The Small Death of Sleep

Oct 27 2018

The small death of sleep

is how I make sense of them.

The fugitive dreams

that slip from my reach

in that hypnagogic haze,

the 8 hours

of total absence

when I vanish each day.

I lie motionless, and try to reconstruct the plot

but am defeated by its madness.

The images blossom and fade

like watercolour paint

on thick absorbent paper,

the light touch

of the tip of a brush

as colours coalesce.

How much the same

are those first years of life,

which only exist

in the fixed impressions that survived 

time's hectic passage?

Like the black-and-white photos

in an old family album

where the dates and subjects were lost.

And which aren't black and white at all,

but shades of grey

and a kind of sallow pale

that leaves them looking bloodless,

gazing out

through permanently open eyes.

And given how slippery memory is

even these glimmers are never the same.

Like the familial tales

and the stories we make

to make it make sense.

I know I was alive back then

as I know I slept through the night.

But only notionally

because I must have been.

And because I have photographic evidence

of this small child

who bore my name

and lived in this house with us.

We all fear dying

and most of us fear death.

Yet so much of our lives

we might as well not have existed.

An automaton, and his unconscious dreams.

The small child, who learned how to speak

as if it came to him

in his sleep, one day.

Just as the vastness of time

before we were born

is bred in the bone,

the stories we've been told

as real as own.

Perhaps the time to come, as well.

Because the fundamentals of life

are everlasting,

and in any given moment

posterity abides.

I though it was Shakespeare, but apparently “the small death” in reference to sleep is attributed to the Buddha. (Nevertheless, Shakespeare conflates death and sleep as well, perhaps most notably in the lines “the death of each day's life” (Macbeth) and “for in that sleep of death what dreams may come” (Hamlet).)

There are many things I could say about this poem. But in this case, I prefer to let it speak for itself. I will note, though, that the immediate inspiration was a piece in the New Yorker (Oct 22, 2018) by Janet Malcolm called Six Glimpses of the the Past – Photography and Memory.

Life Force

Oct 19 2018

My gutters are filled with leaves

the downspouts plugged.

Accreting

like sedimentary layers

each unattended fall.

Where they steadily rot

in a swill of stagnant water,

bitter tannins

bleeding out

their stubborn brownish rust.

Long enough

and this brew will turn to soil.

An aerial refuge

of exotic life

in a sagging metal trough,

self-contained

and unexplored;

green sprouts, unfurling in spring

fruiting fungi in fall.

Irrepressible life,

pressing itself

into the tiniest niche.

Perhaps, in the decomposing heat

a spore has arisen, some bacterium evolved;

a molecule, awaiting its discoverer

that will heal

relieve

render us immortal.

Irrepressible life, always finding a way.

Except for today

when the hired man scooped out the crud

and hosed down the gutters.

Like a primordial planet of cooling rock, sterile and steaming

my troughs have been scoured;

so life has no purchase

and time goes unmeasured,

no succession or death

to count it against.

For the sake of order

what has been lost?

The complexity

we are ill-equipped to see,

orders of magnitude

infinitesimally small.

Like the microscopic life

that somehow survives

in earth's black and airless rock,

all the way down, layer by layer

beneath its crushing weight.

I am amazed at this persistence.

The life force

of this blue and green planet.

The rich diversity

beneath the barren surface

we too often fail to see

or even imagine.

I've been looking for someone to clean out my gutters. They've been dripping for years, I reluctantly admit. I can almost imagine the concrete underneath, steadily wearing away into a smooth shallow pool: like the drip-drip-drip of Chinese water torture, speeding up geological time. So looking up at the sagging gutters, I am feeling increasingly negligent for having ignored them for well over a decade. And recall, when I last got up on the roof, scooping out this heavy black muck: decomposing leaves, composting soil, and who knows what dead animals!

This brought to mind a recent article I read, about forms of anaerobic life found in rock deep in the earth's mantle: life that doesn't get its energy from the sun, but from chemical reactions in wet microscopic seams and fissures; and life that metabolizes and reproduces so slowly it might seem to live almost forever. Scientists who study exobiology think this may be a good model for whatever alien life may eventually be found on other planets. (Here's the link: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/10/meet-endoterrestrials/571939/ .)

In both cases, there is this powerful impression of the indomitability of life. And how, when we are only tuned to what is familiar, we can be blind to it. Life everywhere, hiding in plain sight. Life that will persist – somewhere in some form – even after we have finished trashing the planet, as we are so rapidly and irresponsibly doing.

Edges

Oct 6 2018

It's safest here

far from the edge

on the flat terrain of sameness.

Not for me

any risk-taking, in-your-facing, leap-of-faithing

edginess.

No, it's the comfortable middle, muddling through.

I remember the drop-off

where I lost my nerve,

the sharp edge

of a rock-cut

and a sheer bottomless plunge;

inching up

on hands and knees

and peering over the brink,

sweaty-palmed, and trembling.

The fateful step

that marked before from after.

Like the flow edge, the journey's end

the change in phase of matter.

Not a bright line, but a pause,

where heat is lost

and water's not

solid, liquid, steam;

but becoming

            . . . in flux

                      . . . a state of in-between.

To-and-fro to the tipping point,

when an tiny seed

flash-freezes

and the universe is instantly ice.

In which we are all prehistoric insects,

as if caught in amber

just as we were

in that moment everything stopped.

The glass of water

I swallowed too fast

the clouds that turned to hail.

The scalding steam

the monster wave

the winter ice that failed.

The caustic fog

the blinding sleet

the streams becoming torrents.

The errant step

over the edge

I took, and failed to notice.

The nascent breath

slip into death

ebb into liminal blackness.

The before and the next

I question and fret

and try to make sense of, but can't.

The times I was tempted

and excuses invented

when I failed to take a chance.

How a tentative step

led to the rest

and so my journey began.

The boundaries bent

and borders I tested

when no one would let me pass.

The doors that were closed

the windows I broke

the rivers I bridged and dammed.

The envy and fear

the rush to be clear

so close to the edge

                   . . . and back.

(The image in the fourth paragraph – where I play around with changes of state in matter as a kind of edge or tipping point, and introduce water as a theme – actually comes from a real event. Here's a link: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5288529/Horrific-aftermath-terrifying-ice-tsunami.html. The photo, however does not do this justice. I was originally made aware of this watching a BBC Earth documentary, and their video of the scene made a far stronger impression. I think another similar real life event – maybe even more so – would be Pompeii and Herculaneum.)

Egg Timer

Oct 3 2018

An egg timer

in the shape of an egg.

How elegant is this,

a thing that says what it is

in a simple glance;

no ornamentation,

no need to explain

what it really meant to say.

Like that impeccable sentence

so complete in itself

you wish you could claim as your own;

its essence honed

jagged edges rounded-off.

If only poems

could be so clear,

saying what they mean

without pretension, or extra words.

Without anyone getting

between us, and them.

As irreducible as an egg;

self-contained

and unassuming.

Where function and form

are in perfect accord.

A random egg

you feel compelled to nest

in your warm dry hand,

rolling, fingering

testing its shell;

its smooth surface, brown or chalk,

its lightly pebbled touch.

Small red numbers

circle its waist

along an evenly ruled line.

Where it turns, with a twist

and a soft whirrr of clicks

ratcheting only one way.

Time

begins and ends

in this modest egg

at rest on the kitchen shelf.

So suited to its role.

So true to itself.

In the almost hallucinogenic opening sequence of The Shape of Water, Sally Hawkins boils eggs. She is shown giving an elegantly shaped little egg-timer a little twist. This object struck me as so utterly perfect that a poem leapt to mind. Even though it was very late and I was very hungry for my cooling dinner, I immediately stopped the PVR and sat down to write. I was in love with that little egg-timer, and had to somehow explain and document its irresistible appeal. This poem (many, many versions later!) is the result. I can't imagine an object more perfect, something so true to itself and its role that it absolutely cannot be improved upon.

I admit, an very odd thing indeed to have taken from a celebrated movie. Nevertheless, a found poem is not to be questioned. One is grateful whenever they materialize.

The Shape of Water, by the way, is a movie I probably would have given a pass if it hadn't won the Academy Award. I appreciated the quality of light and lingering pace that gave it a compelling sense of magic realism (if you're able to surrender to that). I liked the evocation of its era (although, as usual, my mind's eye automatically searched out the few subtle anachronisms the continuity team failed to notice, an unwelcome distraction that seems to be my own personal bugaboo in any movie I watch). I could see how the many cinematic references would have appealed to the voters of the Academy. And it's clear that its earnest message of the triumph of the different and disadvantaged and excluded (a mute orphan, a black cleaner, a lonely gay man in the early 1960s) fit the usual high-minded criteria for Best Picture. But some of the violence seemed gratuitous; the characters as written were cardboard thin, if not a little cartoonish; and the movie tended toward melodrama, sorely lacking in the highly naturalistic realism I prefer. Having said that, Michael Shannon and Sally Hawkins were brilliant, Octavia Spencer and Richard Jenkins well worth watching. And the music was wonderful: beautiful pieces from the era of the Great American Songbook, which is the music I most love yet never ever hear in modern movies. I know that a soundtrack only truly succeeds when you don't actually “hear” it; but in this case, it was intrusive to just the right degree. Nevertheless, if you aren't a fan of science fiction or fantasy or noble themes presented with little subtlety, best to give it a pass.

“Mainly Cloudy, Periods of Rain”

Sept 26 2018

A hard rain, marrow-cold.

Not a cloudburst, downpour, deluge

short and sharp and cleansing,

but a steady relentless drip

that seems never-ending

in its dark damp misery,

as if some great scowling malevolence

had stalled overhead

and is testing our forbearance.

Not yet Biblical;

but I'm eyeing higher ground,

and who among us could deny

a reckoning is due?

How long

until the saturated soil

can carry no more

the lakes overflow?

I imagine wild creatures huddling

in inescapable wetness,

as I hold the door

for my irrepressible dogs

meekly seeking refuge,

fur soaked, tails tucked

water heedlessly puddling.

They shoulder against each other,

entering abreast, two-by-two

in an oddly prophetic coupling.

The soothsayers

on the weather page

keep forecasting sun,

but day after day, like a moving target

a clearing sky eludes us.

Not a sun shower

in the freshly rinsed air,

pure autumnal light

glinting off a gentle rain

against an incandescent canvas

of ochre, red, and amber.

And not the steamy heat

after summer storms

as sun burns off the wetness.

Just dull

damp

oppressive.

But in another 2 months, we'll have to shovel it;

the small mercies

with which we console ourselves.

The flood, the covenant

we are reminded of.

The luminous rainbow, return of the sun,

a golden fall

even Indian summer.

When all else fails, the old stand-by: another nature/weather poem!

It began with that image of the sun-shower. After days of rain, I looked up from my easy chair and was pleasantly surprised to take in just this scene: a slanting rain in the foreground, like needles of pure light, against a brilliantly illuminated backdrop of autumn leaves. After several dark days, this felt like the original Wizard of Oz, when black-and-white suddenly gives way to full-spectrum colour. Of course, true to the spirit of this poem, that too proved to be a glimmer of false hope: as I sit here typing this, a glance out the window reveals more dull grey wetness. The tantalizing promise of beautiful fall weather continues to be a moving target ...just out of reach!

The title, by the way, is lifted directly from the Environment Canada weather report for the next few days.

Angkor Wat

Sept 21 2018

The beauty of the old barn

was not its wide weathered planks

cut from the tall trees

that are now mostly gone.

Not the dusty light

shafting through the cracks

in its vast dim interior,

nor the iron implements

with their glorious patina of rust

scattered on its soft dirt floor.

No, it was the muscular trees

grunting-up through the roof,

persistent shrubs

like a garland of green

constricting its walls.

The waist-high grass, going to seed

and lapping at its foundations.

The old building, so graceful in decline

as it slumped back to earth

with a kind of louche beauty,

returning to the soil

subsumed in the land.

Like a lost Mayan city

swamped by feverish jungle.

Or Angkor Wat,

its stagnant moats

with their murky algal bloom,

mossy stone, verdant green on grey.

Its stately courtyards

over-run

by great tropical hardwoods.

How much more beautiful

is the work of man

as nature reclaims it,

so pathetic in its transience

and awesome in its grace.

Like a sun-dried ancient, at peace with his fate,

whose paper-thin skin

is almost translucent

and whose brittle bones have shrunk,

peering out

through rheumy eyes

with world-weary wisdom.

Such an odd origin story to this poem.

In the latest Atlantic (October 2018), in the recurring feature called The Big Question, they called out for nominations for The Eighth Wonder of the World. The submissions are both solicited by the editors and open to the reading public. This one was first in the list:

Vanessa Hua, author, A River of Stars

Angkor Wat is where my husband proposed to me at dawn, the sky rosy and golden over the spires reflected in the moat. With its stunning bas-reliefs and crumbling temples in eternal battle with banyan trees, the temple complex inspires awe and contemplation of the sweep of history and the atrocities of war.

My response to this description was immediate and evocative. It recalled a persistent theme of mine, man vs nature: that is, our presumption of control and conceit of posterity. For some reason I pictured an old falling-down barn and the encroachment of the natural landscape. This poem was the result, and pretty much wrote itself. As I said to one of my first readers, “pretty much ...passing through my hand as if I were taking dictation.”

I should note the more literal and less vernacular use of “awesome”: an over-used and debased word that I'm pleased to reclaim. I was also gratified to find a use for one of my favourite words, “louche”. I like its connotation of slightly disrespectful seediness and of letting oneself go. I discern a kind of sexual energy in its implication of looseness and surrender.

The First Day

Sept 18 2018

The first day

the buses return

from wherever it is they summer,

nesting

in neatly ordered rows

in some sprawling far-off lot.

They materialize in the fall

as if conjured out of air,

flocking in the schoolyard, then busily dispersing

like gawky yellow birds

migrating home.

The day you notice

the first leaf has turned,

when the air's cool crisp edge

has quickened your gait

and refreshed a listless world.

When the waves of heat have stilled

and the humidity has cleared,

and the blue, looking up

is so luminous and pure

it's as if colour could have substance

and a pleasure dome covers the earth.

The day the pumpkins appear

in enormous cardboard crates,

overflowing

by the supermarket doors.

A cornucopia

of bright orange gourds,

corrugated spheres, facing blankly out

like jostling eager neophytes

waiting to be formed.

And then, a few weeks hence

the slumping flesh

of orphans left

in the dumpster in the rear.

The succession of seasons,

and the comfort we take

in the order of things;

from grass to leaves to snow,

rites of passage, rituals

accustomed milestones.

The cycling of season-to-season

and then year after year repeating;

so much faster, it seems

as we get older, and slower, and jaded

and others take our place.

The porcelain skies

we lay on our backs and watched

exhilarated by our smallness,

the buses we rode, and pumpkins carved

'til we outgrew ourselves.

With a weary sigh

at the passage of time

and the bittersweet ache of loss.

The Lay of the Land

Sept 12 2018

Wind whips through the narrows

of this small inland lake

making headway impossible.

Its forested shores

of primordial rock

that were carved by glaciers eons ago

are steering the wind

like a great brass instrument,

funnelling air

through intricate passes

that curve, and branch, and narrow,

turning movement to sound

and invisible air

to implacable force.

You can read the lay of the land

in this onshore breeze

that blows reliably

off Lake Superior

in the afternoon heat.

Its cold black water

and the sun-warmed land

are a convection machine,

so even here, miles north

it pours through the gap

and holds me at bay.

The canoeist's mantra

“may the wind

be always at your back”

has failed me once again;

turning constantly into its teeth, it seems,

as if it knew

and was toying with me,

amused at my frustration.

A large bird is hovering

directly above me,

wings beating into the breeze

so exactly

all the forces cancel out.

It steers with the lightest of touch,

wind rippling

its sleekly feathered form.

Is it high enough to see

the great lake itself?

To discern the storms of fall

the darkness of winter

the southern refuge

it will soon seek out?

The lay of the land

like a topographical map

to its keen avian eye.

And the terrible forces of nature

I can feel converge

on this small inland lake

on this insignificant spot;

a whistling wind, pinched by the narrows,

white-tipped waves

churning north.

And an open canoe

barely holding its own.