My Adventure in Horticulture

April 26 2016

The only year I planted bulbs.

Expecting to see stiff green shoots

pierce the barely thawed soil,

erupt from stubborn clumps of snow

still holding out.

A shock of green, on tired white,

riotous reds, yellows, violets

arresting the eye.

So all spring, I was disappointed 

to see the bare brown bed

overrun with weeds;

like metastases,

seeding the yard

from out of nowhere.

Who knew

there was an "up" to bulbs.

That a native plant

would not seek out the sun

as naturally as water,

stem curling skyward

roots U-turning down,

grappling methodically

into wet dark earth.

So you’d think I could count

on the life force,

a plant’s innate knowledge.

Or was it stunted soil

black thumb

killer frost?

Squirrels, perhaps,

pursuing their own survival

with the ravenous drive

of wild things.

A hard winter, a late spring.

No green succulent shoots.

No brilliant burst

of primary colour.

It's true. Although it was only well after that I realized I must have planted them upside down. And, to be scrupulously correct, a single tulip may have struggled up ...only to die soon after. I suppose I'm too easily discouraged; but that proved to be my last adventure in horticulture.

But as the poem suggests, you'd think it wouldn't matter. That a bulb or seed would know how to grow in the right direction:  know up from down; know sun from earth. 

I hope I was able to conjure the image of those first hardy plants of spring, bursting out when there is still snow on the ground:  their nascent green is arresting, their blossoms are luminous, and their succulence is bursting with the life force.

Bridge

April 25 2016

It glitters against the night,

a necklace of light

spanning a dark bottomless gulf.

And at dawn

looms out of the fog,

cables wreathed, deck draped

in white billowing mist.

It sits on nothing but cloud,

great piers invisible

footings ungrounded.

And its sound, distilled by heavy air

seem unnaturally loud,

ethereal, uncanny

detached.

A bridge to nowhere

exempt from gravity.

Tons of concrete and steel.

Bolts, the size of compact cars.

And high tension cable,

thick as a man

and taut as piano wire

stretched too high to hear.

The illusion of weightlessness.

The extravagance

of beauty for its own sake.

I clench my shoulders, stiffen my back

against the damp chilly air.

A horn wails

its deep tremulous mourning.

And the fugitive bridge

has furtively vanished.

There Are No Islands Anymore

April 24 2016

Before the bridge went in.

Before the island disappeared

and our way of life vanished.

Before all that

the unpredictable sea

and the inconvenience of distance

taught us to be patient, self-sufficient

humble.

But there are no islands anymore.

And all the exiled, and ostracized,

the banished, marooned, and stranded

have drifted off,

wandering, lost

somewhere on the mainland.

And while outsiders are grudgingly welcomed

intruders quietly shunned,

the recluses, who burned their bridges

again, must cut-and-run.

Arthropodophobe

April 23 2016

My brother’s fear of spiders

began in Cape Cod,

a tumble off a footbridge

into a thronging cast of crabs.

Who must have scuttled from the ditch, terrified.

Or were curious, perhaps,

poking and prodding with their clacking claws

like scavengers, drawn to meat.

A small black spider

has claimed the shower stall

as home.

He spins no web.

Magisterially rests,

either conserving strength

or in patient ambush, stalking prey.

And seems content

in perfect solitude,

as if the sterile moonscape

of this smooth white surface

were his natural habitat.

He scurries, confused

keeping just above the water-line.

Even though his hard black body

seems impervious,

kicking unsinkably to the edge,

sticking to the sheer plastic wall

on 8 spindly legs.

I enjoy his company,

admiring the beauty

of function and form,

the certainty, and purpose

of a circumscribed life.

A gentle creature

who amiably serves,

gulping insects

trapping flies.

I know my brother would be terrified.

But I feel a kinship

with this innocent creature

and happily co-exist;

leaving him keeping watch,

and feeling oddly pleased

when I find him still here.

I understand my brother’s fear. And it makes sense:  spiders and crabs both belong to the phylum arthropod, and even to the non-naturalist the similarity is clear.

My fondness for these small scurrying creatures is far less explicable. But I think the poem gets close to it. I see them not only as harmless, but as helpful. And I have a grudging admiration for their functional beauty, for their mastery and patience and magisterial solitude.

The official collective noun for crabs is apparently “cast”. But in the 4^th line, I first went with “congregation”, and then throng:  not only does it work sonically (resonating with Cod, off, prodding, claws, and drawn), but it has fewer distracting connotations than “cast”. And it also seeming more active; I suppose because as you sound it out, it immediately calls up the verb.

I vacillated between “it” and he/his/him:  the former more pedantically correct, but the latter much more effective. I think this is because the spider here has to be anthropomorphized and personalized; “it” automatically creates a kind of academic distance that works against the basic premise of the piece.

The title is pure fun. While I could have gone with an actual word – arachnophobia – I wanted to get “arthropod” in there, since this is the word that effectively links spiders and crabs, and so helps the reader make sense. Which left me playing around with “phylum” and “philia” and “phobia”:  in the end, the neologism arthropodophobe was clearly the most fun. I can’t imagine a reader seeing that title in a table of contents and not wanting to immediately turn to it!

Hackles

April 20 2016

The dog’s hackles are up again.

A tufted hump of fur,

like an unkempt mohawk

on her shoulders, and rump.

She thinks she's looking fierce

but I can see the fear,

head low, tail pointing down.

Such is the lot of timid dogs;

like big-talkers and card-sharps

good at the bluff.

Like puffed-up politicians,

not much there

under the blow-dried hair

and phony smiles.

Mostly, though, she sprawls in the sun,

relocating from patch to patch

as it leisurely travels

from shadow to light.

And when push comes to shove

lies supine,

soft underbelly

a pale pink surrender flag.

Appeasing those tiny yapping dogs

who act like big shots,

strutting and bouncing like wind-up toys

on a short taut leash.

At last, another dog poem!

Skookum’s hackles go up easily. She’s a strong dog and a good size; but she’s gentle and timid and eminently sensible. I admire her social intelligence:  she can defuse any bad situation, mollify the most aggressive dog. If it’s a nasty barking dog, she regally ignores it:  secure and self-contained, she simply goes about her business. I’m proud to see her act submissively:  she’s a lover, not a fighter; a conscientious objector who will never go to war unless it’s life or death.

It’s finally spring, and I notice how clever she is, not to mention what a comfort queen:  always finding the best patch of sun, leisurely circling around the house like a canine sundial. She’s not good in the heat. So she sprawls lazily, soaking it up.

Watching the Clock

April 19 2016

Time moves imperceptibly.

Until that fateful second

it lurches ahead

as if a ratchet slipped,

and you realize

the future is now.

I’ve sat watching the clock

on the classroom wall

in the sweetness of spring.

When the world is luminous green,

the air inside

close, and over-heated.

Hands turning, turning

turning in place,

circling back

starting over again;

slow, steady

indifferent.

The teacher’s distant drone

my own silent pleading.

They say the purpose of time

is so it doesn’t all happen at once.

But in a way, it does.

Because our younger versions

still accompany us,

bearing the burden

of lives lived

of left undone.

The wonky knee, permanent scars,

the bad choices

disappointments

broken hearts.

Sand falls, numerals flash,

hands travel

as they always have.

Everything as it has been

until you feel suddenly old;

time, like a tightening ratchet

in the only direction it goes.

Water Works

April 18 2016

Spring thaw

and water thunders downstream,

pummelling rock

tumbling over fallen trees.

Boiling eddies, flecked with froth

circle

like rabid dogs.

Freezing spray soaks the shore,

a locomotive roar

drowning out everything.

In paper/scissors/rock

you’d think granite indestructible.

But molecule by molecule, water works;

smoothing, polishing, shaping curves,

carving into bends

scouring out the bottom.

The power of sun

to evaporate, sublimate, elevate,

lifting water

making it rain.

An unstoppable gush;

pent-up,

like anger, that festers too long.

Who knew

the force of light

could reshape rock?

Or that such glorious power

and terrible beauty

could co-exist?

But the true magnificence

is how indifferent nature is;

no anger, or retribution

no vain self-consciousness.

And how insignificant I am,

keeping well back

gaze transfixed.

As the river runs

inexhaustibly.

As glistening rock

stands its ground.

I shamelessly stole terrible beauty from the Yeats poem Easter, 1916. Or, more charitably, one might say “paid homage.”

Although “stole” may not be as bad as it sounds. Because, as Picasso is widely (and erroneously?) quoted as saying, “good artists borrow, great artists steal”.  ;-)

Thank You Note

April 14 2016

The thank you note

on creamy paper

in careful cursive

in all its formally worded grace

arrived unexpectedly.

Handwritten

in her best school-girl script.

The trip to the mailbox.

The man who emptied it.

The sorter at the processing plant

who caught it falling through the cracks.

The postman

walking door-to-door

on his appointed rounds.

All the hands

through which it passed,

the fullness of time

its journey occupied.

The substance

of something held.

Even the trace of smell

when I brought it to my nose.

and inhaled deeply.

Who knew scent

adhered to paper so avidly.

I imagined molecules of skin

still intact,

the residue

of her glistening tongue

sealing it shut.

The materiality of things,

when so much of life

has become virtual

and instantaneous.

And the esoteric physics

of touch;

like action at a distance,

her hand, in mine.

Idiomatic

April 11 2016

Sometimes, a word makes me stumble.

Slipping into the blank space,

tumbling over the edge

of line breaks,

getting stuck in the pause.

If it were a song

you’d be straining to hear.

As the restraint

in a powerful voice

goes unfulfilled.

As you anticipate

and tension builds.

As the note lingers, decays

becomes sweeter still.

The mother tongue

whispering words in my ear.

The pregnant pause

where I’m shocked to hear

how odd they sound.

We are all translators

of the foreign language

we speak from the heart.

The lost lingos

arcane dialects

neglected patois,

the inner voice

we’d never chance to talk.

The likes, ya knows, blah-blahs.

Sentences

that run on, and on.

The whiplash bone-rattling stops.

This poem began in a very different place than it ended up. I was reading about a poet who writes in English, but whose mother tongue was German:  how she hears language differently -- the odd literalisms that strike her, the acute attention she brings.

I liked this idea of translation:  that everything is mediated, indirect, never entirely clear.

Language is our most precise tool of thought and communication. Yet it is, at best, an approximation. 

Forecast

April 9 2016

The rain didn’t come.

Good news, depending.

Like the dog days,

when it’s hard, torrential, cleansing

pelting down.

Shrink-wrapped, in sodden clothes

or stripped to the skin,

slick, brown

water-tight.

Knowing hot sun

can’t be far behind

steaming dry.

Or mixed,

when spring

is prying winter’s grip

from a world encased in ice.

Slop, rain, sleet

tipping to snow.

Because it’s on the margins

where things rub-up against

we are most alive.

The ecstasy, and discontent

of a change in the weather,

inclemency

and chance.

Or gentle, almost mist

on the ochre leaves of fall.

The fields gleaned

dormant trees

resting buds.

Hard brown stubble

and watery light,

the expectancy
of wood-smoke.
The first day

you can see your breath;

when the cold

cuts to the quick

and you clutch your jacket tight.

Showers and cloud, the weatherman said
with a crooked smile
as if to apologize.

As if life 
were an ongoing picnic

Sundays in the park.

As if you were never in the mood for rain,

and the lush green world

mere camouflage.