High-Water Mark

March 23 2011

A scum of pollen

rings the lake

like dishwater.

In the shallows

yellow, stagnant.

In the wash of waves

lapping gently back and forth.

And high and dry, on the cobbled shore

a jaundiced stain.

The promise, the waste.

Like overwhelming power

as a doctrine of war

nature resorts to excess,

flooding the world with life

in a promiscuous spring,

brief

pent-up

intense.

Shock and awe, carpet bomb, blitzkrieg.

But in nature, there is no waste;

only food, and fed

and descent,

a perfect balance

of life, and death.

On the sheer cliffs

that hem in the narrows

a bright yellow line is inscribed.

The wanton abundance of spring,

in permanent marker

on weathered rock

in a mean and hungry winter.

We persist in our anthropocentric view of nature. Not just what is of use and what isn’t (or what appears to be), but also our preference for the aesthetic. The scum of pollen is hardly that. But it is no less beautiful if seen as part of an ecological system …in the continuity of time …as a central element in the interdependence of food, survival, and reproduction. Because beauty is not just aesthetics. It also arises from deep knowledge, from an appreciation of complexity, from the marvel of sustainability. So that scum of spent pollen is not unsightly in the least. It’s exactly as it should be. 

D.U.I.

May 27 2016

Driving under the influence

of speed

inertia

escape.

Intoxicated

by motion itself.

She sat to my right

in the old sedan, with its flat bench seat.

Slick vinyl, she could sidle across

and cozy up,

leaning her heat, her weight

hard against my side.

Those times, on the dark Interstate

when she bowed her head

and pleasured me,

hands gripping the wheel

at 2, and 10.

All those horses

at such easy command

with an effortless tap.

The throttle’s silky compliance

engine’s throaty whine.

The high-bore block,

pistons throbbing

tuned exhaust.

So no one feels small, frail

flesh and blood

enclosed in steel and glass.

The open road

a tank of gas.

And going too fast

because you can’t get there soon enough;

saddened to find

only the scenery’s changed.

For a reason I’m not so sure of myself, I find myself returning to this theme:  the fugue state, the lure of the open road, the geographic cure. I think it’s because when I feel dissatisfied, my mind turns to this illusion of escape:  which, despite its easy seduction, takes all of 5 minutes to lose its allure in real life.

Although this particular poem actually began in a completely different place. Once again, it was that  back-page personal essay that appears every weekday in the Globe and Mail. This one was about a child killed by a drunk driver. I hate drunk drivers, and feel they should all be locked up for natural life, whether the consequence of driving drunk is loss of life or not. I know this betrays an unbecoming and self-righteous sense of retribution – a model of justice that’s more about vengeance that restitution. But I said it was a feeling, not a public policy prescription. Anyway, when the expression “D.U.I.” crossed my mind, I thought there was many other ways of being distracted behind the wheel:  power, escape, sex; to name 3. This is the poem that followed.

I’m not so sure about “pleasured”. It’s the kind of euphemism I’d normally avoid. It sounds like those immoderately modest bodice-rippers, where they use every cliché and every polite indirection. On the other hand, the word is economical, it fits, and anything explicit would be out of keeping with the tone of the poem.

I also originally had the 2^nd stanza written as “you”. But, as always, 1^st person is much more powerful – autobiographical, or not!

I had my doubts about the repetition of “only”. Because repetition seems lazy. And because it can be a lost opportunity to add nuance and depth. But I like it here. I think there is an additive effect and a quality of refrain that makes the ending stronger. And anyway, any variation I tried without using “only” in each line somehow didn’t work.

And finally, my car is hardly that:  any high-pitched whine isn’t horsepower; it’s an under-powered engine straining under the load!

Meantime, here’s the essay I mentioned:

Un­speak­able Losses

The Globe and Mail Metro (Ontario Edition) - 2016-05-26

Heidi Mor­ri­son lives in Topanga, Calif.

An elderly woman sitting near my newborn son and me in an airport restaurant leaned over to tell me that a baby in her hometown died recently from influenza. “The funeral is this Saturday, on the pregnant mother’s due date,” she added.

As I clutched my baby’s little hand, deep sadness resounded through my heart. Unwittingly or not, she had tapped into a place of profound worry. I wondered why this woman would tell me a morbid baby story in light of my vulnerability as an obviously new mother.

I remembered how less than a year prior, when I was nearing my due date, another stranger spontaneously approached me to share a distressing story about motherhood. As I stood washing my hands in the gym restroom, the stranger divulged that she’d had an abortion because her partner was unsuitable for parenthood. “Do you think the fetus suffered any pain?” she asked me.

I excused her inappropriate conversation, assuming that my pregnant body must have elicited a mix of emotions in her.

I tried to muster up a similar sense of compassion for the woman in the airport restaurant, who was sitting alone, eating French fries one by one. The iPads mounted at each table make it easy for customers to place their orders then drift away, surfing the Web. Defying the isolation that this setup invited, and pushing aside my own discomfort and fear, I gestured to her that I was willing to hear more.

“I know what it feels like to lose a child,” she continued. More than 20 years ago, she’d woken up to a police officer at the door telling her that her son, John, was dead. A 17-yearold girl driving under the influence had swerved off the road and hit John, who had pulled over to help a stalled motorist. The accident occurred within sight of the home where John’s mother was sleeping. He had moved back to his parents’ house from college a week earlier, ready to begin his first job. His older brother’s wedding, a few weeks away, would have an empty seat.

As I sat listening to this tragic story, unable to eat the noodles in front of me, I looked at my son, asleep so soundly and innocently. “Wait, what did you say was your son’s name?” were, embarrassingly, the first words I uttered at the close of the woman’s story.

“John. His name was John.” “That’s my son’s name,” I replied.

“Well, give him an extra hug each day and tell him you love him.”

That would have been a simple point for me to end the increasingly difficult conversation, but out of both curiosity and obligation I did not conveniently divert my eyes to the iPad in front of me.

“I decided not to press charges against the 17-year-old-girl,” the woman said, as if anticipating my next question. My jaw dropped. “I told the girl that all I wanted from her was that she grows up to live a good life and do good to others.”

“And that gave you the peace you needed to move on in your life?” I probed.

She didn’t answer my question directly. “In the weeks following John’s death, neighbours, friends and family would not let me spend a moment alone. They would be in my kitchen in the morning making coffee before I even awoke. They brought me meals. They did my shopping. I was very near to drifting away.”

The conversation continued for another quarter of an hour, but in my memory, that is where the story ends.

I don’t know the woman’s name, nor do I think I could recognize her in a crowd. In one sense, our exchange was a way to pass time while awaiting our flights, but in another, it was much more. Remarkably, she had found the peace to move on in her life despite having experienced one of the greatest injustices that can be inflicted on a parent. Even more remarkably, she had found this peace without reprisal.

She told me that years after she lost her son she received a letter from the woman who killed him. The woman had established a family and, surprisingly, lost a sibling to a similar type of motor accident – and forgiven the driver as she had been forgiven.

The two distressing conversations I had at the gym and the airport pushed me to marshal up a form of forgiveness. It was painful to hear about termination of a pregnancy while nearing the due date of my long-anticipated son, and to hear about the death of two children while I cradled my newborn. I had endured years of failed pregnancy attempts, including miscarriage. My pregnancy was high-risk and followed closely by specialists, leaving me in a mixed state of grief and excitement.

Nonetheless, I didn’t respond to the women’s insensitivity with spite or vengeance. I wanted them to maintain their dignity. This response was a form of support for the freedom they had found to move forward in their lives.

I can only hope the willingness to forgive would come into my heart and mind if I – perish the thought – woke up to a policeman at my door.

Exposure

May 22 2016

The point of land

on the wind-swept shore

is mostly rock.

Thin soil

clings to sheltered spaces

fills the small indentations

and cracks.

The trees are also small

but surprisingly old.

Contorted, like little old men.

Trunks bent

by prevailing wind

so they all lean one way.

Weathered bark

is knobbly, thick,

while roots knuckle-in

with the tenacious grip

of drowning sailors.

I am standing alone, exposed;

no wind-break

no sheltering shade.

But mercifully free

of the biting bugs

that buzz all spring,

persecuting me

after a barren winter.

Tiny wild-flowers

hunker down

among scattered blades of grass.

The grass is short, and coarse

the flowers dazzling.

As beautiful

as finely cut jewels

set in something plain.

Because there is beauty in strength

and scarcity feeds desire.

And beauty to be found

in unexpected places

if you stop long enough

to look.

From the Outside In

May 11 2016

Just as small birds, returning north

warble, preen, strut,

ruffle feathers, huff and puff

defending a bare branch

in the war of attraction

I am displaying myself,

even though I am long past

the age of musth.

In a cool spring, impatient for summer

a loud Hawaiian shirt;

redolent

of sun and surf,

flowering

with ripe exotic blooms.

I heard the actor say

he can feel the himself change

as make-up goes on

layer-by-layer,

the costume conceals

the frail pretender.

How he inhabits the role

from the outside in.

I know how superficial this seems.

That the clothes make the man.

That you can change your appearance

and transform how you feel.

But here it is, a cool spring

and I feel like high summer

with its long indolent days

decadent heat.

Winter,

bundled-up

in dark puffy material

like faceless automatons.

When clothing reminds us of death;

freeze, if you dress wrong.

But now, the drab little warblers

are fiercely preening,

claiming their homes

calling out for mates.

A cacophony of bird-song

fills the fragrant air.

And me, in my loud Hawaiian shirt,

a riot of primary colour

crying out to be seen.

I’m a lousy dresser.  I’m oblivious to clothes, contemptuous of fashion. My choices are purely functional. So it was an odd choice, on that unseasonably warm day, when I grabbed that loud shirt and wore it for the first time.

It was also when that old cliché “the clothes make the man” started making sense. I can see how similar this is to cognitive-behavioural therapy. Not the “cognitive” part, which is all about re-framing, about modulating your feelings and thought. I mean the “behavioural” part, which suggests that if you simply go through the motions, real change will follow. That is, change your behaviour and you’ll change yourself. Or, to again resort to cliché, “fake it ‘till you make it”!

It’s spring, of course, so the world is busy pairing up, and all the males are fiercely displaying. Which is also a good reason to dress well:  create an impression …cultivate a persona …demonstrate your fitness to the opposite sex! Hmm, I wonder if this has something to do with the creation of art, as well?

In my rough first draft, the last line of the opening stanza was “attraction”, which I soon realized I’d already used. So I had to choose. Which is when “rut” and “musth” came to mind. Ungulates rut, locking horns; bull elephants go into musth. I know the word is a little obscure. But the meaning is perfect, as is the rhyme. So it stayed.

A Game of Catch
May 6 2016


A game of catch.

Once the frost subsided
and the puddles dried
and the matted grass had greened.

Except not really,
because in games
there are sore losers, bad winners
good sports,
tests of will
and keeping score. 

Sun-warmed arms, that could use some colour
pinking-up,
blinking
like prisoners
released from their cells.
A gentle breeze
as pungently sweet
as freshly thawed soil.
And air so soft
after winter’s steel
you find it hard to believe
in living as easy as this.

The give-and-take, the back-and-forth.
The overhand lob
performed automatically.
How muscle memory
calculates everything
all on its own;
the physics 
of the ballistic arc,
moving targets
rusty arms.

The tightly wound ball
at the top of its flight.
An infinitesimal pause,
when all the forces 
cancel out.
And wouldn’t it be something  
if everything stopped 
right there,
as we stood and watched
awe-struck.
The world
in perfect balance
held by a thread.

But the world moves on, the ball is caught.
Back and forth, back and forth
in its own marvellous way;
an easy toss, a seamless catch
as thoughtless as taking a breath.

This is a poem about that first nice day, warm sun, a desultory game.

We wish for the miraculous, transcendent, ecstatic. But there should be gratitude in the every-day. The complexity of a game of catch, for example:  the high physics the brain accomplishes unconsciously; the fluency of muscle memory that is lost as soon as you actually pay attention.

Night Walk

May 5 2016

Walking in the forest at night.

The narrow glimpse of blue-black sky.

Two diminutive figures

trudging on uneven ground

in even deeper dark.

Where the trees crowding the path

seem like one.

A murky mass

of forking branches, looming trunks

that front a shrouded wood;

still, quiet

impenetrable.

I feel eyes peering out

and sometimes hear a rustling.

Yet feel unaccountably safe

if we stick to the path

and walk respectfully,

keeping small

knowing our place.

Here, where it’s never flat, or straight

and no one ever chain-sawed the way,

screeching, burbling

spewing exhaust.

And even though it wanders

circles back

goes nowhere at all

it is not without purpose.

Alone

in the dark

the dog at my side,

so far beneath

the blue-black sky.

I wanted to convey the paradoxical feeling you get walking at night like this:  that small protected feeling of being enclosed, contrasted with that feeling of being open to the universe as the sky peels back and you can see out to the most distant star. Where even the moonless sky is light, compared to the gloom as the eye descends into the trees.

I wanted to invoke that feeling of humility one gets in the grandeur of nature:  how small and insignificant a single human being is; how indifferent the universe.

And finally, I wanted to convey the usefulness of doing something useless:  of unstructured time; of walking for the sake of walking; of going nowhere slow.

I don’t know how nocturnal dogs are by nature, but mine is used to walking at night. We try to make our way without a flashlight. It feels as if you can’t see anything with one:  everything outside the narrow beam of light becomes pitch black. And the unnatural glare makes you feel as if you don’t belong, like some loud disturbance or unwanted intruder. Not to mention that the bright light draws attention, eliminating the cloak of invisibility darkness affords:  as if there were no escape from the sinister eyes that may be peering out and tracking you.