A Small But Telling Gesture - Dec 1 2025

 

A Small But Telling Gesture

Dec 1 2025

He holds the elbow of the blind man,

gently steering him

between the shoppers and their carts,

coolers stacked with produce,

multicoloured fruit.

Occasionally leans in,

speaking into an ear

in a soft clear voice.

A close relative?

Paid attendant?

Or good samaritan,

who jumped at the chance

to be of use?

The white cane taps.

His years of practice show,

swinging it side-to-side

in a tight radius

that matches his pace.

His grip is light, but firm,

and what seems approximate 

is as precise as a radar beam

circling through its arc.

This is how a blind man 

navigates the world,

not with brain implants

and computerized vision, 

but the time-honoured technology

of a long straight stick,

the helping hand

of human touch.

I close my eyes, and continue to walk,

taking small tentative steps

with arms out front

feeling my way.

I hear people talking,

canned music 

wafting overhead;

am vaguely aware

something may or may not

be blocking my way.

A cloying scent fills the air,

ripe fruit

smelling of the tropics,

and the rotting stuff

in the bottom of the bins.

While fresh parsley 

cloves of garlic

and human bodies

who’ve been at work all day

add their funk

to the potent potpourri.

So the steady tap of the cane

is the one constant

that centres me.

They say the blind

have super-human hearing

a discerning nose.

As if our senses are zero-sum;

a deficit in one

made up for by another.

So perhaps he can cut through

the muddle of sound

and competing smells.

Of course, I soon stumble

as the sharp edge of a bin catches my leg.

I am not superhuman

just sightless.

Actually, less;

a mere pretender

who can never know

how blindness truly feels.

Perhaps envious as well?

Because there’s an intimacy

to the blind man and his helper, 

humanity at its best

in this small but telling gesture —

an offered elbow 

compliantly bent,

and a guiding hand

firmly cradling it.

Do I, too, crave touch like that?

Not sexual

or incidental

or with malicious intent,

but the reassuring touch

of a warm and steady hand

reaching out from the darkness

to walk with me.

Touch,

the neglected sense 

we take too much for granted.

But perhaps the most essential;

even when we imagine

we’re perfectly good on our own.

Dog Person - Nov 30 2025

 

Dog Person

Nov 30 2025

He called me a dog person.

I felt both flattered and seen.

Not a cat person, at least,

which I don’t so much admire

as am baffled by.

Suffice it to say

I don’t get cats.

Or is it “dog person”

not as descriptor, but as a noun;

a hybrid, or chimera

with a dog’s head and human body

  — a cynocephalus?

Or have I got that turned around?

Wouldn’t a canine body and human brain

be more ideal,

athleticism and smarts

all in one.

But then again, aren’t dogs more sensible,

less neurotic than us?

A simple creature

who lives in the moment

and quickly forgets,

an enthusiast

obsessed with walks, balls, and food.

  … Mostly food.

Who needs higher thought

and complicated relationships

when you can be man’s best friend?

A come-to-life plush toy

undisturbed 

by the state of the world,

who never pays the rent

commutes to work

or cleans up her mess,

and whose soft brown puppy-eyes

can get her out of anything.

Who needn’t even dress.

Although that human body

would probably want to be clothed.

A man-dog

embarrassed by his nakedness,

not lithe enough to lick.

I sent the following note to my brother when I shared to first draft of this poem. It’s as good an explanation as any, so I’m reproducing it here:

 In your email containing the WSJ article about ugly dogs, you called me a “dog person”. Absolutely!  But the term also struck me in its most literal sense. So I couldn’t resist quickly reeling off this little bit of nonsense. I know you’re not a fan of poetry, but thought you might get a kick out of it nevertheless.

Such a thing actually exists. At least in mythology. There’s the cynocephalus of medieval folklore. And the Egyptians had a god named Anubis: the jackal-headed god of mummification, embalming, cemeteries, and the afterlife, often depicted as a man with a black jackal head symbolizing decay, fertile Nile soil, and rebirth.

Passing Jupiter - Nov 30 2025

 

Passing Jupiter

Nov 30 2025

The embers glow

on a bed of cinder and ash

and scattered coals,

bright red

against sepulchral blacks and greys.

There’s no flame, not even smoke

as the weakening fire

burns cleanly down.

It’s like the life force ebbing away,

or at least how I hope my final battle with death

will end;

inevitably

acceptingly

going gently into the night.

 

The wrought iron poker

is thickly coated

in velvety black soot.

I stir what’s left;

the few embers briefly flare,

then cool

to a dull orange-red.

I watch until it’s dead.

Until the last of the fuel fades

then flickers

before the once blazing fire

snuffs quietly out.

And anticlimactically ends

in a curl of wispy smoke

like a last shallow breath.

But combustion isn’t clean.

Even cremation is incomplete,

there are still the cremains

to be returned to the mourners

in an ornamental urn

or cardboard box.

Perhaps, with sufficient heat, it would all burn

until nothing was left;

no bone

crushed into coarse grey powder

and small hard nubs,

and none of that thick black soot

adhering to the firewall. 

Every atom

to the very last

converted into energy —

from sunlight to tree

and wood to heat

then back to light again.

Which, at speed, is now passing Jupiter

on its way to the edge of the galaxy.

Just as I Love Lucy

beamed out in the 50s

reached Alpha Centauri

4 years on,

too weak

for a rabbit-eared TV

but just as many laughs.

Not an afterlife, exactly.

But more alive

than the inert matter

cooling rapidly

in the bottom of the stove.

No, I didn’t do the arithmetic. Didn’t calculate the distance to Jupiter and the speed of light. Just thought that among the outer planets, “Jupiter” sounded best! 

Some readers might see in this an allusion to a soul or spirit surviving the demise of its body; a life force or consciousness that persists after death. Perhaps, as they’re presented with a box of cold lumpy cremains, they will find the thought of some kind of afterlife comforting. I hope they do.

But this isn’t my belief. I think of death as utter extinguishment: as hard to conceive as it is, an eternity of nothingness. Because consciousness, like the mind, arises from the brain and dies with the brain; there is no spirit separate from the body. So if anything, this poem is simply the First Law of Thermodynamics in action (the conservation of energy).

Not terribly poetical, I know. But I like the circularity of this example:  light from the sun transformed into matter, then back to light (and heat of course). Nothing wasted or lost. A closed circle. So the light that fire cast on you hasn’t gone. It’s still radiating off, racing away somewhere in space at app. 3 million metres/second.