Tunnel Vision

March 27 2016

Even lovers

who know us best

are left with half-truths

and guess-work.

So how much better

do we know ourselves?

I try to write myself out,

consumed, compulsive, obsessed.

But the words build walls

brick-by-brick,

reaching-up on tip-toe

cementing them in.

How disconcerting

to be in the dark

this time of year,

enclosed

in my tower of words.

When the sun is high

the snow

still blindingly bright.

It floods in through the glass

as if it had weight.

I can feel its strength

bleaching colour, boiling-off paint,

tiny motes of dust

dancing excitedly.

But, like a 6^th sense

my eyes are tuned to the dark.

The acuteness

of peripheral vision,

flinching

at a flicker of movement

far to the side.

Like a high wire, stretched taut

I surprise even myself.

How well I see

caught unaware.

Yet how unknowable she is

in such unforgiving light

looking directly in.

Her face, illuminated.

Her skin

a thin translucent layer.

I wasn’t sure what to write today.

I really wanted to say something about the essential unknowability of others.

I wanted to write about falling in love. Why is the operative verb “to fall”? It seems almost ominous:  involuntary, inescapable, terminal.

And I wanted to write about the brilliant light today, when the sun has risen above the trees, and the snow on the lake is a smooth unsullied white, fiercely reflecting. But, of course, I always resist these straight descriptive “nature” poems:  because they’re just too easy to write, and way too boring to read.

Other things were on my mind, as well. I had been reading about Franz Kafka, and so the process of writing was there. I’d recently listened to a podcast about a severely premature baby, and the description of its delicate paper-thin skin had stayed with me. And maybe the sun has created shadows in unexpected places, because the last few days I keep finding myself getting caught off guard by tiny flickers of movement, far off to the side. How uncanny is this peripheral vision:  a good example of all the deep processing and mind-games of which we’re unaware, like the submerged ice berg to consciousness’ small visible tip. After all, central vision – where we see acutely and precisely – constitutes only 3 degrees of the visual field.  

In the end, they all managed to find their way in. Sometimes, this is how writing works:   a scatter-shot brain harnessed to a stream-of-consciousness, which is then somehow distilled into poetry. What’s unusual is writing this blurb soon enough to capture all those fleeting inspirational impressions before they disappear.

I feel conflicted about revealing this process:  like the magician, revealing his tricks. Because you have probably read more profundity and intention into this poem than I can justify. Yet that incoherence and serendipity can be a strength. That’s because at heart I’m an essayist, not a poet. I tend to write in a logical sequential way. So liberating a stream-of-consciousness like this is extremely useful to me. It’s how I achieve ambiguity and implication. It takes me to hidden depths. As the poem says, sometimes I “surprise even myself”!

I like guess-work. It’s a simple word that contains so much. And I like it aurally, as well, bracketed by the sound of best …left, and then better …obsessed  ...cement(ing).

I like “write myself out”. On the one hand, it means writing myself out of the story in order to focus outward, pay attention to others. On the other, it implies writing myself out as one finds one's way out of a box:  that is, using language to resolve, explain, exhaust; as a means of self-knowledge (at best), and escape (at worst). What irony, then, to end up enclosed in (my) …tower of words.

I like illuminated face immediately followed by translucent skin:  the one reflecting light, the other transmitting it; yet neither revealing anything.

Central Vision would have been a more accurate title, because it’s normal – something we all have in common; while Tunnel Vision is pathological – not at all universal:  and I very much want this idea of the unknowability of others to be a universal one. On the other hand, Tunnel Vision is much more evocative, and gets to the heart of the idea.  

Water Takes

March 26 2016

Snow,
coarse, gritty, pitted

in moth-bitten clumps.

Glistening pools, in cool sun.

And muddy rivulets

trickling downhill;

the path of least resistance

water takes.

The indecision of spring,

fitfully shifting

between freeze, and thaw.

Before birds return.

Before grass greens.

Before saturated land

settles, and firms.

When the world is flat,

in dull variations of brown.

And I can smell the earth

coming to life,

the pong of loam, rot

rebirth.

When worms surface,

wriggling, squirming

struggling for air.

The first rootlets

push up, and out,

probing, sipping, getting to work.

And water, seeking its level

gurgles underground.

A still life, in words. But not really as still as it seems. There are the returning birds, the nascent  roots, the struggling worms. Even the shifting seasons.

And most of all, water – water flowing, sublimating, evaporating, re-freezing; water gurgling underground – moving steadily through the piece.

It’s when the poem descends below the surface that this becomes clear:  all that motion, hiding in plain sight.

Invoking the sense of smell is important here. It’s easy to be purely visual in something like this. But scent is powerful, visceral, sensuous. And never still, its vibrating molecules concentrically fanning out at the speed of smell.

I thought the title should contain “water”, since this is what cinches it together. The word only appears twice in the poem. So I simply cannibalized the line that works best. I like how cryptic this title is, because this is once thing a good title does:  it makes the reader irresistibly curious to read on.

Promiscuous Light

March 23 2016

The worst time for photography

is the middle of the day.

High noon,

when the eye is clear

the world unadorned.

Because the image, which depends on light

is flattered more by silhouette.

Inscrutable shade

tricks of depth

the moment stilled.

Contrast

and increment.

There is nothing natural

capturing life this way.

While the sameness

of the middle of the day

cuts too close,

flattened

in its pitiless gaze,

over-exposed

by promiscuous light.

We claim to believe

in illumination

but obscurity serves us well.

Best of all, a gathering storm.

The dark underbelly

of brooding cloud

looming over us,

the far horizon

in brilliant sun.

Black and white,

thrill, and deliverance.

We want drama, but also the lens;

the narrowed aperture

the mirrored glass.

Behind the camera

as if it were a blind,

safe

unseen

detached.

In the latest National Geographic (April 2016) there was an eye-stopping piece called 93 Days of Spring:  a photo-essay of a Minnesota spring, 93 pictures over 93 days. Early in the article, Jim Brandenburg – the writer and photographer – says this: “As photographers know, noon light is the worst light of the day – a time to put the camera away and take a nap.”

This sentence struck me. It illuminates the essence of photography:  that it’s not mere documentary, which would be best served in the strongest and most even light; it’s art, which means artful, constructed, heightened. And it made me think of the nuance, excitement and mystery that’s to be found in the shadows, the liminal edges, the illusions of depth.

The ending of the poem speaks to our aversion to objective truth (if there is such a thing), harsh reality, the cold light of day. Instead, our view is mediated and distorted, coloured by our delusions and biases and shying away. So it’s always only a version of truth: either cropped, as in close-up; or seen indirectly, as if reflected by mirrored glass.

Runs

March 22 2016

It runs in the family.

Like hot pursuit

trying not to fall.

Like gunk

slammed against the wall.

Like cheap nylon hose

unravelling,

ripped, torn, snagged.

Direction set

by the warp and weft

beneath its silky sheen,

the straight line of descent

your eye and hand follow.

As pre-determined

as family, the accident of birth.

As blood, and belonging

clan, and tribe.

You run like hell

to find yourself

running for your life.

But the line is cast, you’re reeled back

can’t escape your kind.

The terrific writer (and medical oncologist/haematologist) Siddhartha Mukherjee had a piece in the recent New Yorker (March 28, 2016) about his family history of mental illness, and about the nascent research into the genetics and possible mechanism of schizophrenia.

When I put the piece down, its title – Runs In The Family – stuck with me. It has a certain inevitability to it:  a connotation of destiny and fate. It contradicts our conceit of agency, and personal autonomy. And yet it has the disarming simplicity and familiarity of cliché.

It left me with the urge to noodle around with the word “run”. This is what came of it.

The Cruelty of Boys

March 21 2016

The cruelty of boys

is different than the men

they will grow to become.

Because we were all guilty

of careless torture

when we first explored the world.

The pack-leaders and yes-men,

the sensitive ones

who hovered at the circle’s edge.

Excited, repulsed

conspiratorial,

lighting firecrackers

in crayfish,

dangling frogs above the flames.

I look back, and feel shame

for the fear, and the pain

we thoughtlessly dispensed,

our experiments

in absolute power.

So the men we became

are chastened

by who we once were.

While the few of us

who still haven’t learned

have the run of the world;

their bruised and broken wives,

plundered countries
plunged into war.

Helpless creatures, still sacrificed

the suffering earth.

I can forgive the cruelty of boys

who know nothing of life.

Their cruelty is cold;

but at least they lie in bed at night

alone in the dark

and aren't afraid to cry.

This poem speaks to regret and despair. But also about the seeds of empathy, and what real manliness is all about. I hovered at the circle’s edge; but never had the nerve to speak out.

It seems that many of my poems are inspired by those personal essays that appear each weekday on the back page of the Arts section of The Globe and Mail. This one as well. In an essay entitled Me and Mr. Hyde, Michele Luchs reflects on how, for years, the story of the demonic Mr. Hyde frightened her childhood self. She writes: “Then I’d wander down to the creek, where boys fished for crayfish then blew them up with firecrackers …”. On reading this, I immediately flashed back to a group of us boys, gathered tightly around, torturing frogs. The universal cruelty of boys, I thought. And how the psychopaths and narcissists – the Putins and Trumps of this world – never outgrow it. 

Singularity

March 16 2016

The Big Bang 
went off without a sound.

And even if there had been air

filling whatever was there before

there was no one to hear.

So the universe began

with as big a bang

as a tree, falling in the forest

snagged on the underbrush.

I imagine lightning storms

looking down from above.

An electric planet, convulsed by deadly light

that would seem, from space

uninhabitable.

I imagine a newborn babe

before its cry

bursting-out into the world.

Except that we hear, pre-birth.

The rush of blood.

The heart’s dull thump.

The muffled sound

of aquatic life

suspended in amnion.

We do not erupt

out of nothingness

into noise.

So before the universe burst forth

with the light of centillion stars

was there something to hear?

Absolute dark’s

barely audible rumblings?

Possibility’s

faint electric buzz?

The whimper

of quiet surrender

that comes before the start?

Or the high-pitched scratch

of infinite thinness

as galaxies speed apart?

In the April 2016 Atlantic, there was a short article on the future of noise. (I was thrilled to read there should be less!) It closed with “A Brief Chronicle of Noise”, and this was the first item in the list:

Beginning of time: Despite its name, the Big Bang is silent, because there is no existing space through which sound waves can travel.

That sentence stuck with me, and gave me the beginning of this poem. The rest was a kind of stream of consciousness riff, and makes as much or as little sense as you like. Although if you take note of some of my musings below, you’ll see how they may fit the poem’s concluding stanzas.

I’ve seen images of lightning storms from the International Space Station. It’s shocking, how much electricity is loose. And unnerving, the silence.

Spell-check is not happy with centillion:  apparently, too uncommon a word for its lexicon. I originally had “a trillion”, but thought this was far too modest a number to cover the entire universe. I read that centillion – which was the biggest number I found listed, according to Google – has 303 zeros; so I guess that gets substantially closer!

I think the bigger question about the Big Bang theory is this:  how does something arise out of nothing? I understand physicists answer this by positing that everything in the universe is a zero sum:  if you take all the energy, matter, anti-matter, and dark energy and dark matter, they all cancel out. So the laws of thermodynamics are not violated, after all.

Other questions are equally fascinating, and even more ineffable:  is there some kind of meta-consciousness to creation, some purpose or meaning? …was there anything before the Big Bang? …is this a one-off event, with the universe is expanding to infinite nothingness; or will it rebound like a yo-yo in repeated acts of collapse and creation? …are there multi-universes, existing in overlapping and non-intersecting space/time?

Not to mention this whopper:  if the universe is expanding from the Big Bang, then what is it expanding into? That is, if it has a boundary, what lies outside? I’m sure the physicists have an answer for this, as well. As for me, both quantum physics and cosmology – the very small and the very large – make my head spin, so I’ll leave it for them to answer.

Airing-Out

March 12 2016

The theory of malignant air

as the cause of disease

seems truer, in spring.

All it takes

is the first warm day

and a brisk north wind.

Because there is something to north

that seems unsullied,

its frozen landscape

astringent air.

When every window’s unlatched, sash unstuck

where the frame warped

expanded

jammed.

When each casement, awning, slide

is cranked-open wide.

The stale space scoured.

The purification of light.

And as each window is cracked

winter’s monastic silence breaks,

eaves dripping

dogs barking,

bickering squirrels

eager to mate.

But there is no sweetness to this air,

whipping over naked trees

raw soil,

small islands

of granular snow.

Just the loamy smell

of thaw and rot

and sodden earth.

If hope and faith can heal

then breathe deep.

But beware the false spring;

the charlatans and quacks

with their scheming flimflammery,

the fickle humours

and cruel mischief
of mercurial gods.

The malady of winter,

the counterfeit cure.

The first warm day, and I felt compelled to open the windows and let fresh air blow through the house. It was as if all the air in the house was old and fetid, while the north wind was pure and clean.

In the days before scientific medicine, “bad air” was one theory of disease:  the word “malaria”, a corruption of the French mal aire, captures this quite literally. Then there is the Aristotelian view of the various humours, which not only explain disease, but correspond to personality:  a concept that persists in words like “sanguine”, “choleric”, “bilious”, and “melancholic”.

But we still believe in the curative powers of fresh air. If cities were cesspools of disease, then sanatoriums in the pure country air could cure tuberculosis. And if winter is the season of illness, then we air out the house in spring.

The quacks and flimflamm(ers) and charlatans call back to these discredited theories of medicine. While the mercurial nature of weather is captured in the fickle gods. So while hope and faith may be eternal, so are false springs and false hope: the poem as cautionary tale. …But really, it was all just an excuse to write the delightful line …charlatans and quacks/ … (and) scheming flimflammery!

Terracotta

March 9 2016

The white ceramic bowl

was thrown by hand.

Its slight asymmetries.

The spot of roughness

under the rim.

Was some imperfection missed?

Or is this the maker’s print,

his fine arches, whorls, and loops

indelible?

The treadmill’s methodical thump.

The weight of the wheel

circling heavily.

The cool clay

with its receptive touch,

slippery, wet, sensuous.

It’s the process he most loves;

the object

is immaterial.

Because the hard impervious glaze

will lose its lustre,

the indestructible bowl

end up in shards.

As fire turns to ash

terracotta to dust.

In the creator’s hand

a shapeless lump

as basic as water, air, earth.

He hunches over the wheel;

aware of nothing but

as his world turns.

It’s really a poem about the creative act:  this the idea of flow, immersion, and utter absorption, as well as the uniqueness and idiosyncrasy of the creator’s vision.  But I think it can also be read as a metaphor for divine creation. Which is the last thing you’d expect of me!

Although it makes sense if you realize than an atheist doesn’t need to take the Bible literally in order to admire it as a piece of literature, as powerful allegory. And also makes sense if you see my allusion as a bit of mischief:  appropriating sacred imagery for my own profane ends. Because ultimately, a poem like this is an exercise in language, not an expression of belief.

There is something here, too, about illusions of permanence and posterity. Pottery lasts a long time. Ancient Sumerian cryptographs have endured far longer than anything in computer memory ever will. But still, even a fingerprint held in clay is transient. Nothing is truly “indelible”.

There is also a very elemental aesthetic appeal in working with clay. So the subject lends itself to poetry, where the visceral and sensuous work best; where language needs to be muscular and tactile and implicated, rather than intellectual and analytical and detached.

I like the references to the human hand:  the uniqueness of a fingerprint; the sensuous feel of wet clay; the creator’s agency. And the whole poem is worth it, just to be able to say “terracotta”:  I love its sound, the image it evokes, and its literal meaning – baked earth.

Good Provider

March 7 2015

My father must have shovelled coal

in the dim basement

in the old house

where the big black furnace lurked,

like some multi-armed beast

in beaten armour

with a thick patina of soot.

Dark bituminous chunks

clattered down the chute.

Choking dust

hung blackly,

suspended

in the weak incandescence

of a single bulb.

Ducts rattled, heat raged.

Fire roared

in its cast-iron bed.

The tired grate

glowed cherry red

if left untended for long.

It was small, post-war,

on a raw plot

on a dirt road

on the far suburban fringe.

He worked hard

was a good provider.

Then came home,

and shovelled coal.

I am not old

but have learned how slippery memory is.

All I have

are fragments, and glimpses

of what may have been.

Yet how medieval

that life now seems.

Demonic chimneys

smudging the sky.

Damp cellars

with little head-room

and earthen floors.

And a bad furnace

like some antiquated forge,

with its delicate balance

of fuel and air

flue, and damper, and ash.

Demanding coal

shovelled by hand.

A milk-man, a bread-man

saluting door-to-door.

A man delivering coal.

And a father who shovelled it,

tie loosened

shirt-sleeves rolled.

I was too terrified

to step downstairs.

All I know

is that the house was always warm

the coal bin never empty.

And that the temperamental furnace

at which even my father cursed,

which would have devoured children, if left to itself,

had its fire dutifully tended

its hunger fed.

Heat coaxed

from its blackened core.

I have a vague fragmentary memory of our old house, its dank dark basement, and that ancient coal-burning furnace. I can picture my father as a young man with a young family, dutifully tending this insatiable and temperamental beast. While we, his small children, were too afraid to even go downstairs; took for granted our food and shelter and warmth.

Nowadays, basements are beautifully finished recreation rooms and hi-tech entertainment centres. We thoughtlessly heat with solar or clean gas, at the touch of a thermostat. I think of all the other social, cultural, and technological change over the intervening years – attitudes to smoking, drinking, sex, seatbelts, pollution, gender, and race; never mind iPhones and satellites – and realize what a different world we inhabit after such a relatively short passage of time. So I guess I wrote this as a way to document what life was so recently like. My memory that far back is tenuous, at best. So  I can just imagine how shocking this will seem to anyone even a little younger than me (I was born in 1955):  imagine, actually shovelling coal in your own home!

...Since I originally posted this, I had a chance to check with my older brother. And it turns out memory is, indeed, slippery. The furnace was oil, not coal. Although apparently my father told a story about neglecting his coal-shovelling duties at his old family home, and allowing the furnace to die in the middle of night in a Winnipeg winter. So I suppose this tale must have combined with my childhood aversion to that dark basement and produced a false memory. Nevertheless, I'll keep the poem. Because -- true or not -- it says a lot about fatherly duty, as well as post-war suburban life.

Beeswax

March 4 2016

It strikes, sputters, flares.

I cup my hand

and bring the match-stick close.

The smokeless wick

the candle lit

the room infused with gold.

A welcome kiss

our night begins

to have, and touch, and hold.

Beeswax burns clean.

Its honeyed scent

is flowers in spring,

its flame

strong, steady.

And will last, at least, ‘til dawn.

As inexhaustible

as the busy bees

who swarm and buzz and sign,

the drones, who bide their time.

As the voluptuous queen

in all her sprawling lumpy bulk,

churning-out little worker bees

to carry on the hive.

In the warm glow, and soft shadows

our imperfections are disguised.

Making love, by candle-light

all night long.

All I set out to do was write something simple, and short. But no ideas.

A beautiful beeswax candle was sitting on the table right in front of me. I picked it up, and sniffed. How beautifully they burn, I remembered: the flame steady, clean, and delicately scented. And how long they last:  you could make love all night, by beeswax.

So this poem is an indulgence, a bauble, a bit of whimsy and fluff. And if it seems far too sentimental and romantic for me, it is. But what else goes better with candlelight? House fires? Power failures? Rampaging mobs, with pitchforks and torches? No, surely not!

(Btw, try googling “queen bee”, as I did. Some interesting pictures turn up!)

In Touch

March 3 2016

I am bad at keeping in touch.

Busy lives claim us

people drift away.

If all language is metaphor

then what could be more telling

than the human hand?

A lover’s private semaphore,

interrogating bodies

skin-to-skin

curve-on-curve.

The manly grip

as good as his word.

An infant in arms

in the moment of birth.

The dialect of touch,

from the beginning of life

to the rites of death.

Her naked remains

washed, and anointed

and laid to rest.

We stroke egos

prod memory

touch the heart.

Feel-out, slap-down

hold-off.

The privileged deaf

who talk with their hands.

Who can fill a room

with silent laughter,

ring tears

from fingers that flash

like quickly clacking tongues.

More often than not

it’s the women in our lives

who are good at reaching out.

Like lines of gravity

she holds us in her light,

minor planetoids

orbiting close.

The gentle pull

of a well-timed note,

a card, a call

a mention.

Sometimes, it’s almost telepathic,

the pressure of thought

rippling out in waves.

Like the other day

when you crossed my mind, and stayed.

When I could feel your hand

touch where I love to be touched;

as if distance

were immaterial,

time had come unstuck.

Nothing could be truer than the opening line. I think this applies to men far more than women. I know my mother was the glue that held extended family together. (I say “held” because, now over 90, she is increasingly limited by her slow cognitive decline.) And I know that married men (my two older brothers, for example) defer to their wives to maintain the social ties. So it’s bachelors like me who are most likely to drift off.

There are a lot of metaphors for touch in the English language. So it was fun to play around with this. Even neuroscience tells us how important hands are:  the homunculus – that miniature representation of the human body in the cerebral cortex – has disproportionately large fingers and hands. I would have liked to shoehorn that idea into the poem. Unfortunately, “homunculus” isn’t a very poetic word! And this would probably have been too self-indulgent a digression.

Physics is a recurring trope here. I think because the art of keeping in touch is like action at a distance:  like gravity, an invisible but persistent force. And this emphasizes the metaphorical power of the expression:  that is, you don’t have to literally touch in order to keep in touch.

I quite like quickly clacking tongues, if only because you can’t say it without actually feeling your tongue “clack”! But I think my favourite lines are A lover’s private semaphore,/ interrogating her body/ skin-to-skin. Because “interrogate” is a powerful word. And “semaphore” nicely conveys this idea of action at a distance, only to have “skin-to-skin” whipsaw the reader back into something that’s intensely and literally tactile.

The ending brings the poem back to the opening line:  from wandering off into generality, the focus narrows back in on the personal. There’s clearly a story here; but it’s left to the reader to write.