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.” .)