Home in Time for Dinner
Sept 24 2009


They used to sell chewing gum
in the shape of cigarettes.
We couldn’t wait to smoke.

There’s that shelf
that runs the length of the back car window.
When I was little
I’d curl up to sleep there
on long road trips.
The white noise
of wind, engine, asphalt,
the sudden light
of passing cars.

We rode our bikes
from morning to night,
one gear gliders
that became motorcycles, spaceships,
in baseball caps and Keds
(which were canvas sneakers
that came in white or black
high-top, or regular.)
“Just be home for dinner”
our mothers had said,
and we were gone.

Back then, they could strap us in school —
holding-out our hands
palms up,
the sting of leather.
It was almost worth it,
a minor celebrity at recess.
Back home, we’d get our butts slapped
again —
“for good measure”, they said.
Because the teacher was always right
“and don’t you forget it.”

We ate white sliced bread
powdered milk
TV dinners,
sat around a small screen
black and white, together,
getting-up to change channels
adjust
the rabbit-ear antenna.
There were only 5
3 of which had bad static,
so we pretty much left it
as it was.



In the precarious days of our youth, when everyone smoked, no one wore seatbelts (or bike helmets), corporal punishment was OK, and we deferred to authority, we somehow managed to survive into adulthood. And not only that, but probably enjoyed life more when there was less choice (shoes and channels, for two!), but so much more freedom.

Another Poem About Fall
Sept 23 2009


The leaves change quickly, here,
a burst of crimson, orange
and then they’re gone —
a sodden brown mat,
heavy raking.

The days as quickly shrink;
and me
craving sleep, sweets,
my body still confused
by the end of summer,
winter, coming.

It’s hard to write a poem about fall;
what hasn’t been said before,
and falling leaves
is too easy a metaphor.
North of the Tropic of Cancer
north of the temperate zone,
more rock than earth
everywhere, standing water,
where even the needles soften, drop
as spruce and pine
prepare for snow.
While I grow fat
and lazy,
and frosty nights grow long.

The air, this time of year
is cool and dry,
so the sky at night seems bigger —
stars, laser-sharp,
the black void, infinite.
I become aware how thin it is,
the egg-shell atmosphere of earth;
its frugal warmth
its precious oxygen.

Looking up
through poplar, birch
— bare branches,
which seem to shiver
all through winter —
I snug-up my red wool sweater
that smells vaguely of wood-smoke
and begin to gather leaves;
still wet with dew,
shadows already lengthening.

Everything Gets Worse
Sept 22 2009


Everything gets worse
at night.
In the murky muffled quiet
of your queen-sized bed.
On sheets
you can’t remember changing,
a comforter
that’s way too hot,
the itch can drive you crazy.
The pain
that says metastases, a heart attack
some gruesome infestation.
Or grief’s
unbearable weight.
When sleep, that sweet escape
won’t take you.

If you’re alone
you think of neighbours,
eventually calling the cops
— the door locked,
the mail untouched,
the pervasive smell
of rot.

If you have company
whose name you just forgot,
you lie beside her, wondering
will she flee
or stop?

And if she’s your lover, your wife
you want to believe
she’ll hold you,
stroke your hair,
spoon your body against her
until dawn,
when the busyness keeps you from thinking,
the cold grey light
makes you small
again.

Then Saturday, you sleep all day
catching up;
the curtains
flung-open wide,
every dust-ball
illuminated.
When the monster under the bed
recoils from the light,
squeezed
into one tiny corner.

Looking Up
Sept 21 2009


When the power was cut
I stood stock-still
in sudden darkness.
But the silence
is what surprised me most —
the fluorescent buzz
the whirr of a clock
the fridge’s comforting hum,
all abruptly gone.

And then my eyes adjusted;
to the sliver of moon,
the stray light
of stars.
Nothing to do
but go outside, and walk.

As our ancestors have done
for tens of thousands of years
before the last century;
when night became glamorous
and we fought-off sleep
and felt ourselves fearless
and stopped looking up.

Until a night like this
is given to us.
When constellations crowd the sky;
and ever fainter stars
appear in bunches,
filling empty space
with light,
looking all the way back
in time.

My eyes area open wide
drinking-in the universe,
my ears
on hair-trigger alert.
And the clocks
have all stopped counting;
which feels like time is free
like permission to finally breathe.
As houses empty
the streets are filled,
politely excusing ourselves
as we gently bump into each other.
Everyone, out walking;
in wonder, looking up.

Hand-Push Mower
Sept 19 2009

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” (attributed to Gustave Flaubert)


The hand-push mower
whirrs through the grass,
carving green manicured strips
clipped as close as boot camp.
The scent is succulent, sweet —
fresh-cut hay, mixed with summer day.
Sunday morning
when the dew has barely lifted.

It’s a heavy machine;
built before obsolescence,
cheap tinny knock-offs
with high-gloss paint.
The blades are elegantly curved
disappearing in an egg-beater blur
the moment it's set in motion.
The wheels are big, black, permanent,
the grips, contoured to fit my hand
smoothly,
hot, in thick leather gloves
stiff and stained with grass;
but inside, soft as a chamois.

I walk along, behind it
my pace steady, measured,
concentrating on long thin rectangles
ruler-straight edges
the margins of beds.
And the base of the chain-link fence,
where mutant weeds
send up grotesque stems
their curdled leaves.

Every two weeks, all summer
I perform this chore;
intoxicated by smell,
reassured by the well-oiled whir,
unaccountably pleased
by the even surface.

The unexpected pleasures
of the bourgeoisie.



I remembered the opening quote as “Live your life as a bourgeois, so you may seek passion and risk in your art.” Which I think may be better, even if he did say it first! Anyway, they both fit the poem. And I think it would be terribly disrespectful not to have stuck to the original.

Parallel Universe
Sept 16 2009


I’m trying to explain colour
to a blind man.
So I ask
what is the essence of blue?
Where is the synapse
that lights-up on red?
How does the vibration
of electro-magnetic waves
affect us as deeply as music
— a blue funk, a purple haze
a jaundiced expression,
the snarling black dog
of depression?

The optic nerve
fires-up the brain,
and colour occurs.
So, is that where colour resides
from the first?
Or is the brain a blank slate,
waiting for the eyes to open
and open-up the world?

He was 2, when it occurred
the accident,
and vaguely remembers looking-out
at the green beginnings of his world.
He doesn’t miss it, he says,
just curious.
“I can’t miss
what I’ve never really known.
And sound is rich enough
touch intense,
especially when I focus;
with nothing but deep dense blackness
to distract me.”

Like the vast orders of magnitude
I can’t see past.
Like the surface of things
I cannot penetrate.
Like the future
that may, or may not, happen.
And like the extra dimensions
only physicists understand,
I, too, am colour-blind —
living the conceit that I’ve mastered
a material world
my eyes can never capture;
my mind
never truly grasp.

Unseasonably Warm
Sept 14 2009


It’s desert dry
the sun high, and merciless.
The road goes by
50 feet from my door;
mostly sand, bits of gravel
spit-out like shrapnel
from passing cars.
They rumble past in a fury of dust,
usually oblivious
to the small frame house
hammered-up
in the middle of nowhere.

It’s been 2 days
looking-out, a hand shading my eyes
since I’ve seen anyone go by.
The road bakes.
Heat waves
rise-up, shimmering,
turning the stagnant air liquid
— like a parched tongue
licking dry cracked lips.

Cicadas buzz;
only the males, I’m told,
signalling their loneliness, desire
their loud abrasive fitness.
And I swear, I wouldn’t be surprised
to see a tumbleweed roll by,
out of the spruce and pine forest.
A diamondback
slither past on its silky belly,
rattler poised.
Or an armadillo
sunning on the road.

I hear voices
on the radio,
reassured I’m not alone;
that the world hasn't ended
quite yet.
For days, now
they’ve been saying rain;
but the sky stays clear, relentless.

On a rough dirt road
through a tinder forest;
way too far north
for rattlers, and sand-storms,
for bleached white bones.

In The Land of Shy Children
Sept 13 2009


I was a shy child.
Adults were pant-legs
and sensible hems,
the tops of shoes;
hands reaching down
from the high plateau of grown-ups,
permanently shrouded in cloud.

Other kids
were quick-sand,
sinking under their scrutiny
confused by their exuberance.
While solitude was freedom
in our small fenced yard —
digging dams, and earthworks,
conjuring whole cities
from dirt.

Until I was abruptly dropped
into kindergarten,
its hot-house soil
overgrown with carnivorous weeds —
giggly girls in pink,
bigger boys
loud, snatching things.
And a teacher
whose smile frightened me.
What I best recall is nap-time —
transported by daydreams;
eyelids firmly shut,
the red-tinged darkness
keeping the world at bay.

Eventually, of course
I came of age,
found my place,
learned how to behave
in my small familiar universe.
The air up here is thinner.
The light
still penetrates.

Where I never stopped seeking solitude
to decompress, escape.
Digging away
in my small backyard,
a poorly tended garden,
a wild ravine.
Still inhabiting
the imaginary ziggurats
piazzas and arcades
the child once dreamed.

The Anatomy of Feeling
Sept 11 2009


The heart is a muscle
like any other.
Except for its built-in beat,
pounding out the pace
from the stern deck,
while the rest of us
dutifully leans into its oar.
And when aroused, worked-up
hammers-away like war-drums —
swelling-out our chest,
sending pulses of blood
flooding right through us.

While the brain has no sense
of rhythm,
firing-off
in all directions at once.
Even in sleep,
juicing our dreams
with random apparitions,
flashes of absurdity.

So I think erratically,
tend to feel with measured intensity;
the head and the heart
pulling in different directions.
And then, in the end
it’s the gut that decides,
that visceral feeling of right
and wrong,
instinct, and intuition.

When I feel my skin crawl
sphincters pinch,
fists clench
and the hair on my neck
bristle
with fear
and rapture.
When I am raw —
nerve-ends exposed,
jaw dropped,
eyes wide open.

Precambrian
Sept 10 2009


I’m following the path of least resistance
through the woods,
where plants are trampled, roots exposed.
I scoop-up a small grey stone,
take pleasure in its heft
its cool density
its smooth round edges.

From countless centuries
spent on an ancient lake-bed.
Or pebble beach
pummelled by waves,
gently rocked
in long slow swells.
Hard to tell
how it found its way
to this land-locked path,
the forest floor
worn down so fast
by human foot-steps.

It feels warm, now
in my hand,
worrying-away at it.
Like a nun
compulsively fingering her rosaries,
asking forgiveness
giving praise.

I am brief, evanescent
compared to this ancient object.
And in my hasty irreverence
toss it off into the forest,
where it will remain
undisturbed, unchanged,
utterly faithful
to its nature.
To be picked-up again, perhaps
in who knows how many millennia;
as if passed hand-to-hand
reaching across the ages.

Sit-coms From Other Planets
Sept 8 2009


The radio keeps me up-to-date on things.
The date
is 1990,
when I stopped paying attention.
Music was OK, back then —
disco dead
hip-hop, not yet invented.
The news, pretty much the same;
so once I got used
to war, disaster, starvation
I’d stopped hearing, anyway.

The announcer is smooth, breathless;
no less for lost pets
than bomb threats, pandemics.
In sports, someone’s worse, someone’s better.
And I can always look out the window
for weather.

There are acts of God, acts of Man,
and I’m not sure which are more hurtful.
But I know the first are easier,
because we can throw up out hands
proclaim ourselves helpless.
And the last
are too easy to blame
on someone else.

So I set the dial between stations.
They say the static hum
is left-over radiation
from the Big Bang,
the slow descent of the universe
toward absolute zero.
But who knows, perhaps
I’ll tune in to some inter-galactic chatter —
aliens, sending a message to earth;
extra-terrestrial girls
dishing juicy rumours;
sit-coms from other planets
reaching us eons after.

And the news from Utopia,
coming over the air
faint and crackly.
Which is what I’d hoped for, all along —
the perfection of Man
a benevolent God,
from a dim cluster of stars
not all that far-off.

Ground Level
Sept 7 2009


I felt manic, that day.
Or maybe some lunar phase
or alien rays
from the Kuiper Belt
that made me so restless.

So I set out
without maps, or direction.
The city looks different
from ground level
at walking speed.
I follow its steep descents,
dipping-down into the cooler air
left over from dawn.
I step into its street life,
spilling out of storefronts, noisy bistros
in Greektown
Little Italy.
And by a corner market
overflowing the sidewalk,
where the Chinese shopkeeper
guards his stalls.
There’s the smell of home-cooking
from narrow brick houses
where immigrants start out —
masala, souvlaki
cilantro, creole.
And behind closed doors
voices raised,
a girl practicing piano chords.

The concrete is hot,
asphalt even hotter.
Weeds push through the cracks,
and trash
accumulates like flotsam
in the lee of benches, garbage bins.
Which archaeologists will uncover
a few hundred years from now;
learning all about us
from soda cans
tobacco tins.

The walker’s geography
is all about the density of crowds,
the feeling of menace
on bad corners, back alleys.
Time is speed,
so the slower I go
the more there is of it.
And it’s not so much lost in the city
as losing myself here;
a flaneur
a voyeur
a fugitive,
just passing through.

Where I’m as invisible
as lines of gravity
or cosmic rays.
And feel I stand-out
like a comet’s tail
trailing sparks.
Like the full moon
at ground level.

Odds
Sept 5 2009


A bird flew into the car.
As if shot from a gun,
no one saw it coming.
Even at cruising speed
its airy body
— hollow-boned, plumage puffed —
did not dent the metal;
just a smudge
of iridescent feathers,
something wet.
A hawk, I think
wheeling in the tricky breeze,
its telescopic gaze
distracted
by a flicker of prey
in the underbrush.

So our intersection
in time and space
was as improbable as falling frogs.
As the man who took a bullet to the heart,
stopped
by his pocket Bible.
As future lovers
bumping into each other
on a crosswalk at rush hour,
in the tide
of human bodies.

Which happens all the time.
The unlikely, not impossible;
no need of divine intervention.
And all those others we brushed against,
conveniently forgotten.

The bird, of course, instantly died.
Which is how we console ourselves
— “instantly”,
no pain, no warning.
Death, dropped into our path
from a clear blue sky.
Like everything else does
looking back;
as if all of it was planned
to perfection.



This poem is about magical thinking; about the illogic to which the human brain is prone.

Things like selective memory and confirmation bias (paying attention to the things that confirm our preconceptions and prejudice; and conveniently ignoring all the rest.)

Things like the misattribution of cause and effect.

Things like the inductive reasoning we use to make sense, looking back.

Things like our intuitive misunderstanding of probability and dumb coincidence.

Because our genius -- the unique ability of the human brain -- is to seek out patterns, to make meaning. Which, in my opinion (admittedly, the opinion of a rigorous skeptic and confirmed atheist) is what leads to magical thinking, to superstition, to religious faith. And we've all seen where that eventually leads: Crusades, Jihad; the Promised Land.

Make Love
Sept 3 2009


Teenagers with kalashnikovs
make me nervous.
They draft ‘em young, he said.
Hormones and guns, I thought — perfect.
We came armed
with bandannas, water, onions.
Onions?!!
For the tear gas — face covered
by a wet cloth,
breathe-in the onion.
Seriously?, I wondered.
But there I was, looking like all the others
— black hoodie, good runners.

40 years after Woodstock
I think about music, free love
more innocent drugs.
Of course, the adrenaline rush is an upper,
getting high
charging police lines, shouting slogans.
Even half-hearted protests, like mine.
Feeling kind of hopeless,
knowing that we’ll also grow old
get fearful
become accustomed to the status quo.

Before Woodstock
there was King, Gandhi —
bus boycotts,
the unstoppable salt march.
All those long hot summers;
but Jim Crow did eventually end
the British left.
So why not make love
sing folk songs instead?, I mutter;
throat burning
eyes on fire,
running blind.



A pretty obvious poem: about non-violent protest; about civil disobedience. The thing about the onions, by the way, is true. Or so I'm told. (I owe an acknowledgment here to CBC radio's "Dispatches": both for the onion thing, and for the first line (which, I must admit, I took the liberty of "borrowing"!))

Guess-Work
Sept 2 2009


You imagine yourself
the hero of a novel —
getting the girl,
carrying the plot,
now quite sure how it ends
or when.

Although most days
you feel more like a minor character —
the best friend,
someone the narrator
owes a favour.
Certainly not a play,
all costume and dialogue
sweating under heavy make-up.
Because you’re more a listener, than a talker.
And how to explain
all the witty badinage, the bon mots, the clever send-offs
that came to you
a minute too late.

No, more a short story, I think.
Dropped into the middle of things,
trying to figure out who’s who
what just happened
where the real truth lies.
And some great weight
something unsaid
you won’t know ‘til it ends,
if then.
Which is never does, really;
more a sudden stop,
the unresolved ending
that both maddens and exhilarates you
with its endless possibility.

Just a few close friends
a simple plot
an intense love interest,
as intricate and condensed
as poetry,
as spare as a single idea.
And people whose inner life is guess-work,
often even to themselves.

No, you’re not a novel
with its vast universe
its neat conclusive ending.
More a book
of linked short stories,
where it’s just one damn thing after another —
a cryptic plot
that lets you briefly in,
then carries on without you.

Hydraulic Pressure
Aug 31 2009


I’ve been told the past
is bad for me.
That I immerse myself
in its tepid bath-water —
knees poking-out
like 2 pale craggy islands;
the grey grim ring
sloshing-up against enamel;
my goose-bumped skin
marinated nicely.

I talk back
about lessons learned
trajectories into the future;
nostalgia, regret
recrimination.

If only I was a master of Zen,
I could float in this perfect temporal plane
in body temperature water,
conditioned with soothing salts
some healing fragrance;
the isolation chamber
of the ever-forgetful now.

But what they don’t take into account
is the hydraulic pressure of memory.
How it seeps through
cracks in the bedrock.
How it gushes-up
unexpectedly.
How incompressible,
it makes its way out.

Continents are worn away
sand, ground down finer,
and a human body emerges
cleansed —
water sluicing off impervious skin,
long hair streaming,
skin tingling
from the bracing cold.

As I grow old
the future shrinks,
time moves faster.
Without memory
a man’s soul desiccates
turns to dust.
So if I pour out the past,
soon, I would be nothing.

Under the Bed
Aug 29 2009


I peer under the bed,
the whites of my eyes
mooning into the darkness,
blinking as they adjust.
Missing socks.
Coins, dropped from emptied pockets.
Dust bunnies
reminding me of ancient tombs,
the magnitudes
hiding in plain sight.

Twice a year, the sun is low enough
to stretch a finger of light
into this secret fortress.
After all those millions of miles
in a straight unbroken line
its journey over,
revealing dust mice
in bleached white relief.

But the furthest corner
is still out of reach,
where dust bunnies cavort
wantonly,
and dust mice shamelessly breed,
miscegenating
proliferating
contaminating the entire place
with their progeny.

When we moved the fridge
dust bunnies scattered like tumbleweeds.
Word went out.
Under the bed, they prepared their defense.

So even after they drop the bomb
all that will be left
are cockroaches,
furiously scurrying for shelter.
And tiny balls of dust,
rolling along
picking-up the survivors
growing to gargantuan size
— mutant dust mice
colonizing the world,
contemptuously out in the open
in the eerie greenish glow.



An excellent poem -- Whirlpool -- by one of my favorites, George Bilgere, was posted on the Writer's Almanac recently. He used the expression "dust mice" (not "dust mites", but "dust mice"), which didn't seem right at all: I've always only heard "dust bunnies". After reading that, the expression stuck in my head, and I felt this overwhelming urge to play around with the idea. This poem, for better or worse, is the result (so far).

(I can't reproduce Whirlpool here. But if you'd like to see it, here's a link: ....no, the link isn't working. Instead, just type "writer's almanac" into your search engine, and then type "whirlpool" in the "search poem titles" line.)

Comings and Goings
Aug 23 2009


You return home
for weddings and funerals.
And in between, keep an eye on the weather
down East,
remembering
how you used to love a winter storm.
When traffic was snarled
school closed;
and snowflakes pelted horizontal,
turning streetlights
into snow-globes.
December wedding.
Funeral in May.

You come and go,
crossing time-zones, re-setting your watch,
as if propelled into the future
still jet-lagged, groggy;
or travelling back through time.
How absence
makes everyone look older.
How you feel far too young
in your childhood bedroom,
quickly regressing
to the rebellious daughter
the insolent son.

Funerals can’t be helped, of course,
And at least in May
the ground is soft
flowers, abundant.
But you can’t help wondering
who gets married in December,
in the stingy light
unforgiving cold.

Except it’s then you remember
the beauty
of freshly-fallen snow.
And the brand new year
just around the corner,
when everyone re-sets the clock
gets to start over.
And begins looking forward
to the first green shoots,
the final thaw.



This poem is about the malleability of time: how we effectively inhabit all the stages of life at once; how, in the geologic sweep of time, we are all essentially contemporaries, despite any difference in age, despite the conceit of the young. So there is a lot of playing around with conventions of time and age: in moving back and forth through them in both memory and space; in the inversion of expectation, with the winter wedding and the funeral in spring. In other words, the "comings and goings" here are both literal and metaphorical, physical and temporal.

There is also the malleability of perception: how the winter storm that, in the 1st stanza, is threatening and disruptive, becomes, in the last, full of beauty.

I think the last line is critical. The "final thaw" calls back to the previous stanza, to the interring of bodies in May's "soft" ground. This is the inevitable inexorability of the cycle of life -- which is easy to grasp intellectually, but we often fail to fully appreciate emotionally. So here, there may be newlyweds; there may be the anticipation of spring; but death still intervenes regardless, as suddenly sobering as the resonance contained in the closing line; and, in particular, in the word "final".

Out of Africa
Aug 24 2009


We are all Africans, they tell us.
And I feel the pull
of the dark continent.
Of fine-boned children, smiling shyly.
The cacophony of tongues.
And dusky-skinned women,
from caramel to coffee
dark cocoa, to plum.

Somewhere deep in my DNA
I crave the desert sun
the grassland
the jungle.
The Great Rift Valley
ancient, dusty
where my forbears walked upright
gathered and hunted
huddled by fires at night.
And in the great rift blackness
looked up at billions of stars,
wondering.

My pale caucasian body
turns dark in the sun.
I sink into the heat
drifting back millennia,
igniting the primordial urge
to return,
to the native land
the common ancestor,
who came out of Africa
and colonized the planet.

They will beam at the rich white tourist,
defer to his odd habits,
serve him for hard money.
And laugh among themselves
at how funny he smells
his burnt complexion
his exotic clothes.

You cannot go home again
they tell us.
Especially men like me,
born in a land of lakes and snow.
Where I will remain
for one more winter,
at home in this place
yet somehow an exile as well —
unsettled,
still wandering.
As if blood and belonging
were inescapable.
As if we were all one tribe,
destined to return.



I guess if I wasn't sensitive about sounding pretentious and sentimental -- sounding like a Hallmark card, in other words -- I'd say this poem was about the essential unity of man, the narcissism of small differences.

But I think what makes it work (and I can't be sure it does, of course) is the inversion, the confounding of expectations. For example, it's the African who is the colonizer, not the European. It's the white man who feels singled out and ridiculed, his clothes which are "exotic". It's the privileged North American who desires to ingratiate himself, not the other way around. I also like the implied irony that begins the poem -- the "dark continent". When that designation was originally applied to Africa, it assumed European superiority -- both technological and moral. But the darkness, as I use it, is self-mocking, and refers to our ignorance, not any backwardness inherent in Africa. What I hope I avoided was not only romanticizing and exoticizing and patronizing Africa, but making a caricature of that vast and varied continent .

There is also the provocative idea of destiny, of biologic determinism, of "blood and belonging" (which I orignally wrote as "blood and memory"): that we are not necessarily the free willed creatures we presume ourselves to be; but rather that we are subject to inexplicable urges and animal drives, and sometimes find ourselves powerless instruments of our own biology.

The Poet Dreams of Writing a Screenplay
Aug 19 2009


It was boffo, block-buster
box office gold.
With the A-list
of Hollywood stars,
ageing divas
in walk-on parts,
heart-throbs, starlets, crashing cars.
A laugh-riot tear-jerker stylish noir,
a duster, sex farce, auterish art.
They called it epic, biopic
borsch-circuit shtick,
a sure-thing teen-flick summer-time hit.
There was song and dance
and computer tricks,
romance, seduction
lots of skin.
We laughed, we cried
wanted more of it.
And in the end
some unfinished bits,
just in case there’s a sequel.

And in less than a week, it died.
Bad timing, they said.
Didn’t get
the word-of-mouth, the crucial buzz,
enough thumbs-up.
But just you wait
for the DVD
pay TV
overseas release;
it’s sure to kill
at 30,000 feet.
A captive audience, I thought
— just what it needs!

It closed
a stinker, a loser, a money pit,
the big block-buster
that broke to bits.
Yet after all
the producer got rich —
typical Hollywood ending, I sniffed.

“A Mix of Sun and Cloud, 40% Chance of Showers”
Aug 18 2009


Intermittent rain
in the forecast;
barometer up, windy gusts
unseasonably cool.

Or he could just have said
“sun-showers expected”.
The air washed clean.
The unexpected heat,
basking
as the sky breaks open.
The light almost 3-dimensional
in its clarity.

Overhead
it reminds me of torn denim, well-worn —
flaps of blue
patched with roiling clouds,
smoky, soiled;
the smell of fresh-washed clothes,
rain-rinsed
sun-dried.
In August, it feels like autumn;
single digits, tonight.

Odd mushrooms
have materialized all over,
domed, flat-topped, fluted, smooth
burnished, orange, flesh-toned.
The quickly rot,
turning black, shrivelled, shrunken.
I imagine spores settling
in the dark wetness
of the forest floor,
where they will fruit again next fall
on a day much like this one —
with sun and cloud
and sudden showers,
the pungent scent
of wood-smoke.

5 Full Stops
Aug 17 2009


Hot pink polish on her toes.
Tanned feet
leather sandals
calloused soles.
Summer dress, earth-tones, hemmed low,
a long blonde pony-tail.
She reminds me of a flower child
sprung from some cryogenic vat
40 years after,
a hippie-wannabe back-to-the-lander
with a brand new pedicure.

I sat across from her
5 full stops,
until she got off at Union Station,
wafting across the platform
like a dancer,
almost weightless.
And in her wake
I caught vanilla
orange essence
the heavy resin of pot.
Sitting, slack-jawed
as the subway jerked to a start,
watching her long lean body
get smaller
and smaller.
‘Til the tunnel
plunged us into darkness.

Hot pink . . . or was it neon red?
I wonder.

Unadorned
Aug 13 2009


His body reminds me of scrimshaw,
ivory skin
inscribed in fine black lines,
every square inch
carved, whittled, etched
heiroglyphed and limned
in brilliant India ink.

Just a glimpse
beneath a rim of cuff;
the intricate wrist
when his sleeve rides-up.
The face and hands
left blank,
an open book
in which the viewer sees what he wishes.

At the beach
he is a spectacle —
impish kids
run up, compulsively touching;
thuggish adolescents
interrupt their horseplay
to ogle, call him names;
and sun-bathing babes
reach-up to adjust their shades,
look down their noses.

The tattooed man
is proud of his art,
parades his body
unselfconsciously,
cannot bear
leaving any part
unadorned.
To most of the world
he is grotesque,
almost indecent.
But he feels brilliant, immortal.
He feels like a sailor
far out to sea —
filling time in the doldrums,
setting-down his story,
writing love letters home
in indelible ink.

He will grow old.
His canvas will sag and wrinkle,
his beautiful art
become incomprehensible.
And 6 feet under
he will slowly decompose,
refuting the conceit of the artist
who preserves his words between the covers,
who carves his vision in bone.
Reminding me
that our art so rarely out-lives us;
that we send it off into the world
and then must relinquish control.

Cul-de-Sac
Aug 8 2009


I grew up in a cookie-cutter suburb
attached to a grim provincial city
that looked longingly overseas
to the mother country,
looked askance
at anything but Church
on Sundays,
and looked down its Anglo-Saxon nose
at immigrants,
who were strange, and uppity.
On a tidy cul-de-sac
grass cut weekly,
a Buick, or Pontiac
parked out front.

Downtown is now polyglot
cosmopolitan
status, and money-mad,
but still feels insecure
about its place,
calling itself world-class
like a teenager seeking approval.
Meanwhile, the outskirts are stuck
in the same bland decade
I grew up.

I return, as if travelling through time,
except the trees are bigger
the house has shrunk.
And unlike us
no kids are playing in the streets,
there’s no one to be seen
behind tinted glass,
as driverless cars
purr
into remote-controlled garages.
So no one ever walks,
and next-door neighbours nod
politely.

Old people, mostly.
In empty nests that are worth a fortune,
which they will soon unload
for a condo
with a narrow view of the lake,
if you crane just so.
And my old house
sold to newlyweds from Hong Kong
or Bangalore,
who will fill it
with the smell of foreign cooking,
re-paint in crimson and gold,
and raise kids
who can’t stand suburban living,
moving out
as soon as they’re of age.

They say such places will die
when the oil runs out.
So these kids will return to a ghost town
a museum of the 20th century, post-war,
a world we thought was normal
and permanent,
but turned out to be exceptional;
a short time-out
from history.

Which immediately comes back to me
walking by a postage stamp lawn
on a tiny downtown lot
— a lawn mower, clattering;
the smell of fresh cut grass.

Afterlife
Aug 6 2009


She had worked hard
to believe in an afterlife.
Not judgement, so much,
and she hardly had need of forgiveness;
but perhaps reuniting with loved ones,
a gauzy tableau of childhood,
the density of life
when you’re young.

The house seems almost impatient
with the kids gone;
a hollow dry-walled box
waiting
for a new family to fill it up.
She keeps the doors shut,
3 museums to adolescence
— old posters, an empty desk, closets still messy.
So she can’t understand
how so much dust
accumulates.

She has gotten used
to marriage;
even better, since the separate beds.
The rituals of daily life
are comforting.
Sometimes, they go out.
But he looks his age, and then some,
and in a certain light
unrecognizable.
She sees how many minutes
he sits in the driveway
with the engine off,
before hauling himself out
abruptly,
as if mustering-up the will.
She imagines him, one day
turning the key
zigzagging back down the lane
driving out of her life
and into his next one.
But of course, he never does.

She doesn’t mind
cooking for two.
They eat
to a game show, the news.

He goes to his workshop
watches golf
takes the trash out.

She grows plants
— sprouting seeds from scratch,
watering, re-potting
pollinating by hand.
And keeps track
of birthdays, and anniversaries.

The house fills up
Thanksgiving, Christmas.
He has plans
to down-size to a condo —
time to move on, he says.
But she’d rather go back;
working just as hard on the past.

Blank Slate
Aug 4 2009


20 pages in
it becomes clear I’ve been here before,
on this gloomy street in Prague
drumbeats of war.
Yet I can happily read on,
my mind, a tabula rasa
wiped clean.
And the movie, last week, I’d already seen,
but the ending had me fooled once more.

So how different would life be
hopping out of bed, refreshed
to a bright and cheerful morning
exactly like yesterday,
like the day before it?
A vigorous stretch,
a long languorous breath
and exhalation,
then steel-cut oats
coffee, black
the morning paper.
And so it goes,
the bliss of ignorance
the small diurnal pleasures.

Because even on days like this
which dawn new, and unpredictable,
I have come to realize nothing essential changes,
— the same headlines, breakfast,
the seasons re-played.
We move in tight self-contained circles.
We grow old, our places are taken,
the same rites of passage
the same conceit of change,
the painful incremental progress
that is too slow to notice,
too easily undone.

The philosopher envies this
— the perfectibility of the moment,
all memory freshly expunged.
And we would be happy,
excited kids on the merry-go-round
to the circus sound of calliopes.

But it’s the roller-coaster I’d rather ride —
scream my lungs out,
lose my lunch,
feel the adrenaline rush.

Or move on to the sequel, at least;
catch the latest release.



I was reading a magazine article. A few paragraphs in, it was starting to seem awfully familiar. But it was a great article, and I kept on: after all, maybe I'd started it once, but put it down. By the end, though, I knew I'd already read it, from start to finish. Still, it was a great piece, and I enjoyed it just as much as the first time.

So, what lesson to take from this? That we are idiots, that we learn nothing; that we keep going in circles, ploughing the same old furrow? Or that we should take our pleasure where we find it, on its own terms; live in the glory of the moment, of present time, and not worry that we've been there before? Which is, after all , the Zen ideal (the philosopher in the 4th stanza) -- to live in the moment; to not be attached to outcomes.

This happens often, of course: you pick up a book, it seems oddly familiar, and a chapter or 2 in you realize you've read it before -- but might as well not have. Or rent a movie -- same thing. Does this represent the utter futility of self-improvement, of life itself? Or should you be eternally grateful instead; grateful you're actually able to re-visit that pleasure, and find it undiminished?

On one level, this is what the poem is about. But on another, it's also about 2 diametric world-views. One is the world of the ancients, our forbears; who saw the succession of life as changeless and cyclic. The other other is the world-view that defines modernity (which I'm tempted to say began with the Enlightenment, but probably really began with the Hebrew Bible), in which we take the notion of progress for granted; in which we live with the conceit of perfectibility, with the burden of both history and the future.

To our jaded modern eyes, I think the older world-view often seems full of wisdom and consolation. It reminds me of Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day". The idea of historical progress, on the other hand, seems a lot more exciting -- and probably the truest version of reality. (I'm a creature of modernity, so what else can I say?!) Except, like the roller-coaster in the poem, the day that "dawns new, and unpredictable" can be a wild ride ...and you might just lose your lunch! And don't forget that the Bill Murray character, once he realized what was happening -- that the same day kept repeating itself over and over -- felt trapped and frustrated, and wanted desperately to escape.

Early Spring
Aug 1 2009


Maybe it was me
sleep-walking through daylight,
going slow, like a man underwater —
lead weights
tied to his feet,
the sound of air
moving mechanically
in and out.

The sky was always grey, it seems;
everything monotone,
stone-cold after dark.
There was an inch of slush
top layer frozen,
dirty snow
piled too high on street corners,
abandoned cars
turned into blocks of Styrofoam.
Days were short
like peering through a letter-slot,
impervious night
blocking the way.

I wore a red goose-down parka,
faded, water-stained —
the down, mostly thinning-out,
the zipper sticking
half-way up.
The boots were good enough,
but my feet always felt cold, or wet
or both.

When spring came
I remembered nothing about that winter.
So when I think of it now
I fill in the blanks,
with hay-rides, and carolling
and skating hand-in-hand.

But the early spring
turned out to be false
— another promise, broken.
It snowed in June.
In July, a killing frost.



I heard the Environment Canada weather "guru" -- Dave Philips -- say we've had 8 solid months of below average temperatures, confirming my strong impression it's been unseasonably cold for far too long. It's summer, but it feels like fall. We've had a week of cold and grey and driving rain. The lake is too cold to swim comfortably, even in a wet suit. Needless to say, all that gave rise to a very bleak poem. I can't explain why it's largely set in winter; that's just what came to me.

I like it: it's an atmospheric poem that I think says just enough. I like the unresolved allusion to some deeply painful event. I like that it's left to the reader to fill in the back story, however he wishes. It's hard for me to tell if this works (because I know what's coming!), but I like the surprise at the end: how it momentarily re-creates that feeling of hope; then abruptly pulls the rug out.

“Do You Read Me, Houston?"
Aug 1 2009


When his foot touched the surface
we pumped our fists
hugged the nearest body
cheered ecstatically.

His boot, actually.
Which means we haven’t been to the moon,
not really.
Haven’t felt its ancient sand between our toes,
basked in the warmth of earth-light,
made brobdingnagian leaps
unencumbered
by clunky pneumatic suits.
But this
is close enough.

We watched
in grainy black and white.
We listened
to distant voices
crackling through space.
And as the fragile suit dangled stiffly
from the rickety ladder’s bottom rung,
I worried he’d fall
tumble backwards
pierce the fabric,
and who knows what would happen to a human body
in that perfect vacuum.
And I worried he’d step
into soft bottomless silt,
sinking beneath millions of years
of moon dust.

In the end, he mangled the momentous pronouncement.
We heard only “Man”.
He insists on “a man” —
the humble indefinite article,
even if he was the most famous man in the world.
Nixon also had a speech prepared
in case no one returned.
Something like “3 lifeless bodies
forever preserved,
a monument to human yearning.”
And made himself scarce,
afraid of the taint of failure —
typical Nixon, politics first.
Kennedy was already dead;
both of them.
In ’61, he had rallied the nation;
but apparently
didn’t much care for space exploration.
No, we sent men to the moon
to put Russia in its place.
. . . So much for “one large step”.

A flag was left
waving in an ersatz wind.
The whole world may have travelled with them
holding its collective breath;
but they were sturdy patriots, nevertheless.
They brought back rocks,
which seems a long way to go.
But as they say
it’s the journey, not the destination.

But I kept thinking back
to Collins —
stuck in lunar orbit,
so close, and yet so far.
I thought about duty
and self-abnegation
and the luck of the draw.
I knew Armstrong and Aldrin
were cut from different cloth
than me.
I was Collins,
looking down from above
detached,
winning Miss Congeniality
a door prize.

When the lunar lander lifted-off
we felt a surge of pride
— we all owned the accomplishment,
our common humanity.
And forever after
“Houston” will evoke powerful feelings
of safety
and home.

The footprints are still intact
40 years on.
The astronauts are now elderly men;
and I’m older
than they were then.
I gaze at the full moon
on a clear summer night,
walk in its silver shadow,
remember how precious and small
this planet looked,
looking back.
Except there is no one circling above us now;
and Houston is hot
and over-crowded.

We got bored with moon-walks
soon after that.
Some still claim it was staged,
Walter Cronkite notwithstanding.
Or even that the earth is flat.
Which is how it feels, flat —
when we never went back,
40 years on
and counting.



This was written several weeks after the commemoration of the first moon landing. I was at summer camp 40 years ago, and we all gathered around a small black and white TV to watch. We certainly felt the weight of history, as well as a powerful sense of pride (undeserved by us, of course!) in human achievement.

This poem began, believe it or not, as an attempt to write a short story. Of course, it inevitably turned into a poem (what else?!): it seems I'm no good at narrative or character, only sentences. Nevertheless, by my "one page" standards, it's a veritable epic!

I was attracted to the short story because, among other things, I thought it would let me say more, be more expansive and declarative; that I could get some relief from the discipline of cutting, of leaving things unsaid , of the stern dictum of "more is less". But by approaching this as a prose poem -- kind of talking my way through it -- things seemed to work out just as well. In the end, it's a bit of a mongrel -- some prose, some rhythm and rhyme. And it says what it says, no fancy metaphors or multiple meanings. In other words, a pleasure to write!

Transcontinental
July 31 2009


I’d rather take the train.
In a slick aluminum sleeper,
with a clever sink
a drop-down desk
a nifty fold-away bed.
The Denver Zephyr, perhaps,
or the Empire State Express.
As the world scrolls by
outside the glass,
to the comforting clatter of tracks.

Or bump along in the bar car;
with ruddy-faced men making wise-cracks,
and heavily made-up women
who refuse to act their age.
The Choctaw Rocket, perhaps;
or the Narragansett
the Dixie Flagler
the Coastline Florida Mail.

The dome is close to empty
sailing through the prairie night.
I look up
at jet black sky,
as if the roof of the world had lifted
out to the edge of space.
And look over
a moon-lit ocean of grain.
In the Land O’ Corn,
the Man O’ War,
the Commodore Vanderbilt.

You feel in constant motion
as the carriage jerks and sways;
but there is no sensation of speed.
And no urgency, once you enter,
as mileposts steadily recede.

Hanging on, by the skin of your teeth
to the non-stop Atlantic Blue Comet,
as the Peoria Rocket takes-off.
To the high-buff stream-lined dream cars
of the glittering Egyptian Zipper,
the more intimate Arrowhead Limited.
Or to a one-way no-return ticket
for a trip on the Tex Mex Express.

But nowadays, trains are numbers,
crunched
by bean-counting time-study types.
So the Empire Builder's done,
the Electroline is over.
No more Missouri River Eagle
New England Wolverine.
We commute to work, elbows touching
in double-decker diesels;
and “fly-over country” disappears
at 30,000 feet.



I read a great David Sedaris short story in the New Yorker -- it takes place on a train. I heard a Garrison Keillor monologue, and -- as he so frequently does -- there was the romantic invocation of exotic names of trains, of idiosyncratic destinations. It struck me that this wealth of evocative names offered a great opportunity for a "found" poem. I got my list from Wikipedia. Which means that it may not be accurate; but I guess good enough for poetry. The trick was to figure out how to extract the music; and how to draw the reader in, and then keep her. I'm not sure if I succeeded; but either way, here's the result. At least I hope I captured a bit of the romance of the train; if not of another age.

Urban Geography
July 28 2009


Something sticky
on the floor mat.
Fabric worn
windows smudged,
where hands touched, noses pressed
all-night heads
slumped against the glass,
sleeping-it-off
a chesty cough
the fog of human breath.

The cabbie sneaks a smoke;
idling, unoccupied,
the lull before closing time.
People leave things behind
he finds,
dropped forgotten treasures,
like empties
wedding rings
lipsticked addresses.

The geography of the inner city
depends on where you sit —
night shift
navigating rain-slicked streets,
or on the back bench seat
of a cab.
Noticing
a brilliantined head,
the back of a neck,
an accent, vaguely menacing.

As street lamps flicker past,
light briefly enters
shadows sharpen, and lengthen
the mat brightens, a second
in the cold electric glare.
I expect condoms, vomit, clotting blood,
incontinent bodily fluids.

But there’s only rotten fruit
I see, relieved,
briskly shifting my feet.



The idea for this poem came from a quick glance at a review of a book called "Taxi!". The review was in the Globe's "buried treasures" section, and the book was published way back in 1975. I didn't read the book. I didn't even read the review. But the accompanying photo caught my eye -- a driver, arm perched in the open window, head facing out and into the camera. Something in her face conveyed intelligence, skepticism, toughness, compassion, and a kind of non-judgmental alertness. Yes, I somehow managed to see all that in a glance! Anyway, it made me want to write about taxis and cities. This is the result.

Talking Politics
July 26 2009


We talk about politics.
Anything, actually —
celebrity sightings
religion, sex.

He rails against
all those smirking bloated phonies,
with slippery handshakes
and gravy-stained shirts.
While I rant and rave
about pay-offs, and pandering.
Which leaves us feeling smug, self-satisfied.
We reward ourselves
with cold imported beer.
The situation in Uzbekistan is scandalous, I rage,
premium foam
clinging to my lip.
The new administration is in over their heads, he proclaims,
almost gloating.

He refrains from mentioning
my mother, his wife,
who is not permitted, yet
to leave the ward
unescorted.
I wait for him to ask
about my brother, his first-born son,
who haven’t spoken
in months.

We exchange a “fine, thanks ...and you?”,
shake hands with manly insouciance,
race, reaching for the bill.

I notice his distracting habit
of folding, unfolding
a paper napkin,
tearing-off long even strips
as he talks.
When I notice my own busy hands
nervously twisting a napkin,
and drop it, fast.

Bad manners, I reproach myself.
And try extra hard
not to notice anything else.



2 things converged to kick-start this poem.

First was hearing Frank McCourt (author of Angela's Ashes) recount meeting -- as an adult and after many years apart -- with the father who had abandoned them as children. Who, while never asking about the family, was content to to talk enthusiastically about the situation in N. Ireland, about the usual Irish martyrs and tragic heroes (something the Irish are apparently particularly good at!) In my family, I don't think we talk at all easily about personal or emotional issues; but politics is always easy, almost a relief. A convenient form of evasion and denial, I suppose.

Second was James (Arthur), who in a recent email strenuously asserted that he was not interested in politics because they're all "self-interested liars and cheats" (I paraphrase). (James, isn't it possible -- and, as a good citizen, desirable -- to ignore the politicians, but still take an interest in public policy?) Which gave me that colourful opening.

This poem is mostly about denial: the unconscious, as well as the deliberate, kind. How even the conventionally "forbidden" topics of politics, religion and sex are easy, compared to the personal and confessional. And about how we are all helpless creatures of the family culture in which we were raised; how -- to resort, again, to cliche -- "the acorn doesn't fall far from the oak".

Flight Path
July 22 2009


Living under the flight path
is a distraction, at first;
‘til soon, you stop noticing.
But thoughts of departures
of flight
of taking-off,
pre-occupy you, nevertheless.

There are steep ascents
under full throttle
rattling windowpanes and cutlery.
There are landings at night
that make your gut clench.
Bright lights appearing out of darkness
from over the adjacent low-rise,
indistinct rumblings,
then this great gleaming creature
directly overhead —
arms outstretched
landing gear grasping
the thrusters’ ear-busting roar.

Where a row of windows
like a string of festive lights
encloses a small orderly village
of convenient strangers,
sipping drinks
in the muted glow
of the oddly still interior.

So much coming, and going.
The strained smiles of seat-mates,
the great airport concourse
where important people hurry by.
You listen from your modest bungalow,
imagine picking-up
lifting-off
rising above
this earthbound melancholy,
so high
the sun always shines.

You will descend
eventually, of course,
through the clouds
into turbulence,
over the brightly lit node
of some unfamiliar town,
nod at your seat-mate
and go.
You will find a place
with the sound of planes
and the scent of jet exhaust,
where you will settle down
among convenient strangers.

Until the restlessness
grips you again.



I think what this poem is about is the delusion of escape; the notion of salvation somewhere else; the idea that others have bigger lives. It is the false promise of the journey itself that seduces him, the fugue state, the taking flight: where he "rise(s) above/this earthbound melancholy", and "the sun always shines"; where he demurely rubs shoulders "in the muted glow/of the oddly still interior."

His disappointment is foreshadowed in the 2nd stanza -- I hope not too clumsily, or too much over-written -- by the rather mercenary and visceral personification of the plane.

It is because of this false hope that he never commits; and so repeatedly finds himself living marooned among "convenient strangers", no more intimate with them than one is within the transient artificial intimacy of an airplane fuselage.

This poem had its seed in a brief image from a DVD I recently rented: dusk; the low rent part of town; a blaze of light in the sky, and an airplane suddenly appears, sweeping in low and loud and menacing. I immediately had the impression of it as a living thing. And there was this sense of stark division: the low-rise people trapped on the ground; contrasted with the freedom and escape offered up by the flight path -- so inaccessible, yet so temptingly close.

Body Heat
July 21 2009


Such sultry heat
there is no relief,
the sun so high
it drives our shadows
straight into the ground.
Even the bugs have hunkered down,
their hard black bodies
cinder-dry.

We move slowly.
We sit motionless.
We revel in the brief wisps of breeze
that stroke our shoulders
stir our sun-bleached hair,
the fleeting shelter
in a puff of cloud.

We are naked, eyes shut
heads tilted upward.
Our bodies are engines of heat,
dark skin flushed with blood
radiating barely contained desire.

I picture your body underwater,
smooth as polished rock
golden hair floating up,
your nipples stiff
your body slick,
the muscles in your arms
strong and hard.
Small bubbles of air
cling to your skin,
your measured breath
released as slow as blown kisses.
I follow your legs
rising up to the curve of your ass
the small of your back
your shoulder blades,
like delicate wings
rippling beneath an even tan.

We will make love
in this sun-warmed water,
weightless
frictionless
out of breath,
bursting out into air
where the sun will dry us
in seconds.

Except the wetness, where I entered you
running down your leg.
And the sweat, intermingling,
where we hold each other
our bodies touching
our skin still flushed.

Open Arms
July 20 2009


She was good in an emergency.
It was the every day
she had trouble with.

This woman of a certain age,
who loved men too much
to stay with one.
Who could cook up a storm,
but left the whirlwind
for the rest to clean up.
Who never owned anything,
but made herself at home
wherever she was.

She couldn’t resist
a road-trip
anywhere warm.
She sought out the adrenaline fix,
the high-octane fuel-injected lift-off.
She danced with her eyes shut,
content to live in her head
but thrilled to have you join her there.
Needless to say, she was always late,
if she showed-up at all.

So I was surprised, impressed
to see her focus
when the alarm went off
the lady was robbed
no one could stop
the bleeding.
A good woman to take charge,
when time went too fast
for the rest of us.

But let her get bored
and she was off —
her man confused
and helpless;
her kids
coping hard,
as usual;
and her friends
juiced when she appeared,
feeling as if all the light in the world
shone only on them.


This is called "Open Arms" as an homage to the novel of the same name by Marina Endicott, since it was inspired by her character Isabelle. I confess, I didn't read it; I cheated by listening to the audio-books version (on CBC's "Between the Covers" series of podcasts). Still, pretty impressive for a first novel!

Road Work
July 17 2009


Road work season.
Big yellow machines, belching smoke.
Guys leaning on shovels,
orange vests, muscles, sweat.
Some engineer has decreed the order of things;
but they’ll tear it up next summer
I bet.

We squeeze into single file
under a broiling sun,
heat-waves shimmering-up
windows shut
air-conditioners humming.
The flag girl looks bored.
She is a goddess
in all this testosterone,
in tom-boy clothes
fretting about a farmer’s tan
the blister under her toe.

In real life
she is an English major
working summers.
And in 20 years
a famous author,
she will write about road work.
The line of cars, crawling by.
The man, who caught her eye
for a moment —
tapping his fingers to jazz,
the case of wine, riding shotgun,
the classic Panama hat.
And like all of us
story-tellers,
we never recognize ourselves.

Unwittingly
plagiarizing each other,
making it up
as we go along.



This is how we all go through life, telling stories about everyone we meet, or even incidentally see -- professional story-tellers, or not. We project and we empathize, trying to imagine other people's lives, filling in the spaces, making presumptions, re-playing our own history, shamelessly invoking our prejudices and smug certainties. In other words, "making it up ...as we go along."

I like the misdirection here: how a relatively straight-forward descriptive piece about something we all immediately recognize takes this unexpected turn; how an incidental character suddenly becomes the story; and, ultimately, the conceit of the author in allowing himself to imagine all this about her. Because this is how it really happens: all these enigmatic and mysterious people, flashing past in real life. This sets up the final stanza, in which he is also the object of someone's story ...which, in turn, raises further questions about objective reality ...truth ...self-knowledge.

Of course, I've always been more of a stylist than a philosopher, which means that these big pretentious themes don't interest me as much as nailing a good line, crafting a fine sentence. So my favourite part is actually this: "She is a goddess/in all this testosterone ...". (I had some misgivings over the line "under a broiling sun", such an obviously tired and cliched expression. But what it loses in impact, it makes up in precision, since I was really unable to come up with anything more cogent than "broiling". So I let it stand.) ...I like the title, too! If I saw that listed in a table of contents, I'm pretty sure I'd turn to it first. Which is how I like to test a title: by imagining the table of contents as a delectable box of assorted chocolates, and trying to make every title scream "choose me! choose me!"

Antipodes
July 16 2009


Even in summer
it’s cold enough to see one’s breath.
At least they’ll know when we’re dead, we joked,
black humour
not yet spent.

Near the end, a man becomes irregular —
flurries of shallow breathing,
long slack-jawed spells.
You can see who’s next
huddled in the blanket where we left him,
beard thick with frost.
And this poor sod,
teeth chattering
breathing shallow, rapidly
desperately imagining
rescue.

While the rest of us, lost
are resigned
to God’s persistent deafness;
conserving our energy
breathing slowly, steadily
the acetone scent of the starved.
Cupping black and blistered fingers
around warm moist breath.

Some talk to themselves,
each word expelled
in a heavy cloud of mist,
as if speech could turn to ice
on contact —
flash-frozen letters
clattering down.

When we sleep, it almost stops;
slow regular breathing
probably dreaming
of sun-drenched beaches,
hot luxurious sand.

As Antarctic winds roar
and the flimsy shack shudders,
and this cursed continent
blows its lungs out.
A single candle flickers,
feeble shadows jump.
Our breath condenses on the ceiling
dripping down,
hardening
into stalactites of cloudy ice.
Breathing is no longer automatic,
and the effort
seems almost too much.

Even in summer
this place sucks the life from us —
wasted bodies
freeze-dried;
our dying breath
preserved in ice.




No, I wasn't reading about Hillary, or Franklin, or any other extreme explorer. Just a few unseasonably cold days in July: overcast, drizzly, incessant wind. I suppose it made it feel warmer, writing about the cold.

I don't know what I had in mind when I started this; but I ended up in Antarctica, holed up with Shackleton, dying heroically. I think the key here is the way, at the start of the penultimate stanza, I anthropomorphize the wind, and how this calls back to all the references to breath and breathing. It is almost as if a metronome runs through the poem, air moving methodically in and out, counting down in resignation to the end.

A bit of a departure here, as well, in that I let my medical background sneak in a bit: the Cheyne-Stokes breathing on the verge of death; the fingers blackened by frost-bite and dry gangrene; the acetone breath of starvation, a result of the ketone bodies produced by lipolysis. Just something for my literary biographers to make a fuss about. (As if!!)

...I was just about to sign off, when I remembered how the theme of "breath" became so instrumental in this poem. About the time I wrote it, I had been listening to the audio-book version of Lawrence Hill's "The Book of Negroes". There is a part where Amanita first arrives in New York from the South, and is shocked to see her breath. As I started in on this piece, that powerful image came immediately to mind, becoming an obvious hook and a natural point of departure.

Pollen Season
July 15 2009


The pollen was thick this year,
leaving a high-water mark
ringing the shore-line rocks.
It sticks to the deck
under the overhang,
a layer of heavy yellow dust.
And still, billows from the trees
when wind is up.

The lake is rich with it,
little golden motes of light
glinting near the sun-lit surface.
It feels like swimming through soup —
a nutrient broth for grazing fish,
the warm turbid liquid
a petri-dish
of life.

By September, the lake will be cold and clear,
its flat grey surface
uninviting.
Then ice,
locked-in
camouflaged by blowing snow.

Somehow, the fish survive,
pitch-dark
freezing cold.
And spring
seems impossibly remote —
when a yellow haze
blankets everything;
and ravenous fish
will feast,
the promiscuous trees
once again
serving-up their riches.

Fourth of July
July 9 2009


There was a mad dash
when the rain hit,
coming down in sheets —
wind-driven, sharp bits
of hail.
Heavy drops
ricochet-off the hard-baked earth
like bee-bees shot by drunks.
The sky goes dark,
thunder rumbles imperiously.

We scoop up blankets, basket, little kids.
Paper dishes
spiral up like water spouts,
vortices
of plastic, napkins, cups.

The say the car
is the safest place in a storm —
wet bodies
crammed-in,
windows fogging-up.
The radio was marching bands
baseball, static.
We sat, time stopped
breathing-in the sweaty fetid air.

We felt it rock,
could almost imagine
being whisked off to Oz
in the hundred year tornado.
Lightning going-off
like flashbulbs at the ball park
on opening day,
its ghostly strobes
freeze-framing the world.

Later, we learned the county over
was hit hard —
houses vanished,
little shafts of straw
impaling trees.
We were lucky, I guess,
just a picnic wrecked.
But the fireworks
were free.

Estate Sale
July 7 2009


The old poet
had run out of words.
All he had were the spaces,
punctuation
blank verse.

But all language is metaphor
he consoled himself,
meaning exactly what he said
no more, and no less,
purged of the clever misdirection
he used to serve-up instead.

Young poets breathe fire
chain smoke
sweet-talk the girls,
convinced they will save
an unwilling world.
His ambition
is far more humble —
to rescue himself,
to make sense of death,
and to use up what’s left
— the straight-ahead words
he found hard to express.

Like
“I could have loved
so much better . . .
or “The imagined transgressions
I forgive, and forget . . .
or “My magnificent debt
of gratitude.”


His entire life’s work
in a battered blue desk
— locked drawer, bottom left —
auctioned off, in a single lot
to the highest bidder;
desk, plus contents
sight unseen.

Ride the Wind
July 5 2009


This island is 10 minutes
from end-to-end.
Its trees are ancient
shrunken, twisted,
from cold and fog
and stony soil.

I pace
like an animal, caged.
The sea contains me
as surely as prison walls,
peering out
at the cruel temptation of freedom.

But it’s the wind
that makes me crazy,
a deafening incessant living thing.
I scream
at the top of my lungs
from the bottom of my soul
and hear nothing,
the words torn from my throat.
Yet the sound
is inescapable
— clear plastic
flapping frantically,
the mad percussion of air,
a thousand jets, taking-off.

I watch sea-birds soar
wings taut.
They ride the wind
dipping and veering and holding their own,
never setting down.
I wonder what they see
from such privileged heights,
looking far beyond
my claustrophobic horizon.
And when the water
will overwhelm this stubborn rock,
bashing the shore
with all its magnificent force.

Or the wind
will carry it off.
How a kite stalls and starts
tumbles and darts,
all the way
to landfall.

Posterity
July 1 2009


We had road-side ditches
a kid, in rubber boots with a pointy stick
could busy himself
all day.
Culverts under the driveways,
gravel roads.
Then streetlights came,
the big pipe
buried, then paved,
sidewalks, finally —
concrete, still soft
where we left our mark,
and fled.
Dares and double dares
still there
40 years on.

Which is how the sky looks today,
concrete, freshly poured
wet and grey.
Which I would also write on, if I could,
something to commemorate the day
the old place burned —
only charred beams left standing,
cracked sidewalks
dark with ash.

The forecast calls for skies to clear.
As I imagine the remains will be flattened —
the foundation razed,
sidewalks jack-hammered.
Fate, as usual
amused
at youthful illusions
of permanence.

Moving Pictures
June 30 2009


I remember stepping out
from the dark air-conditioned space
— a cartoon, a short
a western shoot-em-up —
into white-hot sun;
eyes squinting, tearing-up,
an ice-pick headache.

The doldrums of summer
tagging along with older brothers
to Saturday matinees.
Sticky floors
crappy speakers
kids shouting at the screen,
at the old Glendale theatre
on Bathurst St.,
now a parking lot.

It cost a quarter, I think,
the precious coin tightly in my clutches;
but not enough
for popcorn, candy.
Part 2, next Saturday.

We groaned when “To be continued . . . ” popped-up.
Not that the plot ever changed that much,
just black hats and white hats
a boring kiss, some bad guys bucked
rows of whistling hissing kids.

Because the movies were our first great love,
back when “cinema” was French
and “film” meant snapshots.

The manager must have hated Saturdays.
We couldn’t get enough.

Hauled Away
June 28 2009


The car died
on a country road, near dusk, in its 14th summer.
It bucked once, and was done.

The wrecker came in the morning,
hauling it away to the scrap-yard
no charge,
where it will be reborn
as white hot ingots
of steel.

I wonder if I will go so easy
in useful old age,
no call for crash carts
adrenaline
CPR,
deferring to nature.

I’ll admit, we tried a jump-start.
And I peered under the hood, knowingly;
still, utterly clueless.
If there was a ghost in the machine
it had seeped peacefully away;
perhaps, in that last gasp of steam.
A ton of steel and glass
stranded on a gravel lane,
sagging, lifeless.

They will find my body on a wilderness trail,
no sign of struggle
still fresh enough.
Natural causes, they’ll say
hauling me out for burial.
And 6 feet under
the earth shall reclaim me;
feeding
a small green patch of growth,
warming the ground as I go.

Mileage
June 29 2009


20 miles
30 years,
I’m not sure how much distance
it takes
to write about the past.
And then
when you get far enough away
it all becomes clear,
the incomprehensible
obvious.

Because forgiveness
is so much easier than hate.
Because gratitude
displaces envy.
Because age wears away
a young man’s intransigence,
and distance makes things seem small
receding in the rear-view mirror.

It was a road trip to who knows where,
stopping
for the first hitch-hiker you saw.
She had blue-streaked hair
a pierced tongue
a rising sun, tattooed on her left shoulder.
You smoked dope
sat closer
listened to baseball in the middle of the night,
a tiny dot
hurtling across the prairie
— the dial, glowing green
hi-beams, like feeble pin-pricks
miles, flashing by hypnotically.
It felt
as if this small universe of steel and glass
was everything.

And then, when you ran out of gas
the car stopped,
the journey began,
the odometer
clicked over.

Taciturn Dads
June 22 2009


Fatherly love
is more like jazz
than mothers —
no two versions the same,
always partly improvised,
and to some
it all sounds like noise.

My dad
was a stand-up bass.
His voice could carry,
but you didn’t really notice.
He rarely soloed,
deferring to the flashy sax
the vamping diva, scatting alone.
And always there
playing back-up,
solid, reliable
setting the tone.

Dads were stoic, then.
They brought home a paycheque
never wore shorts
drove 4-door cars from Detroit.
They could seem overwhelmed
by fatherhood
as if it were more than they’d expected,
finding refuge
behind evening papers,
in a workshop basement
puttering.
And the first diaper he ever held
was a grandchild’s,
pinching it gingerly
wrinkling his nose.

The bass player drives a Cadillac,
the only trunk big enough
for his man-sized instrument.
His hands are strong
with sinewy wrists
deeply callused fingertips.
He wears a skinny suit, a narrow tie,
but when called upon
can really swing it.
Which catches us by surprise
every time
— the secret jazzman
hiding inside.

And the inner life
of a taciturn dad
who spent so long
on the road
away from home,
we could never really know him.

The Power-Plant of the World
June 23 2009


I recall endless summer —
sticky heat,
black-top
softening at a 100 degrees,
and hard-baked fields
with base-paths worn to ruts.

But now, I notice its intensity.
Just a few weeks, it seems;
and days so long
the sun barely sets —
twilight, more than darkness.

I could pull up a chair,
watch hostas
unfurl before my eyes,
grass multiply,
trees erupt.
Or put my ear closer,
and hear the ratchet and squeak
of asparagus
growing.
Chlorophyll is ferocious,
sucking-up light
churning–out sugar
fragrance
cellulose
— the essential molecule,
the power-plant of the world.

An evening thunderstorm.
They will drink it in
greedily;
and then, at dawn
race head-long to the sky;
crowding-out, straining higher,
shallow roots
competing for the richest earth.

And in this short fierce summer
we, too, are determined;
soaking-up the sun,
scratched, and bitten, and burnt.

State of Nature
June 22 2009


I am no green thumb;
my brief conceit as a gardener
undone.

Although the pin-cherry
which was so long to bud
has put out blossoms
for the very first time.

And the hostas
are indestructible,
their giant leaves
unfurling in the shade.

Dandelions
tapping into deep moist soil
have turned to puff,
a hundred long thin stems
sticking-up —
like veins
post-dissection.

Day lilies, as I’ve come to expect
will bloom all summer,
despite my neglect,
The dogwood, though, looks spent —
a few shrivelled leaves, brittle stems,
their vibrant red
faded.
And vetch
winds its way everywhere,
the exacting grass
long dead.

I survey my garden
with dread,
too long left
to nature.
But the excess
the disorder
the wildly exuberant green,
are a kind of Eden.

My garden
reclaiming itself.
And how a wild world will look,
liberated
from out brief despotic
occupation.

Treed
June 20 2009


The dogs treed it,
black claws scraping bark.
He was surprisingly agile,
scampering up like a heavy-weight wrestler
gone to fat.

Arms and legs hug the trunk
clinging as tight as a frightened cub,
immoveable.

The dogs bark maniacally
triumphant, intense,
springing up
inciting each other.
All it takes is 3 dogs to make a pack,
turning pets
into wolves, and jackals.

I call them off,
dragging the big black one by its collar.
The blood-lust of dogs
when bear’s in the air,
reeking so bad
even I catch it.

He was a juvenile, kind of small;
his first encounter with man.
And I knew
he wouldn’t be back.

The dogs were rewarded
with table scraps,
fish, freshly caught.

I wonder if he’s climbed back down
by now.

Euclidean Geometry
June 17 2009


We were taught
parallel lines go on forever
and never intersect.
That a point is dimensionless,
and exists in solitary splendour.

I find comfort
in this geometric universe.
So easily rendered
with straight-edged rulers,
my trusty compass
twirling on its needle-sharp leg.

And when they showed us
how glass, cut precisely
could split light,
give order
to the rainbow’s kaleidoscope,
we felt we had mastered
creation’s basic rules.

But they forgot to warn us
about fault lines
and pressure points,
how easily glass can break.
About the complications
3 dimensions make,
how all things change
given time.
And how light relieves the darkness;
but look straight into it
you are left momentarily blind.

Shared Silences
June 15 2009


An elderly couple
sit across from each other,
sipping tea
choosing dessert.
Beneath the table
she has removed
one of her proper comfortable shoes.
Her toes, in sturdy stockings
find the hem of his pants
brush up-and-down his calf,
in slow familiar strokes.
He glances over,
knows her too well
for words.




There is the silence of strangers.
Hunched into themselves,
whose body language declares
no trespassing.

There is the silence of anger.
The space stiff with tension,
bodies rigid
teeth clenched.
The last word
suspended in the air like an echo,
so it’s easy keeping score.
Or a flash of red
to the blood-shot eyes of a bull.

And there is silence, shared.
This is the ultimate intimacy,
so at ease with each other
nothing need be said.
The space between them
full,
the silence
understood.

Indelible
June 14 2009


Her autobiography
is written in skin.
In the laugh lines
permanently etched by her eyes.
In stretch-marks and scars.
In surgical incisions
that march across her body
like battle-hardened troops
in a long exhausting war.
And tattoos
that once belonged
to a young and foolish girl,
as reckless as a drunken sailor
in a foreign port.

She makes love in the dark.
She only looks in mirrors
fully clothed.
But her hands know,
in the shower
touching herself
— strongly scented soap
steam, billowing.
What she’d rather forget,
and takes pride
remembering.

An entire chapter inscribed
in the livid scar on her breast.
Scrubbing hard;
lightly brushing against it.

They Called for Rain
June 8 2009


They called for rain.

But this cool mist is like walking on mountain-tops,
the hard-edged world softened
enclosed in fog.

Then there is all-day-rain,
relentless, soggy.

And showers, on-and-off;
hope dangled, then snatched away.
A rent in the cloud,
a ray of sun, slanting down.

In late summer, it pours,
heavy drops
like water, shot from nail-guns.
These are monsoons, biblical floods,
so the world overflows
nearly drowning us.

I prefer the sturm und drang
of thunder
— the wind, whipped-up,
the clouds
black towering anvils.
How the air feels charged,
the sense of power, barely contained,
and the light
ominous, exhilarating.
And when it breaks
there may be hail
frogs
horizontal rain.
In the end, the earth left cleansed
and glistening —
torn branches scattered,
wet leaves, splattered
on cars, asphalt, glass.

This cool mist
is like kissing your sister.
A thunderstorm is elevator-sex in a black-out —
you and your lover air-locked,
in the very last kiss
on earth.

Bedtime Stories
for Grown-Ups
June 8 2009


When the tides stopped.
When the muddy flats dried-up
hard as rock,
and scuttling crabs dropped
dead as door-nails
— flipped on their backs,
picked-over by gulls, squawking
turkey vultures
hogging the fat ones —
we knew
the cataclysm had come.

No moon rose, that night,
and the constellations seemed to burn up the sky.
Showers of falling stars
bombarded us.
Meteorites
gave rise to prophecy
and awe.
Until all we saw was dust,
blotting-out the universe.

We wondered if the sun
would rise, next morning.
The devout prayed.
Sinners repented.
While the rest sought comfort
in lovers
and friends.

They say our bodies are too small
for tides to affect us.
And we all felt insignificant
that night —
the planet
wobbling in its orbit;
the ecliptic, shifted.

And the moon
a whimsy, a figment,
told in tales
to get fussy babies to sleep.
Such childish dreams;
all moonshine
and lunacy.

Pure White Light
June 4 2009


We burned the chairs first,
splintered, kindling
kiln-dried wood.
The table, next,
fed, leaf-by-leaf
into the stove.
And beds stripped bare
screws, worked loose;
sagging mattress
stacked against the wall.
We pried-up floorboards
crow-barred 2-by-4’s,
exposing joists, and gaping holes.
But still, the cold.

You’d think books would be easy.
But they smoulder, blacken, smoke
douse the stove.
So we burn them page by page.
The heat
has us in its trance,
feeding it, hand after hand.

Floor to ceiling
shelves stripped clean.
They stand against the walls
like skeletons,
ribs sagging
spindly spines.
They too will burn
eventually
— the marrow bone after the meat.

The unmemorized lines
are gone.
But the work of words goes on —
a flare of pure white light,
illuminating us
one last time.

Afraid of the Dark
June 3 2009


They come out at night.

Delirious dreams,
sheets twisted
sweat-soaked.

Nocturnal creatures
stepping tentatively from hidden lairs;
over-sized eyes,
dark fur, black carapace.

Fear of the dark,
projecting our inner worlds
upon the outer one.

How deep
does sunlight penetrate translucent skin,
traverse cytoplasm and corpuscles,
illuminate the deep recesses
we always believed
inaccessible?
How, at night, all is made equal,
turning us inside out
flat as shadows
edges blurred.

At night, the stars come out.
Light that left billions of years ago,
we glimpse for an instant
its journey over.

Twilight
June 1 2009


Dusk
imperceptibly settles.
You feel the weight of air,
the light
getting denser.
Unsure if it fills the world
or empties it.

And then
the colours of darkness disappear.
A charcoal etching
in all the shades of grey —
softening its edges,
smudging the space
in between.

At night
all of us are colour-blind;
more likely to touch
and be touched,
snuggled-up
beneath its soothing cover.

Afterlife
June 1 2009


Who knew
there was a hierarchy of angels.
Arrayed at the right hand of God,
all celestial harps
and beatific smiles,
they elbow and jostle like little girls
competing to be queen of the schoolyard.

The Seraphim, the Cherubim, the Thrones,
looking down their nose
at Powers and Principalities;
and the lowly Archangel
who hovers down near earth.

Even hell has its circles,
also 9.
Or so says Dante’s Inferno,
purgatory not included.

And in between, we work out our own
internal order,
unsure what is a need
a want
a desire;
which one burns inside,
and which will consume us whole.

Even skeptics and atheists
cannot decide.
Who are greedy for everything
in this brief secular life,
eviscerated of all its mystery.
Where death is final,
and relentless rationality rules.