all notice absence most of all. Nevertheless, I would have liked to have used "I sit ...". It's definitely stronger and more poignant than "we sit ...". But changing voice mid-stream just doesn't work.

This poem is a great example of "less is more". It always seem to be these short ones I like best. I think because they don't try to do too much. And because they're distilled, economical; which is, after all, the essential business of poetry.

There is, as usual, nothing autobiographical here. It's language that takes be by the hand, and leads me on; not personal experience.

Noticing The Night Sky

Aug 22 2014

The recent “supermoon”
seduced us into noticing
the night sky.

Which we rarely do,
the heavens reduced
by artificial light,
too easily bemused
by our screens.

Which the human eye
cannot detect
from a full moon.
But we look up, nevertheless
hoping

to be wonder-struck.

Or better still, sight
just above the horizon.
Where the moon seems truly giant,
the illusion of size
that never fails

to take us by surprise.

This perigee-syzygy
suggest even physicists
have poetry in their souls,
that serious men
also take pleasure
in sibilant tongues.

I read it was two hundred twenty one
thousand miles from earth,
a distance my father would routinely drive
in the life of his cars.
Those big old GMs
whose engines never died,
like powerful land yachts
quietly plush
softly sprung.

A celestial object
you could easily attain
in daily commutes, family vacations
seems to make the universe
a little less lonely.
Planet earth, travelling through space,
accompanied
by its protégé.

That waxes and wanes
every month of our lives,
reliable
as clockwork.
But so familiar
we only ever notice
on its closest approach.

When we can't help looking up
at its scarred silvery face
and feel amazed.
Close enough
to reach out and touch
one arm-length away.


Actually, 221,800 miles(!)

"Super" is such a tired superlative. "Supermoon" sounds prosaic, as if someone was trying to sell you something ...something common and cheap. "Perigee-syzygy" is so much better!

But we did notice, having oddly forgotten the last time this occurred; which couldn't have been that long ago.

We rarely look up, we rarely feel wonder. Because the night sky is blotted out with artificial light. And because we are distracted by the simulations on our screens; or grow up jaded, taking too much for granted.

This information -- 221,800; perigee-syzygy -- appeared in a small blurb accompanying a photo essay about the supermoon in the on-line Atlantic Weekly. I'm certain I've previously read about the distance of the moon from earth. But for some reason, this time the number really struck. I immediately saw it on the odometer of that old Buick: a very attainable number; a number -- unlike the vast majority of numbers in astrophysics (or particle physics, for that matter!) -- that's on a human scale; that you can actually grasp!

Petrichor
Aug 21 2014


The smell after it rains.
A sun shower
that breaks a long hot

dry spell.

Like parched lips, wetted

with a damp cloth.

Steam, wisping off the asphalt.
With that pungent scent
of loam, and tar
and ionized air.

I'm a kid again.
All summer, outside,
the screen door slapping shut
sprinklers lazily circling.
Before traffic-stuck, climate-controlled,

from sealed office

to hermetic home.

When the movie palace
was a cool dark oasis,
smelling of popcorn , and stale smoke.

And something on the sticky floor,

velour seats

in the back row.

Then blinking back tears

in the blinding light

outside.

The sense of smell wanes, with age.
Perhaps the olfactory organ
wears out,
like hard-of-hearing
and dimming eyes.

Or did I stop paying attention
start moving fast?
When a summer rain
caught me blind-side,
took me instantly back.


I read a piece in The Atlantic Wire called "Why the World Smells Different After it Rains." Who knew there was actually a word for this, and that serious scientists have studied it? According to the article:

"Petrichor" is the wonderful word that describes the wonderful scent of the air after a rain shower. It comes, like so many wonderful words do, from the ancient Greek: a combination of ichor, the "ethereal essence" the Greeks believed flowed through the veins of their gods, and petros, the stones that form the surface of the Earth.

PBS's Joe Hanson describes the biology that leads to petrichor. "When decomposed organic material is blown airborne from dry soil," he explains, "it lands on dirt and rock where it's joined by minerals. And the whole mixture is cooked in this magical medley of molecules. Falling raindrops then send those chemicals airborne, right into your nostalgic nostrils."

So this poem is a shameless and manipulative wallow in nostalgia: a cheap and lazy trick to elicit pathos, and for which I should by all rights apologize. But won't!

I've tried to use strong visceral sensations in the poem; not only of smell, but hearing and sight as well. With which I could, of course, have go on and on. So in picking my poison, how could I possibly have resisted the delightful irony and anachronistic hyperbole of "movie palace"?

We all know how powerful olfaction is in evoking emotion and memory. And we all instantly recognize this scent. But it seems to me it's been far too long since I last had a whiff of that wonderful smell, breathing all the way in through my nose. ...And in again.

Sand Mandala

Aug 18 2014

We make things of beauty
to signal fitness.
All art
is showing-off.

Like red-assed baboons,

flags raised
to impress potential mates.
Because big-brained chimps
are still evolution's
heedless tools.

So is all art
mere competition,
dogs pissing
hind-legs lifting
higher than him?
A pathetic man
ever hungry

for her sideways glance?

The Buddhist philosopher
spends his life
on a virtuoso work,
a beautiful object
from grains of sand.
Which then, serenely impassive
he turns
and destroys.
Determined to break
the bonds of attachment,
the weight

of self.

The  immortal artist

late departed
who bestowed beauty upon the world.

But whose venal ego

wanted more.
And the long forgotten,
who became enlightened
but left nothing behind.

And then the poet
who needs to be noticed

while meaning well.
Who sends his words
out into the world
where they cannot be destroyed;

not a singular object,
but learned
off-by-heart.

Who never gets the girl,
yet never gets over
himself.

I recently heard about this concept, and found it fascinating. With my nihilistic tendencies, such an exercise in detachment has its philosophical appeal. Of course, a poet doesn’t produce an object:  it’s hard to destroy something composed of words, and learned. We’re stuck with posterity! (Or not. After all, if a poem is never heard, does it even exist?!!)

Anyway, the poem was a great chance to write something about one of my favourite lenses through which to view human behaviour, to interpret the living world:  evolutionary biology. In other words, to say in so many words that we aren’t exempt from nature. Not to mention not nearly as smart as we think!

And also to repeat that endearingly insightful school-boy phrase for memory:  to learn “off-by heart”.

Actually, I might have skipped the entire exercise. “Sand mandala” is lovely on the tongue, and probably needs nothing more!

Canoe
Aug 14 2014     


The canoe is nicely balanced.
The dog, perfect ballast,
hind legs steady on the front seat
fore-paws up on the deck

eagerly sniffing the air,
her brilliant nose, straining ahead
as if pulling us on.
She is like the bowsprit

on a man-o-war,
carved into omens

of fortune, and luck.

She's been at home, in this boat
since a few months old,
knows well
to step nimbly
stay centred.
In our sleek vessel
sitting lightly on the summer lake,
its leading edge
slipping easily through.

Paddling a canoe
can feel effortless.
When I surrender
to muscle memory,
the angle, the pressure
aligning together
the paddle feathered just so.
When I feel the precision
in fine correction
in my body connecting
the stroke, the blade
the boat.
My weight shifts, and the canoe responds,
so like
my attentive dog
locking eyes with mine.

I admire this simple vessel.
The exquisite marriage
of function to form.
Its minimalism, and human scale.
How easily shouldered
on its shaped wooden thwart.
And how in turn, it conveys
a man and his dog,
a self-contained world
between water, and sky.

We hew close to shore,
matching its ins-and-outs
deftly skirting rocks.
When a submerged log
stops us cold,
the dog
catapulted-off
into the still black drink.
She swims, I paddle,
her noble head
determined eyes.

The fierce constancy
of dogs.
And the companionship
of that old red boat
almost as reliable.

A paean to two of my favourite things. She adopted this position early on, and it works perfectly: it helps keeps her centred, and keeps the boat trimmed just right, making it easy for a solo paddler. And yes, she has been known to catapult-off for sudden unexpected swims. Luckily, she's a fine Labrador retriever: seems immune to cold, and swims beautifully. 

I've always loved canoeing. I don't think it's possible, even for a much better poet than me, to adequately describe for the non-paddler the kinaesthetic pleasure of the so-called Canadian stroke. When I get it working (which, fortunately, is most of the time), it really is almost effortless: the boat feels fast, efficient, well-mannered. Paddling can give the almost hallucinatory pleasure that is common to all the other forms of movement that are similarly repetitive and rhythmic: the same feeling I get when cross-country skiing, in sync; and when swimming well.

I especially love paddling with the pooch: her excitement, her inquisitiveness, and the shared pleasure of being together doing something we both enjoy. Not to mention my gushing pride: in how beautiful she looks, balancing up-front like that; and in how well-behaved she is, in so unnatural a place for a dog.

Up
Aug 12 2014


Balloons festoon
a festive sky,

a riot of colour

in effortless flight.

They hover at various heights,

bobbing up and down

like the notes

of a calliope.
And the burners’ percussive rush

are unexpected drum-rolls.

Deep wicker gondolas
are lightly suspended,
tiny people
peering over their edges.
Like a sewing basket
in a corny postcard,
a clutch of kittens
poking out.

They drift together
on the same desultory breeze,

a motley procession
of lighter-than-air machines.
At the pleasure
of wind.

They seem improbable
in the clear summer light,
so big
so insubstantial.

An illusion of ease
despite the hazards abounding,
from high-tension lines
to uncontrolled landings.

An illusion of ease
you could only believe
not seeing them grounded.
Choreographed men,

hauling hard

to get them standing.
Flaccid balloons, and heavy baskets
the staccato roar
of propane gas.

A single errant blast,

and it’s up

in flames. 

I can't explain this poem except to say that I sat down to write, nothing in mind, and this image a ballooning festival inexplicably appeared: a high blue sky, filled with multi-coloured hot air balloons. So I decided to go with it, and this is where it went.

I needed more than straight description, and so the idea of deconstructing this illusion of ease -- of weightlessness, effortlessness, and sheer whimsy -- with hard reality; of closing the distance. The poem sets up expectations, and then works against them. It starts with the circus calliope, the beautiful wicker basket, the cute kittens, the pleasure of wind. And ends with hard work and near-death.

From the very beginning, I wasn't sure if there was anywhere to go with this, or if it was worth going. But once I hit on that circus calliope, I couldn't bear to abandon it! I love the conflation of sound with sight. And I love how that single word alone -- "calliope" -- evokes everything about the scene: the colour, the whimsy, the leisurely pleasures of a summer weekend.

Perhaps the reason for this turn can be found in a mental image that dogged me from the initial lines. It's the opening scene of a recent movie (Enduring Love – thanks, Google!), and sets into motion everything that follows: a shot of people falling from a hot air balloon on a bucolic summer day. It's not just the abrupt change from innocent joy to deadly serious, but the sudden intrusion of gravity and height into a scene of airy weightlessness. The movie sets up an illusion, and then violently breaks it. I think the poem works much the same.

My favourite line is something very simple and obvious, so I'm not quite sure why I respond to it each time I re-read. It's at the pleasure/ of wind. I think it's because I like the push and pull of "pleasure": the word obviously reinforces the pleasant bucolic scene; but "at the pleasure" also contains a hint of darkness in its allusion to fatalism and contingency and arbitrary forces beyond our control. 

The Lawn ...
Aug 4 2014


is mostly weeds.
Broad-leafed scrub.
Clover, in flower, close to the ground.
Which I hope goes to seed, replenishing itself,
green, compact

succulent.

Bare patches
are scorched earth
colonized by dandelions.
They have erupted unchecked
leggy, and menacing,
all serrated leaves, priapic stems,

metastatic tufts
for puffball heads.
And indestructible,
strutting like a conquering army
mocking
my sovereignty here.

Now the anthills have started,
smooth sandy mounds
busy
with hard black bodies,

workers, and soldiers

brothers-in-arms.

The future of earth, after we're gone,
man's brief tenure
in charge.

The lawn mower
rattles and roars,
turret, rusted
puffs of dense blue smoke.
A rough leveller
conferring the illusion of order;
at least, for a day or so.

Because even in drought, weeds grow.
It will take a hard frost
and long winter
to keep them in check.

Minefields, dormant

beneath the snow.


I took a quick glance out the door -- letting-in the dog -- and the possibility of a poem immediately struck. I actually like my weedy lawn: it grows slowly, and nicely resists dryness. The saving grace is that they're low-growing weeds, and act much like well-manicured grass. So except for the dandelions, which at times over-tower everything, it's a pretty good ground cover. And very low maintenance; which is, after all, my main criterion (for just about everything!)

This is the first time I've revisited the cursed dandelion since a poem written years and years ago, now lost in the mist of memory. I like this stanza best. And I especially like "priapic stems"/ "metastatic heads", not to mention the beginning of the martial metaphor.

... Ahhhh, if only the whole lawn were Dutch clover!

I suspect the worker ants, as well as the soldier caste, are all infertile females. Failed queens, as it were. Or are they simply impotent males, identical clones? I've decided that ignorance is best here; after all, "sisters-in-arms" seems to lack a certain mercenary something!

My lawn mower is actually cordless electric, and looks sleek and futuristic. But the rattly old gas mower was irresistible, reinforcing the over-all sense of corruption and neglect. The turret turns it into a tank, notwithstanding shooting blanks!

The same concept of dormancy ended my last poem -- the one about mosquitoes ("A Hundred Times Life"): both leave the reader with this sense of malignancy, barely suppressed. So, does this reflect something about my subconscious state of mind these days? Or is it just the easiest and most natural way to end, a nice neat conclusion to 2 seasonal poems?

A Hundred Times Life

Aug 1 2014

Mosquitos emerge at dusk

flying clumsily.

Long legs

trailing haphazardly,

zipping in random zigs and zags

zeroing-in.

Buzz-saw wings

insistently drill.

Her hypodermic nose

stuck in human skin
makes for an easy kill,

jiujitsu flash

of a flattened hand.

But numbers win
and there will be blood.

The beauty of function over form,

seeing her magnified

a hundred times life.

She is a precisely engineered machine,

from her alien head

to each tiny hair

filigree wing.

And so exquisitely honed
to scope us out,
our breath, our scent
our heat.

The sun sets, in a wash of pink
coolness settles the air.
Almost mosquito-free

as August inexorably ebbs.

The bittersweet end

of summer,
when microscopic eggs
hide-out, somewhere.
To lie dormant, like me
through long forbidding winter,

awaiting the signal

to emerge again.

A small poem about the even smaller. This is the sort of thing I especially like writing: close observation, grounded in nature; the finding of beauty, hiding in plain sight. And how, blindly confined to our narrow order of magnitude, we risk missing the vast creation with which we co-exist. 

I have to admit a grudging admiration for these pernicious creatures: exquisitely engineered by millions of years of evolution for a precisely targeted task; perfectly placed in an intricate ecological web of feedback and interdependence. And perhaps, I'm less inclined to hate them than I once was, since I find them far less hellish than their evil cousins, the blackflies and -- even worse -- no-see-ums. Not to mention the deer flies and ankle biters!

It's August 1st, and we are by no means "mosquito-free". Nevertheless, there is always hope!