August 21, 2017

Aug 11 2017

The path of totality

cuts a dark slash

through middle America.

Which has me wondering

about omens, and portents

and momentous signs

in these troubled times

of guns and drugs and high anxiety;

when the heavens align

and day becomes night

and bird song ceases.

When the solid ground beneath our feet,

the flat earth

every sense insists we inhabit,

will all at once become

a small round planet

hurtling through space;

and we, its puny passengers

looking out.

And in the eerie silence, a minute's grace

when we are privileged to gaze upon vast astronomical objects

wheeling through the cosmos

in their great ponderous arcs.

The serendipity of distance

when the moon intersects with the sun,

covering it so exactly, one can only imagine

that beauty is intrinsic

to how the universe works.

While a dark calm descends

as if the earth stood still;

the sun blacked-out, and its corona revealed,

seething

with brilliantly tinselled light.

And the blind leading the blind

who are bold enough to look.

Cloudburst

Aug 14 2017

When the rain began

— from misty drops

to sprinkled drips

to stiff insistent drizzle —

on and on I drove.

Until, at the flick of a switch

the sluice gates opened

and the heavens poured

and a river roiled the road.

When still, I didn't stop,

headlights a blur, lines submerged

the gravel verge invisible

as the wipers uselessly slapped.

And reference-free

all sensation of speed

was strictly theoretical,

as I gripped the wheel

eyes grimly fixed on the glass.

The sound was a dense metallic roar,

drowning out the rattles, the engine

the radio talk

my breathlessly racing heart.

So why did I push on

in this cacophony of rain?

Before it stopped, just as suddenly

in an eerily quiet calm,

when the sky broke

and the sun beamed

and the asphalt steamed and glistened

power-cleaned and cooled.

My windshield, squeegeed dry

by seesawing wipers,

squeak-squeak-squeak on the glass.

I was sitting pondering what to write, when the heavens opened and a windless rain inundated the house. I immediately thought about similar downpours I've driven through – a combination of stubborn persistence and youthful bravado – and thought this might make a poem.

The Self-Important “Now”

Aug 12 2017

I look at black-and-white pictures

from back when I was a kid

and it seems more anthropological

than personal.

Yes, I was alive

in those tumultuous times,

but too young to be part of history.

And the incongruous mix

of mid-century modern

with what seems from a previous age

is not at all how I remember it.

Like seeing the first Mustang,

adjacent to post-war DeSotos

Studebakers laden with chrome.

Or political hacks, who backed Jim Crow

caught by the camera's indiscriminate eye;

background men, fading to grey

when Camelot came true

and glamour ruled.

Or hippies and peaceniks and student radicals,

whose photos still look just as cool

as when love was free

and youth eternal

and the boomers first

discovered themselves.

Along with lean men

in narrow ties and snappy hats

and thick owlish glasses.

And lumpy housewives in mousy frocks,

sporting cat's-eye frames

and beehive hair

and formidable corsets and bras,

pocketbooks clutched

in white-gloved hands.

But it's the absence of colour

that's truly distancing

and makes the past unrecognizable.

Monochrome photos,

drained of blood

forever young.

Black and white figures, fixed in time,

so they seem more iconic than real.

I know this

after seeing World War II in Colour,

an eye-candy film

that jolted the 40s to life.

Dances, and Big Bands

and rallies of Hitler Youth.

Sleek battleships

on postcard-blue seas,

the daily life

of Parisian streets.

Not heroes of war

but young men I might have known;

sharing cigarettes, relaxing on deck,

strong, and tanned

and clowning for the camera.

And their girlfriends, so beautiful

in the achingly brief

flower of youth.
Still in bloom, on celluloid,

never imagining themselves

the buxom grandmas, and shuffling veterans

I remember from childhood,

their settled world

utterly gone.

I remember how we, too

felt ourselves the height of modernity

in the self-important now,

contemptuous of the world

that came before.

Just as today

a generation is absorbed

by the dazzle of technology

and blinkered self regard.

So will they, looking back

also patronize our innocence, romanticize our time?

Just as we have done

with these photographs in black and white

and endless shades of grey,

the captured moment

freighted with meaning

no snapshot could ever contain?

Must the past always remain

a foreign country?

So that even to those who were there

it never quite feels like home.

Becalmed

Aug 9 2017

I see it far away

under full sail

above a thin sliver of hull.

The wind, a gentle breath

of hot and humid air

so the surface is almost glass.

Where it hovers, weightless

under blue porcelain sky

at the boundary of water and air.

It's like a pointillist painting

in soft pastels,

an impression of stillness

through hazy light

and squinting eyes.

Toy skiffs

on a small pond

in a city park

look festive and bright.

Old men at play.

Children

in games of war.

High summer,

and in the thick lassitude

of late afternoon

boats, going nowhere fast.

While time patiently waits

for the breeze to freshen.

Vacant

Aug 7 2017

The low winter sun

lit up the room

in the long season of night.

Its horizontal light

picked up the blonde hardwood grain

spotlit the dust

and probed the farthest corner

illuminating every flaw.

As if the space had expanded

under pressure of light,

absence

had relieved the room of weight.

No more love-seat

preserved by silk-glove care.

No cabinets and tchotchkes,

no leather ottoman

with its stained and cat-scratched top.

No over-stuffed couch

which wallowed in softness

and they never stopped calling a chesterfield.

No more of the clutter

that comes with living well.

But what did persist was the scent;

and this, unmistakably them.

Like muscle memory

infusing the air, absorbed in the paint

ingrained in the porous walls.

And now, the vacant apartment

my parents so long called home

will soon be rented out.

New tenants

who would never suspect

they will have company,
a ghostly presence

dusting and puttering about.

Not malevolent spectres

but quiet, respectful, neat.

If not a little perplexed

by the strange new furniture

the guests who never leave.

My challenge in writing poetry is the idea. My life is too uneventful for good inspiration. Or in the words of one of my favourite podcasts – The Moth – not sufficiently “story-worthy”.

Which is OK, because what I love is the execution, the feeling of flow, that almost mystical process of receiving words as if they were dictated. And then the tweaking and fussing and revisiting until it strikes the ear and tongue just right.

So I often resort to reading others' work, and stealing their ideas. A prime resource is Garrison Keillor's Writers Almanac, which delivers a poem to my in-box daily. This one arrived August 1 2017.

I felt juiced by Robyn Sarah's idea, and wanted to try riffing on it myself. The persistence of smell is the crux of her poem, and I stole that as well. So most of the credit for this piece is hers. Nevertheless, it was fun to write.

Not to mention that my parents had a condo, not an apartment. And in the spirit of not claiming credit that rightly does not belong to me, my brother and sister-in-law – not I – did the good work of emptying it out (after my father died, and my mother later moved to a senior's residence).

My process is very visual. A poem often begins with a still image, which I wander through and describe. Simple as that. So I saw the floor, the dust, the light; felt the jarring sense of spaciousness. The end seemed to write itself, and came as much a surprise to me as it may have to you.

On Closing the Apartment of my Grandparents of Blessed Memory

By Robyn Sarah

And then I stood for the last time in that room.
The key was in my hand. I held my ground,
and listened to the quiet that was like a sound,
and saw how the long sun of winter afternoon
fell slantwise on the floorboards, making bloom
the grain in the blond wood. (All that they owned
was once contained here.) At the window moaned
a splinter of wind. I would be going soon.

I would be going soon; but first I stood,
hearing the years turn in that emptied place
whose fullness echoed. Whose familiar smell,
of a tranquil life, lived simply, clung like a mood
or a long-loved melody there. A lingering grace.
Then I locked up, and rang the janitor’s bell.

“On Closing the Apartment of my Grandparents of Blessed Memory” by Robyn Sarah from Questions About the Stars. © Brick Books, 1998. Reprinted with permission. 

This poem was recently revised, and sue to formatting problems has been re-posted out of chronological order.

“You Are a Person of Strong Sense of Duty”

Feb 17 2009

The fortune cookie

teases open like a wish-bone -

the gentle resistance

of clasped wings

pried apart,

giving way

to hard edges, and shattered shards.

Nice generic predictions

you can leave

or take.

We complete this communal meal

with cookies that taste

like drywall.

And with a small flutter of hope

for love, treasure, friends,

the good ones, taken to heart

glossing over the rest.

Or scratching our heads

when Confucius inscrutably says . . .

Somewhere, in a cookie factory

that smells of ink, and sweetened dough

a man is frantically stuffing them in,

as a conveyor

pumps them out like hot cakes.

Apparently, good fortune does not rub off

as he sits, hour after hour

in his dead-end job,

lost and luckless

breathing-in crumbs.

This poem was recently revised and due to formatting problems has been re-posted out of chronological order.

With Her Eyes Closed

May 23 2009

A woman of a certain age

is grateful to feel wanted,

long after she thought

her time had passed.

And to be the object of desire

thrills her.

The age, of course, is immaterial

and a gentleman never asks.

They make love

undercover

with her socks on,

thick sturdy wool ones

knee-high hose.

Unselfconscious, unlike the young.

She kisses with her eyes closed,

transported back to old affairs

abandoned lovers

absent men,

and the only one

she wishes never left.

But she is comforted by this embrace,

his body as warm, familiar

as the garden she loves to tend.

Which she could navigate blind-folded

- up the garden path, along the rows,

her hands finding him

her fingers entwined with his.

Insatiable as spring

immersed in warm moist earth.

When she kneels on freshly turned soil

breathing in

its pungent scent.

This poem was recently revised, and due to formatting problems has been re-posted out of chronological order.

When The Revolution Comes

May 19 2004

When the revolution comes

they round up the poets first.

Because there is something suspicious about words,

even to stiff men, in dark glasses

who are immune to irony.

And anyway, not much inclined

to verse.

But they forget that the word never dies,

and that poets are vain

and memorize.

And just how much could a poet hurt

the coup d’etat,

with his harmless armamentarium

of blank verse, and a few blank pages,

of nonsense words, and sentimental phrases

about setting suns

or love undone

or kingdom come,

against well-honed steel

and point-blank guns?

This poem was recently revised, and due to formatting problems has been re-posted out of chronological order.

We Sit

June 9 2008

When there is a death in the family

or death takes its time,

we keep our questions to ourselves

clasp each other’s hands

nod solemnly.

This is what we do

with all the calamities.

We come bearing casseroles.

We sit,

knitting needles clicking

the tick

of a mantle clock.

Others may talk

may keen and wail and tear out their hair

and debate the metaphysics of tragedy.

But we are content

with silence,

comforted to know they will come.

And the warmth of familiar bodies

is enough,

holding us up

as we sleep-walk through

our private sorrows.

The colour of mourning is black

unadorned,

and the sound is small-talk

about recipes, and weather.

We are grateful for those who sit,

we welcome this pause

their taciturn presence.

Plenty of time, later

to wrestle with God.

This poem was recently revised, and due to formatting problems has been re-posted out of chronological order.

Walking Home on a Cold Winter Evening

Feb 11 2008

It’s high pressure cold;

sky clear

all the way out to the ozone.

In thin night air

where the molecules have slowed

close to absolute zero.

A transparent dome

where the stars are sharp as lasers.

I walk

muffled, layered

soft snow underfoot,

through a city of houses like ships at sea

all leaning into the breeze.

Their chimneys huff-out smoke,

trailing away

as if steaming into headwinds.

And it might just as well be mid-Atlantic,

becalmed in oceanic dark.

Where great waves swell, but cannot break;

long unstoppable rollers

rocking us in place.

A small city on a tiny planet

forging through the ocean of ether

that holds the universe up.

So close

I could reach-up and touch

the hard black edge of space.

This poem was recently revised, and due to formatting problems has been re-posted out of chronological order.

U-Turns and Hard Lefts

Aug 10 2006

How far you can go in a straight line

without stopping.

It would be bald prairie, or salt flats,

with policemen, at the cross-roads, holding traffic back

in white immaculate gloves,

until you coasted to a stop

as far as you got

on a full-tank.

Except there are no straight lines or straightaways

on a round planet;

where all roads are bent,

and the shortest distance between two points

runs underground.

And anyway, U-turns and hard lefts

always keep things interesting.

Like questions you ask, you really want answered.

Or going so fast, it no longer matters.

Or swallowing your fear, and taking your chances

with hard women

in after-hours bars,

or strong drink

and even faster cars,

or leaps of faith in darkness.

Because when the entire universe is curved

you can drive, hell-bent-for-leather

or let it ride, and take forever

and still return

unharmed.