Covenant

May 30 2020

You can count on them emerging

as the leaves unfurl

in early spring.

When the air is black with them,

as if the line between life

and the inanimate world

had somehow been blurred,

a determined army of insects

materializing out of the ether

overnight.

When the sun warms.

When the birds return to feed their young.

When the world is reborn

in all its extravagant fecundity.

Blackflies are not individualists

libertarians

free thinkers.

They are automatons,

and overwhelm by numbers

no matter how many I kill.

So despite the heat

we dress in long sleeves

and tuck our pants into our socks.

We slip into gossamer nets

and look out through finely woven mesh

at a gauzy world

in shades of green.

Neighbours pass, nodding agreeably,

not quite sure who we are

in our standard garb

of dark camouflage netting,

a force of grim reapers

draped in shapeless shrouds.

Desperate animals

seek out wind, water, swamp

to escape the scourge.

While we patiently wait for August

and a golden fall.

Then winter's cleansing cold,

when the sun lowers

and buds have closed,

the birds eloped

to their muggy southern homes.

When the flies have long since died.

But their larvae survive

in shallow water

beneath the ice.

Because even in barren winters

life goes on,

out of sight

but everywhere.

A covenant of spring

like all the springs before,

when the world is resurrected

and returning birds have nested

and swarms of dreaded blackflies

fill the windless air.

This poem began with the observation by my neighbour that you can time the first appearance of the dreaded blackfly by the first unfurling of leaves. In the context of climate change, this is an important concept: the intricate interdependencies of complex ecosystems. An obvious one is how the birds time their migration north to coincide with the explosion of insect life. If they arrive too early, their hatchlings die; too late, they miss the peak and their offspring suffer. When the climate changes too quickly, species will adjust at different rates. Adaptation, as it selects for those outliers who were once anomalies but now fit the changed environment (so all you oddballs and misfits take heart!), may eventually bring this dynamic to a stable new equilibrium. But in the meantime, species are lost and biodiversity – which is the engine of nature's resiliency -- diminishes.

So nature works by this intricate clockwork. Every small changed cascades through the system, amplifying its effect and inevitably resulting in unexpected and unintended consequences in both time and space.

And nature works in cycles, as well: as the poem also depicts, the closed loop of seasonal change and succeeding generations.

Bottom line: the more uncomfortable the bugs are making us, the healthier the ecosystem. So the fact that our cities are largely bug-free not only says a lot about the toxic effect of our species on the world around us, but should make us question why we choose to live where we do.

I think this is a positive way to reframe the seasonal scourge of blackflies. To see them as essential to the flourishing of birds and the other animals that feed on either them, or feed on their remains. To see their precise emergence in spring as something beautiful: the clockwork of the natural world. And to appreciate their ability to over-winter as a testament to the persistence and resiliency of life: imagining the resurrection of spring as the small yearly miracle that it is. I think this sense of abundance and mystery is captured in lines like the air is black with them and extravagant fecundity and materializing out of the ether / overnight.

I quite like covenant over “promise” or “vow”. It has that Biblical gravitas (from the story of Noah's arc and the promise signified by the rainbow), so it fits nicely with the theme of something eternal – recurrent and perennial. And for readers who are believers, it will have added resonance: not the miracle of nature, but something divine – that is, literally miraculous.

I think the grim reaper analogy is telling. Not only does the “force” call back to the “army” of blackflies, but it alludes to the manichean bargain of life and death: that you can't have one without the other, just as you can't appreciate good without the existence of evil, or imagine a God without the counterweight of a devious devil and the pull of temptation. So for everything that lives, something else must die: either in terms of eat or be eaten, or in terms of making the way for the succeeding generation. And, as nature recycles and reuses, we are all returned to life anyway. Or at least our matter is, if not our consciousness.

George Herman Junior

May 27 2020

Babe Ruth

spent most of 12 years

at St. Mary’s Industrial School

for Orphans

Delinquent

Incorrigible and Wayward Boys.

Back when they believed in plain speaking

and didn't go in

for hedging the truth,

preferring, instead

an exact taxonomy

of misconduct and bad luck.

No sparing of labels

no sparing the rod.

And the more extravagant names that followed,

like the Great Bambino

Caliph of Clout

Sultan of Swat.

Or simply The Babe.

Nicknames

for men who play games for a living,

both humble and braggart

hero and cad.

Silly ones

like childhood monickers that stuck,

and flashy ones

for legends who hit home runs.

Babe Ruth

was a great athlete

who hardly looked the part,

which makes us all feel better about ourselves.

But was he delinquent, incorrigible, or wayward?

And what sort of industry was taught

to this formidable man

who was a reckless gambler

shameless glutton

and drank far too much,

who chased beautiful women

and twice fell in love;
hardly enough 
for a man of such appetite.

And what would St. Mary have thought,

that venerated saint

and mother of god?

This man who also lives on after death

and was raised from the poor

and bequeathed his fortune

to impoverished kids?

There is much in a name

that goes unsaid.

The Babe

Sultan

Caliph.

The Industrial School ... .

And the far less well-known

George Herman Ruth

Junior.

Google Babe Ruth's nicknames and you'll come up with 23 different ones. Baseball in those days was America's sport, the national pastime, and newspapers were fulsome, competitive, and numerous: so there were lots of heroes, and there was lots of ink spilled and purple prose.

The latest New Yorker features an article about the beginning of sports marketing, when advertising and public relations were hitting their stride, and for the first time ever great athletes could leverage their names to make more money off the field than on. It centres on the two great Yankee stars of the 20s and 30s, Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth: two men of remarkably opposite temperament and proclivities. Among the biographical details of Babe Ruth's life, the name of his school appeared. As soon as I saw it, I knew there was a poem there, and that it was up to me to find it.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/01/how-baseball-players-became-celebrities

Wildfire

May 23 2020

Grass crunches underfoot.

The buds are clenched

like small green fists

when they should have unfurled.

Its a parched spring, starved of rain,

and there's a pall in the air

an acrid scent.

Somewhere upwind

a forest burns.

Animals take flight.

Trees turn to matchsticks

belching dense black smoke.

And tired men

drenched in grimy sweat

shout over its roar.

The sound of air rushing in

and wood exploding,

of flames thundering as noisily

as a herd of bison 
spooked by wolves.

Even fire clouds

igniting lightning storms.

While here, the calm has an unsettled edge

of menace

dread

foreboding.

As if something were hovering

just past the horizon

that may or may not come.

Some pray for rain.

A few choose escape.

While others are wary,

loading up the truck

with what they'll take in the fire.

But I remain;

fatalistic, perhaps

or maybe just smug

I've somehow been favoured

by the gods

or virtue

or chance.

Or in denial

as I go about my business

of the usual spring cleaning

some minor repairs,

a little lawn care

and basic maintenance.

A good homeowner and good neighbour

I keep the place up

plan prudently,

presuming nothing much changes

in the day to day

of a modest life.

No uncontrolled fires.

No hundred year floods.

No careening trucks

or drunken drivers.

And no small artery

that springs a leak

and becomes a gusher,

blasting the squidgy grey matter

of the right cortex

like a high-pressure hose.

That had always been there

on hair-trigger

like tinder-dry wood.

It's been an extremely dry spring. My lawn really is crunching underfoot, and the buds seem arrested. They've just instituted a fire ban. There is a low grey overcast, which reminds me of the sky in fire season; even though there is no smell of smoke, and I haven't heard of anything burning ...yet.

I also just watched a move called Wildlife, and I suspect some of the imagery in this movie informed the poem. It's a small film about an itinerant working class family – husband, wife, 14 year old son – that is quietly imploding in their middling Midwestern town. The backdrop is a wildfire burning out of control, somewhere close. It may be a cheap metaphor, but I think it works in this film.

I've also just been getting my blood pressure under control. When it's not well managed, I can't help but wonder whether there might be an incipient aneurysm -- a weak artery – lurking somewhere in my brain. How we can be blind-sided by events; and how a life can radically change from one second to the next. I chose the right cortex (instead of the left) simply for the rhyme: right and high and dry. But it may be telling that the right side is also the seat of language ...which is pretty much everything to me.

I write about these themes often — contingency, our conceit of agency — and with my usual general air of misanthropy and pessimism. So I'm not sure I needed an unprecedented pandemic – even though, in future, the poem will probably be read in that context – to colour my somewhat bleak worldview!

The thunderstorm reference may have left readers scratching their heads. But big fires can give rise to them: when the super-heated air funnelling up over the fire hits the cool air above it, the moisture in the hot air condenses and forms pyrocumulus clouds, which in turn can form pyrocumulonimbus clouds, which can produce lightning, thunder, and rain. (Not that my explanation needed those technical meteorological terms for fire clouds ...more that I just couldn't resist!)

(Rain is forecast for tomorrow, btw. So if this poem hadn't been written today, it may never have been. ...Tomorrow now (as I post this). Still no rain.)

Controlled Descent

May 20 2020

First dance

first kiss

first touch,

tentative

intimate

lascivious.

The fine art of seduction

and the moment she submits,

unclasped

undone

unzipped.

Where it has always begun.

When we were young

and sure we were immortal,

doubted anyone before us

had ever felt such heat.

From significant other

to committed couple

to falling in love.

Or maybe not quite falling

for those who are cautious, or fearful

or shy.

Who try to control their descent

and hope to land softly,

parachuting down

into unfamiliar terrain

hearts racing anxiously.

But who, in the end

surrender just the same.

While the middle of love

is not nearly so vertiginous.

And hardly the promised land

of happy-ever-after.

The place where every couple

inhabits a foreign country

with its own peculiar customs

and local vernacular.

Not just the unlikely ones

who leave you scratching your head

at how they ever got together

and then how they stayed,

but the well-matched ones, as well;

whose private lives

we can also only guess at.

And where the rest of us

are merely travellers

taking-in the sights;

the drawn blinds

of their well-appointed homes,

the traditional dance

of man and wife.

So movies are made about falling in love,

about bad marriages

fresh starts

and falling out.

But what about attachment?

What about the old married couple

you watch across the floor

dancing arm in arm?

As they did at senior prom,

inexpertly swaying

to a slow romantic song

whose words they know by heart.

Companions

life partners

and soul-mates,

still lusting, in a sensible grown-up way.

Who have survived the fall

and are now firmly grounded.

Who overcame, together

all the unexpected tremors

and treacherous terrain.

His hand

in the small of her back

quietly inching lower.

Her head on his shoulder

eyes drifting shut.

This began as a short self-indulgent amusement: a playful word-play patter poem that messed around with combinations like couples and lovers and significant others, who lust and touch, fight and make up. But it was a real disaster. Except when it took me to the last part in the life cycle of a romantic relationship, and the old married couple on the dance floor appeared, written in a little more conventional style.

So I kept them, then went back to the beginning for a fresh start with a better idea of what the poem's structure should be: that it would begin with infatuation, but then move on to the middle of love and end in attachment.

The old married couple are still dancing. A romantic view of marriage, I know. The old married couple, who can sit quietly together: comfortable in their own skin, content in each other's presence.

Winter Kill

May 17 2020

The dogs keep appearing with bones.

I see them sprawled on the lawn

gnawing on fractured femurs

that end in long narrow spears,

and broken spines

festooned with sharp tiny points

like intricately carved ivories.

They live in the present

with no conception

of injury or risk.

Because a dog on a bone

is oblivious,

to me

weather

death.

But they are good dogs

and let me confiscate their treasures,

staring up sad-eyed

and wet with drool.

A dead deer, somewhere in the woods.

Winter kill.

Or some ravenous pack

who ran it down

in deep wet snow.

Who swarmed its warm twitching body

before it had even expired,

boring in from the anus

to gorge on prized organs

rich with fat.

Wolfing down

its fixed and glossy eyes,

the oleaginous brain

in its white strongbox of bone.

Then the ravens,

cawing and strutting and thrusting their beaks

into its still steaming gut

for whatever entrails remain,

competing with quick little foxes

to gobble-up what's left.

Until the shy scavengers come

and clean-up the rest;

trampled viscera

spilling out,

the red-blooded muscle

of its strong lean legs.

So the well-fed dogs

are left to mine the bones for scraps

crack them for marrow.

It seems a sad end

for a noble animal.

But then, what greater respect can be paid

to a life well-lived

than to have a meaningful death?

To have a purpose, to be of use

instead of scorned

wasted

discarded.

Because we all want to be needed

as much as we need to be loved.

The after-life of a deer,

decomposing

in the thin mineral soil

and forest underbrush.

A spot of green

where new shoots poke up.

A litter of pups

barking hungrily.

And a full nest

of mottled ravens' eggs;

a clutch of glossy black birds

who will fledge in time for summer.

My readers will not believe this, but every time I sit down to write, I'm hoping for a 10 line poem – at most: something slightly oblique, with lots of powerful allusion and innuendo, and a slightly unexpected killer ending that transforms everything that came before. Certainly not something long, linear, or narrative. Short and sweet and enticingly ambiguous.

And, of course, something fresh; rather than my tired old go-tos.

So what do I come up with today? A long, linear, narrative poem about animals. Dogs and deer, no less. Again!

This seems to be my style, like it or not. Maybe what I'm good at, even though it's not really what I most want. I'm still waiting for that great short poem. In the meantime, I can only hope that whatever readers I have are content to go the distance with one more long, direct, plain-speaking poem that says what it says.

Jurisprudence

May 15 2020

You are presumed innocent

before a court of law.

Which doesn't mean others

aren't free to judge.

Or shame, exclude, ignore;

because even the uninformed

get to bring down a verdict

settle personal scores.

While guilt is all your own

private holding cell.

Which no one else can make you feel

or free you of.

Forgiveness is trickier.

Is it yours to ask of another?

A mercy to confer?

A gift to yourself?

The shameless, of course

don't trouble themselves.

If only they were self-aware

instead of incorrigible,

could tell right from wrong

took conscience to heart.

As if we weren't all irredeemably flawed;

because there, but for the grace of God

go us all.

I have never studied law,

but I know justice

and when it isn't served.

The sentencing

the reckoning

the pettiness of rules,

the punishing

for penitence

by the revengeful and the cruel.

When, in the best of all possible worlds

we would be better off making amends,

humbly accepting

lessons learned.

And know injustice, as well.

That good people suffer

instead of scoundrels and thugs.

That the undeserving are punished

by the heedless gods

and providence

and the fickle odds of fate,

while bad actors flourish

and the venal merely squirm.

No burning in hell

no heavenly choir

no earthly paradise.

Just random chance

and fallible gods

and your usual humdrum vice.

Condemned to life

for petty crime

and time already served.

I've been watching a brilliant series called Rectify. It was originally broadcast on Sundance in 2014 or so, and is available on Netflix. It's about a convicted murderer released after 20 years on death row because of new DNA evidence. It also emerges that his confession may have been coerced. So while his sentence has been vacated, his status is uncertain. As is his guilt. Perhaps even to himself. He rejoins his somewhat complicated family and small town Georgia community after having been confined in a small featureless cell since he was 18. His life experience comes mostly from books. He is intelligent, witty, charismatic ...but damaged, and compellingly inscrutable. That's all I'll say.

So after watching this for several consecutive nights, I suppose these issues have been busily fermenting in my subconscious. Ideas about guilt and shame and ostracism, about justice and injustice, about memory and truth. Rectify probably informed my opening few lines. After that, I let my fingers on the keyboard follow more of a stream of consciousness than any kind of outline or end point. So the poem doesn't tell a story. It doesn't reach a conclusion. But I hope it isn't incoherent, has its own internal logic, and provokes the reader to both think and feel.

I think forgiveness is all that: a mercy you can confer ...something you can ask for, as long as you have met all the criteria of apology and amends ...and a gift to yourself. Because at some point, you can only move on if you forgive yourself And forgiving others is your gift, as well. Because it's proffered not so much for their sake as it is for yours: to free yourself of the burden of anger, resentment, injustice. This forgiveness doesn't have to offered, and doesn't depend on being accepted. Simply by having been given, it lets you wipe the mental slate clean.

This isn't a political poem, but I have to admit that I was thinking of Donald Trump – as well as all his hypocritical and shameless lackeys, enablers, and sycophants – when I wrote that stanza about shamelessness. His lack of empathy and self-awareness; pathological narcissism; inveterate lying; ability to conjure alternate realities, and then actually believe in them; and his reflexive self-justification all make him immune to shame. He is incorrigible, and should be barred for life from public office.

Shame, of course, comes from outside. It's our primary means of social control and social harmony. We feel it. It doesn't have to be legislated and proclaimed. Guilt, on the other, is internal. We can choose either to feel it or not. It can be justified and necessary – an act of conscience. Or it can be a self-imposed burden: out of proportion, or even untrue.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After the first draft of this poem was shared with one of my readers, he wrote back about, among other things, Weregild. I responded by elaborating on some of the themes of the poem, as well as with some of my thoughts about crime and punishment in general. Here is that email (slightly edited):

As I said, compassion comes from the humility implied in "there but for the grace ...":  that, given circumstances or accident of birth, we are all susceptible to making one very bad decision. 

In terms of punishment, 2 things come to mind. 

One, what sense does it make to judge a person by the worst thing they ever did on the worst day of their life? If you or I were to be judged that way, people would see us in a very bad light indeed; and one – based on how we stigmatize ex-cons – that we could never for the rest of our lives be free of! 

 ...And two, people are sent to prison AS punishment, not FOR punishment. The loss of freedom is the penalty. After that, they should be treated as wayward members who will some day return to society. The Finnish philosophy and practice of corrections is an admirable one. We should emulate. (Although I don't deny that there are incorrigibles: Psychopaths who can't be redeemed or rehabilitated, and need to be imprisoned for life.)

RECTIFY is just outstanding. I highly recommend it. You'll need to get Netflix, though.

The idea of a judicial system that tries and punishes is fundamentally based on the idea that an offence against any single member of society is an offence against all of us -- against the social order. So we implicitly agree to cede our natural human desire for revenge to the state. The alternative is the poison of vendetta:  families/clans/tribes retaliating in an escalating and cross-generational program of exacting tit-for-tat revenge. The Hatfields vs the McCoys! A very civilizing notion indeed:  contracting out our natural impulse for revenge! 

Although I wonder just how natural revenge really is. When a close friend of mine was murdered by her boyfriend, I didn't feel my blood rise in revenge. I wanted him caught. But at that point, the deed was done and irrevocable, and he became effectively dead to me:  not worthy of one atom of my energy expended on his worthless ass. (He ended up killing himself. So at least he saved the taxpayer a lot of money by trying and sentencing and condemning himself!)