Garden Park
Oct 5 2013


A small park
that ends in a low stone wall,
where a steep drop-off

over-looks the brightly lit city
and in the distance, the lake,
its slate-grey depths
brushed with moonlight.

Where after dark, cars park
like boats pointing out to sea,
straining against the pull
of this small northern place.
I cannot see
behind the tinted glass,
radios thumping

eruptions of laughter.
But I can see the glowing ash

of cigarettes
in nervous hands,
hear suspensions squeak.
The things that have always gone on
Saturday nights
in bucket seats.

Like flocks of small birds
who seek safety in numbers,
swooping into turns as if one
breasts lighting up

in unison,

young women and men

are drawn together

here, on the edge of the park,
cruising, idling

steaming-up cars.
When everything is new,
and they will always be beautiful
indestructible.
And who would resent the comparison
if I told them their parents
had also met
in the back of a vintage car,
here, on the edge of love.

We all think
we have discovered sex
for the first time ever.
But like the fluttering hearts of tiny birds
their all-encompassing heat
is nothing
compared to the ancient lake,
that sits, impervious,
cooling the still night air.

On a recent Saturday night, I walked the dog right instead of left. We ended up in a nearby park that is just as described, and is apparently a hot make-out spot: idling pick-up trucks trading places, the kind of cool cars young men yearn to drive, and low-slung sedans cruising by. I was struck that despite this being 2013 -- an era of social media and sexual freedom -- it could just as well be 1950. It was the old cliché of the more things change, the more they stay the same.

On display was the transience of youth and beauty, the solipsistic hubris of the young. But in sharp counterpoint was a powerful sense of timelessness: the generational repetition of the familiar rites of passage; the brooding permanence of the ancient lake.

Men at Work
Oct 3 2013


I watch the men at work.

They clash,
in yellow hard hats
orange vests.
They chat, talk with their hands,
waving cigarettes
leaning back against
rough concrete piers.

A belching crane
that could squash them like bugs
unspools steel cable
as thick as a weight-lifter's chest,
the diesel revving
deafeningly
against the compression of weight.

I see drones
slouching, lounging,
determined workers, beetling around.
Each man, going this way and that
is a single ant
at some minor task
in a vast chaotic collective.
While I look on, suppressing envy,
as if a boy's dream machines
were their private playthings.

Like a badly choreographed dance,

its conductor stuck in an airless trailer

peering at plans

only he understands.

Or a mismatched ensemble
cacophonous jazz,

all flinching minors, a screeching sax.

Until the final note,
when the racket resolves, nearly miraculous
in a pure sweet chord.
A work of art
in glass and steel,
like music, taking form.


A few times over the last year, I've flown in and out of Billy Bishop Airport, in downtown Toronto. It occupies a small island, separated from the mainland by a narrow gap. So I've been able to catch an intermittent glimpse of the vast underground tunnel that's being built to replace the ferry.

The workers seems almost haphazard and random in their chores. They seem to spend as much time standing around as actually doing something. Which is an impression -- probably thoroughly unfair -- I seem to get at every construction site. The project management and engineering of something like this is a gargantuan and exhaustive task. But slowly, out of this chaos, an incredibly complicated project is taking shape: until all the small details converge; until both ends of the tunnel merge in the middle, not missing even by inches. In a year, when I'm able to walk through a finished tunnel and all signs of disturbance on the surface have been converted to grass and trees (or, more likely, parking lots!), the utter chaos of its gestation will be forgotten. The poem, on the other hand, remembers at least a little of it. Although here, the tunnel becomes a skyscraper. Because you have to admit that a soaring building of glass and steel makes a lot more uplifting image than buried concrete walls.

One metaphor is of small insects: a pretty natural (and hackneyed?) one when you consider flying, and the tired old cliché about ant-like people seen from the air. Although I hope I managed to keep it fresh.

The other metaphor, of music and dance, conveniently leads to the ending, which is simply a different iteration of the quote attributed to Goethe comparing architecture to frozen music.

But I could easily dispense with literary devices, with showing-off how clever I am. Because the 2nd stanza -- which is purely descriptive and pretty much linear -- is actually my favourite. I like the "unspooling", the simple analogy of the weight-lifter, the solid language of "squash" and "bug", and the muscular sound of the diesel compressing.

I wonder if this is the first poem ever that's a paean to project management?!! ...Not to mention comparing civil engineering to the miraculous!

Time Enough
Sept 28 2013


There should be pretty girls
encircled in their arms,
sailors stealing kisses
illicit feels.

Or the home team
in Cadillac cars
in a blizzard of ticker tape,
drunk
on victory.

Delirious leaves
in the first big wind of fall,
burnished yellows and rusts
in swirling curtains, and gusts
funnelling up
in wind-spouts,

filling the air
like confetti, from pent-up fans.
Or from the weary masses

done with war.
In a windy blast
in a single day
all the trees laid bare.

Fall came, and went
like a victory parade;
returning men
thrilled to be alive,
all the girls

ecstatic.
Time enough
to remember fallen friends
in the winter of discontent
the morning after.

The trees have turned,
exhausted limbs

stripped clean.
Next week
I will rake up spent and crumpled leaves,
put them to rest
unmarked
in neatly spaced piles.

Fall is short here, and the colours unspectacular. So a big wind -- like today -- is pretty much enough to turn the soft beauty of fall into skeletal trees and crumpled leaves.

The gusting leaves looked like a storm of confetti, except that the crucial celebration was missing. The scene needed that iconic picture of the anonymous soldier and girl kissing in the street on V-E day; or the New York Yankees waving from the seat backs of 1950s Cadillac convertibles, parading down the canyons of Wall St in a blizzard of ticker tape.

This image of an exhausted population in the aftermath of war led me to the bitter-sweetness of fall: the death of leaves; the coming of winter. Like the drunken bacchanal of these public celebrations, there if often a dark undercurrent beneath the beauty and joy.

The hard part was having the poem take this dark turn. Too sudden or too dark, and it would seem false; or even emotionally manipulative. I hope the bit of foreshadowing, and the way the poem dips in a toe and then back out, helps to soften the turn; helps make it seem natural, if not inevitable. And that the mounds of leaves resembling unmarked graves is not too heavy-handed.

Bumblebee
Sept 23 2013

Yellow, bristling, plump
the bumblebee buzzes
improbably,
a gaudy ornament
in the sweet warm air.
Bumping up and down, shunting unsteadily,
as if drunk
on fermentation.

In the dry equation
flight is impossible.
But the theorists under-estimate
how the rules change
in microcosm.
Like the order of magnitude
inhabited by our gods,
whom we are told
are unknowable,
are proscribed from naming.
The mysteries
that layer by layer
constrain human pride.

Meanwhile, the bee hovers and flies
intent on nectar,
eventually coming to rest
on my outstretched hand.
I feel no weight,
and did I imagine
the electric tickle of its tiny legs,
the susurration of air
as it lifted off?

Busily, on its zig-zag path,
dusted with pollen
impossibly fat.
Magnificently unaware
of its landing spot.

I've written this poem before. I think then it had something to do with spiders. It's the idea of orders of magnitude, of which we occupy a tiny layer. Of how much we are unaware. Of what hides in plain site. Of the ineffable and impenetrable complexity of nature, large and small.

And, of course, a theological theme is hardly unusual with me. As an unrepentant atheist, I suppose I'm supposed to believe that all the mysteries of nature are susceptible to human inquiry and the rigour of rational minds. But that's not true. I find that the more I know about science, the greater the space for mystery and wonder -- you hardly need superstition and magical deities for this. And I also find that the more I learn, the more I learn to be humble about the limits of knowledge. Which is what I'm getting at with the lines "The mysteries/ that layer by layer/ constrain human pride."

("...proscribed from naming" may need explanation, as well. This is very much a tenet of Judaism (if not of other religions): that God is never to be looked upon, or named. So Biblical references are always indirect. The theological explanation, I suppose, is this idea of unknowability: a corrective to human hubris and presumption; and a reminder of our fatalistic submission to (excuse my paraphrase) "His wonders working in mysterious ways.")

The poem was written out of season, so the inspiration was not personal experience. It actually arose from something I read, and immediately felt the urge to riff upon. Here it is:

"A few weeks ago, I noticed a bee clinging to my bathroom window. It was dusted with yellow pollen, drunk on the stuff, and I brought my face in close to look. But I was busy, just taking a quick break so after a few seconds I blew gently on the screen; the bee buzzed away. Immediately, I wished I'd watched it for longer."

The author was J. R. McConvey, a documentary film producer. On the theme of nature, and under the title Paradise Lost?, he was writing a review of two books -- George Monbiot's Feral, and J.R. MacKinnon's The Once and Future World. This was the introduction. While not quite plagiarism, I'll certainly own up to a lack of originality (and reluctantly admit that the dusting and the drunkenness are not mine.)
.
When I began, the poem was going to be short and whimsical: one of my so-called "word-play" poems, where it's all clever rhymes and quick cadences. (Really, have I ever managed to stop myself before a short sweet poem went on too eye-glazingly long?!!) But then what immediately came to mind was that old trope about bees being theoretically unable fly. And, in keeping with the paragraph quoted above, the idea that if you don't look, you won't see. So I wanted to describe something small, transient, and finely detailed. Which is, after all, the purview of poets: to stop; to observe closely; to make unexpected connections; and to cherish the simple pleasures. And which is exactly what McConvey and his two authors are preaching to a distracted and solipsistic world.

I wonder how it would change the poem to have gone with "he" instead of "it"?

Weather Report

Sept 21 2013

We even disagreed
about the weather.

While complete strangers
find it easy breaking the ice
when a day

is unexpectedly nice.
Making small talk
over shared misery
bad predictions.

But she worshipped sun
and I am consoled by rain.
Omens
darkened her clouds,
she took stormy skies to heart.
While I see Greek tragedies, and pagan gods,
enthralled
by the pageantry
the sturm und drang.

Which is why
when she disappeared one night
I figured California,
where it's always gorgeous
and weather reports
aren't much.
Because when beautiful days
are ho-hum
what's to say?

But how do strangers meet
in paradise?
And how do the brooders, the glumly saturnine
survive
the high pressure
of perfect weather?
When there's no excuse
for bad humour,
and pathetic fallacy
is as shallow
as a happy face.

She sent a postcard
of Pacific sunset,
no return address.
Some darkroom magic, I suspect
in the sparkling blue
the pinks and reds.
Her perfect fantasy,
but less epiphany
than farce.

Which was after midnight, here,
with a waxing moon
breaking fitfully through
roiling ragged cloud,
wind-driven
spiked with rain.
A vast drama
playing out in the upper atmosphere
over-powering sleep.

How ecstatic I felt
to be so small.
To disappear
one night
as well.

I was reading a short essay in which the author confessed she had always disparaged talk about the weather as pointless and banal, but then came to realize that it was the perfect way in, between strangers: non-threatening, and universal. Of course here, the weather is always interesting; sometimes vital. Weather reporters can be celebrities.

I had to admit that I often resort to short weather reports speaking long distance with my elderly mother. She reciprocates, and seems cheered by a nice day -- even though she can easily go through daily life without ever actually stepping out into it, moving from her condo to the underground garage and then by car. Weather has a powerful effect on our moods, even if we're just observing through glass.

But who's to say what's good and bad? Sometimes, a stormy day is exhilarating. And sometimes, we all need the enforced time out of a snow day. "Good" weather isn't always good!

And how different this all must be in places like Hawaii, or Southern California, where the weather is as predictable as sunrise: sunny and dry and temperate. Who listens to the carbon copy weather report? And aren't all those good days wasted; hard to appreciate when they're taken for granted?

Anyway, all these thoughts morphed into this poem. It's not autobiography; although I do love a good storm, and often find overcast days unaccountably restful. Although if not autobiography, perhaps an exercise in unbecoming self-flattery, since the sun-lover comes across as shallow; while it's implied that those attracted to "interesting" weather are more thoughtful, sensitive, and deep. ...Or at least more susceptible to angst!

My favourite part of the poem is the call-back in the very last sentence: " ...disappear(ed)/ one night ...". (I also quite like "ho-hum"!) I think this does get a lot closer to autobiography, in that I'm very good at living in my head: while the hypothetical "she" may have needed thousand of miles to disappear, I can quite happily disappear in thought and quiet observation. No going anywhere. Here, of course, it’s disappearing into insignificance against the majesty of nature.

At Rest

Sept 18 2013


Her face softens
in sleep.
One hand
clutching at wrinkled sheets,
a frazzle of hair
undone on the pillow.

A girl, again,

her features slack in repose.

The years dropping off
like weight from her shoulders,

until she's lost, who knows where;
paper-thin lids, unnaturally calm
teeth and jaw unclenched.

In the green glow
of a bedside clock
I watch,
a mix

of transgression

protectiveness.
Her laser eyes, turned in
from the world outside,
a sigh, held breath
short shriek.
Her bed, undefended,

her rest

beset by dreams.

Which she rarely remembers, or wished she'd forget
in the prickly sweat
of awakening;

covers in knots

the familiar set of her face.

Except today,
when she will open her eyes
with a vague sensation of watchfulness,
feeling inexplicably safe.

Point and Shoot

Sept 16 2013

Even snapshots
have their artistry.
In the accident
of pointing the camera,
the intersection
of light, and action
and chance.

The image, fixed.
Seen
as reality can't,
an infinitesimal instant
you can hold in one hand,
re-visit, re-live.
But more important, what's missed;
the before and after,
the telling absences.

As in music
where beauty
is in the space between the notes.
The expectant pause, ear cocked,
and the sublime release
of completion.
And when the music stops, but lingers,
notes that resonate, unplayed
on weightless vibrations of air.
Or the last word
in a line of a poem,
hovering
like the final measure
still unresolved.

Her unblinking eyes
so wise, so world-weary
locked onto mine
like a diamond-tipped drill.
In that one still moment
all we will know of her;
surface, as in everything we see,
but somehow deeper
indelibly.

What took place before
will happen after
the interrogating lens
moved on?
And was he caught, or posed,
distilled
in the click of a shutter
in darkness, and light?

Nothing

is entered into evidence
no fact is hard.
Because every picture
is projection, inference,
every photograph
a trick.
Especially in black and white,
its austere view
more essential
than colour’s literal truth,
so faithfully reproduced
we hardly notice.

Like that skinny little boy.
So earnest, and dignified,
so fragile, beside
the big black car.

He arrests my eye
stopping time.
A universe
in the small gradations of grey.
In the unnatural stillness
where he will always remain.

I struggled a great deal with this poem. It's one of several I've written about photography, trying to capture the powerful effect of arrested time, the indelible power of the still image. I don't think I've ever succeeded.

And I suspect this effort may be a step back, not forward. Because there were many false starts and rejected revisions. And in the end, I don't think the poem works. Probably because there are too many words. And because I never found the phrase that really nails it.

On the other hand, I think I salvaged enough to keep it, and post it. Perhaps a reader will find more here that I can see. And perhaps I will return to it, eventually; or, if not return, then at least plagiarize the good bits!

In

Sept 12 2013


Old married couples
who are still in love
can seem preposterous.
What did she see in him, you wonder.
Or what a beauty
she must have been
to have pursued, and won.
Although, in the fullness of time
it's hard to judge.
Because we all know
how old married couples
come to resemble each other,
until the least likely coupling
hardly seems odd.

Or are they out of love
but stay,
because change is tough
and the inertia of day-to-day
makes life bearable?
Because the weight
of expectation

anchors them,
the others who want, and need
this beacon of faithfulness?

You judge
by the small unacknowledged kindnesses.
The indulgent rolling of eyes
when he repeats that story
she knows by heart.
How unmoored she feels
when he is gone,
paper unread
table set
for one.
And his sleeplessness
left alone in bed
the night she spent
away.
Their settled love
protected inside

the castle walls,
where they tend to their garden
in the ever-after
of domestic life.

We think of falling in love
as a thrill-ride,
stepping over the edge
into giddy surrender
that never ends.
Of lust,
urgent, and reckless.
But not the love
that comes with time,
so enmeshed in the other
one is half a couple
more than oneself;
drawbridge drawn up,
temptation held
at the gate.

When the comfort of home

is wherever she is,

and here, with him. 

It is how they touch
that lets us in.
Straightening his tie
firmly, but gently,
thick hands, not quite so deft

buttoning the back of her dress.
Despite short tempers

long silences,
grudges, regrets, and tough times,

he still sees
his white-gowned bride,
and she, her gallant suitor.

More perfect, even
in the comforting blur
of failing eyes.
In the dim light
of their stone-walled fortress.

Taken

Sept 9 2013

To take a lover.

It seems so simple

put this way;

as if reaching up

for succulent fruit

at the peak of ripeness.

Whole orchards

of unplucked trees

that await
your pleasure.

As if he will be consumed

utterly.

Your appetite, insatiable,

the fickle plaything

your jaded whimsy

desires.

I say he,

because men do not choose

as freely.

He must tend to his garden

attentively,

pursue his quarry

relentlessly,

with offerings

and flattery

and lavish gifts. 

And she will never truly be his;

taken, perhaps

but never fully given.

To take a lover

sounds insincere,

because we idealize romantic love

as virtuous

forever.

While the lover you lust

will be discarded

once you are done.

The inedible pit

unsentimentally tossed aside,

sweet fermented juice 

sucked dry.

Retreat

Sept 7 2013


They have begun their retreat,
in a slanted line
in the high clear sky
of September.

They slipstream south
along the path of least resistance,
a roughly staggered line
back, and to the side
drafting behind;
a ragged procession of geese
that wavers
but holds.
So sensibly honed
by nature,
riding the front-runner's wake
taking turns.

They are not elegant fliers
and hardly fast.
I can see the effort
in their necks, straining ahead
the urgency of wings.
The long-endurance muscles
of their powerful breasts,
as voracious
as jet engine intakes
sucking up air.

Is there a leader
or do they share,
beating upwind?
And are they kin,
or do they assemble
by some inscrutable signal
only birds discern?
Strangers, brought together by luck
who will quickly disperse
when the trip is done.
Like commuters
who avert their eyes
on the journey home,
tolerate
the unnatural closeness
for now.

I look up
in Indian summer
and wonder at their rush,
when the living is easy
and winter seems theoretical.
But they have sensed the briskness
the dearth of insects,
the early setting
of sun.

In spring, their journey reversed
we will welcome them,
harbingers of warmth.
Big awkward birds
honking raucously, and close to exhaustion
putting down hard.
But now, I am caught off guard.
A stab of melancholy
in bitter-sweet fall.


I was caught off guard today: the first sighting of geese, heading south. It wasn't the classic "V"; more of a slanted line -- ragged, but holding. I like what this -- the strategy of drafting off each other's wig-tips -- says about the razor of evolution: selecting the perfect aerodynamic form by trial and error, by the random culling of chance.

Talk about a challenge. Another "nature" poem about migrating geese? Really, does anyone need that?!! So I hope I managed to inject some originality into this. And sufficient small rewards and unexpected pleasures to make worthwhile the few minutes it takes to read ...and (I hope) re-read.

First Day

Sept 5 2013


There are only so many
first days of school.
But for all the remaining Septembers
I am there, again.

The fresh start,

no homework to do

nothing overdue

as yet,
notebooks, unblemished
homeroom freshly waxed.

Before wet wool, and chalk dust

in a few more months.

And the end of summer
as if sentenced to house arrest.
Feeling frayed and stretched
in an tempestuous tug of war --
trepidation

versus excitement.

I remember how anxious I felt
how easily I flushed,
in hand-me-downs, and brand new sneakers
still white as beacons
a size too large,
head down, eyes averted
expecting taunts.
I cringe, even now
how oblivious I was

to fashion, status

sex;

perhaps still am.

I still awaken, in a sweat
in the middle of exams
for which I never studied,
the only thing worse
than first day nerves.
And regret the pretty girls
I might have asked out,
had my vision not blurred

tongue thickened.

And with all that I have learned
in my adult life
I suspect nothing has changed
should first day once again come,
the big kids
strict teacher
new school.
Self-conscious, and feeling set apart,
unguarded
from all-seeing eyes.

The child inside
in the morning light
of September
watching the children walk to school,
hair slicked back
in bright back-packs
and fashionable clothes.
But feeling relieved
I'm now too old
to tag along.

And perhaps a little envy
that I may be too far gone
for fresh starts;
notebook unmarked,
blackboard sparkling clean.


What's good about poetry:

I use these blurbs to elaborate on a poem, and often to bookmark in memory its inspiration and process of creation. Nothing needed here. But I will take this opportunity to suggest to my hypothetical reader a fabulous poem I read shortly before sitting down to write.

In commemoration of his recent death, The New Yorker of Sept 9 2013 reprinted a poem of Nobel prize winner Seamus Heaney (it first appeared in the June 25 1979 edition). What a terrific piece. (Not to mention what a refreshing change from the arcane, pretentious, and unpleasant sounding poetry they usually chose!) So I would highly recommend the Irish poet to anyone trying to understand what's good about poetry. It's called The Guttural Muse. Short and sweet and note perfect, with an unerring ear for the musicality of language: not one word too many or too few; and certainly no need of any elaboration or explanation.

Too Small

Sept 3 2013


It is too small
to appear on maps.
It has many names,
depending on the trees, the season
the angle of sun.
On whether the moon was new, or full;

a silver carpet, rolled-out invitingly,

or inky-black

bad luck.

Modern explorers

stumbling out of the bush, onto its shore

give names

to this anonymous lake,

just as those before them.

Because naming things

is our way into the world.

Mud, Bulrush, Boot-Suck Lake,

fixing place

as mnemonic, epithet, metaphor.

It is no northern beauty,
with pink granite rocks
descending to the water's edge,
lush green moss
softening each step.
Where windswept pines
tower over scant underbrush
in even airy light.

No, it is dense scrub
a tangled shore,

stunted spruce, spindly poplar.
Almost muskeg, sphagnum swamp
where the drainage is poor.
You peer back
at the dark damp interior
and realize how this lake was lost,
one tiny patch of blue
in the boreal vastness.

I watch, under a waxing moon,
distilled light, glinting thinly

in a riff of cool wind,

mirror broken.
And the ghosting trees
that seem to move
all on their own.
Somewhere, piercing the gloom
a loon gives throat,
its ululation
as eerily pure
as it is alone.

I did not name this lake
will let memory stand.
Anyway, the path has overgrown
there are no maps.


As Canadians, we tend to romanticize the north, celebrate the notion of wilderness. Especially at the end of summer, when we are susceptible to nostalgia. That was the case this Labour day, when the Globe featured a piece by Roy McGregor -- both about canoeing the Petawawa, and as a remembrance of Blair Fraser (a celebrated journalist, who died in the rapids there 45 years ago); and a complementary piece by Lorna Crozier -- about the sanctuary of a tiny anonymous lake, a rare blue moon (which is not just a convenient rhyme, but an actual technical term referring to the occurrence of a full moon twice in the same month), and a moment of rumination on a dying friend.

She wrote: "You're not sure why you've chosen this lake -- no one has even bothered to name it. If it was located in southwest Saskatchewan, where you grew up and where water is scarce, you'd find it on a map." I also lifted "Mud" and "Bulrush" from her (she included "Antelope", as well) -- her Saskatchewan names; while her Ontario ones suggest more congenial places: "Trout, Canoe, Devil's Lake." They may be hypothetical, but the names say it all: cattailed and weedy and soft-bottomed, as opposed to clear pools set into ice-age granite.

This idea of the unnamed and unmapped lake really caught my imagination. Because when you travel through the north by canoe, you encounter countless muddy scrubby aesthetically unmemorable lakes, often resembling as much a wet spongy lowland as a legitimate body of water. You know this place has never been charted, and its only names were uttered by some previous traveler -- likely attached to an expletive!

I also liked the idea of a private meaningful place, no need to explain why it gives you solace and sanctuary; even when it would seem utterly unappealing to anyone else.

This is more of a composite than any particular lake. Although it is a bit closer to mine -- with its heavily wooded shore and dense underbrush -- than that postcard Muskoka landscape of pink granite, majestic white pines, open and airy vistas. The contrast was especially salient with when I wrote this, since I'd just seen a documentary the night before, and it featured a particularly beautiful postcard lake; which only served to remind me how deficient in conventional beauty is my own. Having paddled a bit of the Petawawa myself, I know how pretty it is, as well.

So it was with the conflation of all these images, impressions and personal memories that the poem emerged. I think it's a much more accurate rendition of wilderness than the more conventionally beautiful, than cottage country. Because most of the boreal north looks like this. Although there is a different kind of beauty in the feeling of mystery, remoteness, and inaccessibility; in the lack of human presence; in a less hospitable place unsullied by man.

An Augury on Stars

Sept 1 2013


A small fragment of rock,
like an airless planet
erratically circling the sun.
From before the land weathered
the mountains cooled,
before plants, animals
man.

I imagine an ancient remnant,
craggy, black
and infinitesimal,
when it crossed paths
with us,
barely touched
the outer atmosphere.
Where it skimmed, like a skipping rock,
stray molecules of air
sparking-off
its hard glassy surface.

It lasted
for a second, or so
just as I looked skyward,
flaring up
in the brilliant dark
against a million points of light.
That sleepless night,
seeking a sign
some higher power.

A cold black cinder
which was not a star
and did not fall
but intersected blindly.
A billion years
extinguished in a blink of light;
a smudge of heat, a puff of ash
too small to matter.

And was I the only witness
glancing up
that fateful instant?
Or was another privileged to see
the enormous sky
its vast indifference?

How dare I think
the universe would answer me,
take note
that I existed.

The day I wrote this I had been listening to a radio documentary about religion; various people talking about their search for transcendence, surrender to faith, or disillusion. This particular man spoke about looking for a sign, and seeing -- as if right on cue -- a highly visible shooting star. But he wasn't ready, and -- laughing at himself -- thought he'd be the typical Jew and go for 2 out of 3. (As a "Jewish atheist", I can take the liberty of repeating this in its proper self-deprecating spirit!) Of course, the next time, exactly the same thing happened. So, he joked, what choice did he have?

Where I live, the skies are relatively free of light pollution. On cloudless nights, the stars can be brilliant, and shooting stars (falling stars?) no at all unusual. So I'd certainly be loath to attach my fate to something so commonplace.

A recurring theme in my more philosophical pieces is a militant atheism and suspicion of faith that veers toward the nihilistic. The ending here revisits that theme: how infinitesimally small and insignificant we are in a cold indifferent universe. Complementing this is a related theme: how magical thinking about a higher power -- not to mention the self-referential thinking of a personal relationship with God (even worse than the medieval earth-centric universe, a "me"-centric one) -- is closer to narcissism than it is to the humble submission earnest believers seek.

A Small Patch of the World

Aug 28 2013


The perfect length of grass.
So the cut is straight, sharp
as if to mark
an unambiguous act
completed.

Mowing, as in mowing down.
A small patch of the world
I find unaccountably pleasing,
overlapping rows
manicured, even.

Like winter snow, with just enough wetness,
my shovel smoothly slices
geometric edges.

And so I tend
to my modest plot,
conferring order, or its illusion
in a relentlessly messy world.
Where nothing is sure,
no end, definite.

I breathe in
the mulchy scent
of wet hay, and chlorophyll;
summer

in a whiff.
And odourless snow

in drifts, and windrows.

Although wet wool

brings me back,
redolent as fresh cut grass.
Radiators
in an over-heated school,
steaming
with multi-coloured mitts.
Dull-eyed kids

hoping for a white-out blizzard;
snow days
giddy with broken rules.

I survey my work, take its measure
pleased with myself.
The freshly cut lawn,
suffused
with the soft green light of dusk.

And underneath
restless weeds
already pushing up.


The poem is supposed to evoke the tension between order and disorder; between the bourgeois ideal of the well-regulated life, and a kind of restless bohemian undercurrent. So there is the sense of smell, with its primitive emotional power ...the snow day, with its anarchic release ...and the weeds, relentlessly growing, unseen.

The illusion of order we get from these mundane tasks -- the even swathes of a well-cut lawn, the geometric precision of cleared snow -- is unaccountably pleasing! I think this is because most of what we do is ambiguous, equivocal: work is unquantifiable, with no sure endpoint, no sense of finality:  shuffling papers …deals that go nowhere …meaningless busy-work, that does not last. So anything that offers a hard measurable outcome -- as you get when you stand back, hands on hips, and survey a well-cut lawn -- is an uncommonly satisfying. And actually getting something done through hard physical work is one of the simple pleasures of life. 

A Boy and His Dog

Aug 25 2013


In the old folks' home
which everyone calls it,
even though old folks
are now all "seniors",
and the warm comfort of home
has become a halfway-house

in a holding pattern.

Like planes, low on fuel
circling to land.

Perhaps a facility
with green institutional paint
the taint of neglect.
Or a community, manor, estate,
where elegant women
are still well-dressed,
the men outnumbered.

Where proud owners
escort their dogs,
calm ones, with glossy coats
and soft brown eyes.
And shaky hands
with parchment skin
stroke them slowly
hard,
the topographical faces
that chart their lives
beaming.

And a confused man
who won't let go,
as if at sea
clinging to a piece of the wreck,

his vintage plane, ditched

short of the landing strip.
Who may be happy there
regressing to boyhood,

cradling the neck

of his big dependable dog.

While wagging, licking, nuzzling for treats
the dogs do not see
age, or loss.
And so uncommonly gentle
with the frail.

We are most in love
when we feel needed,
so what else could this be?
The eager dogs,
who give themselves to strangers

so completely,
accept each poke and prod
with stoic dignity.
The bed-bound, and dependent
who still have something of worth
to offer a beautiful creature,
hands extended
the coming together
of touch.
To be lifted up
like a lighter-than-air machine.

For a moment, at least
as inseparable
as the boy and his dog,
whose body remembers
though he may have forgot.

My elderly and increasingly confused father finds himself for the next 4 weeks largely bed-bound, in an assisted living home, awaiting an unfortunately long-delayed revision to his prosthetic hip.

When my mother began talking about some of the entertainments that make the place bearable, I began to think about therapy dogs visiting the elderly and institutionalized. I've always thought my own dog (Skookum, the wonder-dog!), who is uncommonly loving and gentle, would be perfect for this -- once she settles down. (She's a Lab, and apparently this takes years!) I was wondering if they ever had such visitors at the place. And I also suggested my mother start thinking about a small dog of her own. Because I know how valuable the companionship of a good dog can be; especially since she hasn't been on her own in over a half century.

In the first stanza, I couldn't resist poking fun at the euphemisms for "old". I know that when "senior citizen" was first used, it had a certain dignity: the idea of citizenship, after all, has the connotation of usefulness and involvement. And "senior" is more a term of respect than relegation. But now, it has an air of ridiculousness about it. Referring to "seniors" just sounds condescending to me. Anyway, I'm pretty sure my cohort -- the giant wave of baby boomers entering their advanced years -- will resist this expression, since it belongs to a different generation and so has lost its euphemistic power. (And if not my generation, then me!)

The rest of the poem needs no explanation -- the beaming faces; the unexpected strength of an old person's grip; the unconditional and unjudgmental dignity of the dogs; and the power of touch. (I originally had "desperate for touch". I chose "the coming together/ of touch" not only because it alludes to this power, but because it's more egalitarian, doesn't distinguish between recipient and giver.)

In the first version, the aviation metaphor touched down just a couple of times -- the holding pattern, ditching at sea. (There is nothing profoundly meaningful about this choice. When "halfway house" wasn't quit strong enough to convey that sense of waiting -- of anteroom or limbo -- "holding pattern" nailed it; so aviation it was.) I thought that abandoning the metaphor there was a weakness in the poem; which is when I added "to be lifted up/ like a lighter-than-air machine." The depiction of aged faces as topo-maps that chart their lives (something you might navigate by, looking down from a plane) was the final change. I'm quite pleased with this: "topographical faces" seems so much better than such tired alternatives as lined, wrinkled, shrivelled, etched. On the the other hand, I wonder if I've flogged the metaphor to death, and it's starting to interrupt the flow, sound shoe-horned in: that is, drawing attention to my cleverness, rather than enhancing the poem.

"A boy and his dog" is almost archetypal. I'm late middle aged; but ever since I got my dog, I often feel as if I'm living a second childhood when we are out together: in the simplicity of our play; in the power of the bond. Here, at the end, the title becomes “the boy and his dog”, calling back to the fourth stanza’s confused man.

Whole Cloth

Aug 22 2013

I pass through dreams
awakening.
Loosely woven cloth
that frays, disintegrates
flutters weightless away.
I try to sustain
this reverie,
amazed
at the warp and weft
of my untethered brain,
which forgets nothing
confabulates the rest.

But before I dreamt

I tossed and turned on a bed of nails,

my mind
brooding on a single thread;

rumination, recrimination

regret.

As if transfixed
by a blinding light
in a long dark tunnel;
a speeding train,
or the way out

a glimpse of day?

Like a lens

funnelling sun to a lethal point,
as when we were kids
torturing ants
for fun.
My mind

fingers its worry-beads,
circling, returning

churning with thought.

I try to travel back
re-imagine the whole cloth,
lying still

emptying out.

Like walking with a full glass
trying not to spill.

But cannot
sustain this fragile trance.
And my problem, lost
in the kaleidoscope
of pink and golden dawn,
in through my window like clockwork.


That bizarre incoherent trance in the morning, as you emerge through REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement sleep, or dream sleep) into wakefulness, is called the hypnagogic state (a word that sounded horrible anywhere I tried to shoehorn it into the poem!) It makes little sense; but as I've tried to cultivate my dream life -- something I used to deny even having, since I never remembered my dreams -- I've trained myself to lie perfectly still, letting my mind free associate and travel back as methodically as I can through the incoherent logic of my latest dream. Which only takes me so far, of course, before all remnants of the dream disintegrate irretrievably, and wakefulness intervenes.

The night before was diametrically opposite. (What else is new?!!) Instead of a barrage of unrelated thoughts, you tend to fixate obsessively on one: some insoluble problem; perhaps some cringe-worthy humiliation. In my case, the focus lately has often been a lot less cerebral: it's been a very bad summer for bugs, and as often as not I'm preoccupied with itching/scratching somewhere on my badly afflicted body. I may distracted enough by the busyness of daytime not to notice; but infallibly, at night, a barely noticed itch becomes unbearable.

What an odd trick of the mind, not to mention bad timing: to go from this laser-like focus at bedtime, to incoherence and fluidity on awakening. And how frustrating, when night begins: trying to get to sleep, only to find yourself so utterly pre-occupied, pulled back into anxious consciousness. Morning, similarly, has its frustrations: grasping at these wisps of dream, just as they dematerialize, or drift beyond reach. ...Of course, the alchemy of the sleeping brain is that you will often awaken to problem solved; or at least awaken with improved perspective, so if not "lost", then not quite such a problem after all.

There is a bit of a dog's breakfast of metaphors here: from cloth to light (which is the major recurring one) to a full glass; not to mention a bed of nails, a magnifying glass, worry beads, and a claustrophobic train tunnel! So I hope this isn't too busy and scattershot. I think it works well enough. But then again, I'm too close to poem right now to judge. I need to let go, and revisit later.

An alternate title -- perhaps a better one -- is "Whole Cloth". I like the misdirection here, as opposed to the absolute lack of ambiguity in "Awakening". Comments welcome.

(Oh oh. I just looked it up. They have "hypnagogic" as the state immediately before falling asleep. Oh well. I'll invoke the universal exculpation of poetic licence, even if my serenely confident statement of fact is unequivocally wrong!)

Cueing Up Some Cool Jazz

Aug 19 2013


I have heard actors say
you build character from the outside in.
The costume, the wig,
how the outer trappings
transform the man.
Not method, but craft,
free of the anguish
of living in your head.

Just as DNA
is expressed
according to the outside world,
deception
hardens into self.
Because how the world sees us
we begin to see ourselves,
empowered
by that protective skin;
while curled within, still warm and wet
the timid homunculus.

I hear her on the radio,
a beautiful voice
both at ease, and masterful.
I imagine her
as perfect as she sounds,
as intimate
as the single listener
she was taught to picture
one-to-one.

You hope never to see
radio people,
who will only disappoint.
Her disembodied voice
here with me
in this warm safe place,
whispering in my ear;
cooing the news, the weather
the latest hit,
cueing up some cool jazz
at 3 am.

Which we will enjoy, together
some far-off day;
a dream sequence
on a private stage,
playing as ourselves
in a clever masquerade.

I was just reading a piece in the weekend paper about a woman named Lake Bell (love the name!) She is an actor who always dreamed of being a voice artist, and who is still fascinated by the inscrutable power of the invisible voice: on stage, over radio, and in voice-over. She's just written, directed, and acted in (at a ridiculously young age, further confirming my self-image as a horrible under-achiever) a very well-received indie movie called "In A World ..." (add your own deep apocalyptic voice and over-hyped music!)

I've loved public radio for as long as I can remember. (So "the latest hit", needless to say, is poetic licence; since as much as I love public radio, I detest top 40.) This shouldn't be surprising, because it seems a perfect match for a solitary type who is very good at living in his head (never mind an information junkie). When I've gotten to see the person behind the voice, I've almost always been disappointed. So I'm very aware of the power of a beautiful voice; and quite certain I'd rather keep my illusions intact. (Which reminds me of that cleverly self-deprecating expression: "I have a face for radio." But the less on that the better!)

I think it was Alec Guinness who said something to the effect that costume and make-up transformed him instantly into character; that character builds naturally from the outside in. This idea of craft appeals to me, and seems the essence of acting. I find the anguish of "method acting" both over-wrought and unnecessary: after all, the audience isn't privy to the inner turmoil going on in the actor's head, which all seems rather solipsistic and pretentious.

In real life we also carefully construct personas, presenting ourselves to the rest of the world in calculated and self-conscious ways. And when we inhabit this way of being long enough, it becomes more real than pretence.

So, whether costumed actor or well turned-out fashionista or disembodied voice, the viewer projects freely, attributes to him/her all sorts of undeserved qualities. This is the halo effect of a beautiful disembodied voice. It's easy to fall in love with an announcer's seductive charms, sight unseen.

This poem is also a pean to radio, an old technology that is still very much with us; and of which -- as I said -- I'm a giant fan. I love the intimacy of radio. I love the theatre of the mind. Because in radio, as has often been said, the pictures are the best part!

I suspect the poem might be criticized as an awkward marriage of two very different pieces: that it probably would have been better to lop off the first 2 stanzas, and simply start with "I hear her on the radio": a really strong first line with which to hook the reader, in contrast with the more analytical and less visceral bit about the stage. Or perhaps I could have reversed the order, moving from "masquerade" to " ...actors say", and ending with the quivering homunculus. I'd very much appreciate feedback on this. I'm quite willing to consider the change.

Here's why I think the poem works as is. It ends with a call-back to actors on a stage, which helps pull it together, cinch it tight. And the theme is coherent: the idea of the power of surface; the idea of becoming what we appear. And the title, an obvious reference to radio, should stay with the reader and help steer her through to the 3rd stanza, where that subject again picks up. And I like the more detached start, which then shifts gears into something more personal and confessional: it's as if there is this bravely hidden vulnerability that can't help but eventually break through.

All Day

Aug 17 2013


On a weekend
near summer's end
I feel the pressure of time,
the pleasures of an August day
undone
by fun's urgent pursuit,
trying to cram in 

all I missed.
How impending fall
makes dwindling summer
more precious yet.

Chilly dawn
when the sun is as sluggish as me,
lingering behind
the line of trees
still half-asleep.
Its light
in a fitful breeze, dappled green,
like a heavy eye-lid
lifting.

And night
that comes too soon, falls too quickly,
insistent days
that will constrict and constrict
all the way down
to December.
When I will look up
from a deep dark well
to catch a glimpse of sun.

So I hope
for Indian summer
before September mellows to fall,
the balm

of cool nights, delightful air.

A second hatch of black-flies
the kind that rarely bite.
And the last brisk swim, skinny-dip
in frigid lake, a bracing wind;
goose-bump skin, already beginning to pale
beneath a paper-thin tan.

When the last loon's haunted call
ululates sadly.
Deer, in rut, pursue each other madly,
big bucks
snorting, tussling
blundering through the bush.
And geese, in ragged Vs
wing toward permanent summer,
where they will have all day
to squabble, and graze
and raise their sun-warmed young.


Another of my so-called "nature poems".

I live a pretty solitary uneventful life in a low-stimulation environment. So it's more a case of close observation and microcosm than it is of grand themes, deep emotion, and personal angst; more a case of craft, than an unstoppable torrent of heart and soul.

Poems come to me through the window; poems about nature ...the weather ...the wildlife. It's a case of much of a muchness, so it becomes a challenge to keep these "nature poems" (which are really classic lyric poems -- roughly defined (I think!) as something intensely personal, and grounded in nature) interesting and fresh, worth the reader's investment in time and effort. Which I hope this one is.

Other than that, the poem speaks for itself. Although the pressure to cram in "all I missed" is that much more urgent this year: the year without summer. Finally, a nice weekend. But it's already almost the end of August, and the days are markedly shortening, the nights are too long and cool for the lake ever to warm up, and it seems summer is ending before it's even begun! I can feel it starting on the long implacable descent into cold and dark, and that it will be nearly 10 whole months until summer comes once more. ...Isn't there an old saying that goes something like "not having the sense God gave geese"?!!

All We Are

Aug 15 2013


Once you come to accept
that memories drift
shape-shift
spin fibs,
like a fast-talking grifter
or confidence man,
you will always suspect the truth;
not just her version, or his
but your own.

Memory is liquid,
bending some light
reflecting more.
As water, cupped in your hands
slips through your fingers
takes its container's form.
So that quick-silver truth, from which memory's born
runs-off
into porous soil.

We reconstruct memories
each time we call them up,
contaminate our own
with something seen, or told.
There is no album
of family photos
opened, and closed.
No documentary film
whirring away 
in its projector,
saturated light
in a blacked-out skull.

So what to make of us
if all we are
is what we remember,
can be re-invented
despite ourselves?

When even the best intentioned truth
is subjective,
and the utter conviction
of the sworn eye-witness
unreliable?

When we stand on shifting sand
and thirst for a firm foundation,
while the past
spills through our hands
and we dig ourselves deeper?

For happy or sad
better or worse,
but never quite sure
it happened like that.


I've written about this before: the malleable, unreliable nature of memory. (And how much I tried to get "malleable"/"fallible" to work somewhere in the poem -- unsuccessfully, as it turns out!)

Dementia, most of all, makes us appreciate how critical memory is to our sense of self. Memory situates us, creates personal meaning from a loosely connected series of events, places us in a 3-dimensional past. Without memory, we disappear. Living in the immediate and ephemeral present, our personality and temperament may be preserved, but life is shallow: as fleeting, superficial, and frictionless as skating over the surface of a frozen sea.

This is why I chose "All We Are" as the title. I wanted those words to jump out when they come up in the poem, to have the extra powerful resonance of recognition and repetition. "So what to make of us/ if all we are/ is what we remember?" (2nd line of the 4th stanza.)

The other message of the piece has to do the neuroscience of memory; that is, its fluidity: the way we reconstruct a memory each time it's recalled. And the critical meaning here is the utter subjectivity of truth: not only that everyone has his/her own version of events, but that we have a changing and unreliable one ourselves. This is the Rashomon take on the world, calling into question not only the nature of truth, but the idea of an objective reality altogether.

This is valuable perspective to take through life. It counsels one to be humble about certain belief, to eschew self-righteous conviction, and to be receptive to seemingly contradictory views. (Of course, most of the time I fail at this!) It's why a court of law may render a verdict of right or wrong, while both may be true. Why in break-ups and in war, all sides have their cherished narratives, and partial truths. Why eye witness testimony has no validity, and why there may be more versions of the truth than there are participants.

We may comfort ourselves with the illusion of standing on solid ground, on the bedrock of accumulated memory and sense of self. While in fact, the foundational beliefs and self-evident truths which guide our lives may be no more than shifting sand. Which is OK, just as long as we realize, deep down, that such certainties are merely convenient constructs, put in place to make life bearable, predictable, and coherent; to get us through.

In The High Latitudes

Aug 14 2013


We are unused to sun
in the high latitudes
in the doldrums of summer.
With our fish-belly skin
dazzled eyes
unacclimatized bodies,
we gasp, sweat, fry;
in the soft decadence
that, in the fullness of time
will exact its reckoning.
Because such easy living
can never be free.

But I luxuriate
in unaccustomed heat,
every fibre of muscle
released,
loose-boned
marrow-warmed
at ease.
And my hotly gleaming skin,
as if a barrier
had softened,
my permeable body
melding
with super-heated air.

I would be a bronze god
if not for burning, redness, sweat.
On endless days
when the sun eventually sets,
blazing red, and immense
just above
a hazy horizon.

And the surprising chill
the second it's gone.
Where northern tribes like us
belong;
aspiring gods
who have fallen to earth
from cool clear Olympus.

Summer here is short, sweet, intense. We barely have time to acclimate. And inculcated with that northern Puritan work ethic, we feel vaguely guilty in its indolence and ease. (Speaking generally of course; since so far, this is the year without summer. And speaking generally, of course; since I'm never guilty about indolence and ease!)

I wanted to express that delicious feeling of sun-bathing on a hot summer day -- that bone deep feeling of relaxation and heat. And then juxtapose this with the discomfort of unaccustomed northerners; who, in our injudicious greed, try to cram in every second of precious sun. So when (the admittedly obvious) "bronze god" came to me, it was a welcome gift, leading me naturally into fallen gods, in turn allowing the heights of Olympus of the final stanza to call back to the high latitudes of the first.

I almost always find my poems too wordy. For me, the pleasure of this art is in its discipline: the distillation and compression; the need to trust the reader. So I'm pleased I kept this fairly short and sweet, didn't try to overload it.

Which is also probably why I write these blurbs, the essay being far more my natural medium than poetry: both because I like clarity and precision in my writing, and because I admire logical sequential thought. (And also because I'm far more comfortable with ideas than feelings; with the rational instead of the visceral. Poetry forces me to go outside this comfort zone. But I digress.) Since poetry is more about holding back than being expansive, more about allusion and ambiguity than precision and exactness, a poem often leaves me feeling all pent up: as if I hadn't fully exercised my writing chops. Hence the essay elaborating on its far less wordy poem. Which I know is actually a bad idea, since it implies that there is a correct way to read the poem; when in fact the hypothetical reader should feel absolutely free to interpret however she likes. Not only do idiosyncratic readings of the poem mean I've succeeded, but I'm quite happy to take credit for brilliant connections I never either intended or perceived!

3-Legged Stool

Aug 12 2013


A 3-legged stool
in a salt-box house
at the end of the road.

In dark fine-grained wood,
the seat is round

bevel-edged
worn smooth.
3 unadorned legs
evenly splayed
sit flush with the ground.
Any less, and it would topple,
while a 4th
would be 1 too many.

This is poetry, in wood
but far more useful.
A 3-legged stool
is elegant, minimalist
utility distilled,
the beauty of something
true to itself.

As functional as its house,
4 walls, a roof, a door
one window, looking out.
As strangers come
looking for something
at the end of the road.
Then re-trace their steps
searching still.

So many 3-legged stools
worth nothing, tossed out.
Forgotten
like the words of a poem
heard over and over
until all they are
is sound,
worn down
by repetition.
As scorned
as the simplest Haiku
self-evident truth.

I think the first time I heard 3-legged stool used as metaphor for a number both necessary and sufficient was in relation to the treatment of diabetes, in which the 3 legs were diet, exercise, and insulin. I came across it again today; although in this case, in a more literal form. It was photo of a piece by the brilliant artist Ai Weiwei. This sculpture is composed entirely of 3-legged stools: in his commentary on China's breakneck modernization, the stools symbolize its hastily discarded and scorned past. As usual, Weiwei accomplishes this on a large scale, with perfect economy and visual wit. 



The salt-box house is the iconic structure of outport Newfoundland, and as quickly fading into history. It looks just as it sounds: a simple rectangle, as economical and utilitarian as the 3-legged stool. (I couldn't find that particular picture, but the only one I recall seeing prior to writing this was as flat-roofed and simple as a box of Sifto salt laid on its side. However, according to Google, the peaked roof is more typical; and 2 stories appears to be common. Oh well. The idea still works. In the end, I managed to find a picture that approximates my recollection.) This is exactly the sort of thing you'd expect subsistent and self-reliant fishermen to build for themselves, with few resources but basic tools and their hands. The name, too, is powerfully evocative. Because what could be suggestive of something foundational and abiding than salt: the "salt of the earth"; a rock that is ubiquitous, essential, radically simple chemically, and prized throughout human history -- or at least until we learned to mine it industrially. Think of the etymology of the word "salary"; think of Gandhi and the salt marches protesting the British raj.

I favour simple design: a lack of clutter; furniture that's minimalist, utilitarian, unornamented. This is like the best poetry, where less is more. And I am reminded of the value of the old abiding truths; which, in all the superficial sophistication of modernity and youth, we too easily disdain. 

I can't think of an object more beautiful than the 3-legged stool: the perfect combination of simplicity and utility.

Half-Full Day

Aug 8 2013


On a half-full day
I stood.
Between a cerulean sky
as if drawn by a child
on thick white bristol-board,
a fresh blue crayon
clutched
in her vicelike fist.
And wind-tousled clouds, scowling down
like dull grey battleships,
a vast armada
forging full-speed-ahead
downwind.

In bare feet, short-sleeves
silly grin,
feeling bone deep warmth
and cool rain.
Which is more like mist
in the gusts of wind
that shift, unpredictably,
as if even the weather
can't decide.

In a sun-shower
you can be an optimist.
The half-full sky
you see coming
from miles upwind,
knowing, in the fullness of time
the sun must shine.
Even someone like me
who finds darkness comforting,
enclosed
by the soft light, low cloud
of half the sky.

Although I am, by nature
a pessimist.
But what's to complain
on half-empty days
caught out in the rain?
The ascetic pleasure
of its cooling cleanse.
The thrill of weather’s

restlessness.

The act of surrender

to forces bigger than me,
so vastly indifferent to us.


This is truly turning out to be the year without summer. The weather report dangles a clear sunny day in front of our eyes. But time after time it turns out to be a moving target. August 8, already: time is running out!

Today, again, mixed sun and cloud turned out to be mostly cloud; and a chance of rain turned out to be 100%. But it was a sun shower day more than all-day rain: a dark foreboding sky that would just as suddenly turn an intensely clear blue; and with that delightful phenomenon of the sun shower -- of cool rain with bone deep sun, so you find yourself instantly dry.

When the metaphor of "half full" and "half empty" occurred to me, I realized the crux of the poem: that I could turn the sky into a rumination on temperament and the half full glass.

So, is a day like this half full, or half empty? Being the inherent pessimist, I suppose I'm obliged to go with the latter. But really, no matter what your temperament, the weather complies: look one way, and the sky is full of storm clouds; turn 180 degrees, and it's a beautiful summer day. Not that it matters if the pessimist's dark prediction is confirmed: so what if you're caught in the rain on this sort of day?!! (Even the pessimist who prefers miserable weather gets to feel triumphally vindicated, his pessimism confirmed: just look up, and he can see more damn sun ...lol!)

Not that you can do anything about it, anyway. One thing weather can be counted upon is to keep us humble: a necessary corrective to human hubris; to our false sense of mastery over the forces of nature. Which is where the poem ends: a little preachy, I know. But sometimes I indulge. 

Let There Be Light

August 6 2013


I peered down the well.
That knowing look,
as I do when popping the hood
of the steaming car
stalled on the freeway.
Hoping, if nothing else
to release the dark humours
coursing beneath
its smooth metallic skin.
Stranded
on the narrow shoulder;
a trembling eddy
in the Niagara of traffic,
blasted
by 18-wheelers
jetting past.

Here, when I bought the place.
Steel pipe, with its patina of rust
plunging straight
into chilly darkness.
Thick black cable, snaking its way
to the precisely machined
German pump.
A silver bullet
sleekly immersed
in hard black water,
the mineral smell
of airless earth
cold Precambrian rock.

The same knowing look
of a man who is good with his hands,
can fix things
knows how they work.
But everything I depend upon
is a black box,
might as well be magic
as bargaining with gods.
Davening
let there be water, ignition
light.

My ear to the pipe
I hear rushing sounds,
a subterranean river
falling and splashing and branching its way
through fractured strata
of ancient rock.

In absolute darkness
for tens of millions of years
until that well was sunk.
Broke through, in an instant,
the distant noise
of men and machines
from far above,
squinting down
that narrow opening.

A brilliant dot
of soft blue sky,
with its warm fragrance
of high summer,
the colour of light.

I'm intrigued by the idea of this utterly alien world a short distance under our feet: not only black cold and lifeless, but ancient and unchanging. (Although, of course, it changes slowly -- as everything must. And there is indeed life: extreme forms of bacteria that literally live in rock deep inside the earth.)

I'm trying to dramatically juxtapose these contrasts, render them stark: that is, our familiar airy world with this dark subterranean space, as well as the sleek machines of human creation with the rawness of nature.

And paralleling this darkness is my own ignorance: the helplessness of a man -- who isn't at all handy -- in a technological and highly specialized world. Which is where that reassuring -- if fraudulent -- "knowing look" comes in. So finding myself gazing confidently down into the depths, I thought of how I gazed just as knowingly under the hood; despite knowing nothing of either cars or pumps. Although the first stanza probably goes on too long: too soon in the poem for such a long-winded tangent. On the other hand, I'm really pleased with all the "watery" allusions I managed to come up with: which, aside from acting as a nice kind of foreshadowing, help cinch it tighter with the the rest of the piece, giving it just enough coherence to let it stand. Of course, living in the country and depending upon a well, events have forced me to acquire a certain amount of knowledge, if not skill. I lost water twice this past year or so: the old well need to be hydrofracted in the middle of cold December (big machines, and men much larger and more competent than me); and later on we had to pull a blown pump. So I got to peer down into that cold mysterious space, listen to the buried rivers rushing by in its dark impenetrable depths: a barely imagined subterranean geography in all 3 dimensions.

The final stanza flips the point of view, and the reader is left looking up through this tiny aperture of pipe, as if squinting through the small eyepiece of an old telescope: from the cold dark stillness, into "a brilliant dot/ of soft blue sky." I was really pleased with "warm fragrance": the way only 2 words can so fully capture a summer day; the power inherent in invoking the too often neglected sense of smell; and the telling contrast between it and the "hard black water", with its "mineral smell/ of airless earth/ cold Precambrian rock."

"Davening", by the way, is a real word -- despite the stern disapproval of spell-check. It's a form of Jewish prayer, associated with Orthodox worship: men standing, rocking, and muttering their own idiosyncratic version of liturgy. The sound is a kind of mumbled sing-song chant. I'm a devout atheist. But davening appeals to me. I like the implication of a personal connection to God, rather than one limited or prescribed by liturgy. And I like the controlled chaos of the Orthodox service, which seems far more authentic than everyone mouthing along with the same formulaic prayers.