The Usual Traffic
Mar 12 2011


They called for heavy snow, gale force winds.
Enough to make the steep hill impassable,
wheels spinning, cars in the ditch.

March storms thrill me.
The adversity
that will melt within days,
like a simulated game
of winter.
The final chance
to be snow-stayed,
enclosed in its thick white walls,
that keep me in
keep the world away.

Tomorrow, the clocks will change.
There will be light
the days will seem longer,
and even summer
not that far off.
And winter, all the more precious
for its rarity.

The weatherman sounded gleeful, announcing this.
I suppose he feels useful
when there’s something to predict,
questions his existence
when it’s warm and clear.
An ice storm
and I imagine he’d be insufferable.

I awaken to barely an inch of snow,
a thin layer of gauze
re-dressing the wounded surface
already cratered and soiled by thaw.
Disappointed the world was not re-made.
A thick white blanket
soothing winter skin,
smoothing over
permanent scars.
Making it new, again.
And that the hill was no trouble at all,
the usual traffic
nothing cancelled, no classes called.

Of course, it’s March.
There will be snow.
The weatherman will find happiness.
And I will have my day,
when the roads are bad
the hill impassable
and a mountain of white
leaves the best laid plans
to wait.

Weather, or Not
Mar 6 2011


The road winds higher,
a steep relentless ascent
on switchbacks, hairpins
inch-from-the-edge-of-the-cliff
asphalt,
no passing, no shoulder
and guard-rails that would snap like twigs,
plummeting over
into oblivion.

Rising into cooler air
it goes from mist
to flurries
to fat wet flakes
furiously filling the world,
an impervious wall of white.
Just 20 minutes further
and the weather changes season.
Just a few miles more
and you find yourself transported
20 degrees
of latitude north.
You should have known, of course
not to count on weather reports.

No backward, or forward
and no standing still.
This is when the atheist finds God.
When it’s stunningly obvious
the woman beside you
is the love of your life,
and your search can finally stop.
And when you can no longer deny
the illusion of safety
that makes life bearable —
the climate-controlled car
the purring engine
4 snow clogged tires.
A few square inches
of rubber on the road
that make you feel you’re in control,
but are not.

And then the storm moves on
suddenly,
a pause in the panic
a shaft of light
the voice of God.
Or just the odds
in the random indifferent world
of non-believers.

So far, depending on the day
it’s been fog, and hail
and Biblical rain.
Perhaps, it’s that you tend to forget,
or never learn, from the start.
Or believe you’re blessed, exceptional.
Or, as you always suspected
not especially newsworthy,
and tragedy happens
to other people
somewhere else.

Which at least gets you out of bed, each morning.
Or lying there, bargaining
for a few minutes more.
Listening to the weather.
Learning to ignore it.

March Comes In . . .
Mar 3 2011


In March
the month of lions and lambs
and deadlines and tax
and I’m looking back, amazed
the New Year is already 3 months old;
the champagne flat
resolutions stale.
And idly wonder
if this snow is worth shovelling.
Will it melt in warm spring sun,
or will I spend weeks
mushing through fender-deep slush
re-frozen clumps
of ice?

The month of indecision
transition
submission
to the fickle whims
of Nature,
the lion and the lamb
somehow co-existing.
Although I suspect
the lamb doesn’t get much rest.

February gives permission
to eat and sleep —
sick days, and snow-stayed,
the vegetative state
of long cold nights.
And April, needless to say
is easy.

While March is a beautiful woman
with a caustic tongue,
a handsome lover
who cheats.
The month that would benefit most
from expensive therapy —
questioning its identity
wildly bipolar
sad from the absence of sun.

Spring will eventually come, of course.
In the meantime
I shovel some more,
a pride of hungry lions
roaring outside my door.


(As it is, I ended up shovelling!)

Playing God
Mar 1 2011


When we were kids
we would play God.
Kicking over ant-hills
just to see the hard black bodies
furiously scurry off,
soldiers hurrying nowhere
workers circling, confused.
Armageddon descending, undeserved
from unlaced high-tops
rubber boots.
The divine right of Queens
over-ruled.

Or torture frogs
which were way too easily caught,
tempting us, unfairly.
Dawdling birds, shot
with pearl-handled B-B’s, or badly winged,
rocks pelted at squirrels.

We were insolent masters
of the natural world,
strutting atop Creation.
This is the way of the world,
the powerless turning the tables
when given the chance,
victims blamed
our meagre mercies strained.

And like the deity, inscrutable,
going nameless
appearing unseen.
Because I think ants, confined to their tiny sphere
are utterly unable to grasp
an order of magnitude
so much greater.
So big, we became invisible.
Or perhaps
spread thin enough to vanish.

And now, all grown up
we condemn injustice
contend with moral subtleties.
And find ourselves wishing
that God would play God
a lot more often.

Or at least once
before we’re gone.
His terrible love.
His strict contingent mercy.

Be Still
Feb 25 2011


In the bitter cold
on a winter night
in the middle of nowhere
the world is unnaturally still.
Here, in the frigid depths
of an immense ocean of air,
dense with cold.

The full moon is gigantic,
casting grotesque shadows
of the bare branches
of skeletal trees,
the gnarled trunks of snags.
A ghostly tableau,
frozen in place
on contact.

In the steady light
I can see every bud,
sharp, and tightly wound.
Set since summer, dormant for months
they wait,
patient for spring.
Which has never failed to come;
at least until now.
No animal ventures out.
The snow sits
where it was left by wind,
as if it’s been like this forever.

The only sound
is the crunch of my footsteps
through virgin snow.
My breath disturbs the air —
crystal fog, suspended,
the rasp of my exhaust.
And my mind, racing as usual
lost in thought.
Spinning its wheels like a stranded car
digging-in deeper.

I am a vandal
in this monastic silence,
breaking the vow.
All the initiates
looking up as I pass,
the spell of contemplation
shattered.
Perhaps they are considering the Psalm
where it says
“Be still, and know Me”.
Something about faith, and fate
and surrender.
Or perhaps humility,
letting the answer come
no question.

I stop dead in my tracks
can’t help but look up.
Hours have passed
since I first set out
and the moon hasn’t budged an inch,
its place in heaven fixed
its shadow eternal.
Not even the earth, the clockwork sun
can break this awful stillness.


I mean "awful" in its archaic sense, well as its modern one. I mostly want to invoke a feeling of awe; but I want to temper that feeling with a measure of dread and foreboding.

I Take The Long Way Home
Feb 21 2011


I take the long way home.
Putting off the moment
of opening the door,
when yellow light
will fan across the porch
flooding out,
and soft warm air
spill into the cool night
with its shiver of winter wetness.
Something bubbling on the stove,
a radio, murmuring.

The steps are still treacherous with ice
where melted snow re-froze
the broken gutter drips.
As usual, the key will stick
and the lock turn heavily.
The door swings in
toppling little boots like dominos,
or getting wedged
barely open.

I stop for awhile
enclosed in darkness,
watching the sky, still light
deepen from azure to indigo.
Street lights flicker to life
a block at a time,
so I can see snow
swirling in the circular glow,
a daisy-chain of snow-globes
now blacking out the sky.
And trailing behind me
on the unswept walk,
a line of footprints, that seem lost,
vacant steps
that end right here,
will not move on
without me.

I take the long way home.
With frequent stops
avoiding shortcuts
waiting to walk
until the signal gives certain permission.
A green unblinking Cyclops
enforcing order,
and I willingly submit.

And eventually, make my way in,
the kitchen dark
the vestibule empty
the air, still heavy
with badly burnt toast.
In the small hours of this morning
that seems so long ago;
standing at the sink
scraping off coal black crust,
and eaten cold.

A Bear Doing Cha-Cha
Feb 17 2011


I can’t remember
if it’s the 800 lb gorilla
or the elephant in the room.
In a single sentence
my essential truth.
How conveniently I forget.
How my power of denial
has not lessened
with age.

I will slip past the pachyderm
meticulously unobservant.
Turning sideways
sucking in my chest,
brushing against its wrinkled grey skin.
Which is surprisingly soft, and giving.
And tactfully never ask
how this unlikely mammoth
in the beginning
managed to squeeze itself in.

And why 800 lbs
the limit?
The suspect round number
the timid excess?
Go all the way, I say
1000 at least,
a bestiary of unnatural feats.
Great ape to King Kong,
a blue whale, beached.
Fish-out-of-water
dancing bears, doing cha-cha
a star-crossed frog,
that longs for a Princess to kiss.

Or some other mythical beast,
unicorn, gryphon, sphinx.
With its enigmatic smile,
like the Cheshire cat, Alice’s rabbit.
Or the blind man’s camel
that comes out front-to-back.

As I suddenly vanish
down the open manhole
I never noticed,
my gaze fixed, unwavering.
The contingent bliss
of denial.

Dry Cold
Feb 15 2011


He will trundle home
in late afternoon
in the grey-blue glow
of twilight.
When the wind has finally died,
and the dry cold
feels like a solid mass,
weighing down on the world.

Pulling a plastic sled
with gutted fish, flash-frozen,
a steel auger, folding chair, tiny tent
teeter-totter rod, heavy test.
Left-over minnows, left behind,
hardening into trampled snow.
The sled is brittle in the cold
and bounces sharply.

Ice fishing, alone, on the frozen lake,
a small dark object, in a shapeless parka
huddled all day
in the vast expanse,
unobstructed wind
going right through him.

He will fillet, pan fry
fresh-caught pickerel,
the firm white flesh
the delicate taste.
But catching fish, in winter
through a small black hole
is simple,
just sit
and they sluggishly come,
fat fish, without much fight.

No, it’s the purification of cold
the astringent silence.
The humility of solitude
under so much sky
untracked miles of ice.

One foot is numb
the tip of his nose, frozen.
And the small round hole
is already closing over,
sealing all the fish
into their warm dark place,
big fish getting bigger
little fish for prey.

And by the bright red stain
of blood, and spilled fish guts
the minnows, by ravens,
strutting, haggling, flapping
crow-hopping daintily.

Until the wind picks up,
and all evidence of the man
vanishes for good.

The Fullness of Time
Feb 13 2011


What will become
of high school sweethearts
in the heat of summer?
In the torpid sun
when parasitic insects buzz.
When rivals blossom
fruit ripens, then drops,
free-for-the-picking.
All too brief, in its luscious peak.

When the honeymoon of adolescence
ends?
When the sweethearts depart for college
and re-invent themselves?
When life eventually commences
with a succession of jobs, new friends
the next 0ne-true-love?
At high school reunions
which neither attends?
When one leaves town,
and a marriage ends?

And when, unexpectedly, they meet again
by intention, or chance
or act of God?

If you are romantically inclined
you already know the ending.
And if you believe in destiny
there can be no doubt.
Me, I’m not sure how it comes out.

Hair thins, bodies soften, idealism grows dim.
And to re-visit
the younger version of himself
in middling middle age
puts everything at risk,
the self-sustaining illusions
of memory.
But by now
after so many opportunities have been missed
can he let her go, again?

The high school lovers.
The heat of summer.
The fruit, still luscious
in the fullness of time.

Between Floors
Feb 8 2011


Time stops
in the brief interval between floors.
While space goes on,
gently ascending
at a set angle
a constant rate.
Each of us fixed in place,
steadily scrolling past.
Time out,
a brief breath
of patience.

We tightly grasp the handrail
which is black, substantial,
a reassuring point
of attachment.
And frown at the iconoclasts
who break rank, squeezing past,
too busy to wait.

The stairs silently glide,
stainless steel teeth
meshing smoothly,
appearing, and disappearing
in an infinite loop
that seems, for all the world
to be effortless.
While in some hot subterranean chamber
gears clash
pistons shudder
taut belts whiz and fray,
transporting us
in unearthly silence.
Rising up
one floor closer to heaven,
our precious energy saved
so we can give praise
to the gods
of consumption.

We avoid eye contact
with our fellow travellers,
watching, instead, the strangers descending beside us,
down, down, down
to a dark netherworld
of bargain bins
and coupon redemption.
Smiling to ourselves
as we are lifted up,
breathing-in the rarefied air
of haute couture.
And standing in judgement
of the tightly-budgeted souls
who have fallen so low.
Most of all, their acts of charity,
conferring an afterlife
on 2nd hand clothes.

A Small Green Garter

Feb 2 2011

I held a snake

once.

Weaving through my fingers, coiling up.

The God-given fear of leglessness

momentarily overcome.

That darting tongue, tasting my scent.

The long muscular body

writhing like a live wire

or instant death.

A small green garter

we called “gardener”;

young men, as yet unfamiliar

with fetish, and fashion

temptation, attraction,

the hooks and fasteners

of fussy lingerie.

I was surprised by his dryness,

the pleasant roughness, touching.

Even the sense of oneness

with another living creature,

however alien

and unknowable.

Snakes, spouting poison,

unhinged jaws

downing furry rabbits whole.

Slithering up the pants

of unsuspecting boys.

I dropped him just-like-that,

and he shimmied off, whip-fast

wanting no part of me.

The mythic beast

condemned to belly through the dirt

for his fatal deceit.

Whose only real weapon, it turns out

is concealment.

Is this reptilian thing

evil by nature?

Or a moral agent, like us

capable of sin;

transgressing at will

repenting unheard?

The Architecture of Snow
Jan 31 2011


Underneath the snow
earth is unexpectedly warm.
The planet’s molten core
pressing up.
Soil, slowly decomposing.
The body heat of rodents
scurrying to and fro
at ground level.
As foxes cock their ears
and hawks patrol,
outstretched wings
feathering the air
with lethal precision.

The winter garden
is dormant.
The uncut grass
too weak to stand,
its green chlorophyll spine
sucked dry.
And January sun
diffuses through the snow,
a blue electric glow
distilled from sunlight.

Ice crystals, and air
in a delicate balance
of compression and freeze and thaw,
until the architecture is lost,
and cold
penetrates to ground level.
When spring is too far off,
and frost
goes deep enough to kill.

Optical Illusion
Jan 29 2011


A portrait in black and white
is mostly grey,
every shade imaginable.

How white
depends on tricks of light,
fugitive shadows
a phantom gaze.

And how black is black?
How far down
into bottomless dark
can you go?

If only colour would last,
but it’s far too natural
for the stillness
I crave.
Knowing that nothing is permanent
and lies get told,
and even the camera obscura
over-exposed.
Like abstract art,
it’s all
in the eye of the beholder.

They thought the photograph
would capture their souls.
But in pictures, surface is everything.
And everything fades
to the same dull grey
in natural light.

Suspension
Jan 26 2011


After the storm
the world seemed unnaturally still.
Like an animal of prey, exhausted and dazed
the chase on hold,
catching its breath
in the brief interregnum of snow.
As the land rests quiet,
beneath the weight
of an arctic high
under smooth undulations of white.

Snow is the great equalizer,
concealing the wounded trees
the half-done things
the mess that emerges in spring.
Even the road is a blur,
its high snow-banks
almost submerged.
And suspended between
in a graceful arc
a perfect span of white
— a long unbroken bridge,
unmarked
uncrossed.

Before the plough,
before the road is scraped to gravel
margins sharply carved,
I will be first
to leave my footsteps
mar its perfection
signal
the end of rest.

When the struggle for existence
will begin again;
predator, and prey
resume the chase.

Defying Gravity
Jan 25 2011


Toboggans like this
are relics.
All wood
heavy as a garage door.
A graceful curve, on the leading edge
steam-bent
by a master craftsman.
The pad, for our frozen bottoms
long gone,
consumed by mice, or mould
in summer storage
in a dank corner
of the leaky shed.
And wax, for slickness
or it would stick —
all front-to-back, tightly packed, ready to go,
marooned
in clumpy snow.

The ultimate gravity sport.
And metaphor
for faith.
No steering, no brakes
no control, except for bailing
into snow that looked deep, and fluffy,
but was rock-hard, underneath.
And trees, flashing past faster and faster.

But back then
before seatbelts and helmets
and even doctors smoked
we were sent out to play
all day, Sunday,
and told don’t be home ‘til dinner.
Where we duly arrived
glowing with cold,
unimpressed that we had survived
a whole day
of falling.

20 minutes, trudging up
hauling that pig of a toboggan
for a minute of giddy pleasure —
not for us, instant gratification.
We surrendered to fate
with the bliss of ignorance,
and learned uplifting moral lessons
about the virtue of work.

While our parents stayed home
together,
probably not deferring pleasure.
And instead of surrender,
defying gravity, exhaustion, age
in their own private way.
More than content
to let work wait.

A Leg of Deer
Jan 21 2011


In the depth of winter
a leg of deer,
dismembered.

The cloven hoof
tapered sleekly,
like a ballerina en pointe
in stiff black slippers.
The lower limb
tawny fur intact,
too thin
for such a big animal.
And above the joint, gnawed to the bone
it seemed almost festive,
flecked white and red
with fat, and flesh.

The dog bounded out of the bush
triumphant,
the prized leg clamped in her jaws.
Wolves, I thought,
prowling the forest
unseen, unheard.

The dog would be easy pickings
out in the yard.
I can just imagine hard barking
tail, furiously carving the air,
the mock bravado
of the pampered dog.
Outside, it was a cold locker,
so I hung it by the elbow
in a grisly “V”,
well out of reach.

And all night, I listened hard for their howling,
the full moon glorious
a fresh kill to gorge.
There is something primeval
and thrilling
about the sound of wolves,
this far from the end of the road.
The atavistic fear
of wolves.
And wolves,
who fear men …even more.

Practice
Jan 19 2011


I practiced badly
on the 2nd hand piano
at the far end of the basement rec room,
kitty-corner from the ping pong table.
It was layer-on-layer of dull brown paint,
with the crackled finish
of a real antique.
Keys like coffee-stained teeth
a spinning seat,
cork-screwing up and down
as I sent it flying.
Which was vastly more entertaining
than Twinkle Twinkle Little Star;
about as far as I got
in piano.

What fascinated me more was the metronome,
keeping its steady pace
unflappable, self-contained.
And in all these years
I see they haven’t changed, or been replaced
by some electronic gizmo.
How attractive,
the simple elegance
the perfect balance
of this mysterious mechanical device.
Like a jewel box, tastefully unadorned
its smoothly tapered form
is burnished wood,
dark, and deeply polished.
And its inexhaustible tap-tap-tap,
as magical
as perpetual motion.

I am told
even the greatest pianist insists on one.
Because he is susceptible to the common problem
of acceleration,
playing faster and faster
absorbed in his art.
Much as life gets faster and faster
as we age;
until all of a sudden
the music runs out.

With an exquisite touch
first hard, then soft
he caresses the keyboard like a man making love.
Infatuated with her beauty
with his power to make her sing, and sigh, and shriek
he must learn to practice restraint,
the subtle pleasure
of patience.

I want to set the metronome in motion
just to feel its measured beat,
the satisfying tap-tap-tap
as it ticks, hypnotically.
Exactly what I need
when I see her again,
my pulse quickening
my heart skipping beats.

When a man
who is badly out of practice
will go far too fast.
Become a falling star
that briefly flares
. . . and is gone.

Contented Circles
Jan 14 2011


A goldfish
in a small glass bowl
circles, nibbles, hovers.
Tiny bubbles
like a broken string of beads
ride up
from the steadily humming aerator,
niftily hidden
in a sunken ship.

An ornamental fish
flashing bronze and copper,
who only exists
for my occasional amusement.
Does he wonder
at the vast world outside the glass?
Does he miss
the company of other
beautiful fish?
Does the blue plastic mermaid
reclining on gravel
make him wish
for more?

Once a week
I dutifully change the water
drop in flakes of food,
not a lot.
Bend down
and look into a hard black eye
that stares inscrutably back,
out from the side of his head
unblinking.
A panopticon creature
ensconced in glass.

And when he dies
I will promptly buy another decorative fish
no different than him,
who will also swim in contented circles
in a safe aquatic world.
Where he will appear
for all it’s worth
immortal.

Open-Concept Plan
Jan 13 2011


I write on the dining room table.
A place I rarely dine.
And the room, more idea than place,
since I knocked down the walls
to let in the light.

So I easily forget
that this hard smooth surface
is illusion,
matter mostly empty space.
And that no matter how hard I try
to represent the world,
reality is unreliable
there is no singular view;
]just a rough simulacrum
I need to believe
is true.

Because I am only sensitive
to a limited spectrum of light,
my narrow aperture of awareness.
Because I see what catches my interest,
my memory is filtered through prejudice,
I quickly forget.
And because every time I remember
I reinvent the past.
I see the world through glass.
looking out my window
concealed by dark;
through a screen,
where faraway people
leave me indifferent, mostly,
are easily clicked-off.
Except when it feels so intense
it’s happening;
when fiction contains more truth than fact.
Even granted
that knowing is impossible.

It takes so much effort
to recognize how small I am,
to see the other as more
than body, object, obstacle.
Which is overwhelming
and inconceivable,
7 billion parallel universes
lighting-up
with pain and angst and love
all at once.

Only a supreme act of imagination
lets me escape
the trap of scale.
The tiny order of magnitude
I occupy.
My solipsistic sense
of the passage of time
in a slowly unfolding universe.
The levels of consciousness
to which I am blind,
can hardly imagine.

So it suits my purpose
to sit at this large dining room table,
with its distressed pine finish
the extra leaf, in the middle
two tall candles
patiently unlit
in the natural light
the windows permit,
and write my version of reality
distil myself into words.

Gratified that my pen
glides freely
dispenses ink,
does not penetrate the surface
of this handsome wood.


I think the meticulous detail at the end is the writer’s solution. That is, both mindfulness and living in the moment are his solution to the problems identifies earlier in the poem: the subjectivity of reality, the impossibility of knowing, and his narrow aperture of awareness. He’s effectively saying that he’s content to accept these limitations, and content to leave the mystery unexplained; choosing instead to invest fully in the version of reality he’s been given, however unreliable.

And I think what the opening does is establish this uncertainty about what’s real, since even the words he automatically uses for the most mundane things are quickly revealed to be poor approximations of objective reality.

The “open-concept plan” is an architectural metaphor for this uncertainty: that reality is constructed (in a way that’s useful for us, that makes the most “sense” – given the limitations of our senses); and that reality is more concept than fact. Perhaps “plan” here should be taken with a grain of salt, as a kind of irony. After all, what hubris to think we can plan out our lives, that we have this degree of control and predictability – irrespective of what one believes about the metaphysics of reality.

Desert
Jan 12 2011


Dessert was store-bought.
Apple pie
some kind of loaf.
Banana, possibly.
Supermarket recipes
that were sweet enough to make your teeth buzz.
Sugar must have been cheap, back then.
And there was shelf-life to think of.

In TV commercials
in the hot studio lights
apple pie a la mode
was made with a scoop of mashed potatoes.
Which looks surprisingly like ice cream.
The industrial pie, I’m sure
could have handled the heat.

3 boys, and never any leftovers.
The handy tin-foil tray, just crumbs
glinting hungrily.
I still remember my first spelling mnemonic —
“dessert” with the double “s”;
for seconds, of course.

My mother had rare spurts of ambition
in the culinary arts.
I remember something called ambrosia,
with marshmallows, and mandarins
maraschino cherries
and pudding mix.
Needless to say
she felt her efforts went unappreciated.
Not to mention her own mother,
an intimidating presence
who baked wonderfully
without recipes,
in the secretive kingdom
of her cramped apartment kitchen.

The store-bought apple pie
had a glutinous interior, a heavy crust.
But add ice cream
and it was ambrosia,
with never enough
for seconds.
So much for learning how to spell.

Last Words
Jan 10 2011


Words have consequences.

When you think you won’t be heard.
When you’ll say whatever it takes.
Even the words you never said,
and now regret
you didn’t.

You can always wait
for time to heal, memory blur.
You can retract the nasty attitude
take back slurs,
or assert that they misheard.
Politicians, especially.

But when the encouraging word
eluded you.
When you failed to return
the call.
When last words were said in anger,
deathbed left to cliché.
When you wanted to tell her
I love you,
and thought you had time to wait.

We appropriate hateful words
as empowering,
like faggot, nigger, nerd.
But when she called me an asshole, a bastard
it stuck,
her diatribe well-deserved.
I sulked in silence,
wanting to call after her
as if language still could work.

Trouble is
words aren’t sticks and stones.
They’re more like barbed hooks
razor-sharp.
The work their way in.
Leave permanent scars.

Progress
Jan 4 2011


Washing laundry by hand.
Wind the alarm clock
before bed, each night.
Dial one number at a time,
then wait
while it whirrrs back to zero.

Back when TV began
as a point of light
in the middle of a thick glass screen,
then expanding, slowly
into a universe of 3
local stations.
Fiddle with the rabbit ears,
get up to change channels.
A flickering picture of an Indian chief
after midnight,
when every sensible person’s asleep.

Labour-saving devices
that make us slaves.
How we pilfer from sleep
to serve.
There is not enough time in the day
to get things done,
and how work expands to fill
the space available.

And when the power goes out,
in the sudden silence
in accustomed dark,
the universe shrinks
to these 4 walls.
Alone, for once
you make polite conversation
with yourself,
find out if you like your own company
can somehow keep talking.
Maybe even stop
waiting for the light to break.

Do you notice how your eyes strobe
in the unfamiliar darkness,
your exhausted retina
firing at random?
Like static, on that old TV
on the receding edge
of reception,
even at the speed of light.

The phone still works when the power’s out
casting its ghostly glow.
So you turn it off,
immerse yourself
in the dark.
Perfectly silent, and black,
like before time began.




I’m probably guilty of romanticizing the past in this poem. The beginning was clumsily lifted from Ian Frazier’s Family: I heard him read an excerpt (on the Dec 31 2010 edition of A Prairie Home Companion), and couldn’t get it out of my head. (You can listen yourself, by going to the PHC website – prairiehome.publicradio.org.)

The main idea is how, living in a culture of constant distraction, over-stimulation, and dizzying obsolescence, we have trouble being alone with ourselves. And how true silence and darkness are so rarely experienced in the modern world. Even our labour-saving devices don’t do that; they just raise our expectations, and cause even more work. I’m thinking about generating laundry: tossing a shirt in a hamper after wearing it for a few hours, which you’d never do without the machine. And standards of house-cleaning: without a vacuum cleaner, you’d probably tolerate a lot more dog hair and dust. This isn’t an original thesis, and I’ve heard an academic (of social anthropology or home economics or some other obscure discipline) expound on it with much more authority than me. Actually, I’m not sure I totally buy it: washing laundry by hand was bloody hard! But our forbears expected less. And they lived more circumscribed – and not necessarily less happy – lives. So there’s probably some truth here; as usual, the law of unintended consequences at work.

My first inclination was to call it Big Bang. I tried to sustain this metaphor through the piece (I suspect not terribly successfully), since the cosmology of the Big Bang so tellingly impinges on these two ideas – time, and progress. Because this model of the origin of the universe could mean an infinitely expanding one, which ultimately leads to oblivion: like progress, a feverish expansion which ultimately results in a thinner life and more shallow relationships. Or it could mean a yo-yo universe: one that constantly creates, and then annihilates, time.

All in all, kind of complicated and obscure ideas that I tried to make palatable and interesting. I’m not sure how well I accomplished that. So I’d be interested to hear any feedback on how well this poem works. And also what you may have thought it was about, before you had the chance to see what I had in mind.

Dregs
Dec 31 2010


The dregs of a dying year
are like the grounds of yesterday’s coffee,
dumped in the trash.
A stubbed-out butt, lipstick smudged
in a clump of ash.
Open another can
a fresh pack.

I’m not sure if I should lament its passing,
or feel glad
to be done with it.
Not that the new one will change much;
it never does.
I will tear a page off the calendar.
There will be sun
wheeling steadily west.
And, as it’s always done,
the 3rd planet in this minor system
will follow its trajectory.
The heavens move,
and I feel nothing
down here on earth.
On January 1st,
in the exact same winter.

Even in the inevitable thaw
that comes somewhere in the middle
it will be wet and dull and grey,
and I will still feel invisible.
And even though
there will be a little more light each day,
I will see the same horizon
the same face beside me
will still turn away.

When we first met
had greedy animal sex
we could feel the world move
again, and again.
And now, the beginning of the end
in a brand new year
will start with me
sipping hot black coffee
in a cold kitchen.
And you, still in bed,
fumbling for a cigarette.



It probably would have been easier if this had been autobiographical.

Actually, it didn’t start out as lovelorn at all. What I had in mind as I set out to write takes to the 2nd last stanza to make its eventual appearance: “the inevitable thaw” that seems to come sometime every winter. (Because we just had one, and will shortly have another: always a mess in the middle of winter.)

And then I thought it’s December 31, so how can I possibly get away without writing something about the passing of a year, the beginning of a new one. Which always makes me think of the cartoon depiction of the bearded old man and the newborn baby …and then want to subvert that by perhaps making the old year the one full of promise and vigour, and the new one senescent and decrepit. (In the end, both years came out rather bleak!)

The whole astronomical bit, the mechanistic universe – the wheeling sun, the planet on its pre-ordained trajectory – is there in order to get at this idea of the indifference of nature to man, as well as the arbitrariness of the calendar; and especially so, since the beginning of the new year inexplicably falls right in the middle of an undifferentiated season. (“ …January 1st / in the exact same winter.”)

And that, in turn, led to “the heavens mov(ing)”, which brought immediately to mind the obvious sexual connotation of “feel(ing) the world move”. And so, without the least intention, the poem gave this to me, and told me where to take it. Of course, I was pleased to be able to write something about sex …and even use the word sex. (“Greedy animal sex”, no less!) Because, for a self-proclaimed poet, you have to admit my stuff is pretty damned sanitized and safe. Hardly anything erotic at all. So it’s nice to have the nerve to go there, for once.

I quite like the “call-backs”: how it gives the poem a coherence, and pulls the strings tight (a coherence which the description of its haphazard genesis makes hard to believe!) What I’m referring to here is the coffee and cigarettes, as well as the heavens moving/earth moved bits. I think I’ve managed a nice restrained use of metaphor, allusion, and ambiguity. And I particularly like all the things that go unsaid, the back story that’s left to the reader’s imagination. And finally, I like the misdirection: yes, it does start off rather negatively (what else is new!); but still, I think the direction the poem ultimately takes is quite unexpected (just as it was in the writing).

Department Store Santa Claus
Dec 30 2010


I went to the mall
in the week after Christmas,
my annual expedition
to its frenzied halls.
The festive green and red
over-heated air.
This secular temple
to the fashion gods.

The seasonal music
via satellite dish
was jingly and bright,
but seemed shrill, and inauthentic
going over the heads
of determined shoppers.
Seeking out sales.
Bearing unwrapped gifts
jammed back into boxes,
clothes that don’t fit.

The food court
was unaccountably popular,
with the smell of fried grease
I’d almost forgot.
Stalls for Italian, and Chinese
rendered bland, and salty-sweet
with “special sauce”;
fast food and finger-lickin’
shoved down quickly.
Pre-occupied folks
who keep in touch
by phone,
and walk and talk while eating.
As well as toys-for-tots
and Santa Claus
and a Salvation Army kettle,
just as you’d expect.

I dashed in
did my business
and quickly went.
Out to the far end of the parking lot,
where the ploughs had piled a frozen wall of snow.
Perfect for tobogganing, I thought,
or snowballs, and forts.

But the kids had all gone home,
transfixed by screens
playing war.



All very true. I strenuously resist going to the mall. But the old camera couldn’t be fixed (as usual, a complicated electronic device rendered obsolescent: either by the frenzied pace of dubious innovation, or the impossibility of fixing deranged chips and cheap plastic), and I needed to pick up the new one. It was the week after Christmas; and the camera shop was right next to the food court.

It’s darn hard to be cynical about Christmas, and not sound both stale and pretentious. So I at least tried to show it, not say it – the usual cardinal rule of poetry, of course. And I tried to add some amusing observations – to at least reward the reader for his indulgence and perseverance. And I tried to tie it up into a bit of narrative – if one can be persuaded that walking out to the parking lot constitutes an actual story! (I especially like the ersatz ethnic food, that all ends up tasting the same!)

The poem can be fairly criticized for making too much of a virage in the final stanza. In terms of tone, that is. (Virage is French, but I think it may have entered into Canadian English in the last few years. It means a sudden change in direction – like the standard English “swerve” – but works much better, I’d say.) On the other hand, there is a natural progression from snow fort to games of war. And it’s a neat sideways rhyme, as well: fort and war, that is. I love the word “transfixed” here. I can just picture the body immobile in a chair, leaning slightly forward; and the fixed unblinking eyes (not to mention blood-shot and demonic …lol!) Anyway, it’s true. In my day (sneered the old-timer in his usual superior tone), we were sent outside to play, and spent the entire day doing just that. We didn’t sit in front of screens (as this hypocrite has been doing for the last couple of hours!) And other than that, I’ll take any chance I get to decry these horrible video games that are full of explosions and guns and blood; that dehumanize “the other”; and that celebrate violence without consequence.

I’ve said before how much I try to avoid adverbs (especially the word “suddenly”): how they patronize the reader; how they’re superfluous if the writing is good; and how they clutter things up and get in the way. So I have to point out that I used “quickly” twice here. I tried cutting it out; but in this case, it seemed to work. I hope you agree. (In this regard, I strongly suggest that you check out Billy Collins’ recent poem Suddenly.)

Going Blind
Dec 25 2010


It’s always that much rougher
away from shore.
In the deceptive calm
in the lee of the forest
the water invites you on.
The same blue as the sky
but darker,
a gentle chop
concealing the cold black layer
that lies, like a heavy weight
on the very bottom.

When the wind blows in
the surf washes up and down the beach,
a steady comforting beat.
Not sand
sinking into its heat,
but small round pebbles
cool, and treacherous,
rattling together
in the powerful surge.
And when it blows off-shore
it’s almost glass,
with tell-tale ripples
as the wind dips.
Racing across
on cats paws.

So you head out
in an open boat
paddling alone.
How a man has 10 minutes, at most
in such cold water
this far north.
How the squall blew up
at most, an hour.
With the setting sun
pouring into your eyes,
going blind.

It’s all timing, in life —
random intersections
fate
good luck.
Or bad
if it so happens.

Because who doesn’t judge
from a distance?
And what’s another
sudden gust?

Hunger
Dec 24 2010


In winter, there is food and shelter
and not much else.
Except for the holiday season
of gifts, with receipts
well-meant greetings
New Year’s eve.
The forced gaiety
of vague beginnings,
according to the calendar.

In the forced-air heat
my lips crack, and bleed,
dry skin
feels tight, and prickly.
As if I’m shrinking
slowly.
It’s hard to feel desire
under all these clothes,
prudently layered
against the cold.

But the shovelling over
the stores all closed
we sit by the fire
almost touching,
stoke it up ‘til it roars.
Entranced by flame,
the dance of shadow
on the wall in back.

In the unaccustomed heat
we begin unbuttoning.
Unfasten zippers and clasps,
wiggle out of tops,
peel off
thermal underpants
skin-tight skivvies.

And thinking back
to a bad year
the one we’ll usher out, the beginning of another
in the vegetative funk
of darkness,
we are overcome by lust,
naked skin flushed, and hungry.

Hoping desire, at least
has come
to rescue us.

Season’s Greetings
Dec 20 2010


A Christmas thaw,
the streets awash
in gritty slush,
salt-encrusted fenders.
A van with a red velvet bow
on its bumper,
and a rusty truck
sporting a festive wreath.
A standard sedan
has a green button in front,
an adorable nose
of plastic mistletoe
to kiss someone under.

Even the lifeguards at the pool
wore cute little Santa hats.

The seasonal spirit
is contagious,
an epidemic of decoration
overtaking the world.
A white Christmas
with teeth-clenching carols
to afflict us,
from tinny speakers
hidden in storefronts, and parking lots.

The streets will freeze
into minefields of congealed slush.

My next door neighbours
are off to the Bahamas
for the next two weeks,
where they will celebrate beside the pool.
Their house is dark,
except for an elegant tree
trimmed with tiny white lights
framed in the window.
I appreciate
this modest display
their tasteful restraint.

I think of the tree
in that over-heated house
dropping more needles each day,
until its lush green branches
are scrawny twigs.
A skeleton tree
festooned with lights.
Like a wizened old lady
with too much make-up
who can’t disguise her age.

But from a distance
a perfect scene —
the angelic tree, pure and simple,
through a picture window
touched by frost.


All true. The Bahamas, the 2 weeks, the elegant tree. Even the cutely decorated cars and lifeguards. I’ve never noticed people decorating their cars before. So it’s either something new this season; or I just haven’t been very observant! Anyway, it’s this almost unseemly proliferation that gave rise to the rather bleak metaphor of contagion and affliction.(The "teeth-clinching" carol is -- what else! -- "Little Drummer Boy".)

I think we all feel torn by the season: a religious celebration appropriated by a secular world; the clash of the spiritual and material; the blatant excess in a time when nature is all about scarcity and hunkering down. Which is how the poem works, whipsawing the reader between beauty and tastelessness, between cynicism and hope. So the incongruity, interruptions, and modest misdirection are all very intentional.

I end on an uplifting note. So there: I'm not as negative and cynical as you'd think!

Birds Who Mate for Life
Dec 17 2010


Birds who mate for life,
who return
to the same tract of trackless forest
same tree, same branch,
in another spring
a thousand miles after,
still sing
to each other.

His song of seduction
is not intended
for the young receptive hens.
But instead, to cement their attachment.
Just as they mud the nest,
having survived
to mate again.

Like an elderly couple
married forever,
who squabble and peck
ruffle their feathers
then quickly forget.
Who complete each other’s sentences,
are snugly content
in silence, together.

The trouble is
they have studied the DNA,
and birds who mate for life
apparently stray.
Frequently.

I see the elderly couple
on the park bench,
tossing stale bread
to a scuffle of gulls.
I wonder if one, or both, ever cheated,
if they’ll take the secret
to the grave.
Or did the guilty party confide,
and still, the marriage survives?

And does he sing to her
at night?
Or doing the dishes
his turn to dry?
An old song
off key,
with words he’s not quite sure of.

And, deaf in one ear
she joins in the chorus,
with a clear pure voice.


I've been listening to "Between the Covers", on CBC radio. This is a podcast, where they present audio versions of contemporary books. The latest is Elizabeth Haye's "Late Nights on Air", which won the Giller Prize a few years ago, and which I'm quite enjoying. Anyway, there was a single simple sentence I heard on one instalment, and it stuck in my head. It seemed a good first line for a poem So I wrote it down on my usual blank white sheet, and let my mind wander. This is how it turned out.

A nice combination, I think, of the cynical and sweet; the romantic, and the ornithological!

At The Confluence of Rivers
Dec 17 2010


Ft. Charlotte wasn’t really a disappointment.
No, there were no palisades, no log cabins,
no re-enactments, like Disneyland.
But I could tell men had left their mark
on-and off
for hundreds of years
in this New World wilderness.

At the confluence of rivers
at the end of a long portage,
this was once the outer limit
of exploration,
connected by a tenuous thread
of blood and sweat
and manual labour
to the civilized centre
of life.

At the confluence of rivers
near a Great Lake port,
this could have been a great city
like Minneapolis
New York, New York.
It was a gentleman’s chivalry
to call it “Charlotte,”
after some virgin princess
a patron, perhaps.
And a grand ambition
to call it “Fort.”
Because the frontier would quickly move on
leaving Ft. Charlotte deserted,
stillborn
in its virgin forest.
Where there was nothing as rich as gold
to hold them,
the fabulous Orient
luring them on.

Standing here, I feel as if I had stepped back in time
in my own small city
at the confluence of rivers
where a forest once stood.
Where by chance, or larceny
settlement took.
How it , too, would look
if you lopped-off
the girdered buildings,
the bungalows
on cul-de-sacs, and circles.
Stripped away
the concrete surface
and grid-locked streets.
Plucked out
ornamental trees, and well-kept gardens,
roughed up
manicured lawns.
And underneath
pulled cables, tubes, and conduits,
replaced
the blasted rocks.

Leaving wilderness, like Ft. Charlotte,
as hard a journey as it ever was.
A walk back in time,
when all our cities
were modest clearings
in a vast unbroken forest.
When an entire continent
felt impenetrable, closed.

Which you’d think would make me feel claustrophobic,
over-towered by trees
underbrush, entangling my feet.
Except that suddenly
I was in an alternate future
in the middle of a 6-lane street,
gleaming black walls
50 stories high
crowding the sidewalk,
angry horns
bearing down on me.
The Ft. Charlotte, that might have been.

Where, like every city, I cannot breathe,
sprawling beyond the horizon
traffic crawling by.
Desperately seeking an edge
I can step out over,
and hear myself think.



There is a long hike, at Grand Portage, near the Minnesota/Ontario border. The highlight is a spectacular waterfall, the Cascades. But for some reason, the trail is very poorly marked, and the more obvious path leads to another site, grandiosely called “Ft. Charlotte”. Not much to see; but I’ve missed the cut-off a few times, and found myself there. And each time, the germ of this poem was always lurking somewhere in my subconscious, but never managed to get written.

How, back in the day, this place called Ft. Charlotte was as civilized as it got. Minneapolis or Thunder Bay or Duluth either didn’t exist, or were just as rudimentary. So what alchemy chose them to become the cities we know, and left the ambitious “Fort” to be nothing but a plaque in a modest clearing?

And how would it feel for someone 400 years ago to be standing on the original site of one of these modern cities, and then suddenly transported into the future? How utterly gobsmacked would he feel? How could someone from 400 years ago even assimilate a tiny bit of the modern world?

And conversely, standing on the site of Ft Charlotte made me feel as if my whole city had been whisked into oblivion, and its original virgin state somehow recaptured. An impossibility, of course; but a tantalizing mental simulation.

Anyway, the poem became a bit of an epic. It kind of reminds me of Gordon Lightfoot’s famous Canadian Railway Trilogy. If it’s anywhere near as good, I’ll be thoroughly pleased.

Swim Class
Dec 15 2010


In swim class
back when I was a Tadpole,
hoping for a bright red badge
to sew
on my swimsuit.

We were earnest listeners, learning to swim.
They showed us how to crawl, tread, kick;
the daunting fly
was for older kids.
How to throw a big orange life preserver
past the drowning man,
then pull it back
shouting reassurance.

I always pictured him splashing madly,
like blood-in-the-water
a froth of sharks.
But sometimes
it’s just a look in the eye
of quiet desperation.
Parting the water like a sharpened knife,
slipping silently under
the undisturbed surface.
Maybe twice
before he vanishes.

And sometimes, a frugal wave,
like a benevolent Queen
to her adoring subjects.
The final gesture
of a dying man,
I acknowledged with a nod of my head
an open hand,
politely waving back.

Exposure
Dec 14 2010


The shortest day of the year.
When a month of winter
is enough, already.
I console myself
that soon, the darkness will begin lifting.
Imperceptibly, at first,
until the shadows shorten
and I feel myself emerge
into light.

But the season is indifferent
to sun,
and I can count on 3 more months
of blizzards
arctic fronts.

The lake is locked in ice,
an immaculate field of white.
A tabula rasa
waiting to receive my footprints.
Where a machine would make a perfect path
mine seem to stagger across its surface.
Bundled up, so just my eyes appear
I walk erratically;
drunk on life, perhaps,
or simply lost
in thought.

Shadows are sharp enough to cut.
The sky, a high blue bowl
inverted.
There are rabbit tracks
a lone wolf’s massive paws.
But I haven’t seen a deer since fall.
When the bucks were in rut,
flanks steaming, nostrils flared
tossing their noble heads.
When they’d emerge on the back-country roads
hungry for salt.
Now, for months, they make themselves scarce,
hunkered down, burning fat
easy prey.

A wolf, without its pack
might starve, as well.
Because we are all the same
when exposed skin freezes in seconds.
A solitary man
walking into the wind,
squinting in blinding brightness.

Their Houses Set on Fire
Dec 12 2010


The science of fire
is simple —
oxygen, fuel, ignition.

It’s the art of fire
I’ve been missing.
How to catch lightning
before it strikes the earth.
How to pull away
from hypnotic flame.
How to feed
its inexhaustible appetite,
without consigning myself to the blaze.
Because it’s either incinerate
or burn slowly,
decomposing
in warm fertile soil.

Not every circle of Hell
is white hot, molten.
There is the Hell we make
right here.
Scorched earth,
diabolical air.
The acid sea,
that will strip you of your outer shell
reduce bone
to nothing.

The fields of the vanquished
were sown with salt,
their women taken as slaves.
And their houses set on fire,
the men who remained
left inside.
So for years
the smell of burning flesh
clung to the place.
Teeth, and fragments of bone,
sifted from cooling ash
disgorged from fertile ground.

Grass, succeeded
by saplings, and trees,
a dark dank forest.
Until lightning strikes.
Or a match
accidentally tossed
into tinder.


An environmental poem about the perfidy of man; the creative destruction of fire; and the regenerative cycles of nature.

There is lots going on here, and probably lots I don’t know about. It was a kind of stream of consciousness thing, on a freezing day when I made a roaring fire: a day when my mood was darkened by the black dogs of futility and despair. Which probably explains a lot!

Dying Tongue
Dec 9 2010


The last one left
alive.
Old friends, buried,
brothers and sisters, passed away.

How the last speaker
of a dead language
must feel,
who has no one in the world to talk with
to criticize his grammar
or recall, for him
a forgotten word.

You begin to wonder
which memories are true
did the past really happen
when only you
remember.
Even your childhood no longer exists
when there’s no one left
who witnessed it.
And the man, impossibly young, in the pictures
could be anyone, at all.

The old man
stooped and grizzled
was always thus,
according to passers-by.
Who see him on the park bench
tossing bread at pigeons
drowsing in afternoon sun,
almost biting his tongue
when some reminiscence
startles him.

You always felt
you were an old soul
in a young body.
So perhaps it’s only just
you’ve finally caught up.
And now, the final custodian
of a long ago world
you’ll take to the grave.

All you have left is the past tense
the future imperfect
the passive voice.
Talking loudly
to yourself.
So that mothers with little children
warn them sternly
about strangers,
herd them quickly on by.



This poem is about how, without memory, we are nothing, we cease to exist, we lose meaning. And how memory has to be shared to be authentic. And how it’s only once we are forgotten, once there is no one to remember us, that we truly die.

It’s also about the loneliness of old age: how the world can move on, how you can feel like the last one left, how you can even question what's the point of going on. I’m really pleased with the analogy that is at the heart of the poem: how being the final custodian of shared memory is like being the last speaker of a dead language. So there is no one with whom to speak; and when you die, the language – and the world view that is inextricably part of it – might as well never have existed.

And finally, it’s about how we see old people as if they were born that way, were always thus. A silly conceit, of course, that ignores your own procession through life. And ignores how in the fullness of time, we are all contemporaries, all occupy the same continuum. And ignores how the child, the adolescent, the young adult remain alive in us, however old we become.

The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company
Dec 8 2010


At A&P, it was Eight O’Clock coffee,
a no-nonsense name
for the well-regulated life.

Strong java in the morning.
Back when the percolator
burped frantically on the stove,
burning the bitter liquid
but infusing the house
with glorious aroma.

As a boy, I loved that big red machine
in the aisle chock-a-block with coffee.
The powerful grinding noise.
The silky sluice
of finely ground beans,
that stopped
just short of overflowing.
The intoxicating smell.
So that I yearned to try
the grown-up drink.

The first cup
is like a rite of passage.
Up there with the first kiss,
accidentally clinking incisors.
With learning to drive,
your dad on the passenger side
clenching tightly.
A delicious aroma
but the taste was bitter.
Until, that is
I was initiated into the ritual
of milk and sugar,
transforming it
into a rich brown elixir.
Because a child’s palate
is so much more sensitive,
not yet jaded by life.

Eventually, I learned to take it black.
A well-roasted blend
filtered through acid-free paper.
As I learned to drive
with the roof down, the tunes cranked up
a girl nestled beside me.
And learned to kiss,
not just lips, but tongue
all over her body.

My first cup of coffee,
a gateway drug
to all the pleasures of life.

Snow Take Its Time
Dec 5 2010


Snow takes its time
getting to earth.
I can see the flurry in the distance,
snow in the shape of wind
swirling, hovering
even rising up,
suspended
on cold dense air.

Or perhaps, in winter
the law of gravity is inconsistent.
No different than everything else, it seems
this time of year.
When I walk on water,
awaken, in darkness,
constantly crave
sugar, fat, and starch.

Rain simply falls,
in sprinkles and showers
and cats and dogs.
In summer
a drenching sun.
And night, descending
at a sensible hour
all at once.

But the snow won’t come down
without tempting us
with mischief.
Watching it dance on the wind,
form bottomless drifts,
festoon the trees
with glitter.
Invite us to burrow in
to its unexpected warmth.

The man in the 3-piece suit
puts down his briefcase
scoops up a handful of snow,
and when no one’s looking
aims for a passing bus.
Perfect packing snow,
before the plough
carves an ice-hard snow bank,
before the salt and sand.

A small perfect window
when there are no rules.
When even gravity has gone out to play;
back, in a minute or two.

Longing
Dec 1 2010


The flightless bird
looks ridiculous.
A fat body
on stick-like legs,
waddling bobble-head.
Prehistoric feet
awkwardly grasping at earth.
It adjusts its useless wings,
iridescent, elegantly feathered
longingly feeling for air.
Gracefully stretching, then tucking them in
against a well-muscled breast.
That has yet
to atrophy.

A fish out of water
flops spasmodically,
one unblinking eye
aiming directly up.
Into heaven, perhaps,
a bright and endless sky.
Scales glisten, drying quickly
fins gritty with sand.
Its delicate gills flare,
drowning
in the thin sharp air.

A man, in the darkness
of an arctic winter
desperately longs for the sun.
Not so much heat
as light, and shadow,
the going down, the rising up.
He remembers how tired he was
sleepless, all summer,
when sun penetrated everything
boring relentlessly in.
Now, just a glimpse
would reassure him,
the world might recover
from ceaseless night.

He sleeps, constantly.
Like a land-locked bird
unsuited to earth.
Like a beached fish
turning putrid.
Still trying to find
his element.

The Longest Night
Nov 30 2010


The longest night
of winter.
The moon, extinguished,
the feeble light of stars
at the end of a million years.

Out here, I can see the porch-light for miles
welcoming me home.
It looks like a snow-globe
gently shaken.
The ground glows,
its soft white cover
reminding me of innocence,
never touched.
And forgiveness,
excusing the sins of fall
of things not done,
in a year
when winter came so suddenly.

A flash freeze,
a messy thaw, like false spring.
Now snow
relentlessly falling.

My footsteps are sharply etched
in the soft wet surface
here, in the 40W light.
But follow them back
and they fill-in, gradually
— a precise map,
conflating time
and distance.
Until the last footstep disappears
in a field of perfect white,
all evidence of my passing
erased,
and who would ever miss me?

Like starlight
I decay in time and space;
not quite so far
as the galaxy’s outer reaches,
but ending here, as well.
Where the light of a single bulb
is strong enough to overwhelm
a thousand suns.

One Kind of Everything
Nov 26 2010


I got them at the liquor store
or supermarket;
which was a longer walk
but felt more deserving.
Where I shopped
for macaroni, and dented cans
bruised bananas, going black
and produce past its due-date
— as good as perfect fruit,
at least for scurvy.

And have stayed with me on every move.
Filled with books
I haven’t cracked since college,
but find I cannot part with.
Sometimes, don’t even unpack
before moving on.

The boxes are cleverly nested
in a crowded closet
or musty basement,
marked with vintage logos
and discontinued brands.
With the faint whiff of vinegar
that old cardboard
and cheap paper give-off,
going brittle, and brown.

How these books weigh me down
I’m not quite sure —
are they an anchor
holding me back,
or a solid foundation
that keeps me grounded?
Either way, I feel reassured,
home-made shelves
filled with familiar stuff
like some sort of talisman.
The book as object,
its contents immaterial.

Of course, they’re useless now,
when tiny silicon chips
contain whole libraries.
The boxes, though
remind me of that old supermarket
that was as small as a modern convenience store.
Not much choice, back then,
nothing foreign, or exotic
or terribly fresh.
Oddly, we were probably happier, shopping
in that modest emporium —
no second-guessing, or regrets
when there’s one kind of everything.

The books, too, contained all the truth,
their received wisdom
irrefutable.
And, like me, hardly up-to-date.
Weighed down by words,
no one there to hear.



This poem has a certain nostalgic power for me. I remember collecting boxes, before a move, at supermarkets and liquor stores. I remember this A&P from the late 70’s, in downtown Kingston: no one today would believe that this actually called itself a “super” market; not in this era of big box stores and hypermarkets. I remember that distinct smell of age and decomposition when I was cleaning out old cardboard boxes from under the stairs: the sort of stuff you know you’d never use, but needed to “ferment” for a while before you could, in all conscience, toss. And I remember vigilantly watching prices and searching out discounts, when there wasn’t much money for basic food.

There are a lot of small details that paint this character as a bit of failure; and, at the same time, elicit a certain sympathy for him: he’s too poor to have a car (or at least early on he didn’t); he moves a lot, presumably looking for work; his shelves are still home-made (I picture college dorm style, made of bricks and 2 x 4’s); and he’s a long way from college, but still seems unsure of his place in the world. He’s not me. But in the final stanza, I guess my subconscious discontent broke through, and he and I end up sharing not just a jaded view of modernity, but the frustration of unpublished writers.

There is a lot of truth in the way we haul around boxes of old books, and how we ornament our shelves with them: books we’ll almost certainly never open again. Perhaps it’s because of the reassuring sense of continuity they provide, a link to our past. Perhaps it’s out of respect: how throwing out a book is such a philistine and irreverent act. Perhaps it’s the mystical sense of knowledge attained, simply by proximity to it. Perhaps it’s a way of proclaiming who we are to the world: not necessarily trying to impress people, but simply that the books that formed us are almost a template of our inner lives. Or perhaps it’s just the usual good intentions: that some day we’ll re-read (or, in some cases, read them for the first time!) Again, please don’t mistake this for autobiography. I actually don’t have this talismanic collection of old books. But I know people who do. I suppose it’s odd that this character seems as sentimental about the boxes as he is about the books. It may not be sentimentality, though: it could be efficiency, or thrift. Or perhaps just plain laziness!

I used “One Kind of Everything” for the title because this is my favourite part of the piece. First of all, because of this strong memory of that old supermarket, and how today something like that seems so quaint and distant and hard to believe. And second, because “happiness” research (something called “behavioural economics”) actually shows this to be true: our purchases give us more happiness – and we’re more likely to buy – when there is less choice! Our terribly destructive consumer society is all about obsolescence and choice. And yet when we see 20 varieties of jam on the shelf, rather than 6, we’re more likely to be paralyzed by too much choice into not buying at all. Or, if we do, we’re more likely to second guess ourselves, and feel regret.

I quite like this poem. I think it evokes a sense of nostalgia and loss and mild failure, in which most of us can see something of ourselves. And I like the way the final stanza ties things together, conflating the character with his collection of books: the weight of words (both metaphorical and literal); the feeling of anachronism and futility.

Superhero
Nov 22 2010


In the old part of town, where I live
there are still alleyways,
running between backyards
like some feral no-man’s land
— a hidden grid,
that shadows
the city streets.

You can tell the neighbourhood
by the wooden fences —
custom-built, and thick,
higher than by-laws permit.
Or over a bit,
where they’re chain-link
and leaning,
anchored in cheap concrete.
And hedges
with sharply trimmed edges,
or moth-eaten, and growing wild.
There are manicured lawns
like a real-estate ad,
or hard dry pads
with weeds, and bare spots,
and a plywood sandbox
with its cracker-jack prize
of plastic toys
and cat shit.

Some good citizens
diligently cut the grass
of the verdant alley, out back;
either civic-minded
or defending their sovereign border
from weeds.
Others ignore it,
a temperate jungle
gone to seed.
And some cheat
going fenceless,
plundering several square feet
of public property
as their own.

I walk the dog here
after dark,
feeling vaguely incognito
an object of suspicion, even.
I can see into windows
where curtains aren’t drawn,
this private world
of quiet backyards.
Rooms blazing warmly with light
looking out
into pitch black night;
so they are blind
to the outside world.
And I am a superhero
in my cloak of invisibility
— the impunity
of darkness.

In winter
the alley is a rutted path
of frozen footsteps
dog scat
a child’s lost mitten.
For a week in fall
there are raspberries,
free-for-the-picking.
And summer is a cool refuge of green,
passing people in their backyard sanctuaries
escaping the street.
Where I can hear ice cubes clink
sudden laughter
kids, splashing in a wading pool.

I hustle on past
avoiding eye contact.
Feeling like a stranger, a voyeur,
intruding on a private world.

Complicity
Nov 21 2010


I was born in the middle of the 20th century.
Which history will remember
as the bloodiest,
ever.
Even the word genocide
had to be invented.

The rich got richer
nothing new.
We were urged to consume
and complied, gladly;
yet happiness
somehow eluded us.
And in the end
bequeathed our debt
to generations to come.
Bu inattention, perhaps
or simple gluttony —
a hot-house earth,
bills deferred
printing money.

So who in the future will believe
I never went to war,
never saw
a dismembered body?
And that I paid my way,
obeyed
my frugal father —
didn’t gawk, fridge door open wide,
lights off, behind me.
And even though I watched the news
faithfully
every night,
couldn’t really do much;
except disapprove,
lead my life
as honourably as possible.

When I reach 100
they will marvel at this old man,
a witness to so many portentous events
that radically changed the world.
Not knowing that all I remember
are sweet corn, and ripe red tomatoes
fresh from my garden.
The only child,
my nose still buried
in that newborn baby smell.
And how it felt
first time ever in love.

And that my main regret
is how helpless I was
to change anything.
My complacency
when the world burned.
When the screams of its victims
were nicely out of hearing.




A political poem, a rare indulgence: about bourgeois complacency, complicity, and powerlessness. The key is in the very first stanza: “Even the word “genocide” / had to be invented.”

I wrote this poem because I feel terribly embarrassed by, and ashamed of, “my” generation; of which, paradoxically, I don’t really feel a part. We baby boomers, squandering the noble legacy of “the greatest generation”, who saved the world from Hitler. Consuming the planet in an orgy of greed. And shamelessly leaving a mountain of debt to out children – having borrowed against the future for immediate gratification; having heedlessly spewed CO2 into the oceans and air.

History will see me as complicit; even though distance and circumstance have somehow left me exempt from the cruelty and depravity of my era.

I see myself as complacent and ineffective.

The truth probably is that most of us really are powerless. And that our small diurnal lives go on despite the great machinations of history; that they go on much the same as they always have; and that the essentials remain unchanged.

And also that bourgeois values may be both our undoing, and our salvation: tending to our own garden may be too little; and, at the same time, just enough.

Safe Passage
Nov 19 2010


The trees were loaded with snow.
Spruce are spindly, this far north,
bending nearly to the ground
in graceful arcs
with their burden of fresh white powder
— like the palace guard
bowing respectfully.
Some trees broke
bare and jagged,
barring the path like scattered spears
abandoned
on the battlefield.

There is a delicate balance of forces,
like deterrence
in a cold war —
the stickiness of snow, the springy wood
the warmth of a frugal sun.
When a sudden gust
can disrupt it all.

Until I walk
along the path
beneath this arbour of gently bending trees,
a triumphant arc
glittering brightly.
And brush against a branch,
springing-up lightly
in a shower of airy snow.
That powders my fleece,
sits, like epaulettes, on my shoulders,
clings to my lashes,
filling the world
with cool translucent light.
Melting quickly,
and, when the mercury plummets
freezing my eyelids shut.
Struck blind, suddenly.

The trees grow towards the path
in a lattice-work tunnel,
competing for open space.
Which will be choked off by forest
swallowed up,
when I no longer come.
Because the trees always win the war,
and safe passage
for a neutral observer like me
is never sure.

The path
as if it never existed.
History, as usual
re-written by the victors.

Illumination
Nov 14 2010


A brisk wind
and the stove draws nicely.

Dry wood
from last winter
seasoned another year,
stacked by the hearth all summer.
Where it sat
adding a nice warm touch
of home.

Birch bark burns
with a strong clean flame,
flaring-up at the touch of a match.
And kindling
becomes instant embers.
Beneath a ziggurat of logs
criss-crossed, then topped-off
with an all-night behemoth,
consumed by fire.

The tree stood for 40 years,
when the man who planted it
found himself old
suddenly,
looking in the bathroom mirror
one brilliant morning
in the cold white light
that reflects
off the first fresh snow.

In a week of fires
the tree is gone.
40 years of sunlight
compressed
into 7 days.
Leaving a dark patina of ash
on the slope of snow
that blankets the roof
undisturbed.
And its elemental atoms
diffusing out
until they cover the earth.
Because nothing is wasted;
matter re-shaped
energy conserved.

An exothermic reaction
sustains itself
until the fuel is gone.
A spark of ignition
steady oxygen,
giving-off
heat, and light.
Breathing in, and out
how many times
in the course of a life?

Like rust
he burns slowly,
the oxygen he needs
consuming his body
from the inside out.
Every cell
re-building itself
many times over
in the course of a life;
until they, too, exhaust themselves.

An urn of ash,
fragments
of unburned bone.
His body heat, as well
left behind,
warming the earth
ever so slightly
all these years.
And perhaps, if he’s good
and lucky,
some light.


I’m very pleased how the last line transforms this poem. Or, at least, abruptly pulls all the threads tight. Not just pleased at the line break between “good”/ “and lucky”, but the reference to “light, left behind.” Because despite the optimism in the idea that matter and energy are ultimately conserved – even fire does not destroy – it is the angst of this man in later middle age that sets the poem’s tone. Until you get to the very last word, that is; where there is the possibility that his life might be redeemed by the light he gave to the world. This metaphorical meaning of “illumination” is very powerful: there is light, and then there is illumination – insight, truth, revelation.

The poem didn’t start with this intent at all. Rather, it was given to me by means of that mysterious stream of consciousness, that exalted state of free association that somehow manages to break down the brain’s rigid compartments. I’ve previously referred to this inspired process as “channelling”: an exhilarating and intensely pleasurable creative state that feels like automatic writing. Let the analytic and critical gate-keepers stand down, and see where that inner voice takes you.

So the poem actually started as a simple descriptive piece: with the first snow and first fire of the season. The key turning point was the word “behemoth” (which was itself given to me by the intrinsic music of language: logs/crossed/top, and behemoth.) I couldn’t help but think what an ignominious end to a life of such longevity and beauty. And what an irreverent act to simply toss a log on the fire, another log to be quickly and casually consumed. That, conflated with my apparent subconscious preoccupation with getting older, made this poem much more personal; and I think, that much more compelling.

I think it would also nicely qualify as one of my notorious “physics” poems. I like the way it plays with time and perspective. I especially like the way it shows natural law unifying such seemingly different phenomena as a growing tree, a fire, human metabolism, the oxidation of metals, and a material interpretation of the after-life.

You Can Close Your Eyes
Nov 8 2010


Our version of fall
is a frumpy librarian
in a modest dress and sensible shoes,
glaring sternly at noise-makers.

No loud displays.
No scarlet show-offs
suffused with light
against crisp blue sky.
No, our trees are quiet, studious
well-behaved.
Mostly yellow foliage
that’s gone in the first stiff wind
well before the clocks turn back.
Gloomy days, and colder rain
waiting for snow.

But this fall was golden
— warm and dry
and slow.
Like a hushed reading room
with clerestory windows
lined with darkly polished wood.

I hear myself crunch
through crisp piles of leaves,
filling ditches
thick to leeward
blown into windrows.
A thin skim of ice
clings to the shore,
tinkling like a million tiny wind chimes
as open water
laps at its edge.
And a rustling in the airy woods
as small furry creatures
dig-in against the cold.

In the honeyed hush
of a fall like this one
you can close your eyes.
Find a place
in the afternoon sun
between long low shadows
and listen carefully,
feeling the unexpected warmth
on your up-turned face.
More literary fiction
than best-seller,
more Haiku, than epic,
the attentive reader
will get her reward.

This northern fall
this fleeting season
is like a single page
between summer and winter,
quickly turned.



After wavering between summer and winter (never spring!), this golden fall has made me think it’s my favourite season after all – as fall always used to be. As the poem says, unusually “warm and dry/and slow”, unlike the cold wet gloom of last year.

It will never be a visually spectacular fall, this far north. But that just encouraged me to tune in to its subtle beauty; and especially its sound. Just imagine, experiencing the beauty of fall with your eyes closed! So the 5th stanza is really where the poem began: crunching through thick piles of leaves; the delicate skim of ice, that literally tinkled in a light breeze; a rustling in the woods, followed by the appearance of a juvenile porcupine, about to experience his very first winter.

I don’t know why the librarian came to mind, except that I was thinking about the unnatural quiet, and immediately pictured her stern glare and strenuous shushing. So, of course, I had to let the metaphor lead me through the rest of the piece – through the reading room, the brief poem, the single page.

It’s challenging to write another poem about fall that anyone would want to read. Hasn’t it all already been said? And these lyric poems about nature can get pretty tired and formulaic. So I hope I managed to meet the challenge, and come up with something worth reading.

A Fresh Fat Cuban
Nov 2 2010


There was the smell of cigars.
In the den, where he read the evening paper.
In the car
always a late model Oldsmobile.
Smudging the windows
with a dull blue haze,
crumpled in ashtrays, the blunt remains
of stogies
dark with spit.
Rolling around his lips
not paying much attention,
the way a couple kiss
after 40 years of marriage.

Stale cigar smoke
is like a beer parlour at closing time,
better in low light
urgently opening windows.
But when someone puffs
on a fresh fat Cuban
you can’t get enough,
inhaling the 2nd hand smoke
with greedy pleasure,
nose extended, nostrils flared.
Impatient to be grown up,
when you will be ushered in
to the secret society of men,
who can knot a bow-tie, eyes closed,
tell off-colour jokes,
light up a stogie
old-school.

My glamorous uncle
would come all the way up
from New York City,
stashing a box full of hand-rolled Cubans
in his matching bags.
The thrill of contraband
immensely improving
the long slow draw
of well-cured tobacco.

My dad quit
a few years after I left home.
I never did learn how to smoke.
But I still love the smell
of a good cigar.
The thick smoke, uncoiling;
the rich brown leaves
with a little green
in the wrapper.

I can only hope
that one day
I will have something to celebrate
worthy of a fine cigar.
Passing around
a well-stocked humidor
to comrades, and co-conspirators,
swapping backslaps
and manly laughter.



The closest I ever got were those cheap wine-dipped and plastic-tipped Cigarillos: in my defence, a mercifully short-lived form of adolescent rebellion.

The rest is largely true. With embellishment (poetic license?), of course. My father never really smoked that often; only on special occasions. And he never drove an Oldsmobile; but the brand has that nice archaic sound, and evokes a past era delightfully – well before the age of political correctness. Back when a prosperous executive bought a new car every two years. And fits nicely this whole archaic notion of “manliness” (Which, needless to say – except somehow I feel I need to say it – I’m using entirely ironically!) I don’t think anyone says “late model” anymore, either. And while newspapers still struggle gamely on, the evening editions have altogether disappeared. The New York uncle always did seem glamorous; and I’m sure those illegal Cubans tasted twice as good because of it. And the smell of stale cigar smoke is really quite revolting, while the smell of a freshly smoked cigar is intoxicating: better, I think, 2nd hand than it is for the actual smoker.

My mother eventually had her way, and my dad quit. My brother, too: also to the eternal relief of his own long-suffering wife!

I’ve been watching a TV series called Boardwalk Empire, set in Atlantic City at the time of prohibition. The men here drink too much, step out on their wives, wear gorgeous suits and great hats, and smoke big fat cigars with impeccable style. I don’t want to emulate them. But these archetypes do strike me as the essence of manliness, and the well-savoured cigar is an indispensable part.

…I just realized that when the paternal side of my family first came over from Europe in the 1800's (from Amsterdam, actually) they were in the cigar business! In fact, the precursor to a fairly big chain called United Cigar (which may not still be around; but was when I was a kid.) So perhaps there's a cigar aficionado's gene lurking somewhere inside me, and I was destined – sooner or later – to write a cigar poem!