Pebble

March 27 2018

There are consequences, no matter what.

Like concentric rings, rippling out

from the small rock

in the still water

you idly tossed that day.

But even when you kept on walking

and never bent

and never lobbed

inaction still has its effect;

like the lie of omission, the thing unsaid,

the best of intentions

that went unexpectedly wrong.

So either way

damned if you did, or did not.

Even in death

which you'd think would be the certain end

the world grinds relentlessly on,

secrets revealed, trust betrayed

memory corrupted, or lost.

Because events inexorably unfold.

Because we control so much less than we thought.

Except that time I paused

and watched the ripples decay.

Until the small pond

was at rest, again

and it appeared nothing had changed.

Just one more stone, set on the bottom,

smooth and small and grey.

And how many more would it take?

Water seeking its level.

The pond

eventually drained.

In a column in today's paper, something Niall Ferguson wrote really struck me. I thought every history teacher should start the first class by chalking this up on the board, and then leave it up there for the entire course: The only law of history is the law of unintended consequences. I thought about the truth of this, and what a humbling corrective it should be for all who confidently believe they should lead, and for those ideologues who pursue their beliefs with such intransigent conviction. I also thought how it applies not only to what we do, but to what we choose not to do. There are consequences to everything. Choosing inaction can be as consequential as blundering on. Or, to paraphrase the poem, you're damned if you do or you don't.

So I thought it would be interesting to play around with the theme of “unintended consequences”, and this poem is the result.

As I often do, I like to toy with cliche.

It's a challenge, locking yourself into a cliche while at the same time trying to be fresh and original.

It's kind of ironic and self-mocking, as well: the last thing a poet wants is to fall into platitudes and triteness. So intentionally jumping into the deep end is like a wink and a nudge between the reader and me.

And I like interrogating a cliche: taking a tired metaphor, and rendering it instead as something literal and concrete. Which at least wakes up the expression, making it at the same time more illuminating yet utterly silly.

Sweet Water

March 22 2018

Before the white froth of surf.

Before the green glass 
where the swells start to flatten
then bottom out.

Before the majestic procession of waves, glinting with sun

that roll metronomically shoreward

I can hear its dull roar.

And even further inland

where I first encountered the smell,

overwhelmed

by the sharp tang of brine

and mucous-coated life
and warm stagnant waste,

the fishy stink

and rotting weeds

and decomposing flesh.

The cool astringent air

heavy with fog.

And when my journey ends
at the rich inter-tidal,

teeming with shelled creatures scuttling

and soft burrowing worms,

probing birds

on bent pencil legs.

With algae, limpets, crabs.

With barnacled rocks

damp and knobbly,

tenacious plants, inured to salt,

their long bedraggled tendrils

a deep absorbent green.

Which is all too much for me

accustomed to this small land-locked lake.

Its thin water

fresh enough to drink.

Its shallow wash

over cleanly scoured stones.

The few solitary fish

slipping through the dark

of its cold still reaches.

How simple to comprehend,

how comforting

in its changelessness.

Nothing here

of the amniotic sea,

the churn of the shore,

the rich abundance

of subaquatic life.

Even the trees are marginal.

Spindly fir

and witchy black spruce,

small sheltering cedars

and struggling pines   —

the descendants

of once great whites.

Leggy aspen

in dense weedy patches,

and striking silver birch

that grow too slow to flourish.

Where I feel at home,

immersed

in its sweet water,

the earthy spice

of its sparse boreal woods,

its brisk northern air.

Far from the stench and mess and vastness

of the one great ocean

that spans the world;

the danger

its black surface conceals,

the desperate drama

of life and death

in silent bottomless depths.

This is the second time I've entitled a poem Sweet Water. (I note, too, that I've posted the first poem twice: apparently, an updated version as well as the original.) It just fits this poem too well to resist. The expression emphasizes the essential contrast that runs through the piece: the thinness of my small land-locked lake compared to the rich ocean and inter-tidal; between fresh-water and marine. Which could really all be simply contained in salt vs sweet.

This is something I've often considered: my aversion to salt-water swimming; my preference for freshwater lakes over open ocean. This probably says a lot about me: more comfortable with a simpler ecology, with smallness and stability, with less life and mess.

But what triggered this poem today was reading a piece in the latest New Yorker (March 26 2018) by Jill Lepore about Rachel Carson – the celebrated write of Silent Spring – and her earlier and more prolific writing about marine biology (The Right Way to Remember Rachel Carson). Lepore's opening paragraph was beautifully written: really, closer to poetry than prose, and something I must have re-read at least 3 times. Here it is:

The house, on an island in Maine, perches on a rock at the edge of the sea like the aerie of an eagle. Below the white-railed back porch, the sea-slick rock slopes down to a lumpy low tideland of eelgrass and bladder wrack, as slippery as a knot of snakes. Periwinkles cling to rocks; mussels pinch themselves together like purses. A gull lands on a shaggy-weeded rock, fluffs itself, and settles into a crouch, bracing against a fierce wind rushing across the water, while, up on the cliff, lichen-covered trees—spruce and fir and birch—sigh and creak like old men on a damp morning.

Frankly, I think her paragraph puts my poem to shame. But, of course, I'm writing about something different, and felt impelled to have a go at it not in the spirit of competition, but simply to say what I've been thinking about saying for awhile now. And at least my poem has given me an opportunity to share this lovely little paragraph.

Sense of Place

March 19 2018

They used to build

on the ruins of the old,

accreting layers

like a sea creature's shell

encrusted with age.

Impatiently striving

ever upward

no matter what had come before.

Yet beneath such busy lives

the past still dwelled;

scorned, perhaps

but at least preserved.

While we heedlessly raze it,

the debris carted away

the ground neutered.

Until all that are left

are soaring towers of steel and glass

anchored in bedrock,

untethered cities

floating on air.

No ancient tells, or tell-tale mounds of sand,

no carefully sifted layers

where further down

is further back.

In fact, no past to speak of.

So future archaeologists

will be starting from scratch

beginning with this benighted century.

A good metaphor, I think

to represent the discontinuous present

the breathless self-importance of now.

And to raise the question

have we become so forgetful

we are doomed to repeat our mistakes,

our humility lost

our sense of place?

And to wonder, when history ends

without murmur or trace,

    who will remember

        . . . who will remain?

When Seeing is Believing

March 17 2018

Dogs do not see red.

Their rich olfactory world, drenched in smell

is bloodless.

Ripe fruit

might as well be sour green

and hard as pith.

And this sunset, magenta-pink

never existed;

its brilliant light replaced

with a dull wash

of bluish-grey.

As I am blind

to infrared, ultraviolet,

my world thin

my view impoverished.

We think we see reality

as it is,

our eyes capturing light

our minds processing it.

Because how would you know what you've missed,

squinting

through a narrow aperture

at partial glimpses

and shifting shadows,

surface the eye cannot fathom.

A manic dash

after the bright orange ball

that will always incite her,

as if taunting the killer

who lives in her core.

Or what weak yellow light is left;

orange

bled of all its redness.

But she is infallible

in fierce pursuit;

following her nose,

digging it out

from deeply drifted snow.

Then triumphantly holds up her head,

eyes glowing

with the thrill of the hunt,

jubilant tail

a brownish blur.

I've often idly wondered why these balls come only in orange. True, it's bright and easy to find – for me. But to the colour-blind dogs who are chasing after, it's at best a dull yellow, the orange bled of its red.

I've wondered something similar, driving at night, following the red glow of the car in front. Does the brightness even register? Is there at least some kind of grey ...or are they totally invisible? The latter, I have to believe: with no receptors for red, these brake lights simply cease to exist, no matter how brightly they shine.

And tonight, admiring a beautiful sunset, the same thought came to me: do they see this part of the sky as utterly dark, absent all colour and light? ( ... Which is academic, of course, since not only are the dogs' noses glued to the ground, sniffing everything in sight, but they never look up at the sky or take an interest in what's overhead – ever.)

A typical human retina has 3 types of cones: red, green, blue. While butterflies, with their tiny insect brains, have either 5 or 6, depending on the species. And the mantis shrimp may have up to 16! So the world we see is not actually the world as it is. Our version of reality is incomplete, and our intuitive understanding that seeing is believing is mere conceit.

Just imagine: the ability to see various shades of ultraviolet, or to perceive magnetic fields, or to see further into the electromagnetic spectrum. An alarming thought, actually, considering how we are bathed in radiation from all our electronic devices and the WiFi that connects them; from satellites beaming their signals down to earth; from all the microwave transmissions that invisibly fill the air; and from the stray energy that leaks from hydro lines and appliances and who knows what. Perhaps better to remain blind after all!

Heart's Content

March 12 2018

Heartfelt, heart melts, heart skips a beat,

heartstrings

heart leaps

heart on my sleeve.

Heart's desire, heart throb

from the bottom of my heart,

cockles warmed, whole-hearted

sweet-hearted

soft.

Have a heart, faint of heart, lose heart and will,

followed heart

change of heart

beating heart be still.

Take heart, lose heart, heart of hearts sinks,

cross my heart

in my mouth

eat it out or weep.

Heart felt, heart sick, half-hearted, numb,

heartache, heartbreak

what the heart wants — undone.

Heavy-hearted, gold-hearted, dark heart of stone,

soft-hearted, hard-hearted

heart warm to cold.

Poured out, set on, stolen lost or light,

know by heart, heart of hearts

the person after mine.

All heart, young at heart, brave heart or faint,

take heart, big heart

in the right place.

Heart bleeds, still as sweet, heart set against,

near my heart, have a heart

to my heart's content.

Secret Garden

March 3 2018

The houses stand

shoulder-to-shoulder

on ample rectangular lots.

They look out

from dark impassive windows

on cul-de-sacs, and pampered dogs

and placid sunlit streets,

where tut-tutting people

steal glances upward.

Sturdy doors

securely shut,

facades all prim and neat.

The lawns are nicely cut

but oddly idiosyncratic  —

some, like putting greens, are emerald and plush,

while others are patchy, yellowed, overrun.

Where there are majestically spreading trees

the sun-starved grass is sparse,

and where the lawns have been covered

in paving-stone, or river-rock

absent, entirely.

While in back, behind high wooden fences

secret gardens flourish

cool and green and lush.

Where people gather

in small congenial groups,

intimate couples

seclude themselves.

Now, in this long fallow season

buried under snow;

a thick blanket of white

concealing warm dark soil.

An especially private place,

where a loose thatch

of dead brown grass

shelters small warm-blooded animals.

Where succulent worms nestle

and microbial life thrives

and matter decomposes.

Where dormant roots

await rebirth.

The architecture of snow;

intricate bonds of frozen water

with tiny pockets of air.

Protecting a subterranean garden

for months on end

in this winter of discontent.

Except for the heavy tread

where someone stepped

on a warm wet day;

the virgin snow compressed,

its fine crystalline lattice

shattered and crushed.

Frost penetrates.

Entire worlds

no one even knew of

laid waste.

Somewhere – it has already escaped my mind – I read “secret garden”: 2 simple words, but somehow highly evocative. Which is where the poem started. After which it wrote itself: no planning; no idea where it would lead. Writing like this is a pleasure: it feels as if you're taking dictation; the words seem to travel from inner consciousness, along your arm, and out through the pen. Only later do you bring some critical thought to the piece, ordering its content and refining the language.

In retrospect, it seems almost inevitable that the poem would have taken the turn it did. Because it's so much my style: in its close observation, its fascination with microcosm, its idea of orders of magnitude and invisible worlds layered one on top of the other. Even in its somewhat supercilious take on bourgeois suburbia.

I like the unexpected and abrupt shifts: from front yard to back; from summer to winter; from the sun-lit world to the subterranean. I like the casual indifference of the footstep, as well as the disproportion between action and effect. I would hope the reader makes the inference at the end: that we are tiny insignificant creatures in a vast indifferent universe, subject to unimaginable contingency, or – if you are a believer – to the fickle moods of gods, so that the entire world contained in this small patch of soil could as easily be ours. (Yes, another of my recurring – and I imagine by this time tiresome – tropes: that, to quote myself, we are “tiny insignificant creatures in a vast indifferent universe”!)

Black Bile

March 1 2018

I say melancholy

over and over again.

Until all I hear is sound.

Patter, piffle, bafflegab,

or one of those long compound German words

of Teutonic exactness,

all bark and phlegm and spit.

Mouthing four syllables, of equal weight

without emphasis

or intonation.

Beginning with the lips, briefly pursed.

Then the tip of the tongue

tripping lightly.

Followed by the hard guttural

against the roof of the mouth,

and ending in a clenched exhalation of air

that becomes a sigh

if left to linger.

In the archaeology of words

black bile.

But unlike its namesake, bitter-sweet.

A mix

of rumination

disenchantment

self-pity, perhaps.

But more detached, in its sadness

than a good cry.

If yellow bile's fire

then black bile is earth.

Soil's dry metallic taste.

Its iron and chalk.

Its pungent fruit, and slow rot,

sweet hay

fresh manure

old barn.

Why does blackness

carry so much weight?

Black lie, black sheep, black witch,

black eye

the blackest of depths.

Black arts, black magic, black death,

the black dog

of the deeply depressed.

The dark night of the soul

and the darkly eternal unknown,

transcendent with wonder

as well as despair.

I am suffused with spleen

caustic as gall.

I am rich dusky oxblood.

I am wallowing

around in myself;

the bitter taste

in back of my throat,

the warm dark soil

it feels I'm under.

I was reading Rafael Campo's poem The Four Humours. The final of 4 sections is called Melancholy. This is a word that has always appealed to me: I enjoy the literalness of its roots, absolutely true to the original Greek. I love the sound and the “mouth-feel” of the word. And its nuanced meaning appeals, because I am often melancholy, and I identify with its combination of deep reflection and tempered feeling.

“Black bile”, though, seems so much more intense and emphatic than its English descendant. And there can be no doubt about its implication: the prejudice of black, the bitter poison of bile.

This piece is less linear than my recent work. It leans more heavily on mood and sensation than story-telling or constructing an argument. You might think I was depressed when I wrote this. I was not. It was much more of an intellectual exercise in exploring my response to this word than it was an expression of my state of mind.