Scarcity - Sept 16 2020

 

Scarcity

Sept 16 2020

A brief efflorescence of colour

in this northern outpost of fall.

Nothing flamboyant,

mostly modest yellows and brittle browns.

But there are arresting bursts of fire red

against the tepid canvas,

so that even the most preoccupied

can't help but stop and stare;

a useful reminder

of how scarcity makes something precious

and transience has no price.

Like forbidden fruit, we desire the unattainable

covet what's beyond our grasp.

And how rarity makes something beautiful

whether it's ours to have, or not.

When all it takes is a strong wind

to strip the trees,

thin tapered limbs

that seem to shiver through the winter cold.

And a sodden layer of leaves

matted on the ground,

a dull wet brown

as the colour leeches out.

But for now, our week of fall.

The leaves have changed

the nights are long

the air redolent of smoke.

A rare beauty

given freely to all

who take a moment to stop.

Beauty often resides in scarcity and transience. So even though we don't have tourists gawking at our autumn trees as they do the brilliant fall foliage of New England, there is pleasure to be found in our small pockets of beauty. And knowing how soon they'll be gone enhances this beauty even more.

Rebreathing My Own Air - Sept 15 2020

Rebreathing My Own Air

Sept 15 2020

In this small contained space

we keep our distance.

Behind walls of silence

averted eyes,

intrusive thoughts

we're determined to keep private.

Too far

to feel each other's heat,

but close enough

to hear the sound of breathing.

Which I always found too loud

and how could you not notice,

but squelched my annoyance

scowling curtly inside.

Yet no matter how much we try to separate ourselves

and however much space,

the invisible air

we're obliged to share

is the ultimate intimacy.

Because while with each warm breath

molecules of you

are diffusing freely out

to every nook and niche,

I am taking them in;

to the depths of my lungs

then directly to blood

and right to my heart,

until they're just as much

a part of me.

Or I could build real walls

of mortar, brick, and steel,

rebreathing my own air

in my pure hermetic space

in blissful solitude.

Until I have exhausted

the last atom of oxygen

and am hammering on the walls,

the silence finally broken

our aloneness exposed.

The Covid pandemic has illuminated how interdependent we are: our interdependence as a society; and the interdependence between us and the natural world in which we're inescapably embedded.

Responses to crises like this are often populist. But populism is grounded in a false notion of purity that is much like the poem's illusion of uncontaminated air. Populism, whether of the left or right, divides the world into a homogeneous us vs a mongrel them – the alien outsiders and interlopers. It sets corrupt elites against the nobility of “the people”. And it proffers up simplistic solutions to complicated problems – “pure” solutions uncontaminated by nuance and empathy.

It doesn't take a planetary disaster to realize that the notion of the “self-made” man is a conceit, and the idea of compete self-reliance almost impossible. We are social animals, and even if we prefer solitude we can't avoid the need for intimacy and connection. And no matter how hermetic a life we think we have constructed, there is no such thing: we breath the same air, share the same planet; there is no getting away from the other.

In a similar sense, we have no choice to be a part of nature, not apart from it. Man does not stand astride the natural world, exempt from its exigencies, observing from behind the glass and from over the parapet. A high price will be exacted for our unsustainable lifestyle, greed, and short-term thinking. And if we don't pay that price, our descendants will. ...Except I think it has become increasingly clear that bill is now coming due, and that we can no longer afford our wilfully blinkered denial.

Fire - Sept 13 2020

Fire

Sept 13 2020

We close around the fire.

Bask

in its warm inviting glow.

It holds our eyes,

flickering flames

reflect in glistening whites,

faces flush

with infernal light.

We huddle, shuffle, bunch

as a breeze picks up

and the circle turns ragged;

a funnel of smoke

is stubbornly hugging the ground,

red-hot cinders

and superheated ash

shift this way and that

with maddening inconstancy.

We face away

from the cold black night.

It feels like a weight

against our backs;

a stalking cat

crouching in darkness

intently biding its time.

We stare, as if hypnotized,

piling on fuel

feeding the pyre.

Something unnatural

bred in the bone, and ancient in blood

has us enthralled,

servants of flame

disciples of fire.

I was looking back over some of my recent pieces, and Water inspired me to elaborate on the elements; or at least the elements as understood in the ancient worldview of creation. I also thought back to the Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta's acclaimed trilogy -- Fire, Water, Earth.

It's also the time of year for warm cozy fires and gathering around: when the leaves are turning, a crisp chill is in the air, and night – like a pincer movement of hostile forces – is steadily creeping in on daylight from both ends.

I was also listening to a repeat episode of the BBC radio's Crowd Science, in which the topic was fire: why we cook our food, and what advantage we get from this; as well as how and when man learned not only to use fire but to control it. The importance of fire to our biological and cultural evolution is remarkable, and how this may go back as much as 2 million years to our proto-human ancestors suggests why this unnatural thing seems so natural to us. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3csz1sv)

There are also vast uncontrolled wildfires raging in the Western US – California, Oregon, and Washington. (Yes, as I've feared for years, one of the incipient positive-feedback tipping point of runaway climate change. This is only the start!)

So fire is essential destructive, and enthralling. We control it, and we don't. We feed it ...and it consumes us, as well.

The final stanza initially began with ...piling on fuel / feeding the fire. But I was reluctant to repeat fire. (I suspect I'm overly sensitive to repetition that readers never notice.) “Blaze” works; but it lacks both the alliteration and the rhyme (with hypnotized), and so interrupts the flow. Pyre conveniently restores some of this. And because of its funereal connotation also seems a little unexpected, and so arrests the reader for a moment. Which, I think, may be helpful: sandwiched-in between the predatory cat and the compulsive zeal of servants and disciples, it reinforces the vaguely sinister tone; a tone that began with infernal, and continued with the smoke and cinders.

Belonging - Sept 12 2020

 

Belonging

Sept 12 2020

She said recognizing your mortality

is not only about death.

That being mortal also means you belong,

along with the rest of us

down here on earth.

On a troubled planet

in the mess of humanity

and just as fatally flawed.

So mortality

is about belonging

as much as it is departure.

A need all of us share,

as certain as death

and fundamental as breath

and as urgent a drive.

One of the billions

of misfit souls,

muddling through

down here on earth.

Where, despite their immortality

even our gods are imperfect;

the scheming pantheon

on Mt. Olympus

who trifle with our lives,

or the Old Testament God

who is quick to temper

and slower to learn.

Who demands obeisance

and judges sternly

and is often so insecure,

demanding flattery and praise

from his subjects and acolytes.

An eternal ever-after

amidst the heavenly host.

Or mouldering in a grave

consumed by worms,

where the soil will subsume

our mortal remains

and return us to mother earth.

The ultimate belonging

where all ends converge,

closing the circle

on life and death

and whatever posterity there is.

I would really rather get away from these philosophical poems (and certainly  poems that touch on death!), but something I heard on a podcast immediately had me saying to myself "there's a poem there"; and later when I sat down to write, it's all that came to mind. ...I think it came out well, despite the unfortunate subject! (Here's a link, if you'd like to listen: https://nadiabolzweber.com/203-abby-wambach/)

When we think about mortality, we often forget that “mortal” also means feet of clay: so it's not just about death and eschatology, it's also about humility and belonging. When we say we “are mortal”, we are saying that we are flawed. And also that we are all in this together, contending with failure and heading toward death. ...While who has heard anyone ever say “Hey, I'm a mere mortal, what did you expect?”when they're enjoying success and celebrating life?!!

I had a few other ideas for "scheming pantheon". Because as little as I know about ancient history and Greek theology, I do know that those Olympian gods were very flawed, up to all kinds of shenanigans, jealousies, deceits, infidelities, and rivalries. Feuding pantheon? Fractious pantheon? But I settled on scheming because it just sounds right, somehow less technical and more emotionally evocative.

Obviously, this comes from the pen of an atheist who believes death is final, and who does not privilege the Christian god.  Although Jewish is probably more exact: because while Jesus is all about love and forgiveness, the Old Testament deity has a lot of slavery, murder, maiming, infidelity, bad temper, and hair-trigger smiting going on!

Surfacing - Sept 11 2020

 

Surfacing

Sept 11 2020

I surface from a troubled sleep.

Remnants of dreams

sink into murk.

Like early morning sun

burning off the fog

what's near emerges first

then far slowly resolves,

the light sharpening

as a familiar world

rematerializes.

An agitated sleep

of tossing and awakenings,

hallucinatory dreams

that make no sense.

But it's a new day

and the fog is lifting,

the lake is cool and calm

and glints in rising sun.

Smooth rocks slope down

into still water,

the last wisps of mist

thin imperceptibly out.

It could be a still life

in primary colours.

How odd, my kaleidoscopic sleep

of action and transience,

while real life

appears motionless.

Unrestorative sleep,

and an awakening

that rests my weary soul.

I'm a nocturnal creature, both by habit and nature, so I rarely get to see an early morning fog burn off. But I was out canoeing early this evening, the lake was relatively calm, and this image seemed to superimpose itself on my mind's eye: a low morning sun, the rocks sloping down into still water, a dense fog slowly lifting. The words resonated as they came to me: water, fog, calm, rock, toss ...and then odd. So I thought there might be a poem here, and later started noodling around. “Still” was the key word: I wanted to evoke a sense of stillness and utter calm. (It strikes me how each word demands its descriptor: it's the lake that must be calm, the water still. For some reason, not the other way around!)

It had to be a short poem, because there wasn't much there to start. I think this brevity is a strength. Especially the restraint in terms of description: not a lot of adjectives, not a lot of detail. I've always found that pointing the reader in the right direction and then letting her do the rest is a great way to keep her compelled and engaged. Leave space, and let the reader's imagination complete the thing. Leave space, and it might say something different every time she revisits it – which is the test of a good poem, the urge to reread. Two good reasons why less is almost always more.

Letting Go - Sept 10 2020

 

Letting Go

Sept 10 2020

That's the thing about regret.

Would your younger self

have taken your sensible advice,

or even had it in him

to listen respectfully?

If character is destiny,

by which I mean temperament

and that hard-wired brain,

then maybe the fix was in

and you are who you're meant to be.

And while you're entitled to regret

recrimination isn't fair,

because the callow version of you

who is long gone, and imperfectly remembered,

deserves love and forgiveness

instead of churlish resentment.

If I could only do it all again

you say to yourself,

imagining that human beings are perfectible

and life is fair.

Or you console yourself

with second chances;

an unexpected romance

in your twilight years,

reincarnation, perhaps.

Coming back

with nothing of your current life

except the karmic burden

of virtue and vice.

As if you had been let go,

a limp balloon

shrivelled and stretched

exhausting the last of its air,

while an indestructible soul

kept on keeping score.

When you'll start from scratch

with none of the hard-won wisdom

accumulated over the years,

yet with all the hubris of youth;

stumbling, then walking, then learning to talk,

then knowing it all

by the time you've turned 13.

So the more I contemplate rebirth

the more I'm inclined to prefer

a new beginning with the slate wiped clean;

because just imagine

a second adolescence

while still remembering the first!

G. B. Shaw

is reputed to have said

that youth is wasted on the young.

To which I would say

age is only a number,

and even wise old people

keep getting it wrong.

Except the difference is

they know enough

to forgive themselves,

let go of grievance and grudge,

and spend what precious time remains

with purpose and heart.

This poem is a real stretch for me. Because I try to avoid philosophical ones. Because I'm leery of preachiness (the kind of poem full of affirmation, aphoristic self-actualizing saccharine, and adolescent fist-pumping sentiment ...take note, Rupi Kaur!) And because rather than being a positive person, as the narrator of this poem would appear to be, I'm more the half-empty pessimist, catastrophist, and misanthrope! But this is what came to me as I sat down to write.

(By the way, the most amusing take on this metaphorical glass is the one that comes from the practical and frugal engineer. Neither half-full nor half-empty, but rather the product of bad design: a poorly constructed container, mismatched to its intended use!)

I find variations on the expression “you are who you're meant to be” very problematic. Because I don't believe in destiny or fate, as if some celestial puppet-master were pulling the strings. But in the sense the poem has it, I can agree: if character is destiny, then no matter how many times we're given the chance to relive our lives, it would likely turn out similar.

I think I have more regrets than most, and being inclined to introspection and retrospection, dwell on them more. But when I find regret turning into recrimination, I reprimand myself: that younger version of me deserves only love and forgiveness, not resentment and animosity. You need the humility to recognize that you still haven't mastered life: that you still frequently betray your better angels; that you still make bad choices despite knowing better. And if that's the case, then imagine how hard it was for your callow self. If the compass points of a happy life are kindness, gratitude, and forgiveness, then forgiveness starts with this: not just forgiving others, and not just forgiving yourself, but forgiving your past selves, as well.

Reincarnation – that mistakes don't matter anyway, since you get another chance – is really no consolation for a badly lived life. Because if consciousness and self-consciousness are not continuous, then it's not really you who gets reborn, it's someone else. If memory is all we're constructed of, then death truly is final, no matter how many times the wheel of reincarnation turns.

Yes, youth is wasted on the young: young people rarely appreciate their vitality and opportunity; rarely have the perspective to deal well with minor setbacks. But an old age spent in regret or grievance or grudge is also wasted. Life satisfaction requires finding meaning and purpose. This is the business of the old and elderly. It can be the best part of living.

(“Character is destiny” is one version of something said by the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Haraclitus. As a great admirer of Stoicism, I was wondering if he might have been one. After Googling, it turns out that he predated the Stoics, but that his thought influenced them. Here's more:

https://medium.com/stoicism-philosophy-as-a-way-of-life/heraclitus-the-pre-stoic-philosopher-who-inspired-marcus-aurelius-89c8e4312936)

Something From Nothing - Sept 8 2020

 

Something From Nothing

Sept 8 2020

In the beginning,

but after the stars

and the greening of earth

and the creatures who dwell in the sea

there was the accident of birth.

Which we tend to forget

while living out our lives

with the conceit of agency.

Of self-determination

mastery

and will,

as if contingency

coincidence

luck

were not repeatedly tossing the dice,

like tipsy gamblers

placing all-night bets.

The year of the polio vaccine

was the year of my birth.

So I grew up

free of the scourge

of children forbidden to play

and mothers wasting away

and hard-working men

confined to iron lungs.

Healthy

to a good family

in a first world country

in the middle of the 20^th century.

So I began

by winning the lottery,

and after that

any sense of entitlement

is churlish at best.

While my gratitude

is also tempered by fear

for the children born of hope

in this chilling 21^st,

our poor stewardship

and malignant neglect,

the future we have left to them.

1955

will not be remembered for me

and my paltry life.

But what a singular year

for that one in millions of sperm

to have found its egg

and persisted to birth.

The cosmos, with its trillions of stars

seems incomprehensible.

Yet we are no less.

In the beginning, the earth

was formless and void,

there was darkness

upon the face of the deep.

As we too were born;

something from nothing

in the year of our Lord.

This is something I've often thought, and frequently spoken of and written about. It's a very useful reframing device. When you feel hard done by and entitled, recalling the accident of birth can be a sobering corrective: you won the lottery from the get-go; everything from then on is gravy. (I know, I know; not only an unforgivably mixed metaphor, but two lazy cliches!) I call these the five basic things: born healthy, to a good family, in a first world country, in the middle of the 20^th century. Not to mention the astronomical odds against conception in the first place.

Philosophical poems like these are the hardest to write, and generally not my favourites. Because complicated and nuanced ideas are probably better expressed in prose. But then, it's the constraints that make writing poems challenging, and make reading them pleasurable: appreciating how the author navigates that fine line between, on the one side, argument and linear thought, and on the other, prosody, musicality, whimsy ...and an economy of words. (The latter usually being my greatest test!)

The Biblical references may seem odd, coming from such a fundamentalist atheist. Perhaps it's the irony of this that appeals to me. Or perhaps it's a kind of reaching across the philosophical divide, a token of respect I offer to believers. Or perhaps it's simply an acknowledgement of the influence and gravitas not only of Judaeo-Christian thought and mythology in our culture, but of scriptural language itself.

Water - Sept 7 2020

 

Water

Sept 7 2020

Be water, he said.

How it works its way

through the tightest crevice

crack and cleft.

How it drips, inexorably,

wearing down the densest rock

in its unstoppable descent.

How it occupies space,

taking on whatever shape

nature might contrive.

And how it does all this

with patient dogged stealth.

So you will seep silently in

then pause,

biding your time

observing

           . . . waiting

                       . . . unwatched.

An incompressible liquid

that is pure, clear, calm.

Or turn into ice, and expand,

breaking out

of your sealed container

and rising to the top.

Vaporize, and vanish

in an odourless colourless gas.

I'll often find myself in a mood to write, but not moved by any particular image or idea. In fact, most of my poems originate this way. There seems to be an aesthetic of writing – the act itself; the wordplay; that intoxicating sense of flow – that is more powerful than the need to express some specific thought. This usually occurs after I've been reading and am in a well-caffeinated state. (Which, in my daily habit, are pretty much inextricably linked: my familiar comfortable chair; some good black coffee, scalding hot; and a fully charged iPad.)

So I found myself today (as I seem to most days lately!), and all it took to set me off was the word “water” catching my eye. I've written similar poems in the past – about the relentlessness of water, about water seeking its lowest level – but not quite as I have here.

I believe I first heard “be like water” in the context of the Hong Kong protests of 2019 (against China's increasing assertiveness and authoritarianism), and it was then attributed to the Kung Fu master Bruce Lee. He had used it as metaphor for being formless: not trapped in a certain mindset, but rather adaptable, changeable, capable of growth. While the protesters were using it to describe their tactics: spontaneous, flexible, and evasive – just like the flow of water. (My acknowledgement to Wikipedia for both of these explanations, some of which I have transcribed word for word.) I think this notion of evasiveness comes closest to where I went in this poem.

1955 -- . . . (Sept 6 2020)

1955 — . . .

Sept 6 2020

There are long straight rows

between the headstones.

Between the grave markers, obelisks, epitaphs

tombstones and plaques.

And, apparently, footstones.

Which are placed opposite,

as if to contain the body

or fence off the plot

of good bourgeois suburbanites,

who knew that fences make good neighbours

and always maintained

a well-kept lawn.

I walk here most days.

A pleasant green oasis,

a quiet space

in the city cacophony.

I read the epitaphs

and contemplate their dates.

About beginnings and ends

and what the wise man once said

about the hyphen in between:

that while we can't control when

we have agency

over what we make of this.

And so, over what we'll have left

after we're gone,

aside from these few kind words

chiselled in stone,

one neat rectangular plot

of nicely manicured lawn.

My walks take me very different places these days. But I've always enjoyed walking in cemeteries, and have been fascinated not only by epitaphs – with their tantalizing, but inscrutably brief, words – but also by the beauty of weathered stone. Granite may age so slowly it seems permanent (and marble, that much quicker); but still eventually topples, its inscription erased and sculpted edges softened.

Someone was recently speaking about his concern that walking his dogs in a cemetery might be seen as disrespectful, even though he assiduously picked-up after them and kept to the marked paths. I can't see anything more suitable. Because life goes on. Because the dead should not be consigned to oblivion, but rather should co-exist with the living. And because bodies return to the earth, where their matter is eventually resurrected. A cemetery that is full of life, where people want to visit, and that provides succour and respite, is not an irreverent trampling, but rather a testament to the dead. I would want to be buried in such a place, instead of some austere, empty, restricted space that was itself a morbid metaphor for death.

I'm not sure I'm doing a very good job with my own hyphen. But what a telling symbol this standard inscription is: how little two dates separated by a hyphen conveys of a life; and how sobering a message as to how soon we are forgotten, how small our petty lives in the grand scheme of things. And perhaps that it's more important to live well than to live long.

Here's a little about my process in coming up with his poem. I went to the internet to find synonyms for “headstone”. I have a weakness for this in my poetry: lists that not only drive home a point, but play with the sound and rhythm of words, as well as the nuance and variety of the English language. These are lists that by all rights should be too long and wordy and repetitive for poetry, but that I find a pleasure to both read and write. When I found “footstone”, I immediately lit up to the possibilities. The central part of the poem, about the hyphen, came from a podcast (as ideas often do!): the second episode of People I (Mostly) Admire, in which the economist Steven Levitt interviews the actor and neuroscientist Mayim Bialik. The dog walker was also inspired by a podcast. I've been greatly enjoying listening to old episodes of Judge John Hodgman, and in the “docket” section of this one, he was asked to adjudicate this listener's dilemma. Whatever the alchemy is by which poems begin, this – combined with my own enjoyment of spending time in cemeteries – is how this one came to be.

Although my wish is not to be buried in a cemetery at all. I'd much prefer a natural burial: no embalming; a simple biodegradable container; and my body placed near the foot of a beautiful tree somewhere in a remote forest. And if I'm dug up by animals and eaten, so be it. I don't understand the reverence for a soulless body. Once we're gone, we're gone: our bodies are merely lifeless decomposing meat, not us.

A Light Dusting - Sept 5 2020

 

A Light Dusting

Sept 5 2020

It settles, drifts, accumulates,

steady

relentless

impartial.

It's said to come from space,

star stuff and meteors

and interstellar gas.

From desert sand

and sun-baked earth

and silt and soot and dirt,

on Mistral and Sirocco

Santa Ana, Foehn.

And from human skin

for simply having lived,

shed

abraded

replenished

over and over again.

I return

to the old house

that has been sitting undisturbed.

An even layer of dust

has claimed every surface,

deepening the dark

with its dull grey pall.

I vacuum, wipe, brush

but still, it comes,

steady

relentless

impartial.

I see it dance

on warm currents of air,

drifting past

and drafting up.

In bright shafts of lights,

where it tumbles and spins

and cartwheels-off into shadow.

And know how it will end

for each of us.

Birth

then burning bright

then certain slow decline,

like guttering flames

reduced to cooling ash.

And as ashes to ashes

from dust to dust;

returning to soil

our elements

the basic stuff of stars.