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. 

The Perseids
Aug 13 2016


The meteor shower 
above the clouds
went on, as promised
I‘ve been reassured.

Because the tree that falls
need not be heard. 
Because somewhere, there is always clear black sky
whoever’s watching;
the stars, hard points of light
through thin motionless air.

Where flecks of ice, shards of rock
blaze for a brilliant instant;
after billions of years, in the frozen void 
a random encounter with earth.

Except that in a closed universe 
nothing ends.
The spared molecules
gassing-off,
the charred remains
seeding the planet.
And the shared atmosphere
of our only home
absorbing the heat
of immolation.

That egg-shell thin
mixture of air,
keeping us safe
from space debris, ultra-violet.
Just as cosmic rays
are deflected by magnetic flux,
in a luminous veil
of shimmering light
when winter nights are clear.

Nevertheless
I kept on watching
that claustrophobic cloud,
hugging the surface
like a pale quilt.
As if there was nowhere else but here;
this planet,
this point of land,
this very spot.

Earth, hurtling on
regardless. 



If I were a lot less prolific, this would be a lot easier! Because once again, I find myself cribbing previous work --  scouring old ground, searching for interesting subjects. Any reasonably attentive reader will easily see that I’ve touched on similar imagery and themes before. I can only hope that practice has sharpened my ear, honed my eye, and distilled my language, so it comes out better the 2nd (or 3rd!) time around. 

After two weeks of perfectly clear weather, it turned overcast the day before the annual Perseid meteor shower. This year we were promised a more spectacular view than usual. I can only presume it came to pass!

Muskoka Chair
Aug 9 2016



Adirondack
                        ...Laurentian
                                                     ...Cape Cod.

But I know them as Muskoka chairs.


Because they are everywhere,
but jealously claimed
by each proud enclave of summer
 -- watershed, seashore, lake-front
cottage, camp, chalet.


They are set at the end of a dock
or on a large covered veranda,
wooden-slatted, high-backed
angling nicely away.


They invite you in,
with ample arms
contoured bottoms
slightly curved splats,
softly encircling your body
like a comfortable embrace.


Unoccupied,
they are turned toward each other
like life-long friends
amiably shooting the breeze.
And like stoic old mariners
are contemptuous of weather
but show the patina of age;
seasoned wood
bleached and peeling paint.


Even empty
they give the place that lived-in look.
And, like family, welcome you home,
proclaiming summer
simply by being there,
a constant presence
waiting to take you in.


Take a load off, crack a beer
the chair seems to graciously say.
Recline your body, rest your head
there’s no rush here. 

Classic Rock
Aug 8 2016


Every summer has its song.

An anthem 
of rock & roll.
Or something danceable 
at the beach
or easily strummed,
you imagine sung 
by California girls
drenched in sunshine.

Or thumping from a fast car
idling in the park
rocking on its springs,
windows shut
steaming-up
with urgent breath.

I dislike top 40 radio.
And like most people of a certain age
the latest music leaves me cold.
But the song
that 16-year-old heard
is coded in my DNA
and fills me with the same hot thrill.
When everything was possible.
When I was on top of the world.

I surprise myself,
singing along with the words
I seem to know by heart
those simple 4/4 chords.

Even in the Alzheimer’s ward
they play the music of their youth,
a well-meaning pianist
pounding away at the keys.
She sings with gusto,
and even lost souls
are drawn back from their wanderings,
the garbled and withdrawn
latch on to the verse.
Faces brighten, feet tap
mouths form the words.

Because it was always a golden age, back then;
“classic rock”, we say
no matter who, or when.

I wouldn’t know
the song of this summer
as it plays and plays,
snatches from a passing car
or tinkling out of ear buds.
But I know it will be the soundtrack 
to some young man's life
who feels just as I once did,
trembling on the cusp
of something great.

Picked Green
Aug 7 2016


Supermarket tomatoes 
are picked green.
In my muscle memory
I can feel the resistance 
of unripe fruit
firmly attached to its stem;
like a warm-blooded creature, weaned too young
reluctantly pulled from the breast.

Hard green spheres
that will not bruise
no matter what,
dumped into buckets, poured into trucks.
Then, in a trick of chemistry, gassed;
temptingly red
utterly bland.

While a fresh tomato
grown in the sun on a backyard vine
is exquisitely ripe,
smelling of summer
sweet, and tart.
That savoury taste
the Japanese have called umami,
like Parmesan, and beef-steak.

It slips from the plant
like tender fruit
fully ready to part.
Red skin, soft pulp, small yellow seeds.
That spurt of juice
that drips down your chin
sticks to eager hands. 


This poem was once again inspired by a Writer’s Almanac offering. 

I often turn there when I’m at a loss for what to write. Because I’m encouraged to see “legitimate” poetry (that is, validated by publication, as well as by Garrison Keillor’s imprimatur) concerning itself with the small diurnal things of life, when there is a temptation to try to write about the profound and philosophical. And because for me, the attraction is most often in the writing itself, rather than in having something important to say. So really, any idea I can steal is welcome. 

I never refer back to the original piece as I write, and usually haven’t even read it at all closely in the first place; but nevertheless, it’s great fun to go back and contrast and compare our different takes on a vaguely related topic. So here is where Picked Green began:


Tomatoes on Interstate 5  (by Albert Garcia)


Trucks roll down I-5, trailers full
of tomatoes. Almost always
they’ll spill a few as they round a corner, 

hard, small fruit
bouncing over asphalt,
a bright scattering of red

on the road’s shoulder
of star thistle and tarweed.
Maybe you left the house

angry over an argument with your wife,
words in the air
like a whining fan belt. Maybe

you’re headed down the freeway
because it’s the fastest way out
of town and you’re suddenly sick

of the same streets and just have to drive
to something new. You’re in your car,
mind dulled by the flatness of rice fields,

their green monotony, when somewhere
in your vision’s periphery a pheasant
coasts over the road

almost hitting the big rig in front of you.
The trucker taps his breaks
and it happens: spilling, filling your view,

tomatoes bouncing around your car
in a flash of color so sudden
you wonder if this is real

or if it’s something else that’s made
your pulse quicken, your grip
tighten on the wheel. In the rearview

you see them roll onto the shoulder’s
hot gravel, and you can’t help it—
you keep glancing in the mirror,

feeling lucky, wanting to say something
though no one is sitting
beside you, and you drive

until the small red dots are gone
and the road bends
into the dreary gray grove of olives.

“Tomatoes on Interstate 5” by Albert Garcia from A Meal Like That. © Brick Road Press, 2015.


I know I’ve recently written a similar poem (The Smell of a Ripe Tomato - June 1), but having another go always turns up interesting challenges and opportunities for fun. And even though they’re both explorations of sensory experience, I think they’re different enough to stand. 

And I suppose I should once again reiterate that tomatoes are, technically, fruit; not vegetables! A fruit contains its own seeds. Re-casting tomatoes as an everyday vegetable was a clever marketing strategy that dates from the turn of the last century, in the early days of industrial agriculture and long distance transport by rail.

Odd Weeds

Aug 3 2016

Odd weeds 

keep poking through the deck,

squeezing in-between the planks

and opening their leaves

to drink in the sun.

It sits 6 feet high

above a dark enclosed space

containing who-knows-what.

I imagine spiders and snakes

and something that recently died,

slowly decomposing 

in the cool dank.

Determined plants, eking out the meagre light

that sifts through the slats

and lattice-work walls.

So they must subsist on water and air

long enough to reach the sun;

as if we could survive

deprived of oxygen.

Some innate sense

tugging them upward,

then bursting out

in the glory of light. 

Such is the life force;

plants that keep appearing

where I thought nothing could grow, 

thin stems and pale leaves

greedy for light.

Like weeds, cracking concrete.

Like the city, after we’re gone.

How long, I wonder

until I am that ancient Mayan ruin;

crumbling stone, over-run by impassable jungle,

my clearing in the woods

reclaimed by the kingdom of plants?

Another man vs. nature poem. Which is, I admit, getting to be a rather tired trope. But I had no intention of pushing the same earnest environmental polemic. Rather, this poem arose from a simple observation, and all I could do was follow it where it took me. 

Archaeologists have  recently discovered these lost Mayan cities by flying over the jungle and imaging them with a shallow ground-penetrating version of radar called LiDAR :  it uses light instead of sound, and allows them to see patterns of vegetation and soil hidden by the dense jungle canopy. When these cities flourished, they may very well have been the high point of human civilization. And although we know these did not, other ancient civilizations that are barely remembered lasted so much longer than ours has yet existed.  So whenever I see a modern skyline, with its gleaming high-rises and soaring towers, I think of obsolescence and pride:  the fullness of time;  how we privilege the now; the conceit of modernity.

In Touch
Aug 1 2016


Something in the post office
might have suited me better.

A fixed route
carrying letters door-to-door
seems a good fit
for a man so wedded to routine.
Not to mention the dogs, the regulars
the outdoor air.
Even the weather, out in the real world.
And all that walking
wouldn’t hurt. 

A respectable position
a good government job.
You would have thought, back then,
before email, and text.

The postman
 --  and they were all men, as I recall  -- 
was a reassuring figure
making his rounds.
A symbol of order, and calm.
The authority of a uniform
the measured walk. 
Children were taught
he could be safely called upon
if there was trouble.

My mother would leave a 5 dollar bill
at Christmas,
tipping the mailman
milkman
paperboy.
The breadman, as well.
In furthest suburbia
with its small lots, and sparse trees
and newly-paved streets,
an essential service 
for housewives moored to home.

But there are no postmen
in the high-rise condo
patrolling its halls. 
The mail appears
in my assigned box,
and letters slip through the slot
never doubting they’ll get there.

That you took the trouble.
That was written in your own hand.
That will keep in a dark desk drawer
until it’s found;
like reaching back across the gap of years, 
and getting in touch
once more.



A nostalgic poem that leaves no doubt I was born in the 50s, grew up in the 60s, and came of age in the 70s.  Yes, in deepest suburbia and before 2-car families, there really was all that door-to-door:  bread, milk, and actual broadsheet newspapers (both morning and evening!) -- as well as mail. My mother was very frugal (in her defence, she had reason to be!), but also very aware of obligation and social nicety:  so I think it was a slightly pained expression I discerned on her face, sealing those low denomination bills into their appointed envelopes. (And we didn’t even celebrate Christmas!)

I know I’m romanticizing it --- because there is a lot of hard work and misery -- but the life of  a letter carrier seems enviably simple and satisfying. And a mailman assumes a certain authority when he puts on that uniform:  an official agent of the state; a symbol of order.

There is much to be mourned with the passing of snail mail. (The personal letter, anyway. Bills still come. As well as official missives and unsolicited junk.) Yes, it frustrated our need for instant gratification. And it was more trouble than electronic communication. But there is something about an actual object, a thing that’s both tactile and personal:  the paper that was touched, the ink that was applied by hand, the idiosyncratic script.  And there are the  little incidentals, frozen in time:  a coffee drip, a latent scent. 

So this poem is a paen to the past through rose-coloured glasses. It may not even interest many readers. But it was fun to write. And I’m particularly pleased with its conversational tone: not strictly a prose poem, but getting there. And  this is a form I greatly admire. I like its accessibility. I like the writerly discipline its lack of formal structure requires. I like the subversion of dry prose with the whimsy and ambiguity of poetry.