Inexhaustible

Sept 26 2019

The creek

burbling over polished rocks

gurgles

               . . . tinkles

                                   . . . tumbles.

Its sound fills in the night,

giving substance

to one-dimensional dark,

the flattening

of shadow and murk.

Enough

to reconstruct the world

using only our ears.

Complete

with us at its centre,

moving in step

as we make our way.

The trees that border the path

are a scrim of deeper darkness

superimposed

upon the dark.

And moving at a steady pace

unconscious of our gait

they could be painted onto scrolls

in shades of grey and black

unspooling as we stand;

like Newtonian objects

in a frictionless world,

where constant motion

is no different than being at rest.

How is it

that this creek is inexhaustible,

flowing from some distant height

water from the earth?

That falls

according to gravity's inviolable law,

but unlike the apple

never stops;

a plume of silty water

diffusing out

into the vast cold lake;

its molecules infinitely mixed,

its earthy essence spent.

They say a river is never the same

in the same place twice,

and this is even truer

when all you do is listen.

Until, as we amble along

the creek's no longer heard,

our accommodating ears

distracted self-absorption.

And because, in the fullness of time

even beauty jades us,

our sense of wonder lost

some minor flaw magnified.

And because we are, by nature, disruptive,

the clump-clump-clump of feet

our nattering chattering tongues.

But long after we're gone

the creek still runs;

its gentle burbling

as if sound had substance,

its music still with me

as darkness descends

and I drift downstream in slumber.

That night, it was the sound of the creek that stuck with me. I think because, having to focus on conversation, my usual visual engagement with my surroundings kind of involuted in until we were enclosed in a small dark sphere. (I wasn't even paying attention to the dogs, who usually entertain me.) Sound, however, is the most powerful and primordial sense:  it penetrates, even when you are concentrated elsewhere. And somehow, hearing the creek, it not only gave a dimensionality to that blackness, but it conjured the entire surroundings -- without even looking up. Which is where this poem began.

Terra Nullius

Sept 24 2019

An Indian summer

is a few warm days

after the first hard frost.

Am I still permitted

to use this word?

With its indelible taint

of the original sin

of the settlers who arrived on this land

imperiously planted their flags

and proclaimed its vastness empty?

This word

that offends geography,

preserving the fallacy

of entire continents

no one had even imagined?

Yet Indian summer

makes me want to go back

before it was colonized,

when First Nations called it home

and ghosted along its trails

stepping gently upon this earth.

Spread a hand-woven blanket

in a faraway forest clearing

under still majestic trees,

a soft dry bed

of needles loosely thatched

and thickly piled leaves.

To bask

in unexpected sun

naked as Adam was.

To lie down at your side, my sun-browned Eve

and let the time pass

unhurried between us.

Eve

a little tame, a little wild,

inhabiting her body

with the natural grace of an animal

strong, and sure, and lithe.

A civilization of two

in the mythological garden

of a well-romanticized past,

the noble savage

and an Eden I very well know

never really existed.

And which, if it did

we would just as surely destroy.

Olfactory

Sept 15 2019

The dogs scamper ahead

zig-zagging down the path,

noses pressed to the ground

pin-balling edge to edge.

It has just rained

and the moist earth is redolent.

It feels like a cathedral

in the cool damp shade

beneath the over-arching trees,

but instead of incense

there is the scent of decomposing soil

fungal spores

the wet fur of animals

that passed in the night

the day before.

Because smell is a time machine,

so as the dogs follow their noses

they're exploring in 4 dimensions,

creating a map of the world

to which I was born blind.

Even one molecule

is plenty,

lingering in air

or puddling in mud

or drip-dripping above.

We hear music

differently than words,

no processing

or second-guessing

as they enter the mind directly

ear to brain.

The olfactory nerve is the same;

passing freely up the nose

and allowing the brain

to breathe in the world.

A lifeline, out to the light

from this fatty lump

of white and grey matter

locked in its bony crypt

black as darkest night.

So my dogs inhabit the world

literally,

absorbing its substance

molecule by molecule.

While I stand off to the side

and watch,

marvelling

at the symphony of smell

and the soundtrack of time

their glorious noses compose.

Busying Ourselves

Sept 13 2019

An all-day rain

and the dogs, always sensible creatures

curl up

in their accustomed places

warm and dry.

How comforting, to be inside.

A steady rain

and its gentle calming patter.

Rivulets

zig-zagging down the glass,

the fog of breath

as I stand and watch.

The light is uniform

in terms of place,

low grey cloud

blanketing the sky

out to the horizon.

And over time, as well,

the day settling in

without any sense

of the sun's diurnal passage,

no waxing or waning

just imperceptibly fading

to dusk.

What a gracious interlude

in the headlong rush of life.

Between the urgency

of our short and precious summer,

guilting us out

loathe to miss any fun.

The pressure-cooker heat

contained in its high-gauge steel.

And the exigencies

of winter to come;

when rain will turn to snow

which will fall silently

into deep impassable drifts,

leaving us stranded

and anxious for home.

Or wind-whipped and whited-out

have us leaning-in,

teeth gritted

eyelids frozen shut.

Busying ourselves

in the elemental struggle
with no luxury of time.

The dogs step out the door, pause and consider, then retreat back into the house where they curl-up in bed with me. They adjust themselves so instinctively to the weather: no urgency, no to-do list, no compulsion to master nature.

A literal all-day rain is rare. Nevertheless, under this leaden sky, it feels like it. What an excuse for even a driven personality (which I'm most definitely not!) to take a time-out. There is something in the air of this unseasonably cold September that gives permission. I think of busyness: the urgency of summer; the exigencies of winter. And now, in this in-between time, a welcome pause.

How Many Old?

Aug 30 2019

As I sit at my desk

and dusk descends

and August ends too soon,

I can't help but notice

just how much the days are shortening.

The slope of time steepening

the planet's axis tilting

its heat bleeding slowly away.

I can feel the cooler air

settling in for fall,

the thinner light it carries

its incremental weight.

It is a truism

that time goes faster with age.

And it feels that summer is ending

with too much left undone

before it had even begun.

While fall, in all its bitter-sweetness

has somehow already come;

the turning leaves,

a vanguard of geese

honking bossily south,

wood-smoke

with its slightly acrid nose.

Not so much a season

as an interlude;

a cool sorbet

to refresh the palate

a landing along a stairs.

A restorative pause

before winter's hard ascent.

I can feel my body

prepare itself for rest,

eating, sleeping

conserving

despite my best intent.

The long cold hibernation

eons of evolution

have exquisitely shaped us for.

Because this is how we age ourselves,

counting down by summers

by winters counting up.

How many years young

you may ask.

Or, with the gravitas of winter, how many old?

Lazy, fat, and grizzled

huddling around the stove.

Graph day length through the year, and it appears as a sine curve: its slope flattening as it heads into the turns, the steepening as it falls. And when it approaches the bottom, the rate of change slowing again until it bottoms out. And in the way we unconsciously process the passage time, we all sense we are in that period of steep decline: where days shorten rapidly, until winter darkness abides and day-length roughly equals out.

Who doesn't feel young in summer? While in winter, just as in old age, everything becomes more difficult. We feel our age in the cold.

I feel it's kind of taking the path of least resistance to write a poem — another poem, that is!

— about the seasons. And it's hard to avoid cliches like fallen leaves and the smell of wood-smoke. Especially because they are so instantly evocative. So I hope I've managed to inject a little originality into an old theme. Maybe I was moved to write because the feelings in this poem were particular hard to avoid, this year: such an early fall, and such a feeling of incompletion it has brought. It seems as if one winter runs into the next, with just a short break in between.