Presence
Nov 17 2016


Walking dogless
my thoughts turn in.

Hardly there
I ghost through the woods, unaware;
birds unflushed
squirrels, unmolested. 

Because the world is thin.
Its mulch
has lost its earthy redolence,
the rabbit’s scent
that will decay unread;
molecules
of age, and sex
and when.

The water
tumbling over polished rock
that will not quench,
rotting sticks
resting where they fell.

I walk alone,
lost in rumination 
chafing to be over.

Until I find myself back home.
Like those long habitual drives
I know so well, I can’t remember,
muscle memory
getting me there.

So I miss 
avid nose, pressed to the soil,
excited tail
confessing all.

Miss 
the presence of dogs;
grounding me,
as once, we made our way. 



“Presence”:   as in being present; as in present tense, exempt from future and past. We learn much from dogs. But this, I think, is their greatest gift.

Time also enters into this poem in the appreciation of smell; which, unlike vision, contains time as well as space. 

I like ending on made our way. It implies not only intention and attention, but improvisation:  one doesn’t make one’s way according to a schedule. It’s a good counter-point to ghosting through.

A Hot Dry Climate
Oct 15 2016


In the arid sands
of the Holy Land.
In the southwest desert, or sub-Saharan sahel
live dark-skinned people
hardened by sun.
Their small rectangular homes
are jumbled like children’s blocks
on the lay of the land.
Sand-coloured walls
choke narrow roads,
a patina of dust
that seems centuries old.
Cowed dogs, all skin-and-bone
slink in the shadows.

In a hot dry climate
the roofs are flat.
Where people seek relief, after dark,
grateful, in the stifling heat
for any hint of breeze.
Where they lie on their backs
and look up at the stars
feeling small.

Exposed, in communal sleep.
While we huddle against the cold
beneath sloping roofs, overhanging eaves,
a muffle of snow
to keep the world out.

As if climate were destiny
and we could be nothing but
reserved, taciturn, closed.
Never looking up
at the night sky,
feeling awe-struck
and wonder.

Even high summer, we swelter inside.
As constellations rise, and sink;
the heavens circle
indifferently.

We are products of our environment. So while our northern temperament is private, quiet, and guarded, southerners are more communal:  they live outdoors, in shared spaces; public and private overlap. 

I picture a village of small dun-coloured buildings scattered over an arid landscape. They are all flat-roofed boxes made of clay and crumbling brick. In the heat, people sleep on the roof-tops, gazing up at the stars. So many of us have never seen the night sky. Our lights blind us. We never look up. 

This poem began as I listened to Terry Gross (of NPR’s Fresh Air) interviewing  the author Jonathan Safran Foer about his new novel Here I Am.  He talks about a father and son who, after visiting an observatory in  Marfa, Texas, sit out on the roof looking up at the night sky. Foer quotes (from memory, so it may be a little different in  the actual book) one of them saying:  Why do you think it is people whisper when they look at stars? The question contains truth:  we do speak in hushed reverential tones when we feel wonder and awe. And I like that he apparently ends it there, leaving it more as a rhetorical statement than a  question that needs to be answered, making both the fictional listener and the actual reader complicit in the thought.  The best writers understand the power of this kind of restraint, leaving the reader to elaborate on her own. Anyway, the poem had its start when I heard this and it became somehow conflated with an image I’d seen of this kind of village. 

Not only don’t we have dry heat and flat roofs and an inclination toward communal living; we also don’t have much opportunity in modern life to experience wonder and awe. The key word in the poem is small.  A feeling of smallness and insignificance: this is the common denominator of all experiences that overwhelm us, that shock us out of the boundaries of ego -- from religious transcendence, to the search for meaning through psychedelic drugs.

Keeping House

Oct 11 2016

The spare room

in the rented villa

where we once kept house.

A rough wooden table, salvaged chairs.

Your paintings

against white plaster walls

the nude above the headboard.

And at its glorious centre

all brass and feathers

an unmade bed.

Where we nested at night

and explored each other

in the heat of day.

It was all spare;

an open space

with no clutter or waste

and nothing to possess us.

Which is how we all remember love;

an island of two

in a simple house

absolved from time,

sharing sun-warmed olives

cheap red wine.

Getting by

with a few awkward words

in the local tongue.

Because the young

can afford to be ascetic

and are hedonists at heart.

It’s the old who accumulate,

bent under the weight

of all they’ve done

and didn’t.

Their desire, cooling like dusk.

Which comes surprisingly quick

in this southern latitude

its unfamiliar stars.

David Remnick has a piece about Leonard Cohen in the latest New Yorker. I was reading about his early years living in a simple villa on the Greek island of Hydra with his beloved Marianne. 

I admire Cohen’s ability to combine a rich inner life with a Zen-like asceticism. 

I admire how a ladies’ man and a lover of women can also be so modest and kind.

But he’s in his 80s now, and Marianne is dead, and his body is inexorably betraying him. 

This poem is a mood piece. It was inspired by this article, but is neither biography, nor autobiographical. It really started in language, which is where a lot of my poems start:  a word or sound or phrase that pricks up my ears. Here, you can see this in the opening stanza. First, it was the double meaning of spare room that stuck with me:  how the expression sounds like an afterthought, but also conjures up the ascetic beauty of spareness.  And second, it was that dated expression keeping house (or, in this case, kept house). I thought of two young adults giddily playing at being grown-up in a little doll-house starter home. But I also thought of “kept woman”. And thought, as well, of  the intense domesticity of infatuation, where the world recedes, leaving only eyes for this illuminated other.

The poem is also looking back. So while it’s presumably about the passion of young  love, it ends in a wistful reflection about  baggage, regret, and navigating the unfamiliar terrain of growing old.

 ...In the process of working on this poem, the announcement came of Dylan winning the Nobel in literature. I was shocked by this, and thought of him as unworthy. And I still think that, because I don't believe his lyrics stand up on the page unaccompanied by voice or music. Even knowing that poetry is primarily an aural, not a written, art form, I find that lyrics make bad poetry. But if a singer-songwriter had to be awarded the Nobel, I would have without hesitation chosen Cohen over Dylan. For this line, if nothing else: Ring the bells that still can ring. ...There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.

Miscalculation
Oct 8 2016


The act
is smooth, tactical, fierce.
In the soundless distance
violence turns to art
and death is stone cold blood.

The eagle
with the silver-sided fish
is labouring up,
water streaming
compact muscles flailing
in the blinding dry.
Wings pump,
powerfully, methodically
gaining  height.

The impression of  prey
beneath a flat grey lake.
But its grasp is fixed,
great curved talons 
locked-in,
and a monster fish
can pull it down.

The white belly 
of a bloated fish
an eagle drowned.
Back and forth
where waves lap the shore;
sodden feathers, captive legs,
eyes' dull stare.

I think this poem is about challenging assumptions. 

Because we reflexively identify with the predator:  we don’t think of ourselves as victims; we feel an affinity for the warm-blooded charismatic creature. But hunters fail often. And hunting can be as risky for predator as it is for prey. 

And because the  fish doesn’t just complete the scene --  a mere ornament in our view of the majestic eagle --  it’s also a living thing in its own right, worthy  of empathy.  In this sense, blinding dry -- despite being  only 2 words -- is important:   it tries to inhabit  the fish’s experience of an utterly incomprehensible event. Perhaps how we would feel, snatched-up by aliens into an unimagined world. I’m challenging the reader to flip her point of view from the  cold blooded scene playing out in the picturesque distance into something immediate and real.

The poem is also about contingency:  how in  a momentary miscalculation this beautiful, powerful, iconic bird  quickly meets its death. Every time we drive, we perform judgements that can be just as fateful and final.

The poem is  nature in tooth and claw:  the zero-sum contest where there is no life without death;  the grim end we all ultimately share.

Intruder
Sept 27 2016


The rabbits have turned.
Patches of white, in their mottled coats,
too soon
for the first snow’s camouflage.

They are out at night
under cover of dark.
Acutely attuned to fox,
who are silky in fall
and stalk on mincing paws,
ears twitching, tails low.
To goggle-eyed owls,
who simply materialize
all feathery swish, and grappling claws.

But my nocturnal threat
is unknowable.
As if aliens
had descended in a blaze of light,
gleaming discs
with that high unearthly hum.

On the narrow dirt road
that cuts through the forest
he is caught in my high-beams.
Racing ahead, he darts frantically
pin-balling side-to-side;
exhausting the speed
prey depends upon.

The dog is a feral hunter,
barking madly, nose against the glass.
While I idle down
as guilty as any intruder,
willing him into the trees
with focused calming thoughts.

Primal fear.
A small animal’s
racing heart.



There are a lot of rabbits this year. Often, as I drive down my long narrow lane at night, they are caught in my lights:  utterly confused, running in fear. Naturally, I feel guilty to cause such distress, to burn up their precious reserves. But it seems to take forever until they wise up:  fleeing the open road, and escaping into dark impenetrable woods.

It’s a simple poem:  descriptive, narrative, particular. But it has a certain universality, as well, reiterating one of my recurring themes:  man in nature, offending against the natural order of things.

Rebuke
Sept 25 2016


Magazines in glossy towers,
deftly massaged
into even rectangular blocks.
Face-up, spine out.

 Newspapers in every corner
in neat chronological order
going yellow with age. 

And the novels I stopped
when the going got tough
and those I never started;
dust-covered, dog-eared
book-marked.

The room is a stern mistress,
nodding her disapproval
at what went wrong.
A museum of best intentions
and things put off.

Because the world is too much with us;
its burden of words 
                                     ...and love 
                                                         ...and hurt.
If the interior lives
of the billions and billions
were conjured up in decibels
the sound would be unbearable,
disembodied screams
in the dead of night.

Even here, in seclusion
the words are a silent rebuke;
relentlessly piling-up
until they overflow.
So at best, I am a custodian,
trying to keep in order
this dark refuge.

Like a hoarder, whose home is filled
with treasures still unopened;
floors sagging
door wedged shut.
Who has nowhere left for himself,
except for the narrow aisles
between the piles of words.



I read a daily paper. I understand this is an anomaly these days, when most people (or certainly most young people) rely on curated Facebook feeds for their knowledge of current events. There are  magazines and highlighted articles sitting unread:  their presence silently rebukes me for my neglect. (Although since I now read everything in electronic form, there are no yellowing piles and over-flowing table tops. Just starred articles and more recent editions accumulating on my screen!)

Yet while I remain informed, bring to bear critical thought on crucial issues, and develop well-defended positions on everything, none of it matters!! One could argue being informed needs no more justification than its role as a vital act of basic citizenship. Nevertheless, while I read with such utter despair about atrocities by war criminals in Syria, fulminate about idiotic public policy and government waste, and rant about the marginalization of the singular issue of our generation -- climate change -- NOTHING CHANGES. I move from one topic to the next, smugly experience my self-righteous rightness, and then await the next day’s news.

So I think this  poem is about  information overload. But also about how too much information  becomes just noise. And also about how language has the power to elicit empathy. But at the same time, it distances and detaches, so that reading and commentary become a substitute for action.

Red Light, Green Light
Sept 18 2016


After
even the after-hours bars
are shuttered and locked,
the last lost drunk
staggered-off into darkness.

When hard-up cabbies, in dead-end alleys, in idling cars
start nodding-off,
slouched at the wheel
on the graveyard slog.

Before alarms go off,
and the bleary-eyed
begin their long dreary days

the downtown street is still.

Its sidewalks bare.
Its asphalt
sunk in blackness
like a deep calm pool.
Its dull facades
facing blankly out.
Darkened windows
like eyeless sockets, empty stares,
office blocks
made of mortar and brick
set timelessly there.

And its traffic lights, in the dregs of night
cycling from green to yellow to red
then green again,
signalling non-existent cars
on empty streets.
Ticking over, unwitnessed,
with the steady indifference
of inanimate things.

Utter silence,
except for the loud mechanical click
you never knew they made
in the clamour of day.

And how you imagine
our world will sound, winding down
when no one’s left to hear.



I suppose this is an urban version of the tree that falls in the forest. And kind of post-apocalyptic, as well. But that’s the feeling in the dead of night in the abandoned core. Like the last man on earth. Like the indifferent city; set in motion, and robotically continuing on. 

The poem began with that unaccustomed sound of traffic lights clicking over. How unnaturally loud it sounds, in the sleeping city. And how odd, that you never heard it before. 

Writers seem to love that time of day:   4 in the morning, or so. Not just noirs with their hard-boiled detectives, or thrillers and spies. Maybe it’s because most writers are introverts, and that time of day is not only dangerous and mysterious, but also quiet and private and slow.

All Ships at Sea
Sept 8 2016


I envy the man 
who kept the light.

Who dutifully trudged
the spiral stairs
and down-and-up again,
tending the beam 
in his glass-walled cupola.

Whose simple home 
was ship-shape snug.
A perfectly circular space;
the ideal form
according to philosophers, and mystics.
Because who wants to live in a box,
all right-angles
and blind spots?

Whose modest life
was ordered by a single task.
Whose quiet heroics
consisted of standing guard.
Before they automated the lights,
unmanned
those headlands
and barren rocks.

From the commanding heights
his light penetrates the dark,
reassuring all ships at sea
with its regular sweep
and certainty.
Which even the home-bodies, and land-locked
who are not as grounded as you’d think
can navigate by.

But mostly
it’s the solitude of his tower.
The  lap of surf, the ocean breeze.
The roar of gale-force wind;
rogue waves, battering its glass, 
the unstoppable sea
pounding its massive base.

But ships still founder 
against the rocks
and men are lost at sea.

And drowning sailors
still cling to shore;
the warm fire
he huddles beside
their last and only hope.

Beneath the Dead Black Calm
Sept 5 2016


The last swim of the summer
begins in mist
on a cool day.

The sun is late
and getting later.
But there’s a bracing clarity
to this early morning light;
shadowless, and flattening,
so even the small things
seem illuminated.
A still life,
where everything 
has equal weight.

The lake is cold, its surface still.
Bare feet teeter 
on glistening rocks
as we toddle in, and shallow-dive;
a little splash
and bodies vanish
beneath the dead black calm.

It’s like a ceremonial swim, a formal good-bye;
a grateful nod to summer
acceptance that it’s gone. 
But it’s easier, this way;
when the familiar water
feels  unwelcoming,
and the air has the edge of fall.

And now, teeth chattering
goose-bumped bodies wrapped
in big absorbent towels.
That seem out of place
with their tropical scenes
and primary colours.
With the smell of cotton
left in the dryer too long,
or hung all day 
in August sun.

Let winter claim the lake.
Because we know we’ll take it back;
another summer
just like last.


I wrote this in Labour Day, which I suppose is the traditional final swim of summer. I think of a ceremonial dip on the last day of summer camp, or a final plunge after closing the cottage for the season. There is this bitter-sweetness; where you feeling slightly distanced,  already nostalgic for something that hasn’t even passed. 

I began this poem with an image of mist, that morning light, and the cool water at dead calm.  But a descriptive poems that verges on cliche is hardly going to interest a reader, or be satisfying to write. So I’m glad I was able to take it in a little different direction.

It strikes me that many readers will have no idea what I’m talking about when I refer to towels dried under hot sun, or left in the dryer too long. Because with scented detergent and anti-cling dryer sheets, I don’t imagine you ever get that natural smell :  slightly burnt, but appealing in a way that makes you want to bury your nose in it.  Which is impossible to describe, and which is why I didn’t. So this should register instantly if you’ve had the experience; and I guess leave every other reader utterly puzzled. As usual, I like to include sensation in my poems, and this stanza does it nicely:  temperature/touch ...colour ...smell. 

Re-reading, it appears I went overboard with semi-colons -- once again. But it’s my favourite piece of punctuation, so usefully falling between the pause of the comma and the full stop of the period. As I’ve said before, punctuation and line breaks are like a musical score, guiding the reader through the poem’s tempo and pace.  So I pay as close attention to punctuation as to my choice of words. 

While the River Runs Dry
Sept 3 2016


Where the Hydro dammed the falls
there is only grey rock.
With hints of pink, the glitter of quartz
exposed to light and air.

In high summer
it reminds me of sun-bleached bones,
as still as the desert
quiet as death.

Thousands of years
of moving water
have polished the ancient rock.
Like a marble obelisk, or cast bronze
I feel compelled to touch,
run the flat of my palm
over its smooth dry surface.
I want to drink
from the cool trickle
that wends its way down, 
the path of least resistance
water seeks.
And after a long climb
I can’t resist stretching-out
on its sun-warmed curves
worn by eons of flow.

I imagine the the spray, the power, the roar
when water thundered and poured
down its hard granite face.
Before men came, and shackled it,
before it was blasted,  dammed,  diverted
and ordered to serve;
like a broken animal, 
branded and penned
and put to work.

Now corralled, the torrent obediently flows 
through tunnels, turbines, wires
and on to comfortable homes.
While the river runs dry,
a testament to the immensity of time
it takes moving water 
to carve through rock.

Leave its mark on earth. 

My working title was “Silver Falls”, which the is the actual name of the place. But I like the ironic tension in ...river runs dry. Because a river either runs, or it’s dry; and the idea of “running dry” doesn’t really make sense.

I found this picture on the internet. As is often the case, a photograph doesn’t do the place justice. Approaching Silver Falls, I see an immense sculpted bowl of polished rock. And from the top, the panoramic view is spectacular. Further up, there is a jewel-like set of pools and drops, with a thin sheen of water pouring over a vertical face. And even further up, you make your way along the dry gorge that eventually leads to Dog Lake, clambering over the immense boulders that tumble down its course.

(As to the circumstances of this writing, here’s something I wrote to my first reader while working on this:  A total perspiration poem. I sat down knowing I needed to write to feel good; but with ABSOLUTELY zero ideas or inspiration, and not even much enthusiasm. So it’s reassuring to know that it turned out pretty well, regardless. As Mary Heaton Vorse (I always thought it was Mark Twain, but apparently not) famously  said about the mystique of inspiration:  “The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.” .)

An Object at Rest
Aug 30 2016


My rocket wobbles
on its column of flame.
The ground shakes
the booster strains.
The sound 
makes each cell of my brain
reverberate
within its craggy skull.

At first, it seems to hover
before gaining speed.
Then, the majestic ascent
of its impossible bulk,
gleaming in a clear blue sky.

It consumes nearly all of its fuel
in just lifting-off,
the bonds of earth
inertia
sloth
so unbreakable.
And whatever immoveable thing
you think is blocking you.
Hoping 
for that once-in-motion
effortless glide,
as constant as an object at rest.

I know now 
why Cape Canaveral 
began counting down.
Because zero stops you cold, 
no putting off
until another day, a better place
you’re feeling more disposed.
While I insist on counting up,
and could just as well go on and on
until the universe 
turned dark and still.

I feel like I’m perched 
atop a powerful bomb,
a Saturn rocket
my tiny pod.
Waiting ...waiting
for that fateful shot.

Strapped-in, looking up at the sky
I’m a passenger
on my very own flight.
Riding a vat 
of hair-trigger fuel,
a speck of spare baggage
a passive fool.

Failure to launch
and getting old.

Or my own Hiroshima
about to blow.



I read something about how a rocket consumes nearly all of its fuel in just getting off the ground. So there are numerous theoretical ways to get an object into orbit a lot more cheaply (and in a more environmentally responsible way, as well!):  things like balloon launches; or catapults (so it’s not carrying the weight of its own fuel); or winged flight up as far as the stratosphere. There is even the hypothetical space ladder:  like a giant rope or skyhook, tethered above in geo-stationary orbit. 

But what came to mind when I read this was procrastination:  that is, how hard it can be to get started, to get off the ground in the first place.

I have to confess, I often feel I’ve lived my life this way.  Too passively. As a spectator. Immobilized by  too much “magical thinking”. That is, waiting for something to happen ...some kind of synchronicity ...something to be given. Ahhh, yes; a mode of thinking where “all in the fullness of time” is too easy a consolation. I suppose you could call it the “deus ex machina” world-view.

Even though we take it for granted, it was not a given that, at the beginning of the “space age”,  NASA would launch rockets by counting down. In fact, the countdown was probably counter-intuitive. But for some reason, they chose it, and now it seems self-evident. And I suppose it is:  ending at zero stops you cold, leaving nowhere to go but up! 

Anyway, the critical line in the poem is probably failure to launch. Which has become a bit of a cliche in describing the so-called Millenials who can’t find good full-time jobs, are frustrated getting into their chosen profession, and still live at home with their aging parents. I hardly fit that cohort; but I think the expression is still appropriate. And the final  stanza describes the frustration that can accompany this:  the narrator, sitting atop that volatile mountain of liquid fuel boiling away beneath him. (I should note that the final lines only work if you pronounce Hiroshima as I do:  where the “o” takes the emphasis; and sounds as it does in “off”, not “old”.)

Slippery When Wet

Aug 24 2016

They have a lane to themselves

in the public pool.

They bob lightly

where the bottom drops-off,

feet barely touching

heads up enough

to breathe.

They are kissing and snuggling,

hands fumbling, bodies clutched tight.

An adolescent couple, on the cusp of sex

oblivious to the swimmers

churning through laps.

As if submersion

rendered them invisible.

As if nothing mattered

outside of touch.

How, at least for now

they glory in freedom

from supervision

disappointment

gravity’s relentless toll.

Where the only thing that lies

between them, and fierce desire

is the thin nylon material

that isn’t hiding much.

I know it seems rude

to flaunt their youth so brazenly,

so publicly conduct

such a private act.

But I understand

how it is to be young

and discovering hunger, love, lust

as if for the first time ever.

How it feels to be overcome

by urgency, and revelation.

How the thrill of intimacy

and invincible youth

reduces the universe

to a world of two.

Sexual tension

transmits through water

like an electric arc;

her near nakedness

exciting him,

the firm heat of his skin

has her tingling inside.

I swim by, turning to breathe,

and get a glimpse of bodies suspended

arms and legs enmeshed.

Through the stagnant pool, my fogged lenses.

The turbulence

where water meets air.

I swim regularly in the pool, and this isn’t unusual to see on a Friday night:  a teen-aged couple getting hot and bothered, and so absorbed in each other that all self-consciousness evaporates. As if submersion rendered them invisible. I can see how such intimate behaviour in a public place could be seen as rude and inconsiderate. But I can also understand and excuse it. 

I think the narrator here feels a mix of admiration and envy. And I wonder if the final stanza is as much about repression and denial, and maybe regret, as it is about the laws of physics.

In Her Own Skin
Aug 15 2016


She still has the figure
that caught a certain man’s eye
and intimidated others.

The lithe loose walk
that reminds me of the coltish girl
who moved through the world
with such blithe aplomb,
unconscious of her power.

But all the sun
in which her body gloried
in those halcyon summers of peace and love
has left its mark.
Because time is relentless,
and beauty, it seems
a zero-sum game.
Even though long golden hair
still brushes her shoulders,
deep blue eyes
just as fiercely engage.

We age gracefully
into ourselves. 
Where once we’d have squirmed, and felt exposed
we learn to be comfortable 
in our own skin. 
It doesn’t matter 
that hers is parchment-thin,
splotched, rough, wizened.

I don’t know if she ever laments
her past indiscretions.
If she’d rather have been wan and transparent
but out of the light;
never dancing in sun
or teasing the boys
or falling in love.
Had rarely known
the male gaze,
felt herself
the object of lust.

The ideal, once
was pale-skinned, a little plump.
But she was a dark thin beauty
who was of her time.
And now, she can’t help but embody
the invisibility of age
man’s desire. 

In the latest New Yorker, this picture of the author accompanied a review of Joy Williams’ book Ninety-Nine Stories of God. I know nothing about her, and so obviously have taken great liberties in this completely invented narrative. But as soon as I saw it, this poem came to mind.

When I see such pictures, I feel twinges of regret at my sun-worshipping ways. I think how beauty is such a two-edged knife:  what was once irresistible turning slightly repellent. How images of age convey wisdom and comfort, but also evoke the harsh aesthetic judgment of conventional beauty. You can see the past in the present; but it takes a certain exercise of imagination and empathy.