Demarcation

July 26 2019

Paddling

into the wind-shadow

in the small island's lee

its battered trees leaning

exposed rock

thin tenacious soil,

the sudden calm startled me.

The roar of wind lifted

and only silence remained,

as the tension left my body

the canoe drifted lazily

my hands released their grip.

Alone with my thoughts

in this unlikely oasis of peace,

snuggling in

behind its gently curving shore.

We crave interludes like this,

where time time slows

ambition wanes

and our dubious labours

reap their just rewards.

In a wind as stiff as this

the line is sharp

between the protected lee

and open water.

If only life

were as unambiguously ruled.

I look down

at my blurred reflection

in the flatly mirrored surface

pondering 

my imperfect self.

Lean back

and look out at the churning lake,

its darkened surface

white-flecked waves.

Cats-paws that race,

touching down

then spinning out.

The only way home

is back through the squall.

So I gather myself

tighten my grip

brace my knees.

Nose out

over that hard line of demarcation

and feel the wind's powerful hand

grab the bow

whip it around

scoot me down before it.

Overpowering

my futile stroke.

This is the time of year when I'm out in the canoe a lot. Paddling solo, accompanied by the dogs. They mostly swim, cruise through the shallows, or deke along the shore; where I'm sure, by now, they've created their own rough paths through the dense underbrush. Poems sometimes come to mind as I paddle.

Rhythmic activities like this are good for getting lost in thought. Like walking. Or X-C skiing on consistent terrain, when your body finds its pace and your mind drifts off. Or swimming, especially in open water, when you can settle into autopilot without the distraction of bulkheads and buoy lines.

Eddying out of a stiff wind into the calm lee of an island is such a great relief. A time to pause, to sit back and gather yourself, to enjoy the scenery. Rare “time-out” moments like this occur in life, as well; moments to be cherished and explored; moments for introspection. It wouldn't have been enough to have written a poem of simple description. Especially one with which most readers wouldn't easily identify. So it needed to be rescued with a more ambitious allusion. I hope that attempt at a more universal and accessible message doesn't strike the reader as over-reach or pretension.

Beached

July 17 2019

One of those old folding chairs

with an aluminum tube frame

and broad criss-crossing strips

of faded nylon webbing

that dimple your legs

with small even squares

if you sit long enough.

And where your thighs sweat,

sticking to the seat

as you peel yourself off.

He was paunchy and pale,

knobbly knees

splayed up and out.

In the kind of old-school swimwear

my father called “trunks,”

baggy

high-waisted

invariably brown.

Beer in hand

he was leaning back

with imperial insouciance,

surveying the shore

as if he had staked the land

and now claimed ownership.

The sweet chemical smell

of budget suntan oil

slathered on
to hot flushed skin,

a whiff of stale cigarette.

Gulls swooped and squawked

tinny music played

and small waves brushed the shore

as regular as breathing.

A high sun

flattened everything,

beating down and bleaching out,

leaching the strength

from the beached human bodies

that thronged the sand,

inertly sprawled

in its implacable glare.

The castle

the children had made

in all its ramshackle glory,

bossing and bickering and working things out,

but was built too close to the tide.

Like an hourglass

I watched time running down

as the water slowly crept up.

Beefsteak

July 10 2019

A bread knife works best.

Its serrated edge sharpened

by drawing it slowly over the whetstone

with a gentle touch,

just the weight of the blade

resting lightly against

the hard pebbled rock.

The verb, as well as the noun,

it knifes cleanly through

the ripe round tomato

so barely any liquid is lost.

Until the sound of tempered steel

rasping across

the heavy wooden cutting-board,

well-burnished and worn

and intricately scored

by so many knives before,

gorgeously stained

by the juice of a thousand tomatoes.

It sits face up, rocking slightly,

deep red pulp

and rosy-yellow liquor

laced with small gilded seeds

glistening

in the incandescent light,

a homegrown tomato, freshly plucked.

Like snowflakes

each centre-cut tomato

is exquisitely unique,

a cross-section

exposing the inner world

of a still-living thing.

Its red

is the definitive version

against which all other reds are compared.

Its smell is tomato,

a mix of floral, acid, sweet.

And its flesh is umami,

slightly carnal, savoury, beef.

Quarter it, with the same honed blade

drawn lightly through its meat.

Slip a slice between my lips,

savouring it slowly

eyes shut.

This is a form I love returning to, and often do: microcosm, and close observation. I think this is really the essence of the poetic sensibility, a mindset that requires you slow down, take notice, surrender to your physical senses, and let the world come to you with as little preconception as possible. If anyone is to pay attention to the cliched dictum “slow down and smell the roses”, it has to be poets. Maybe because we aren't expected to do anything useful. And because we have the freedom to write at length or at short, to end the lines where we choose, and to try to see the world as if for the first time.

Increase

July 7 2019

Here, in the land of rocks and trees

the forest shoulders in

in that persistent methodical way

of nature,

as if all that matters is more

and increasing itself

life's essential meaning.

Reproduce, survive, grow;

even if the malignancy kills you,

even if you exhaust the earth

and starve yourself to death.

So I have given up

on the manicured lawn.

The patch of garden

behind its wobbly wire fence

on bent metal staves

going to rust.

The flowerbeds

overrun by webs of choking vetch,

dandelions

with their white cadaverous heads,

and alien-looking weeds

on leggy stems

grasping upwards.

So greedily ravenous

I can almost hear them grow.

I am no horticulturist.

My philosophy of gardening

has become live and let live.

So now, like walls closing in

the forest pushes closer

enclosing me in greenery.

A free-for-all of plants

shouldering up against the house

almost blocking-out the sun,

competing

in their striving canopy

and silent underground.

So when I look out the window

I am reminded of my place;

my brief undistinguished life,

my cracked foundation

and rotting beams.

Bury me

at the base of the tallest white pine.

In a hundred years, we will burn,

the forest, renewing itself

while I chimney-up in smoke

spread evenly around the world.

So that every creature on earth

will breathe me in,

a single molecule

of my posterity

in at least one breath.

Way too much math for my taste and for poetry, but when better brains than mine do the calculations, this turns out to be true: we do have an excellent chance of breathing in the same molecules as Napoleon or Julius Caesar did, and possible even the molecules their decomposing bodies released. The planet is a closed system, and matter is conserved.

I had no idea, of course, the poem would end with this. A poem takes me by the hand, and the pen goes where it will. The original idea came from my negligent gardening and lawn care. Especially living out here in the wild, where the forest seems relentless and inexorable, and weeds appear as if by spontaneous generation.

Contemplating this imperative of growth leads me to life's ultimate purpose. Which, when distilled down, seems simply to be more life: more process, than a measurable end or some ultimate meaning. Especially being an atheist, who discerns no divine if inscrutable purpose, the meaning of life seems simply to be to carry on and create more or it. There are no higher or lower organisms, no hierarchy of worthiness and entitlement. So as well as an essential malignancy in this, there is also a kind of unity.

Fire is a great equalizer. The forest is adapted to fire, needs it, and it will eventually happen. Fire allows the circle to close. Instead of life consuming itself and leaving a scorched inanimate earth, there are cycles of death and renewal, and life goes on.

... “A poem takes me by the hand, and the pen goes where it will.” Indeed! Here's the short note I wrote when sending the first rough draft to my first readers:

One of those that wrote itself; which seems to be happening a lot, lately.  There is a pent-up desire to write; there is a central idea, which I've been putting off, but which has been percolating unconsciously; and then there is the actual writing, which disinters all these intuitive connections of which I'm unaware  ...and so the words flow -- as if I'm taking dictation.

It was much the same with the blurb. Just kind of came out. Unlike those letters I write, which are meticulously thought through, constructed, edited. 

A little mysterious, but quite a lot of fun, actually! 

Handful

July 3 2019

Here they go again

calling it dirt instead of soil.

Are we this disconnected from earth

we recoil from its living surface?

Seeing only the mess

the dog tracks in,

the gumbo mud

churned up by rain,

the choking dust

of summer drought

suspended in a heavy yellow pall.

The complex web

of fungi and bugs

roots and slugs

and blind slithering creatures

that give life to the soil

we plow, spray, suck dry.

A handful

of the rich moist stuff

squeezed between my fingers

held up to my nose.

It is black, and lightly packed

and smells of fresh manure

cut grass

humus and loam,

compost left to ripen

into fertile earthy soil.

Determined shoots are breaking through

unfurling toward the sun,

succulent green

with tiny drops of water

clinging to their leaves.

Like a painless birth

from mother earth

creating matter from light.

A friend of mine, with whom I share an interest in science, forwarded an article from the Washington Post about the completion of the “connectome” of C. Elegans: the completion of the entire wiring map of this highly studied worm's neural anatomy. An interesting article, no doubt, and a finding that will not only help elucidate the neurological function of higher animals – including us – but also serves as a sobering reminder of just how dauntingly complicated the same mapping exercise will be in the human brain and body.

But, of course, in my typical pedantic way, my attention was arrested by this sentence:

The worm in question is Caenorhabditis elegans. Thin and translucent as a glass noodle, the microscopic animal lives in dirt and eats bacteria.

No one who has anything to do with agriculture or horticulture or even an illicit grow-op would call it “dirt” and not “soil.” I've frequently encountered this error, and the opportunity for a poem immediately struck me. This is the result.

A Dry Heat

July 2 2019

It's a dry heat.

Not the kind you stew in,

like a soft-boiled egg

soaking in your own sweat.

But where you feel it sucking you dry,

as if a desert wind

greedy for wetness

had blasted through,

all sand and rasp and panting dogs

lolling immobilized.

This heat penetrates my skin

suffuses my body,

joints unlocking

and muscles softening

in the bone-deep warmth.

We are mostly water,

and I imagine the small mound of powder

I would leave behind

reduced to basic chemistry.

The asphalt has also gone soft,

too hot

to even walk on.

Waves of heat are rising off

and rippling down its surface,

as if solid objects

could move at will,

as if the barrier had dissolved

between matter and air.

You tend to hallucinate

in heat like this,

dreaming of a cool lake

and dew-tipped grass,

a tall drink

clinking with ice.

Like the dry cold of winter

the sky is a brilliant blue

transparently still.

Nothing to block the sun

as earth edges ever so slightly

nearer its star.

Such a fine balance

between our only home

glowing blue and green

against absolute blackness,

and a scorched rock

circling an eyeless vacuum

through trackless time.

When the living planet

can so easily tip

into deadly heat.

I've really been hankering to write, but nothing was coming. Until I sat down tonight, pen in hand, and the obvious became clear:  write about the heat.

I wouldn't quite call this a heat wave. I think it has to be well into the 30s for that. And it's nothing like Europe is experiencing now. But really, what struck me most was the absence of humidity. The dry heat is so much easier to take. Which is, of course, where the poem began:  with dry heat. 

I think the poem can also be seen as a commentary on climate change. The final stanza could easily be read as referring to the tipping points of climate, where global warming becomes a runaway train:  positive feedback loops, such as a massive Antarctic glacier dropping into the sea; or Arctic permafrost releasing unstoppable volumes of the potent greenhouse gas methane; or the albido effect, when highly reflective surface of snow and ice is replaced by ever expanding areas of darker heat-absorbing rock.