Felled

Nov 28 2015

The road

badly overgrown.

Trailing vines, like trip-wires

branches lash my eyes.

I bulldoze through,

stumbling

on weathered rocks

camouflaged with dirt,

gnarled roots

that knuckle-up from earth.

Weeds colonize openings

trees compete for light.

And in the cool gloom of the forest floor

opportunistic plants

plant their flags;

wild flowers

papering the ground like confetti

after the victory parade.

When it became impassable

we abandoned the road

and the forest took it back.

How nature encroaches

on the works of man,

our conceits are subsumed in soil.

Leaving nothing

to tell of us.

Except a few scattered stumps

level as table-tops,

felled trees

crumbling into rot.

Where new growth

sprouts from their trunks,

black ants

scurry in long sinuous columns.

Claim as their own

a no-man's-land

of waterlogged bark

shattered heartwood.

I share a very long driveway with 3 neighbours. It's technically their land, and I depend on an easement for access. I bought this place about 17 years ago, but only just now learned that my predecessor here had gone to great expense to build his own road on his own land. Did he dislike being dependent on others? Or did he simply have a walking- and ski-trail in mind?

Not only did I never know this, I've never seen any residue of this abandoned road. So I plan to explore, and see what -- if any -- evidence is left. In the meantime, I let my imagination have free reign, and came up with this poem.

I like the density of exuberant first growth. I like bulldoze, which calls back kind of ironically to the forgotten builders. I like the martial theme: our "war" on nature , that nature won. And I like the final line, shattered heartwood: I can hear the echo of "broken heart", and with it a quality of rueful remembrance and pained regret.

Inexorable nature vs. the hubris of man: hardly a new theme for me. And conveniently depicted by ants: who, like the proverbial cockroach, will probably inherit the earth. This is also the point of view I'm most partial to: microcosm and close observation; directing my gaze to the smallest of things.

I chose Felled as the title because it's an unusual word; especially when read alone, without context. I like a cryptic title: it invites the reader in, if only to find out what's up. And I think it directs the emphasis of the poem to the ending, which is just where it should go: to the tiny world of ants, the rotting heartwood.

Door

Nov 25 2015

The door was double-hinged

swinging in, as well as out.

It took all my weight, shouldering against.

Then whispered swiftly shut

with a soft pneumatic hiss.

Was that a click,

tumblers falling

locking cogs enmeshed?

And looking out

through the small glass pane

I saw only my face, looking back.

The darkness of night

a mirror's silvered paint.

Triple-glazed

and reinforced with mesh

it seemed unbreakable.

The massive door

I shouldered against,

that let me in

this windowless space.

Stale air

with a vaguely chemical scent.

No exit

despite what they say

about fate, surrender,

trust.

Impatience

trying me.

Thinking

I cannot wait.

                           …I must.

                                                …I will.

I read an article about a man (Abbas Kairostami) who has spent years photographing doors, and whose work is on exhibition at the Aga Khan museum (in Toronto). These are not ordinary doors. They're doors with character and the patina of age, the kind of massive wooden doors and dilapidated doors and doors with stories to tell that you'd see on some ancient building in the Middle East, or sub-Saharan Africa. The pictures were beautiful, and made me think that the lowly utilitarian door was worthy of a poem.

At my new pool, there is a hydraulic door that at first caught me by surprise: if I don't lean all my weight pushing against it, it will snap shut, throw my balance off.

Somehow, the image and the experience conflated, and gave rise to this poem.

I was thinking of the old adage: when a door closes behind you, a window opens. And maybe something about a gilded cage, as well.

The poem can also be read metaphorically: something about life choices and bridges burned, about self-fulfilling prophecies and dead ends. Is he locked in, or locked out? Did he cage himself?

The poem ends with perseverance, the indomitable life force: as in Beckett's Godot, when there is no choice in life, we simply go on.

Wrestling Cable

Nov 23 2015

Copper cable, thick as my wrist

in its black glistening skin

was stiff with cold.

Electricians

wrestling cables

through boxes, conduits, holes,

plugging-in

naked wires.

The switch flicks

the line goes live.

Copper hums

its confined Niagara

of easy power.

Do electrons race

at the speed of light

along its copper strands?

Or do they nudge one another

on down the line

telegraphing the wave;

how excitement

becomes a contagion?

Insulation stripped, virgin metal exposed

revealing its rich coppery tone,

lighter than gold, but even more lustrous.

Too beautiful, I thought

to enclose in a lightless box.

While the old cables

are dull.

Electricity, or age

has depleted their brightness.

But still

copper is inexhaustible;

not one atom stripped,

no dark corrosion

corrupting its length.

And still conducting a fatal shock

easy as fingers

flick off, and on.

The electrician was hooking up my new generator today. Holding a light for him, I joked that if he decided to be an electrician because there was no hard physical labour involved, he apparently chose badly!

This is a job I would never volunteer for. Electricity scares me.

When the insulation was stripped and the virgin copper exposed, I was struck by its beauty:  a rich bright copper colour, lighter than gold, but even more lustrous.

The old wires made me wonder, as well. Decades of use have not left them brittle or corroded. And despite the many millions of volts that have passed through them, it appears not a single atom has burned away. Copper gives, yet remains pure and undiminished.

Although unintended, I think an attentive reader might find a sexual metaphor running through the poem. Consider stiff with cold …naked wires (I’ll discreetly ignore plugging-in!) …confined …easy …excitement and contagion …stripped and virgin and exposed. And finally dark(ness) and corrupt(ion).  …Or maybe it’s not so much attentiveness as it is the mind of the beholder!

Tropical Blood

Nov 19 2915

Her tropical blood.

Salt-water thin

ran hot.

Her sumptuous skin,

cool

as loosely woven cloth.

As if her body could breathe

through every supple inch;

a small amphibious creature

in its permeable cover.

Her languid grace

in the indolent heat.

Sultry eyes, half shut

like a permanent act of seduction.

No wonder why

she never would be rushed.

And her sun-bleached hair

that was untamable

in the swampy warmth, equatorial rains.

Which I had always loved,

she struggled to straighten.

Who followed me north,

but only once.

Unbearable cold

that clutched at her throat

left her gasping for air.

Ice-picks, piercing her heart

like hard tungsten steel.

You’d think a tropical flower

would last in the cold,

unaccustomed, though it is.

Fresh

as a gaudy orchid

in the florist’s glass-walled fridge.

Or cool jasmine’s

undetectable scent,

volatile atoms at rest.

Yet still, she refused to stay;

fleeing winter

at the first cold blast.

As if she had known

the moment she arrived.

When the heavy door hissed open

and she stood, looking out.

As if she couldn’t help herself.

Like a butterfly, migrating south,

her gossamer wings unfolded

and she fluttered into flight.

Erratic, but sure,

tacking left, then right

and heading straight for the light.

The subject was originally a "he". I was thinking of Jo-Jo, a man I met in Turks and Caicos (my sister-in-law's handyman and all-round Mr. Fix-it). He was raised in the Philippines, and had lived all his life in the tropics. I complained of the heat. He recounted his only visit to Canada. It had been in the fall, and hardly up north: but the cold hit him with physical force as he stepped off the plane, and he never could get warm. I think I understood, because a northerner gets a similar feeling stepping through the airplane door into that heavy tropical air. It's like crossing a 2-dimensional boundary. The muggy atmosphere seems to have a substance you never noticed before.

But the poem was far more interesting when it envisioned a woman instead. And then, what would be more natural than to make her flight from the arctic chill a metaphor for lost love and disillusion? I think the end gives pause. The butterfly's wings recapitulate the delicate beauty of the flowers. But they also recall a moth: helplessly attracted to light, but risking immolation as well.

Mongrel Colour

Nov 15 2015

How odd, the purity of white.

The creamy porcelain saucer

the virgin bride.

Black ink

messily penned

on a blank absorbent sheet,

neutral, mute, serene

in its acceptance.

The wedding bed, deflowered;

stained red

sluiced clean.

Because it's a mongrel colour

of all visible light;

difference subsumed

in inexplicable white.

Combining pigment

you get brown, drab, dead.

But light is cleansed

of all impurity,

vaulting through the universe

to its ultimate edge,

pushing-out against

the black abyss.

Muscle Memory

Nov 13 2015

The secret was

not to think too much

or think at all.

Not of broken bolts, frayed rope.

Of a flayed body,

rag-dolling down

the face of rock.

Not of the rapture

of a man-sized speck,

the rarefied beauty

of thinning air.

And never of death;

because the moment was all.

I remember the ball-player

who lost his mojo, throwing to first

when the arm got in his head.

Gravity, friction

the arc of the ball,

the point of release

the perfect toss.

The inscrutable art

of the emptied mind.

The things you can

and can't control.

Finger-tips jammed

in a seam of rock.

The point of release

where the bolt let go.

I was reading a short article (by Nathaniel Rich, in the Nov 2015 Atlantic) about the world's most famous free-climber, Alex Honnold. (The occasion was his new auto-biography, Alone on the Wall.) He is an elite extreme athlete, solo-climbing without ropes. His accomplishments are astounding; his lack of fear, even more so. There was a lot about focus and risk-taking. I briefly wondered if he might have a disorder of his amygdala: that he is neurologically wired for fearlessness. But I thought even more about his ability not to think: "non-thinking", as the piece put it. Because I over-think too much, and could use some of this enviable skill in everyday life.

I also thought about "the yips". And in particular, a former major league all-star 2nd baseman (with the Twins and Yankees) named Chuck Knoblach, who later in his career developed a horrible case of the yips: he could not make the simple throw to first. He started to think too much, and the muscle memory that enabled his arm to mindlessly execute perfect throws was lost.

So there is much to be said for not over-thinking things. And also for not worrying about the things you can't control. You can't think about the release point of the ball. You can't worry about a broken bolt. Because if you do either, you'll soon find you can't go on.

Unseasonably Warm

Nov 10 2015

Unseasonably warm.

On the cusp of winter

that refuses to tip

into cold.

The natural order of things

we thought was set.

So the landscape sits;

leaves undressed

greenish grass, arrested.

Confused birds, that should have left

stretching-out their stay.

And the low sun, unsettling us,

as shadows lengthen

darkness comes too quick.

When the succession of seasons

we’ve always known

has broken down,

all predictions missed.

Yes, how pleasant it is;

but this steady state has us squirming

as if on hold,

expectation

penting-up.

Apprehensive

the weather gods

will exact their pay.

A zero-sum game

of a hard winter

frozen spring.

How amused they must be,

glancing down

as we fretfully wait.

This resigned pessimism seems endemic to northern people: that we will inevitably be punished for good weather; that life, at best, is a zero-sum game.

It really is unsettling, though. There is this feeling of waiting, of something impending: an uncomfortable holding pattern, and nature out of whack.

I think Weather Gods (or perhaps The Gods of Weather) would have been a much better title. But this is a good case of not wanting to steal my own thunder:  that is, best to leave  the little twist of superstition and whimsy to the end.

Sharpened Three Times

Nov 3 2015

A pencil achieves its ideal length

when it has been sharpened three times.

The way it rests

in the fleshy web

of finger/thumb,

easy balance

perfect heft.

My finger runs

its stubby nub

of dully glistening lead;

so silky smooth

to paper’s rough,

so lovely to impress.

Hard letters

softly smudged,

lined foolscap

3-hole punched.

Like a connoisseur

of fine cigars,

slowly rolling

loosely gripped.

8 faces, length-wise

are stepped like little cogs;

regular as clock-work

back-and-forth in time.

My mind, free to wander,

while finger-tips

are on their own.

Not round, or it would roll

under desks

across the floor.

Bite marks, in splintered wood

flecks of yellow paint.

I tap my lip

with fleshy tip,

sit and wonder

pencil-in,

scribble, picture, write.

The pink eraser

leaves a paper trail

of greyly scrubbed mistakes;

flubs absolved, rubber rubbing,

forgiveness granted

confessing nothing.

The sweet spot

between sharp and dull

where graphite flows.

A medium pencil's

cherished length

to have and hold.

The opening lines came from a short whimsical piece about pencils in the latest New Yorker (by Mary Norris; Nov 9 2015). Apparently, there are aficionados of pencils, historians of pencil-making, and virtuosos of perfect sharpness. I find this delightful: the love of the mundane and utilitarian; the attention to infinitesimal detail. This is the appeal of the eccentric, the hobbyist, the esoteric.

I read these lines and naturally thought "what is it that makes this length ideal?" ...and so the poem got its start.

In going from cigar-making to clock-work, the mixed metaphor in the middle stanza may be a problem. And I'm not sure if this line -- forgiveness granted/ confessing nothing -- is necessary. Does it may interrupt the flow of the poem? Is it more about cleverness than content? Other than that, I think I'd have preferred a more conversational voice: I find the rhymes a little busy, the sentence structure a little abrupt.

What I do like is the natural progression from the nicely worn nub to the pink eraser. And how the last 3 lines call back to the opening quote, closing the poem by bringing it full circle.