Relativity - Jan 30 2021

 

Relativity

Jan 30 2021

I remember killing time.

As if it were an offence against the living

a brief rehearsal of death.

There was also saving time,

that clock-watching non-stopping toe-tapping rush,

as if, in the end

I could get it back.

And most of all, there was the fullness of time.

All the aspirations, good intentions, and best-laid plans

that, in the fullness of time

I was sure would be realized.

But time is not full.

It empties out

like sand from an hourglass,

and too soon

you find you've run out.

A wrong step

black ice

a bad set of brakes,

a tiny stretch of DNA

that multiplies

goes renegade.

And despite the tick-tock

of the mantle clock

is not the constant it appears.

I'm sure of this,

because I remember when we were together

how fast time went;

as if the days were too short,

as if we'd been spending time

like debtors kiting cheques.

And, looking back, how slow;

when our lives were so full

that if time hadn't stretched

it would have overflowed.

I've written before about the subjectivity of time: the irony that the faster it feels in the moment, the slower it seems in retrospect. And vice versa.

But this poem only landed there by accident. What I really wanted to say when I set out is all in the first stanza: the idea that killing time is the worst kind of failure, a terrible waste of our short and precious lives. Yet how often have we killed time? How often invoked this phrase without really contemplating its full implication?

After that, it was a short step to playing with “saving” time, “the fullness of time”, and “spending” time. And then, the inconstancy of time's passage, in the moment as well as memory.

Is the ending too unexpected, too much of a shift in tone? I ask this because while there is an undercurrent of regret that runs through the poem, there is no hint of romance. So in seeming to come out of nowhere, I wonder if this might strike the reader as a bit of emotional manipulation.

Change of Shift - Jan 27 2021

 

Change of Shift

Jan 27 2021

In a single bed

in a small room

that contains all she's kept,

the remnants of a life

approaching its end.

Attended by a nurse

on a 12 hour shift

who will hold her bird-like hand

and stroke her thinning hair.

As she has diminished with the years

so her world has contracted.

From a big suburban house

to a clever city condo,

then this tidy little cubicle

in Sunrise Seniors Care.

From mastery and agency

to dependency and frail.

But now she feels at home

beneath her heirloom quilt.

There's a favourite chair and table

culled from all the rest,

clothes on wooden hangers

and photos on the chest.

Some sentimental valuables

she keeps close at hand,

flat-soled shoes with Velcro straps

slipped underneath the bed.

Ambition wanes

the world contracts

the walls close in,

muscles waste

and bodies shrink

and breath grows short.

Shallower and shallower

through pale dry lips,

with a long expectant pause

as if it were her last.

Until a drawn out sigh

and all the air is gone.

The 12 hours end

and the next shift starts.

Obverse - Jan 24 2021

 

Obverse

Jan 24 2021

Like love and loss

belief and doubt

are inextricable.

In quantum physics

this would be action at a distance,

the entanglement of atoms

that cannot act

except as one.

In electricity

the positive and negative.

Which you'd think would be zero sum

and cancel out.

But without which

the current falters, power dies,

the live wire

never fires-off sparks.

No faith is immaculate

no love inviolable.

Forbidden thoughts

afflict the pious,

betrayal and loss

are ever possible.

The ambivalence

of human emotion,

as inscrutable as quantum physics

but far less quantifiable.

And as binary

as the obverse sides of the same coin,

facing away

but never apart.

Ineffable love

tempered by loss,

the mystery of belief

flirting with apostasy.

Bespoke - Jan 11 2021

 

Bespoke

Jan 11 2021

A cordwainer makes shoes

a cobbler repairs them.

As if anyone rescues a damaged pair of shoes

instead of buying new ones.

Obsolescence rules.

Just as the division of labour

has rendered makers obsolete.

Instead, each worker is a cog in the machine

bending to the singular task

of backstay, counter, eyelet, gore

heel, insole, outstrap,

toe cap, top lift, saddle, throat

welt, medallion, plain-toe.

And even more hourly earners

at work on the vamp, monk strap, outsole.

Or a single machine

extruding plastic

and turning out a sleek seamless beauty.

Humble footwear

that serves its purpose.

While the forgotten craft

like all the other lost arts

is as archaic as the word.

One I encountered today

and will never have need of again.

Because the cordwainers and cobblers

have become as disposable

as an old pair of shoes

that aren't worth fixing.

And work

that might once have been virtuous, meaningful, Godly

is now merely cheap;

a world of plenty,

with so many inexpensive goods

we can no longer discern

desire from need.

This poem was inspired by Jill Lepore's piece in today's New Yorker (Jan 11, 2021): What's Wrong With the Way We Work (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/18/whats-wrong-with-the-way-we-work_).

She deals with serious subjects like the gig economy and gruelling shift work, increasing inequality, the decline of unions, domestic labour and the discounting of women's work, the myth of “meaningful” work, the decline of craft and competence, and the epidemic of over-work. And, as happens more frequently in the New Yorker than anything else I regularly read, she stumped me with a new word.

In an industrial society, where hyper-specialization and the division of labour rule, we are all helpless. I think me more than most, because I am utterly incapable of doing anything with my hands. I realize that there is a lot of romanticization in my lament for a lost world of self-sufficiency and near subsistence. Still, there has always been satisfaction in creating something out of whole cloth, even if it was by necessity.

Aside from the virtue of craft and the lost art of the maker, abundance may have made us less happy, not more. And obsolescence, on which a consumption based economy depends, is not merely wasteful, it has a strong moral dimension to it.

The Puritans thought we needed to be productive to be Godly. But to flourish as human beings, we need time for leisure, creativity, wandering minds. Poetry, for example, is hardly productive. There is no place for it in the venerated GNP. But at least it's more meaningful than an assembly line!

I really enjoy the celebration of language that can be found in specialized terms and found sounds. So as soon as I started thinking about making a shoe from scratch, I started to imagine the possibilities in its technical nomenclature. I Googled, immediately found 17 words, and thought a list was not only a great way to play with their music, but to impress on the reader the complexity and craftsmanship that can go into this simple-seeming everyday object. It's always fun to play with language this way. And a nice addition to a poem that began with a fascination about a word.

Small Mercies - Jan 9 2021

 

Small Mercies

Jan 9 2021

This far down

there is only light

when the sun is at its height.

So in high summer

for an hour or two at most,

while in winter

there's only a softening

in the small keyhole of sky.

I feel for crevices and handhold

but there is just unstable earth,

scrabbling at cold damp soil

that smells of rot and mould.

Dirt rains down on me.

The ground beneath is hard,

pebbled with sharp embedded stones.

They say you dug yourself in

now claw your way out

or resign yourself to the grave;

you can pray, if you like

but don't count on salvation.

Instead, I curl up and dream.

Of a verdant sun-kissed upland

a warm bed of grass.

Of my lover at my side

and her lovely lilting laugh,

of life ever-after

and no need to ask.

Until a shaft of light intrudes

and I'm rudely jerked awake.

The sun is passing

directly overhead

and I add another day.

Pleased

at how patient I've become.

Grateful

for this small mercy of warmth,

and that the rain

which can't hold off forever

has spared me so far.

I've often said that gratitude and forgiveness are key ingredients of happiness. Even here, in this metaphorical pit of hopelessness, survival depends on gratitude for the smallest thing. And if not divine absolution, then at least some kind of self-acceptance.

It's also an extreme exercise in reframing, of the “could always be worse” variety. Perhaps this is one way pessimism serves mental health. Not just when it can be characterized as “defensive pessimism”, in which catastrophizing prepares you to respond to misfortune, but as a way to salvage something from the worst circumstance. And even if optimists are also inclined to think it could always be worse, I suspect they lack the imagination to plumb the depths of just how bad worse can get!

Enmeshed - Jan 6 2021

 

Enmeshed

Jan 6 2021

I live by myself.

I don't mind being alone

and have lived most of my life this way.

Yet I wonder

about the path of least resistance

and lazy comfort zones.

About complacency,

and what I may be missing

having been so long on my own.

But as I learn more

about the human body

I realize that this sovereign being I call me

is a kind of conceit.

That my gut contains more bacteria

than there are stars in the galaxy,

that 40 trillion creatures

inhabit me.

I am not one, but many;

entangled and enmeshed, despite myself.

So where do I begin and end?

Is there no such thing as independence?

And don't get me started

on the question of free will.

How humbling

that I contain such multitudes.

Even though I always knew

that in a society

as civilized as ours

there is no such thing as singular,

that as well as depending

on others to survive

we rely on the kindness of strangers.

Because there are no organisms

there is just ecology,

unheard-of creatures

all at once

breathing, growing, decomposing

and filling every space,

entangled

in fights to the death

and symbiotic nets

and closely balanced truces.

Perhaps lonely

and even longing

but never truly alone.

I suspect that this poem has been fermenting in my subconscious for a while, but my discomfort with confessional poetry kept it there. The spur to write came from a brilliant book called Entangled Life – How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change our Minds, & Shape Our Futures, and written by a man whose name sounds like the ultimate parody of Englishness: Merlin Sheldrake. Fungi are the neglected kingdom of biology, and Sheldrake is a biologist whose writing and thoughtfulness entitle him to the name by which scientists used to be known: a true Natural Philosopher. He is not just a brilliant synthesizer; he is a careful, compassionate, insightful observer of human nature and the natural world. Not to mention a fine writer with the ear of a poet. A philosophers as much as a scientist.

The poem is informed by his general world view, one I increasingly share. But two facts and one insightful thought I lifted directly from him: That my gut contains more bacteria / than there are stars in the galaxy, / that 40 trillion creatures / inhabit me; and there are no organisms / just ecology.(I'm trusting his numbers!)

In this understanding of biology, I see a strong overlap with sociology: the conflict between libertarian ideology and the realization that we are inherently social creatures; and in modern industrial society – a system as complex and interdependent and therefore as vulnerable as any – this survivalist fantasy of the heroic individual is just that, a fantasy.

And I also see a strong overlap with certain kinds of spirituality: the idea that our personal boundaries are artificial constructs, and that true enlightenment depends on dissolving the boundaries of ego and self. We naturally think of this as expanding outward. But the microscopic lens of this poem reminds us – in an instrumental, if not a spiritual sense – that the dissolution of this sense of self works in the other direction as well.

Happy New Year - Jan 7 2021

 

Happy New Year

Jan 7 2021

January 7

dawned sunny and warm.

The sky was that deep winter blue,

and the eaves, brimming with snow

dripped

then trickled

then streamed.

As if a bewildered world

had been abruptly released

from its usual deep-freeze,

eager to make every second count

before the gods of weather

come to their senses

and the cold, as expected, returned.

Almost a week in

to a new year

and the novelty is gone.

When once again we had hopefully thought

that with the turning of the calendar

at least something would change;

but it's still the middle of winter

and the news is just as disheartening

and all the hard resolutions have lost.

And with this unseasonable weather

I'm feeling out of sorts

and more and more unmoored.

A feeling that persists

as day turns quickly to night.

When there's a damp cold,

the kind that chills to the marrow

no matter how you dress.

When Christmas trees, no longer festive

lie where they were dumped by the curb,

stranded morosely

in lumpy sodden snow.

And when icicles loom from sagging eaves,

lethal daggers

dangling overhead.

A week in

and we've gotten over saying

have a happy new year.

Not that we don't wish it,

but it seems excessive

after 7 days.

Perhaps the 8^th will be better.

Another warm day

in a world without winter,

as the calendar keeps counting down

and the sun

heats relentlessly up.

One of those days when I felt like writing, but had no idea or inspiration. So I thought what could be more obvious than a new year's poem. I began with no preconception. So the negativity of this poem must have seeped up from my subconscious.

Perhaps it's the unseasonable weather. When even the deniers of climate change must be having second thoughts, and catastrophists like me sink deeper into despair.

Or the unthinkable happenings in the U.S., when we were just coming to hope that the madness of the Trump years – with less than 2 weeks left in his benighted single term – were at an end.

Or maybe it's the sense of desperation I always get from the New Year bacchanal: the unacknowledged but understood artificiality of a change in calendar, as if we're trying to fool ourselves into false hope; the social pressure to party, along with the pathetic fear of missing out; and the self-destructive excess of over-eating and getting drunk.

So even a beautiful day, which is where the poem begins, is unable to warm my heart. Especially in a new year when even the optimists are consoling themselves by saying: “Well, couldn't be worse”!

Small Mercies - Jan 9 2021

 

Small Mercies

Jan 9 2021

This far down

there is only light

when the sun is at its height.

So in high summer

for an hour or two at most,

while in winter

there's only a softening

in the small keyhole of sky.

I feel for crevices and handholds

but there is just unstable earth,

damp and cold

and smelling of rot and mould.

Dirt rains down on me.

The ground beneath is hard,

pebbled with sharp embedded stones.

They say you dug yourself in

now claw your way out

or resign yourself to the grave;

you can pray, if you like

but don't count on salvation.

Instead, I curl up and dream.

Of a verdant sun-kissed upland

a warm bed of grass.

Of my lover at my side

and her lovely lilting laugh,

of life ever-after

and no need to ask.

Until a shaft of light intrudes

and I'm rudely jerked awake.

The sun has passed

directly overhead

and I add another day.

Pleased

at how patient I've become.

Grateful

for this small mercy of warmth,

and that the rain

which can't hold off forever

has spared me so far.

I've often said that gratitude and forgiveness are key ingredients of happiness. Even here, in this metaphorical pit of hopelessness, survival depends on gratitude for the smallest thing. And if not divine absolution, then at least some kind of self-acceptance.

It's also an extreme exercise in reframing, of the “could always be worse” variety. Perhaps this is one way pessimism serves mental health. Not just when it can be characterized as “defensive pessimism”, in which catastrophizing prepares you to respond to misfortune, but as a way to salvage something from the worst circumstance. And even if optimists are also inclined to think it could always be worse, I suspect they lack the imagination to plumb the depths of just how bad worse can get!

Microcosm - Jan 4 2021

 

Microcosm

Jan 4 2021

Early morning,

and the last wisps of mist

are rising off the lake,

suspended

above its still reflective face.

That liminal place

between limitless sky

and the weight of water;

progressively thinning air

that soon will empty into space,

and the lake

filling its container

with the force of liquid attraction.

A 2-dimensional world,

where little insects

scurry about their business,

or freeze in place

as if stillness

could render them unseen.

I see them poised

on impossibly thin, stilt-like legs,

each tip

in a tiny depression

in the smooth reflective surface,

impervious molecular bonds

flexing like a trampoline.

A small branch of a branch

the wind has broken off

is also embedded

in the brightly mirrored glass,

which clings to the edges

as if holding it in place

on tautly drawn stays.

And a featherweight leaf

with its ends curling upward

and middle barely touching;

a nifty little vessel

becalmed at sea,

waiting for the next soft breeze

to catch its sails.

I see this

in the early morning calm

sitting by the water's edge.

A precious moment in time

before the sun rises

and the air warms

and convection roils the surface

breaking its glass,

turning it dark and rough and porous.

Submerging

that 2 dimensional world

of perfect stillness

and infinitesimal things.

So much beauty

in small orders of magnitude.

In the transient, and precarious.

In simply stopping to look

and taking careful note.

I found myself very taken by both the imagery and the craftsmanship in today's offering of The Writer's Almanac. I live on a small lake, and have the privilege of swimming here each summer. I've watched the same tiny objects held in the glass-like surface tension of a calm day, observed the jewel-like delicacy of dragonflies.

I love the clever ending, because it not only calls on a bookish person's familiar frame of reference, but because it speaks to the importance of close observation. Of taking note. Of not just seeing, but of looking. And does so beautifully, by showing instead of saying. Close observation and microcosm are both often key elements in my version of lyric poetry.

And I especially admire his simplicity of language and easy conversational tone.

The surfacing swimmer immediately reminded me of those wildlife documentaries where the camera lens is horizontally bisected by the water line: so we see kind of a fish-eye view of our familiar terrestrial world above, and a somewhat alien pelagic world below. I saw that line as this liminal 2-dimensional place that exists for a short time when conditions are right, and is governed by its own physical laws. How life fills every niche available. How, in this order of magnitude, it's even possible to walk on water.

His piece, of course, illuminates the weakness in mine. He is economical and distilled, trusting his reader to see it for herself. He says one thing and he says it simply. While I can't seem to get over the need to hold the reader's hand and spell everything out. I know less is more. But it's still not easy for me!

 

Field Guide

by Tony Hoagland

 

Once, in the cool blue middle of a lake,

up to my neck in that most precious element of all,

 

I found a pale-gray, curled-upwards pigeon feather

floating on the tension of the water

 

at the very instant when a dragonfly,

like a blue-green iridescent bobby pin,

 

hovered over it, then lit, and rested.

That’s all.

 

I mention this in the same way

that I fold the corner of a page

 

in certain library books,

so that the next reader will know

 

where to look for the good parts.