Happy In Our Work

Sept 29 2014

A place for everything.
Like a tack-board on a workshop wall,
each tool

in its appointed spot

matched to its outline.

Yes, peace of mind
for the meticulous tinkerer
who keeps careful track.
But are inanimate objects
also reassured
by order --
each tool, put to proper use,
each implement
easily at hand?

Everything in its place,
and the universe

unfolding as it should.
As a man
settling in his favourite chair
sighs, leaning back.
As the choreography
of the stars, and their planets
seems decreed

everlasting.

When you use a tool well
it conforms to the hand,
matching its curves
balancing its pressure points.
How a heavy hammer
with its burnished wooden handle
feels warm and smooth,
a well-mannered tool
almost happy in our work.

The nail, exactly struck
with a final solid thud.


I read an interview with Lena Dunham (among other accomplishments, the creator, writer, director, and star(!) of HBO's Girls) in which she said this:

"I feel happiest when I write and make things. I feel like I'm a tool being put to its proper use. And that's a feeling we're all after." (Johanna Schneller, in the Globe and Mail of Sept 27 2014).

Reading this, it immediately struck me as a simple reduction of the complicated idea of happiness: as if describing that point in life when you're finally comfortable in your own skin, when you've found your niche, your role, your identity. First, because I easily identified, since I too find it in writing. And second, because I love the metaphor of "tool": something useful, happy in work, uniquely suited to its perfect task, and couldn't help picturing a workshop festooned with hammers and saws, all smiling contentedly. It's as if the world would finally feel at rest when there was "a place for everything, and everything in its place", and as if our own peace of mind depended on the inanimate objects around us.

In this, I kind of identified with my neighbour, who has a fully equipped and immaculate workshop, who can build and fix anything beautifully, and who is slightly OCD: I can just feel the profound sense of contentment he must feel when the work is perfect and everything is happily in its place. Not only do I, too, feel at ease when the house around me is neatly ordered, but also more productive; as if I have carved out a peaceful space in which I'm free to work.

So I guess what I'm doing in this poem is trying to encapsulate, in the hammering of a nail, Dunham's simple -- yet deeply affecting -- definition of happiness.

I like the personification of the tools. It starts in the first stanza, when I pretty much say it: "inanimate objects ...also reassured". But I think really works later on, when I show it, in a way that sneaks up on the reader: "almost happy in our work." And I think I got away with a shameless cliché, sneaking in "everything in its place ..." by splitting it. I needed that cliché, and couldn't have improved upon it, because it's the perfect distillation of this poem.

Bible Stories

Sept 27 2014

We live in biblical times.

I know,
muddling through daily life
hardly feels scriptural.
That heightened age
when God spoke, angels descended,
and Jesus and you
might have broken bread,

having no idea

what he’d make of himself.

But with biblical drought
in California
and Holy warriors
beheading infidels,

you could mistake the daily news

for the mythological.
Meanwhile

in a present-day Exodus

refugees flee 

the land of the Bible,
and false prophets proclaim 

Ebola's plague

the wrath of God.

Above all, there is cataclysmic warming
and we ignore it,
because what Creator would destroy
his own handiwork?

I do not believe in God,
but what a mistake
to have put my faith in men,
despairing
at the death of progress,
that common sense
is less common than rare.
That we are still superstitious, tribal
fatalist,
that our greed
knows no limit, or end.

What a conceit
to have imagined enlightenment.
When we could have had heaven on earth
but were far too quarrelsome,
and have now turned the planet
a version of hell.

It’s too late for prayer
to absolve us of sin,
and doing good
in the small things of life
seems hardly enough.
Not when the aquifers
we thought inexhaustible
have been pumped nearly dry,

the fields

are turning to dust.

Such a miraculous gift

wasted on us.


This is the second poem I've written on the last few months about the state of the world. I usually prefer microcosm to big ideas. But the accumulation of bad news is too much to bear without at least ventilating. So please excuse this self-indulgent departure, the misanthropy and despair.

I know, I know ...we always live in interesting times, history is never at an end, and atrocities have never stopped. And according to Harvard's Steven Pinker, violence has never been lower, and more people have never had it so good. But I don't think my despair is simply a result of too much media, of a media landscape that is instantaneous, ubiquitous, and catastrophizing. Things really do seem terrible!

And although I'm always more than willing to blame religion for all our sins, I now find myself unable to take refuge in humanism. Men disappoint me as much as God! Which, I guess, explains the second- and third-last stanzas.

I could have gone on with all the bad news. But I kept it to three: climate change, the mess in Syria and Iraq, and Ebola in western Africa. I think all three have resonance in scripture: especially in the story of Exodus, with its plagues, and its wrathful God. ("False prophets" and "the wrath of God" actually refer to something I heard cited as one factor in Ebola's uncontained spread: self-proclaimed preachers who proclaimed to an ingenuous and credulous public that Ebola was punishment for sin, and could be cured by prayer. It's also an indirect reference to the funeral rite of body-washing, a cultural/religious practice that has apparently been another major cause of transmission.)

What actually set me off was a photo essay in the New Yorker about the unprecedented drought in California. Meanwhile, coinciding with a major climate conference at the opening session of the UN General Assembly and with mass protests worldwide in favour of climate action, I saw some coverage of Republican Senators grilling a prominent climate scientist. Their ignorance was so appalling and abysmal and ideological, I felt like giving up. So I conclude the poem on that theme: climate change. When I say "doing good/ in the small things of life/ hardly seems enough", my point is that changes in personal lifestyle (such as drive less, don't eat meat) will not solve the problem: we need top-down systemic change.

When I wrote "and Jesus and you/ might have broken bread", I'm trying to illuminate the tension between the historical Jesus -- the man -- and the symbolic Jesus -- anointed a deity by his acolytes after his death. In "God speaking" and "angels descending", you get that traditional sense of Bible stories: something mythological, unreal, distant from us. The jarring invocation of Jesus as an everyday person wrenches us from that rarefied time and place back to now. Plagues and prophecies actually happened; and they could just as well happen now. We do, indeed, "live in biblical times".

As an atheist, a rationalist, a skeptic, I bristle when people talk about miracles. So, of course, my use of "miraculous" in the penultimate line is ironic. It was originally "marvellous"; but I couldn't resist the private self-indulgent taunt!

Religious language runs through the poem. There are plagues, prophets, infidels, and Holy warriors. There is heaven and hell, absolution and sin, faith and enlightenment. There is Exodus, and allusions to Noah's flood -- which fits well with rising sea levels, if not with the drought. So the poem hardly serves a fun purpose (actually, I'm not sure it has any purpose at all, other than ventilation and self-indulgence ;-) ); but at least it was fun to write!

                      

Tamarack

Sept 20 2014

The tamarack turns to gold

at the first hard frost.

An uncommon beauty, until its needles drop,

shed

in gentle showers

tinseling down.

In a breath of wind, the stroke of a hand

through soft sinewy branches.

Then stands, its thinness exposed

through a northern winter’s

frozen fastness.

A coniferous tree, but not evergreen

it looks like winter-kill,

skinny, shivering, plain.

But for a few weeks in fall

its golden crown is luminous,

commanding attention

like a radiant girl

in the bloom of youth.

Turning heads

amongst dark green pines,

the brittle leaves

of aspen.

I planted tamaracks

when I first landed here,

an exposed slope

in low scrub

and glacial soil.

Years on, they still look like gangly adolescents

who out-grew themselves,

long-limbed, and awkward

when their needles thin.

Glamorous, yes

in the glory of fall.

But practical, for a native of north,

shedding the heaviest snow

and supple enough

in a stiff nor-wester.

Come-from-aways, like me

they are now deeply rooted.

Have gamely survived

and will surely remain,

well past

my own brief tenure.

Another to add to my ever-lengthening list of "tree" poems. I recall so far celebrating the white pine, black spruce, aspen, and cedar; and a poem about a snag, that's home to birds, and a fallen giant, decomposing on the forest floor. I'm sure there were more.

But this time of year, one thinks of tamaracks (which also go by the less mellifluous "larch"). Because they are the only conifer that sheds its needles. And because there is something in the autumn light that makes them luminous, as if radiating from within. Their branches are thin, but with this sinewy elasticity that is both tough, and appealing to the touch. Their light green needles are soft, and become almost gossamer in fall. I suppose if we were further south, in maple country, the brilliant reds would catch the eye. But here, it's mostly aspen and evergreen: yellow leaves you only notice when they're back-lit, and thinning pines, with a sprinkling of dead brown needles.

I've always found the tamarack a lovely tree, and planted several when I moved in. A couple died, but the others have flourished. It seems to me that here, they're kind of halfway between native and exotic: there are infrequent stands, but you wonder if those were planted, not natural. And mine are the only ones in my immediate area. Either way, they fit in. Kind of like I do: a city kid, who much prefers the wilderness.

I like the combination of toughness and beauty that the poem evokes. And also the brief moment of brilliance, like youth's fleeting pulchritude.

I'm not a person of faith, and hardly an optimist: more skeptic, atheist, nihilist. But the act of planting a tree -- an act of deferred gratification, and which you know will out-live you -- can't help but express both optimism and faith. And the act also confers a powerful sense of connection: both across time, and to a place. I like the humility of the ending: how "brief tenure" suggests not just that our time is short, but that we are squatters, not owners; and how it further implies the utter indifference of nature to our presence. The relative permanence of the tree seems the strongest form of admiration for something that's tough, but -- "sinewy" ..."skinny" ..."shivering", not to mention "gangly" and "gamely" -- hardly looks it.

The Single Day
Sept 25 2014


This far north
it's always September.
The single day, the fortuitous hour
when the leaves are at their peak
and the sun is low,
so they seem to glow
with their own internal light.

And another
when the lawn is thick with leaves.
Crisply rustling
as you push your way through,
like a kid, in rubber boots
dragging his feet
kicking up showers.
Or whipped into windrows
in the lee of a fence, a tumble-down shed,
soft, against the house.
Before the first wet snow,
a cold matted mess
just as well left
until spring.

Fall is like a minor note
between summer's symphony
and winter's dirge,
a held breath
before the full-throated roar
of the self-important seasons.
Because looking back, or looking ahead
you might easily ignore
its fleeting brilliance;
the melancholy palette
of crimson, and rust,
the bittersweet scent
of woodsmoke.

You never know
when that day will come;
and when it does
only in retrospect.
The morning after
the day before,
when you notice the trees
have thinned just a bit,
the leaves
are a little more dull.


I'm starting to like fall the best. But its always a little neglected: like spring, a transitional season, sandwiched between the summer we wait for all year, and the foreboding imminence of winter. And this fleeting quality is reinforced by the brief height of its beauty: that single day all year, when the the leaves are perfect. And then the next, when a day late you realize that's it for fall. So in this poem, I'm trying to convey is a sense of impermanence, evanescence, the swiftness of time. And also how you must remain watchful, observant, and alert, or risk having the subtle beauties and small pleasures pass you by.

I can't tell you how challenging it is to write something that hasn't already been written about the autumn leaves. I began this with a feeling of resignation: along the lines of of "OK, I'll quickly jot something down, get this out of my system, and then move on to something clever and personal and utterly original." But having worked it more than a "quick jot", I'm pleased with having coaxed something fresh and interesting (I hope!) from the same old fall.

The first two lines were a big challenge. Because I thought that if I wrote anything at all like "autumn leaves" or "fall colours", most readers would immediately roll their eyes and turn the page. So I kind of like the concise and ambiguously alluring "This far north ..."; as well as the intentional misdirection of "it's always September", with its "when" left unsaid.

"...soft, against the house" was a kind of throwaway: just trying something out (almost as a place-holder) because I left "tumble-down shed" feeling it sounded incomplete, and needed another line. But I immediately liked this image: in trying to reinforce the sense of crisp weightless leaves, it needed nothing more than that single short simple word -- "soft" -- to contrast with the "cold matted mess" that comes next. I often over-write. But the best poetry is all about minimalism, compression, distillation: less is almost always more. So when I succeed at that, when I can discipline my tendency to pile on the words, I find it deeply satisfying. (Then I go and write a blurb like this, and get all that pent-up prolixity out of my system!)

I also like "self-important seasons". I think this nicely conveys the idea of two big swaggering seasons, and a modest fall, bracketed in between. I also like the accumulation of modifiers -- "minor note" ..."melancholy" ..."bittersweet" -- that I think help confer on fall its precious fleeting quality.

And it hardly needs saying that the kid in rubber boots is irresistible!

Ancient Lichen

Sept 16 2014

There is an ancient lichen

in Greenland’s glacial mud
that every hundred years
grows one centimetre.
Even the continents
drift faster,
as they jig-saw the map
we always imagined
eternal.

I take this on faith
like most scientific pronouncements.
Was it isotopes, growth rings
meticulous accounting?
Did someone draw a line
in the last century,
like a child's height
pencilled on the wall?
As if we actually talked
across time
listened to the past,
in the headlong rush
of science.

The breakneck clock
of a human life
from single cell, to death,
while this tiny plant
toils so slow
it seems inanimate.

Our frame of reference
imprisons us.
Too big or too small
and we are oblivious;
the magnitude of the cosmos
the expanse of time.

Perhaps there is strength
in give-and-take.
This co-habitation
of algae and fungus
that grows on rock,
seems to have solved the problem
of eternal life.

Except where the scientist walked
busily sampling, clambering up.
Did not notice
the dull green patch
scuffing the rock,
that slight dry crunch, underfoot
too soft to hear.


I read this in a short piece in The New Yorker today:

Stepping into the sticky Staten Island mud, she said, “When I was in Greenland, there was this glacial mud—someone had to pull me out.” She paused. “There are map lichens in Greenland that grow one centimetre every hundred years. Just think about that in human terms: imagine if, in your whole life span, your main accomplishment was to grow one centimetre. Continents drift away faster than that!" (The article is Survivors, by Raffi Khatchadourian, and it's about photographer Rachel Sussman's book and exhibition The Oldest Living Things in the World. ...The attached pic is generic, btw -- to add a bit of colour -- and has nothing to do with her work.)

I loved that comparison so much I couldn't resist stealing it. So, if I want to be ungenerous, the best part of the poem is plagiarized. Or, being generous, borrowed ...an homage ...research! In the New Yorker piece, there are references to a 13,000 year old South African forest that was recently bulldozed for a road; a 3500 year old tree in Orlando accidentally incinerated by meth heads; a 13,000 year old oak in California growing next to mounds of garbage; cordgrass on a polluted Staten Island beach that dates back to the recession of the glaciers; and a bacteria that has so far lived for half a million years. She never specifies the age of the lichen, but I took the liberty of presuming that it was similarly ancient.

I've obliterated patches of lichen innumerable times, clambering over the rocks of the Canadian shield. Even if not so old as in the poem, they too grow painfully slowly. So there is a kind of irreverence, a human-centred solipsism, in this unmindful action.

I've written before on this idea of things that hide in plain sight. Of how we are blinkered by our order of magnitude, our conception of time; and so either miss, or find incomprehensible, anything that doesn't conform to our scale: the slow unfolding of the cosmos; the invisible goings-on of undiscovered micro-organisms, as well as the intricate machinery of cells, molecules, atoms.

According to Webster's, lichens are plants. But they're actually symbiotic organisms composed of both fungi and algae. Evolution isn't always rapacious predation. It's also co-existence and co-operation. What a contrast to modern society, which seems to be based on speed and competition. So lichens are nice stand-ins for the "slow" movement, as well as for collaboration: the slowing of food, of so-called progress, of consumption. While we are "breakneck" and "headlong", the lichen is "ancient", "eternal", and almost "inanimate".

I don't really equate science with faith. And if any of us are patient observers and respect the past, it's scientists. But when I listen dizzily to cosmologists and sub-atomic physicists, it does feel like an act of faith. The scale of time and magnitude in which they dwell defies comprehension. I nod my head knowingly, but really have no idea!

Swimming in the Rain
Sept 14 2014


Swimming in the rain
on a summer day.
Laden clouds, in a blue-rinse sky.
Sudden light
cleansed of all impurities.

The sizzling sound of rain
on a windless lake,
and an inch from my eyes
pin-cushion drops,
circles merging, cancelling out.

Hard weather, extinguished

by simply dropping my head,

a submarine world

that’s sublimely still.

Boundaries grow soft
in summer rain,

categories less certain.

Where water and air, dry and wet

seamlessly merge.
Where I could easily forget
to surface, take breath,
which direction

to shore.

The blurred line
where land and lake intersect,

rising and falling

with reassuring steadiness.

Like a beating heart,

the lake

its brooding body.

Where I emerge

from water into water

warm, and wet, and slick.
An amphibious creature

breathing through its skin.

Signals From Space
Sept 12 2014


I live at the end of the road
on the verge of a forest
where I could easily lose myself
a few minutes in
to its dark wet interior,
perhaps the first man to see
its unmapped vastness.

Hammered to the wall of my house
is a small device
that picks up signals from space,
a lifeline
from the glimmering lights
of the big metropolis
somewhere south.

I have never seen
the bristling satellite
that keeps me in touch.
Stationed
in low earth orbit,
where it's high enough to see
the cold blackness
of interstellar space,
the blinding sun
burst from behind the planet,
this luminous blue-and-green sphere
that must seem even more rare, and fragile
from the airless void.

But it does not look, of course,
too busy transmitting game shows
to outposts like this.

Or perhaps I have had a glimpse.
Looking up, on a cloudless night
from boreal darkness
at a star-filled sky,
a tiny point of light
near the southern horizon
I could easily mistake
for a distant sun.
One, among billions and billions.

Its reassuring stream
of electromagnetic waves
is thin as spider-silk.
My connection
to the rest of the world
as easily cut.

I recently signed up for a satellite dish. Instead of 3 stations over the air on rabbit-ears, I am suddenly in touch with a busy noisy colourful world that goes for 24 hours non-stop. TV can be brilliant; but there is no escaping the vacuity, the breathless self-importance, and the shameless consumerism of most of the medium, as we hypnotically distract ourselves to death.

That small dish, and its tenuous stream of electromagnetic waves, can seem incongruous, even ironic, sharpening the difference between the profane and profound. There is the contrast between the real physical environment here, and the world the dish exposes. There is the feeling of invincible power our technology gives us, when in fact our civilization could quickly disintegrate, as every civilization before us has -- as easily as that thin tenuous signal, instantly snuffed out. There is this super-sophisticated high-tech precision machinery, all dedicated to transmitting mostly junk. There is a brilliant star in a breath-taking night sky, which is really just a small orbiting box, almost close enough to touch. I think of the almost transcendent experience of astronauts, describing their privileged sojourn in low earth orbit -- watching the sun rise from behind the planet; on a space-walk looking out at total blackness, with nothing between them and deep interstellar space; looking down from on-high at a borderless planet, and feeling filled by its beauty and fragility -- and how the opportunity is wasted on this dumb metallic box.

So a lot of thoughts spring to mind when I glance at this small dish, hammered on to the southern wall of my house. But I can't give it up. Seinfeld re-runs to my heart's content? Really, how could anyone?!!

Downward Cow

Sept 11 2014

Cows graze

cropping the field.

Powerful jaws

crushing, working

circling methodically,

turning succulent grass

to greenish pulp.

They gaze, glassily,

fully occupied

by this basic task.

All facing one way

as if telepathic;

if not a thundering herd, then a shuffling one,

reassured by the simple fact

of presence.

They are a study in permanence.

Great rectangular lumps,

solidly anchored, in rolling pasture

scattered about

in twos and ones.

A mottled black and white,

with sagging guts, and bony flanks

angling oddly outward.

In a downward cow

noses grazing, tails swishing,

rhythmically flicking

at flies.

No one wonders

at the inner life of cows.

We assume she’s simple enough,

bovine, contented

incurious,

thinking only

of the moveable feast

that fills her day.

With big brown eyes

that are gentle, accepting,

but hardly empathic

or deep.

She chews, sleeps, drinks

eliminates,

fuelling the grass

on which she feeds.

A virtuous circle

perfectly closed.

I read a personal essay that had to do with cows, and the image of grazing cows stuck: especially the impression of permanence, contentment, bovine complacency. The surprising thing in the essay was the depth of feeling the cow expressed for her stillborn calf -- the grief, the unfilled longing. Of course, one is left wondering whether this is all the anthropomorphic projection of the writer's own feelings, or a true inner life we rarely perceive.

I think I once read something about scientists studying just this: do cows all tend to face the same way? (Why anyone would research this, I have no idea!) As I recall, the answer was "no". But I liked the image. And I liked using it as a signifier of conformity, of herd mentality. But even more, I liked the way it conveys the comfort of belonging, of knowing your place.

Anyway, there is a lot to be said for no ambition, for being in the moment, and for paying attention to the basic diurnal pleasures of life. And for living harmoniously with the natural world, instead of always taking from it.

I find the ending of this poem very satisfying. The neat closing of the circle leaves me with a sense of simplicity and completion. The resonance of “virtuous” with “perfect”, along with the doubling down on meaning, has me picturing a smiling Buddha, delighted with the world.

Who knew it was possible to write a well-mannered poem about cow excrement? Whatever happened to beauty and truth?!!

Keeping Time
Sept 9 2014


I am keeping time,
as time
slips just out of reach.

A leaky tap's
drip-drip-drip.
A finger, relentlessly jabbing
right between the eyes.
My heart, contracting
like a miraculous wind-up toy,
imperceptibly running down.

The sweeping hands
of the wall-clock,
endlessly circling
steadily keeping track.
Blinking digits, flitting past,
as if numbers
were inexhaustible.

Every cell of my body
contains its own molecular clock.
Strands of DNA
fraying, unravelling,
the metabolism
of night and day
synchronized by light.

I try to take
slow deep breaths.
Go back, in my head,
but time is inexorable,
propelling me on.

The hour chimes, cuckoo frets
steeple bell tolls,
wrist-watch, pocket-fob
always running slow.
And a ships' chronometer
among the many curiosities
in the old clock-maker's shop,
walls festooned, shelves crowded
counters overflowed.
On the hour, going-off
in tinkles, trills
jingle-jangles,
beeps and rings and blasts.
And a single hourglass,
silky sand
slipping through its narrow waist.

I try to keep time, accurately,
frantically grabbing
at this thing that has
no charge, or mass, or rate.

Direction
its only known quantity.

I try keeping time
as it slips out of reach.


We're surrounded by clocks. And even when we're not, the passage of time is pressing and unavoidable: the shortening days, the exigencies of meals and work and sleep. It's hardly original to observe that our modern lives are governed by time.

I was reading about contact made with another "lost" tribe in the Amazon, and thought about how our sense of time is so culturally determined, and how the concept of time might seem so very different for a small subsistence people like this. I was listening to a podcast about dinosaurs, and how a study of their long bones can -- like tree rings -- roughly determine age. Shortly after that I began to read a review of David Mitchell's new novel The Bone Clocks, and thought how his title resonated with what I’d just heard about actual bones and their biological clock. I recalled how molecular biologists can construct an evolutionary clock by comparing mutations in DNA, and how every cell has its own internal clock that governs its activity, as well as its predestined senescence. A multitude of clocks, within and without. There are very few clock-makers left, and a clock these days (like most everything else!) is rarely worth repairing; but I nevertheless had this persisting image of an old shop full of beeping blinking chiming clocks, signalling the hour all at once. ...So it seemed as good a time as any to write something about clocks. And as you can see, some of those thoughts actually made it into the eventual poem!

I noodled around with taking time and biding time and saving time, and then the was struck with the paradox of "keeping" time: as if you could stop time long enough to hold it; as if the time you saved you'd get back in the end. So the irony of "keeping time" was my entry into the poem, and I let it take me by the hand from there.

There are lots of little touches I like in this poem. But I think the one that keeps working with each re-reading is the hourglass. I quite like how the detail and cacophony (believe me, I tried to get that word in there!) of that small crowded shop so unexpectedly gives way to this simple device, the sharp contrast of all that sound and busyness with the implied silence of "silky sand/ slipping through its narrow waist".

Death Notices
Sept 7 2014


The obituary page invites me
to celebrate lives,
join in remembering,
give to a worthy cause.

The deceased are often pictured
in the prime of life,
women, posed like starlets
strong and dashing men.
So even a "good" death
of people I've never met

is unexpectedly affecting.

And the litany of descendants
branching, spreading
down to a fourth generation, at best;
mourners far too young
to yet make sense of death.

I notice it's the relationships
that come first.
The jobs and titles and honours
are mostly postscript,
in the end, matter less.
So did he, too
think he was indispensable,
regret
so much time spent at work?

How tragic I feel
when they die young;
or at least, younger than me.
Cold dread
at life's randomness,
which has never, in truth, been fair.
And each year, my own mortality
getting less and less
hypothetical.

Because death notices

is also a verb,

and I can see the grim reaper

turning my way.

The newspaper
lives for only a day;
then, like all old news
the obits get tossed.
Lives rudely ended,
and now
their final moment gone;
fading portraits, on yellowing paper
face-down in the dark.

While the living go on
to view the newest dearly departed
on a freshly printed page.
An endless parade, passing before us
of accomplishment, suffering
love.

It is consoling to believe
the circle of life goes on,
that our passing bequeaths
its own inscrutable meaning.
But sobering, to think
that a brief note
in a daily paper
is likely our last hurrah.
That despite the best of intentions
memory soon expires
as busy lives press on.


There is something poignant about an obituary in the daily paper. And metaphorical, as well. Because a daily paper is so transient and disposable: it becomes old and useless with tomorrow's fresh one; and in short order, the very newsprint self-destructs. So there is almost a feeling of obligation: that I have to stop and read each entry, honour each life. Because that is it -- the last hurrah, and now the rest of us will all move on with the urgency and busyness of daily life. The most accomplished life ends this way: a small entry, in a daily paper; and after it's tossed, who knows what tiny fragment of memory will remain.

With my philosophical tendency toward nihilism, I have an especially hard struggle with the meaningfulness of a life. So seeing this parade of lives, all these final acts of remembrance, balled-up and tossed in the trash (symbolically, anyway, since I now read on an iPad!), my feeling of insignificance is reinforced. The last hurrah. Now ended, as if it never was.

I find that as I've aged, I've gone from flipping past the obits, to a quick glance, and now a more studied reading. I look for familiar names. I notice, soberingly, how more and more were born after me. And when they've died at a ripe old age, I find arresting the pictures of vivacious women and strong men, taken in the prime of life. After all, I'm sure this is how they pictured themselves, no matter how the rest of us saw them. And I like to think that their grandchildren will do a double-take, never having imagined that old person as anything else: the women, in their vintage hairdos; the men in uniform, or formal dress, or as weekend warriors, in fishing vests and favourite hats.

When a person dies old, and in their time, it seems less tragic. The call to mourn by celebrating a life makes sense. But when they die young, I see the hopeful picture of a young woman or man, and feel the cruel weight of death.

(Actually, the final episode of that great HBO series Six Feet Under was the most powerful thing I've ever seen or read in evoking this deeply affecting sense of poignancy. The hopefulness of the young adult setting off alone on a cross-country drive to a new uncertain life, inter-cut with all the characters in their final moments -- people we've come to know so well, so suddenly and convincingly aged, in some vaguely familiar future -- was utterly unforgettable. Please don't try to tell me that television is all low culture, or a waste of time. Admittedly, most is. But something like this is high art; perhaps even more noteworthy because of its technical complexity and collaborative nature. To produce art by committee, and where so much can go wrong, is especially impressive to a simple poet: who works alone, and only requires a pencil and a flat surface. Or as little as a good memory and some free time!)

The original title was Old News. I like “News” being pulled back to its original intent, and so the inherent tension in the phrase. On the other hand, it’s not really that original. So I considered alternate titles, and the obvious was to be completely straight – no misdirection, no cleverness, no lifting of a favourite line – and go with the simple Obits or Obituary. Any other word for it …?, I wondered. Death Notices, of course. I like how a little tweak in the language centre of my brain converts a heading into a sentence, complete with its proper noun and unornamented verb. And how those two words suddenly take on a different and very sinister quality.

The Semiotics of Hats
Sept 6 2014


My new hat, I flatter myself
proclaims good taste
frugal practicality.

Its broad brim
has an elegant snap.
Its dome is ventilated, lightweight,
so it does not sit
heavy as a crown on the head of state,
but breezy as a cap
on a sovereign man,
who is more often than not
ungovernable.
And a chin-strap
that makes me feel like a little child
sent outside to play,
woollen mittens tied
snow-suit snugly zipped.

Admittedly, this is not at all cool.
It proclaims to the world
I am middle-aged.
Sensibly sun-safe,

and well past the age

of backward ball-caps

poseur berets,

of pork-pies, fedoras
and any ironic form

of hipster headgear.

A well-recognized brand

that neatly broadcasts
white, middle class
conventional.

Which I protest,
imagining myself too original
to dress like them,

a free-thinker, bumbling along
happily oblivious

to fashion.

But whatever happens
this hat will serve me well.
The withering sun, repelled,
receding hairline
well-hidden.
Its generous brim
tipped down over my eyes
as I gaze, inscrutably

out into the world.
A man of a certain age
suitably accessorized.

This is my second "hat" poem, and I find them both delightful. What is it about hats that invites word play and whimsy?!! (And not only that, but I actually managed to use the word "accessorized" in a poem. Which is something, since it's not a word I've ever come even close to using in real life!)

Anyway, if you haven't guessed, it is of course a "Tilley". And I realize that this hat allows the world to immediately size me up, pigeon-holed into -- as the poem goes -- nicely "middle-aged", as well as "white, middle class, conventional". It doesn't matter than I'm not. Conventional, that is. Or that I didn't buy it to fit in, but because it's practical and well-made.

The chin strap does make me feel silly. But the lightness is delightful, and the extra-broad brim perfect for summer.

And in the right social circle, it is even fashionable. Which might be a first for me. Because, as I've written before, I am not only oblivious, I revile the whole notion of fashion: what it means in terms of status-seeking, conformity, and wasteful obsolescence. So I console myself that being fashionable depends on intent: if it comes about by accident, then it's more like children playing dress-up with an old chest of clothes. And console myself, as well, that elegant and timeless good taste supersedes mere fashion.

After writing and posting this, I decided to share it with the Tilley hat people. Here's what I wrote:

My old Tilley hat - classic cotton duck -- was recently retired after approximately 20 years of loyal service. In its place, I purchased a new Lightweight Mesh.

There are certain risks in sporting a Tilley hat, because it says something of the wearer: that one is of a certain age ...that one has aspirations of being fashionable ...and that this elegant head-covering is a mere distraction from the receding hairline underneath.

Nevertheless, I quite like my new Tilley hat. And it inspired a poem, which I'm pleased to share with you.

Enjoy ...

Good Wood
Sept 4 2014


When I say good wood
I mean well-seasoned
true-grained.

So it splits straight.
A single blow, a heavy axe
keen blade gleaming.
A solid crack,
so dry
it almost rings.

Hardwood burns long, and hot
to incandescent coals,
a warm red glow
through the stove's
tempered glass.
I prefer silver birch
black ash.

Softwood is fast,
thick
with branches, and knots.
Pockets of sap
that sizzle, and pop,
flare-up
in tiny supernova.

Fire season is home, and hearth,
an antidote
to darkness.
The woodpile, prepared
chimney swept.
The scent
of fresh cut wood.
A log, that burns
too hot to smoke.

A hundred years of sun
to grow this tree,
released
in a single night.
A hundred summers, the stuff of stars
in bone-deep heat
and dancing light.


A purely descriptive poem, that verges on the sentimental. I tend to feel that a poem like this is unworthy: too easy; too much an exercise in language, rather than meaning.

And I've written previously about this idea of all those seasons of energy released in a single night, of the concentrated sunlight in a piece of wood. So not only am I being self-indulgent, I'm also plagiarizing myself!

On the other hand, the wordplay is terrific fun. And it's challenging to keep it simple; to keep it short, yet rich; to evoke nostalgia in readers who heat with wood, while painting an exact and compelling picture for those who don't. And to toy with cliché, yet somehow not descend to it.

Why was I thinking about splitting wood? A couple of things.

A friend of mine has been keeping me apprised of her autumn woodpile odyssey. She got a deal on black ash, and was marvelling on its straight true grain. This makes splitting wood a joy. I use mostly birch, which is also pretty good. And then I read a piece about a completely different subject. But in it, someone was building a dug-out canoe. Out of oak. He mentioned the quality of concentration required, especially with the first blow of the axe: a misplaced cut risks splitting the entire log. I found thus preposterous: a wood as hard and fine-grained as oak? I would imagine it's almost impossible to split! So, needless to say, splitting wood was on my mind. ...Not to mention my barely disguised envy for that prime black ash!

And something else. Today, the snap of fall was in the air. Soon, it will be wood-burning season. My woodpile is ready. So I have that smugly snug and cozy feeling of being well-prepared. Seems as good a time as any for a poem about wood piles and woodstoves.

I'm conflicted about the title. Which isn't at all unusual. I think a good alternative would be "A Hundred Summers". Or better still "A Hundred Years of Summer".

Rough Draft
Sept 3 2014


If I am to be charitable
toward the first half of my life
I will see it not as failure, or waste
but as a rough draft.

The fearlessness
of the first word, on a blank page.
The blind canyons
I stumbled into
and back-tracked out.
Whole paragraphs, excised
with heavily-inked lines,
like badly chosen lovers
and disappointed wives.

The sanitized version
I present to the world
papers over the bad,
like a great metropolis
built on the ruins
of cities past.
Layer upon layer
of clay tablets, vellum manuscripts,
first editions
inscribed by hand.
Of ledgers and lists
and scribbled scraps.

Should I rip the whole thing up,
re-invent myself
learn from the past?
Or is change impossible,
and the rough drafts, I've diligently saved
the map I follow
over-and-over again?

Yellowing sheets

riddled with chicken-scratch,
that preserve the history
of the creative act.
Do they detract
from the appearance of effortlessness?
Or do they show just how hard it is;
what an accomplishment
to have simply lived?


I was reading a column by Elizabeth Renzetti (I think in the Sept 1 2014 Globe and Mail) about how we should reframe the concept of failure: that it should celebrated, instead of stigmatized and concealed, since most success is built on failure; and that we should consciously teach kids how to fail well, instead of fearfully protecting their presumably frail self-esteem. Because -- in the spirit of "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger" -- protecting them makes them less resilient, not more.

There was a line that went something like "we should regard our failures as rough drafts": necessary steps on the way to success. As a writer, this idea of the rough draft struck a chord with me, and I thought "...well, why not regard the whole first half of my life as a rough draft, and use it to start over, do better?" Certainly no reason not to, if it's as easy as balling up a piece of paper and tossing it in the trash -- which I do, all the time. ...Unfortunately, it turns out that changing the habits of a lifetime, let alone one's temperament and personality, are a lot harder than re-writing a line of poetry! (And not to mention that if it's literally the first "half", I'm destined to live to the ripe old age of 118!)

I also recently read (in a piece by Adrienne La France, in the on-line Atlantic Weekly of Aug 31 2014) about a fellow (Paul Moran) who for years compulsively rifled through John Updike's garbage (set out at the curb for collecting), and was able to preserve rough drafts that would otherwise have been lost (among lots of other ephemera -- shopping lists mixed in with rare manuscripts!), with all their telling insertions and crossed-out lines and marginal comments. I love that kind of artifact. It gives unparalleled insight not only into the creative act, but into the application and craft that go into making a masterful piece of writing appear effortless. It's always encouraging to another writer to see the clumsy first attempt at what would eventually become a famous and oft-quoted line.

I write first drafts, as well as the initial revisions, in pen on paper. But subsequent editing is done with screen and keyboard, so all the intermediate steps are unrecoverable. I sometimes keep the rough draft, though. I admit this sheepishly, because for what other reason would I do such a thing except out of a hubristic sense of posterity: as if I had in mind my literary biographer in some hypothetical future. (Note to literary biographer: I think they've all by now been lost!)

It was the conflation of these two streams of thought -- the saved ephemera of a famous writer's life, the exalted status of the rough draft -- that led me to this poem.

I should make clear that there are no "wives"; or wife, for that matter. As always, this is not auto-biography. Actually, my life regrets mostly concern the things I haven't done. This is understandable, in my case: I've tended to live quietly, to be more of an observer than an actor, and to have missed some of the assumed rites of passage and developmental stages that are common landmarks in more conventional lives. But I think regret over failures of omission rather than commission is the rule. Because the tendency with a hypothetical choice is to visualize an idealized outcome; while the choices we actually made have measurable and known outcomes. When you're measuring yourself against perfection, it's hard to win.

My 10th grade teacher referred to my penmanship as "chicken-scratch". My handwriting, as is usually the case, has degenerated even further as I've aged. So this bastardized version of cursive and printed is all me, the caution about auto-biography notwithstanding!

The penultimate stanza refers to the difficulty of change. But the final stanza responds to that with a kind of self-acceptance: if not using failure as an engine of change, at least acknowledging it, taking ownership, trying not to repeat mistakes. (Although to have "simply lived", admittedly, sets a very low bar: as if basic survival were enough!)

I had the inspired thought of taking a picture of the first rough draft of this poem. I think it came out legibly enough. (Actually, the bad light and high contrast help: it has the look of something archival and almost iconic, of a fluid thing -- thought -- unexpectedly fixed; the way I reacted seeing Lincoln's scribbled and roughly corrected draft of Gettysburg.) I've included it here: a chance -- as that old reliable exam question has it -- to "contrast and compare" the original with the finished version. There is no rough draft of this blurb, however: it was written directly onto the computer, and all its revisions have long since disappeared into the black hole of cyberspace. (Where I'm sure they happily co-exist with lost socks and unlucky pennies!)

Daily Walk
Aug 31 2014


As if the sidewalk
were a treacherous river
edged by shallows and rocks,
the elderly couple
stick close to the middle
on their daily walk.

They are annoyingly slow,
an obstacle, in the pre-occupied flow
of busy commuters,
heads turning, eyes averted,
scowling, swerving
hurrying on.
Unstoppably, like water going downstream,
parting, and merging
seamlessly.

Holding on
like life-lines.
She, whose vision is blurred,
and he, who leans against her

hobbling awkwardly

on a gimpy hip.
Who never fell out of love
with city life,
the speed, and sense of purpose,
the ease
getting by on foot.

Once, there was a dog.
Now, alone on their walks
they share solitude
rarely talk.
Has the elderly couple
run out of things to say?
Or is speech superfluous,
the presence of the other
enough?

Soon, she will be gone.
And he will walk, unaccompanied
until the day he drops.
In the street, most probably,
as if caught in the rapids, and swamped
by the very rocks
he tried to avoid.
An ambulance, blocking traffic,
gawkers, crowding close.
A spot of turbulence
in the rush of passers-by,
until the sidewalk
resumes its steady flow.

An old man
trapped in an eddy, circling round and round,
who knew, somehow
it was time to go.


There was an interesting piece by Adam Gopnik in the latest New Yorker (Sept 1 2014 - the cleverly titled Heaven's Gaits: What We Do When We Walk) that made me want to write a poem about walking. He distinguishes between the flaneur, the perambulator, and the peripatetic. Most fascinating was his description of the marathon walking contests of the late 19th century, which recalled to me the dance contests of the Depression in the early 20th. Both were more about sleep-deprived exhaustion than sport: walking or dancing until they drop, and the morbid fascination of the voyeuristic watchers. Which isn't at all different than the spectators of motor-sport who go to see cars crash.

I think the definition of a city is a place that is walkable. By this logic, Los Angeles isn't and New York is: a place with the density and amenities to favour the walker over the driver. (Thunder Bay, where I live, is most definitely not!) Which made me think of an elderly couple, who can remain self-sufficient so much longer in a downtown of intersecting sidewalks, of bodegas and corner stores, than they can in a place of wide roadways and long empty blocks; or in a suburb of cul-de-sacs and dead-end streets.

The metaphor of the river is what kept this interesting, and fun. The unconscious choreography of crowds is very much like a river, or a school of fish, a flock of birds: how it parts, and converges, moving with a kid of collective unspoken intelligence. I saw this elderly couple in the middle of a quickly moving stream of people, and let the poem take me from there.

My favourite part is "shar(ing) solitude", which I stole from Gopnik, who in turn quotes Frederic Gros, whose book is -- among others -- the subject of Gopnik's piece. It contains the idea of a couple who have grown old together: that level of mutual comfort that doesn't need to be cemented with words. And also the idea of the philosophical walk: that you can be side by side, yet still experience a kind of solitude of thought.

I think "annoyingly" broke two of my cardinal rules of poetry: one being no adverbs (or as few as humanly possible); and the other being "show it, don't say it". Especially in this case, since I do go and show it in the rest of the stanza. So I probably should have dropped "annoyingly" altogether. On the other hand -- despite the hectoring of my internal editor -- "annoyance" is such a perfect word for this, I couldn't let it go. After which I let discipline go all to hell, bracketing the last sentence of that same stanza between “unstoppably” and “seamlessly”, then echoing the sound in the next with “awkwardly”.

An attentive reader will notice how I managed to shoe-horn a dog into the poem. An indulgence, I know. Just wondering if it now qualifies as one of my "dog poems". Is a passing mention enough?!!