Tornado Season
May 30 2013


It's tornado season
in Oklahoma,
and I heard a witness say
the sky went green
and she could feel the pressure
change in her teeth

and over all the screams

were 10 locomotives

careening full-speed.
She saw open mouths, voiceless

couldn't hear her own,

felt her throat

reamed taut enough to bleed.

I once lived on a flood plain.
That spring
the basement had 4 feet of water
I felt betrayed,
as if nature had it in for me.
But memory
sugar-coats the past,
and after awhile
you get complacent
when nothing’s happened.

But it did,

and that was it, for me.

In tornado alley
they rebuild.
Take comfort
in the wind's whimsy,
touching down for an instant
somewhere else.
Either wilfully blind
or consigned
to a higher power.
People who don't swear, drink, gamble
in a game of chance,

damn the odds.

I heard the survivor say
her prayers were answered,

trapped

in a miraculous pocket

when the house collapsed. 
That she felt blessed
by a merciful God,
her bedrock faith
refreshed.

While the dead
were not quoted.
I presumed they prayed
no less.

A deadly Tornado this May: the highest rating of 5 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, which measures the destructive power of tornadoes. The Moore tornado touched down in a suburb of Oklahoma City, and along with all the usual mayhem destroyed two schools, a day-care, movie theatre, and medical clinic. The final tally was 24 dead.

One wonders why people persist in building -- and re-building -- in tornado alley. Are we in denial? Do we feel we are immune to fate, somehow exempt? Or is it just inertia, false hope, misplaced faith? Of course, I found myself in a vaguely similar situation with that flood. After all, sooner or later it was inevitable. On the other hand, and to my credit, I was naive when I bought the place; and as soon as I could, moved away.

I always hear some survivor say something like this: that God answered my prayers. As an atheist, it leaves me shaking my head. I mean, even if there were a God, what an utterly solipsistic world view, no to mention a childishly simplistic theology. But more than that, it's thoughtless, disrespectful, and -- as a fellow human of whatever belief -- infuriating: because if she was somehow virtuous enough to warrant rescue, then presumably the dead were deserving of their fate as well.

Drift
May 25 2013


In the dark fortress of trees
at their densest,

with the correct exposure, perfect slope,

and the south-west wind

missed

a small protected pocket

and dropped its load.

Still snow,

in shirt-sleeve weather
in early May.

A glimpse of white
radiating cold,
as if I'd entered a narrow gorge
sun can never penetrate.
The drift, locked-in
to the rocky hollow,

trunks, thrusting-up
from its frozen hold,
dead branches
scattered on top.
A granular surface
where lost needles, dropped cones
emerge,
as fresh as extinct mammoths
trapped in Siberian ice.

A becalmed eddy
with the scent of spruce, damp and resinous

sitting in the heavy air
dense with cold.

Winter persists
here, in the forest,
like a little ice age
in a small forgotten glade.

Or could this possibly be
an ancient remnant
of the last great glacier,
that was once a mile thick
and seemed invincible?

Reduced to this,
fossilized snow
millennia old
no one noticed before
I stumbled off the trail,
saw the glint of white
felt my shoulders tighten
with a shiver of cold.

Running at Night
May 23 2013


I remember running at night.
How fast it feels;
untroubled by thought,
enclosed
in the bubble of dark;
existence distilled
to body heat
the need to breath,
hypnotic ease
of pace.

Running as far as I can
just to go back,
a god, in stamina
in quickly cooling air.
Or imagine moving on,
a clean break
free of care.
Feet barely touching the ground
body virtually gone
-- an automaton,
set in motion
and left.

Now, on a lame hip, ageing knees
I walk.
But nights are just as magical;
in a world unnaturally still,
where all they catch is a glimpse of me
ghosting through.
Knowing that humans have always walked,
migrating
to the ends of the earth,
blindly setting-out.

And whether going to, or getting out,
there is the loneliness of the long distance runner
who cannot run far

from himself.
A solitary man
in starlit night
under vast indifferent sky,
almost effortless
in his measured trance,
step-by-step-by-step.

Who must learn to be alone,
at home
inside his head.



As the poem says, I used to run, and now have to find the same solace in walking. Which I don't think suits night-time as well: there isn't the same inexplicable sense of speed and stamina, or even quite the same sense of invisibility.

Running, no matter how social, is still essentially solitary: alone with your thoughts, your pain, your sense of accomplishment -- or failure; and, when you're lucky enough to have it all come together, alone with the exhilaration of a body that seems to go by itself -- effortless, automatic, weightless. It's then that you seem to think with laser-sharp clarity, and when your body seems more god-like than mortal. (Walking, I'm afraid, not so much once again.) This is something I very much wanted to convey, and ended up doing so in 3 out of the 4 stanzas, going from "hypnotic ease" to "automaton" to "measured trance": doing, but I hope not over-doing.

Whatever your reason for running or walking, you can't go fast enough to get away from yourself. If anything, you run into yourself: it's a great time for introspection, for living inside your head. Which may be why I always liked to run: that I'm good at living in my head (and probably like it too much for my own good!) So "the loneliness of the long distance runner" is not so much a lament as it is a highly desirable state, in that I see the solitude more as aloneness than loneliness.

Humans are the best walkers, the champion endurance animal. That's why our ancestors survived, and what we were born to do. Of course, being someone who likes to live in his head, I'm hardly the adventurous type. Nevertheless, the romance of "blindly setting out" is still irresistible -- even if just in poetic form! The same theme is also present in the preceding stanza: the idea of "moving on", ...(of) vanish(ing)". I think we have all thought this, if not out for a run then out for a drive: "What if I left everything behind, made a clean break and just kept on going?" This might have been as good a place to leave the reader -- perhaps better -- that "inside his head." But the stanzas seemed to work best in this order, and so "blindly setting out" had to settle for 2nd last.

The line " ...the ends of the earth". may too much of a cliché  So originally, I fudged with " ...to fill the earth". But the neat little resonance of "ends ...setting ...getting" was too good to waste. So for the sake of sound, I ended up risking being criticized for cliché. Does the trade-off work?
\

Wash-Out
May 20 2013


The road washed-out
in the non-stop rain
that came
before frost had left the ground.

I felt daring
in my compact sedan,
blasting through a foot
of murky water
that might well have been bottomless,
flowing fast
over asphalt
patched with tar.

And then

like a sand-castle collapsing

as the tide licks higher

the roadbed crumbled, pavement cracked,

jagged slabs
spinning-off
in the unstoppable stream.

A gaping hole
around a blind turn
where the road abruptly drops,
cut-off
on the wrong side of home.
Standing on the shoulder
cold rain, soaking in
nowhere else to go.

A thin strip of asphalt
a useless car.
The gossamer thread
of civilization
suddenly cut,
solid ground
underfoot
no longer to be trusted.

How rivers flow
where they must.
How all at once
a steady rain
becomes a flood.


This is the 2nd spring in a row when unremitting rain threatened to turn into a flood: dried-out creek-beds became rampaging streams, foundations leaked, and poorly built roads washed out.

My route in and out of town drops down to a low point where, even in a usual heavy rain, water covers the road. Today, it was pouring over, eating away at the edges and threatening to undermine the pavement. I splashed through it almost up to the fender, anxious to hustle back before it either washed out, or was closed to traffic. In real life, I made it (and the next day, was reassured to find that the road held). In the poem, it disintegrates just as I pass; which is when I stop, looking back.

A little more rain, it seems, and nothing much suddenly crosses that tipping point, when first the roads become impassable, then the hydro poles topple, then our homes are swamped: and the thin line of civilization -- the gossamer thread -- is rudely severed "all at once".

(Repeating this phrase 3 (or more) times would have worked really well, as a kind of refrain. But there was only 1 other spot where it fit; and using it just twice sounded to me more like lazy writing than powerful repetition. So, in the penultimate stanza, I instead went with "suddenly": all the while feeling highly conflicted, because not only do I dislike adverbs in general, I especially dislike "suddenly". I'd much rather have the idea of suddenness made obvious by the context. Spelling it out strikes me as patronizing -- almost insultingly so -- to the reader: too much hand-holding; when I think one key to good poetry is to trust the reader -- to make her own connections, to be a collaborator, to experience her own creative thrill.)

In our unthinking hubris, we assume the status quo, imagine our way of life is pretty much impregnable. Which is why I think the key phrase in this poem -- and the part I like the best -- is " ...rivers flow/ where they must." It implies the inexorable power of nature, her sublime indifference to man: that you can cover up the natural landscape, pave over the ancient watercourses; but water seeks its level, follows the path of least resistance, and always flows where it will.

Fallen Poplar
May 19 2013


The poplar had always been there.
Soaring, straight, sheer,
clear of branches
all the up
to its dandelion tuft
of soft green leaves.

If it weren't for the beautiful trees,
both freshly planted

and mature and grand
like that signal poplar, 
I would never have bought the place.

But now, its crown thinner, turning brown
the rot had been obvious for years.
So when it snapped in two
halfway-up that long tapering trunk
I was not surprised,
only gratified
it had missed the house.
In a fierce north wind
that free-wheeled through, one night,
like a runaway train
scouring out the deadwood.

Its broken stub will remain,
a monument
in scarred and mossy bark.
From softening wood
for woodpeckers with jack-hammer heads,
to shattered tip
where eagles may nest.
Because the place belongs to nature
I will leave it as is.

I am merely its steward, for a few short years,
after which
I, too, will return to the earth,
mature, but weary
a little thinner on top,

stricken by who knows what.
Like that fallen poplar

on some blustery night,
toppling

in our own good time.

A Sense of Place
May 18 2013

When I see a map of the continent

my eyes are drawn
here.

Zero-in
on the Great Lakes,
you might mistake

for a squashed bug,
right of centre, a little up.
Where I feel grounded, right away,
that warm flush, a sense of place
on the upper edge
of Lake Superior.

They say backwater, middle-of-nowhere
remote,
compared to the great metropolis, cosmopolitan coast
where important things get done.
Fly-over country;
unplumbed
at 30,000 feet.

Place shouldn't matter so much.
After all, we are defined

by people,
entangled, embedded, embraced.
But everyone needs to feel at home,
find a landscape
that resonates, and consoles.

I see forest and lake
hear the rustle of leaves.
See rushing water
on its way to the sea;
seeking its level, coming to rest;
salt, freshened by sweet.

See the line of darkness
approach from the east
and suddenly feel the speed;
as if riding the earth
as it steadily turns
into night.
This magnificent sphere
suspended in space
in all its ponderous grace,
the precise choreography
of gravity
and place.

Where I hover, weightless
looking down.
See the beacon of light
on the shore of the lake,
darkness all around.


I like the way this poem telescopes in and out: from the local landscape, celebrating nature, all the way to the astronomical. And I like the way it evokes (or at least tries to evoke) a sense of place that is both spiritual and geographic.

I'm a regular viewer of The Daily Show. On the set, behind Jon Stewart, is a large illuminated world map. And every day, I find my eyes inexorably drawn to that little squashed bug -- over his right shoulder -- where I drop an imaginary pin, exactly here. So, is this pride? Or is this insecurity, a desperate need for validation and recognition? Other than that, I've always had a fascination with maps; the older the better. On Antiques Roadshow, for example (yes, more TV!), I find myself especially excited when a vintage map or atlas comes up; and then find myself despairing at how undervalued they almost always are.

The poem began when I was reading an article on modern cartography: how imaginative maps have become; how artists and geographers use them to convey all sorts of unexpected or esoteric information. The piece also made a point of the importance of sense of place: how idiosyncratically each of us would fill in the outline of the same geographic space.

When you see us in satellite pictures, at night, we really are a solitary dot of light, surrounded by darkness. So, are we isolated and remote? Or could we just as well be the centre, and everyone else remote from us?!!

Mushrooming
May 16 2013


Mushrooms, in the grass
in the shadowy damp
of trees.
Exponentially feed
on unsuspecting plants, dead matter,
white, bulbous, glowing.

And in a week
black, decomposing,
so insubstantial
a hand would vanish
into frothy mush,
too gruesome to touch.

In a wet spring
under cool sun
one easily succumbs
to fungus.

Spores, in the breeze
like alien seeds
naively breathed
into soft pink lungs.

Eats

or is slowly eaten up
by toxic mycelium,

that mushroom, and bud
all over creation.

The snake in the grass
you never imagined

here.  

Fracture Line

May 13 2013

Fracture lines

materialize

on a warm day in spring.

And within a week

the lake breaks-up,

scattered ice, in jig-saw bits

before erratic winds.

Fragments

that will vanish

in an hour of sun,

or big enough

to float away on.

Who knows

where the weakness lies.

Is the fracture line

determined at freeze-up?

Or is it all dumb luck;

some darkness marring the surface

melting early,

a windrow of snow

reflecting sun?

Like the fork in the road

one may have taken, or never begun;

but either way, comforts himself

that this was meant to be.

Melted pools

of indeterminate depth

nest like lakes on lakes.

Where famished geese will rest,

the early arrivals

before this endless winter ends.

Downwind, ice piles up.

Like tectonic plates

they subduct, grinding the shore,

open and close

ebb, re-form.

While water warms,

and even deeper down

earth boils.

From the surface

we can only infer.

The silty bottom, murky depths

where fish have slept

all winter.

Fat and benthic, they lurk unseen,

pelagic and sleek

they slip with silky stealth.

A cold war

of eaten, and eat

in this dark unknowable world.

A descriptive poem, a simple seasonal piece, but with hints of the metaphysical: allusions to escape, and precariousness; to fate and free will; to hidden depths upon hidden depths (such as in "waters, nesting", for the pools that form on top of the ice; and then, in "the earth boils", plunging all the way down to magma.) I hope the ending conveys a sense of delight and mystery, as well as of resigned finality; resigned that is, to the inexorable cycle -- and cruelty -- of life. It's that last stanza, as well as the first, that are my favourites.

I'm not too thrilled with the "fork in the road ...wilful agent/ or creature of fate" bit: it seems to be saying it more than showing it; which is what prose is supposed to do, and poetry assiduously avoid. So if this strikes you, the reader, as too didactic or pretentious or obvious or clichéd, I might be persuaded to lose it.

I struggle with the title. Because I'm more taken with the idea of the unseen and the deceptive surface than I am with the idea of precarious fate; and it's the latter that Fracture Line is meant to imply. But standing on its own, I think Fracture Line is more evocative than something like Surfaces, or Nesting Waters, or Tectonic Ice (maybe because "fracture" is as much verb as noun). If you think otherwise, please let me know. I'm more than willing to re-visit this. (Although, come to think of it, in the science of plate tectonics fracture lines are invisible -- hidden under our feet, and underground.) I might even consider the whimsicality of Float Away On -- the inelegance of a dangling preposition notwithstanding! (A potential title makes me think of Joni Mitchell's wonderful song River. If you've never heard it, please listen.)

Vigilance
May 12 2013


The rabbits have turned.
Dun-coloured fur,
invisible
in the shrivelled grass,
nibbling
on thinly nourishing straw.

Concealed by shade
a crust of snow persists;
white, in a murky thaw

as if at odds with the world.

Startled, darting off
he stands on top,

frozen, for a moment

reconnoitering;
a skittish creature's
fleeting pause.
Ears twitching, head cocked
he has the startled look of prey
who are never safe.
Even worse, betrayed
by clever camouflage.

I feel the shadow
of the bird of prey,
the thrum

of powerful wings

displacing air.
As if my own disguise
were just as transparent,
the penetrating glare
of an in-between world
where I feel as out-of-place

out of sync.

Then he dashes off
swiftly lost
in last year's fallow field.
A creature of flight

who depends on vigilance, and speed,

the unreliable art

of concealment.

And almost overnight, it seems
the grass is green
again.

Condensation
May 8 2013


Cool air
spilled-in over the sill
all night long.
The house, thrown open wide,
unguarded as an innocent child
asleep.

A thick heat, today
and I can feel the ocean of air
weighing me down,
so very different

from the cold dry winter
it seemed would never end.

Now, the windows are closed,
misting over
containing the cool
of the night before.
I look out through fog,
the world as impressionist art
in water-colour paint
on creamy paper.

Tiny droplets
coalesce,
running down the glass
leaving random trails
that merge, and branch

dropping-off the edge.
Abruptly stop
where surface tension
and gravity
exactly cancel out.

Saturated air 
envelopes
my hermetic house.
Stepping out
into wilting heat
that hits me like a body-blow.

As forgetful
as if my whole life
had been winter.
As if the existence of spring
were a comforting myth,
whispered to children
to make them sleep.

A very late winter this year, so when it turned warm it was sudden, under clear skies and lots of sun.  Today, though, is the first day with overcast and a little rain. 

The house is cool and dry from the night before. So when I stepped out the door, it was with the shock of hitting a wall of humid air, thinking to myself ..."oh, yeah, this is what it's like":  so unexpected,  it was as if it had been in a previous life I'd experienced summer weather; or at least so long this felt like the first time ever. And seasons rarely collide like this, the contrast rarely so dramatic. 

What mostly made me want to write this, though, was the stylistic exercise of microcosm, of close observation:   playing around with the simple image of heavy condensation on cool glass.  

The Country Girl
May 6 2013


She was a beauty
with flaming hair, fierce blue eyes
a famous blush,
who defied her elders
danced, did drugs,
chose her lovers
on impulse, lust.

And who persists
in gradations of grey,
as if a ghostly apparition
had wandered into the frame
and was snapped.
Unnaturally still
for a woman who lived so fast,
was never black and white.
So we can peruse, at leisure,
reading-in a life
of colour, and depth,
what went before
might have, after.
A reflection, perhaps
less of her, than us.

When the cause of death
is old age,
we forget they once were young.

That in retrospect
future generations
will see us as contemporaries,
not notice, or care
who came early, who came late
to the same shared century.

Forget
that in the vast history
of life on earth
we flicker, instantly
in-and-out.
That the presumption of youth
who are immortal,
the invisibility of the old
who feel no older
are mere conceits,
the narcissism
of the living,
repeatedly coming of age.

So I am grateful,
her voice still fresh
in the writing she left

to posterity.
While her exhausted body
will not wait long
for us,
who will soon arrive
like unexpected guests
at one of her fabulous affairs.


There was a terrific column about the author Edna O'Brien in The Globe and Mail this weekend. (I've copied it below; which is probably an infringement of copyright, if such a thing applies to obscure blogs).

The piece reminded me of the narcissism of youth, the solipsism of generations, our patronizing attitude to the elderly. After all, it doesn't take much of a long term view to realize that we are all contemporaries, despite the self-absorption of youth, the invisibility of old age. This is what I mean by "the narcissism/ of the living": in 100 years, all of us -- from newborn to centenarian -- will all be gone, replaced by billions more who -- like us -- feel themselves at the centre of the universe, as if they were exempt from the fate of all who came before; who see their predecessors as 2-dimensional figments, and those to follow as merely hypothetical. So we distance ourselves: unable to identify with ancestors who persist, at best, in faded black and white pictures; unable to appreciate that our shared humanity transcends generations.

I also thought about the power of the still photograph: the archaic impression we get from sepia, or black and white; and the evocative power of seeing life in this unnatural state of fixation -- the reading-in, the implication -- that probably says as much about the viewer as the subject. Since McLaren never mentions a photograph, perhaps I was thinking of that formal author picture that appears on every dust cover. Or perhaps it was just the way she brought this woman to life, like injecting colour into black and white: taking someone who was just a name to me, who I knew was an old woman, and who must have written vintage and very proper books; then bringing her to sudden life in the most unexpected way. And probably also because I had just read another feature in the same section of the paper, which was about two celebrated photographers: the Brazilian Sebastiao Selgado, who works in brilliant black and white, and whose photographs reminded me what a surprisingly epic and eternal quality black and white confers; and the Canadian Edward Burtynsky, whose large format works are full colour, and breath-taking in their monumental scope. The Selgado photographs are of the natural world, untouched; but they seem almost other-worldly in their power. Black and whit pictures really arrest my eye in a way that colour can't. There is an analogy here in poetry, where less is almost always more.

So when we see old photographs, we not only see -- and imagine -- more than there is, but the old fashions and black and white format distance us even further. It is only when a fine write like Leah McLaren brings someone to life -- as she does here with Edna O'Brien -- do we find ourselves identifying with someone so much older than ourselves; and then reflecting on how absurd to have entertained the notion that a few decades could have made that much difference in a life.

The line "...repeatedly coming of age" tries to get at something we all feel as we age: how deceptive is our exterior; how we seem to get fixed on a certain age -- usually late teens or early twenties -- and in our interior lives never feel older than that. This is something I think we will all experience: looking into a mirror, and wondering who that old geezer staring back could possibly be!

The title of McLaren's column (just below) refers to the recent HBO series Girls. Lena Dunham is the precocious young talent who stars, writes, directs, and produces. I love Girls (which may seem strange, for a man, who is middle aged, and has nothing to do with Brooklyn!) The conflation of Dunham and O'Brien reminds me even more how everything old is new again: a useful cliché, that probably sums up the poem as well as anything more original and profound.

One more note. If you never realized that the writer's life is one of envy, then I feel obliged to confess that I wish it had been me, instead of Leah McLaren, who wrote: "clanged like a recess bell in my teenage brain." Nice!!


The Lena Dun­ham of Her Time

LEAH McLAREN (lm­claren@globe­and­mail.com)
The Globe and Mail
4 May, 2013

When I was a girl, I wanted to grow up to be just like the Irish novelist Edna O’Brien – or at least how I imagined her to be. Her 1960 novel, The Country Girls, clanged like a recess bell in my teenage brain, ringing in my first adult notions of life and love and longing. Lena Dunham and her kicky gang of Brooklyn neurotics can thank Kate and Baba, O’Brien’s emancipated 1950s Irish convent girls set free in the big city, for inventing the genre they now so anxiously inhabit: clever girls gone wild.

O’Brien, whose wonderful autobiography Country Girl was just published in Canada this week, wasn’t just a pioneer. She also paid dearly for her home truths. Her books were banned in Ireland, her local Catholic parish burned copies in a bonfire, and her family was publicly shamed. O’Brien’s husband, on reading her first manuscript, spoke the words she describes as “the death knell of an already ailing marriage – ‘ You can write and I will never forgive you.’ ” Her mother later disowned O’Brien for refusing to send her own children to Catholic school. In short, she got her lusted-after literary fame and sexual freedom, but she also paid the price.

It’s easy to forget the social sacrifices made by women writers of O’Brien’s generation. They weren’t just breaking boundaries “to make a splash”; they were risking social exclusion and, in some cases, their sanity (see Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath for details) to make a point we now take very much for granted: that young women should, within reason, be allowed to speak, behave and – most crucially – have sex in whatever way they wanted.

O’Brien certainly did that in the end. She is now in her early 80s and still writing the luminous sentences for which she became famous. It took her a while to escape the clutches of her first and only husband and later regain custody of her young sons; but by the late sixties, she was living in a mansion in swinging Chelsea, writing bestselling novels, hit West End plays, and screenplays with Peter Brook. Her parties were legendary, and she writes about them with the innocent enthusiasm of a wideeyed interloper who makes name-dropping a pleasure.

Over those wild years, she played host to a fantastically bizarre mix of inebriated notables, including Judy Garland, Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, Richard Burton and her close friend Sean Connery. A flamehaired beauty, she was heavily pursued by many (Paul McCartney, Marlon Brando, and Burton among them) and ended up in bed with more than a few (most notably Robert Mitchum).

She tried everything – drugs; interpretive dancing; even dropping acid with the original celebrity shrink, R.D. Laing. But beneath all this taboo-busting revelry lurked the lingering effects of her religious upbringing. Single and heartbroken from a love affair at 40, she received a letter from her mother imploring her to “never bother again with men outside of meeting them in everyday life or for work. I pray for you, and each day of life, I go down on my knees and ask Christ that you remember the words of St. Paul, ‘Flee fornication.’ ”

O’Brien is one of the great talents and rule breakers of her generation, a woman who knew everyone and was loved by the literary public in turn. My own encounter with the author some years ago was so spontaneous and surprising, it could almost be an anecdote from one of her early novels.

Ten years ago, when I first moved to London, I went on a date at the Chelsea Arts Club. From the moment I sat down with the sour, humourless man – a complete stranger, as the date was a set-up – I knew it was going to be an excruciating evening. Sipping my cocktail, I debated what to do, and when it was my turn to go to the bar for more drinks, I panicked. I turned to a handsome, jolly-looking chap at the bar. “Listen,” I said, “I’m on a terrible date and I need to get out of it, so will you pretend to be my long-lost friend?”

The words weren’t out of my mouth before the man was throwing his arms around me and buying me a drink. I wriggled out of my date, and my saviour and I ended up having dinner. He turned out to be Sasha, Edna O’Brien’s younger son. When I told him that his mother was one of my favourite authors – and had recently been the answer to a trivia question at at quiz at my local pub (“Which author believed August is a wicked month?”) – he laughed out loud. We became friends and kept in touch.

One day he texted to ask if he could come to my quiz night, which I found strange (it was a skeezy pub in a not very fashionable part of London). But when he arrived with his mother in tow – a regal woman in her 70s wearing a fabulous purple velvet coat dress – the entire pub fell silent, then burst into applause. She was charming and witty, with a good head for trivia.
In other words, exactly the sort of woman I’d like to grow up to be.

© Copyright 2012 The Globe and Mail Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Dusty Leaves
May 6 2013


A desk chair
of close-grained wood
darkly stained.
The patina of age
on the slatted back
were countless hands have gripped,
tinged by sweat and skin.
The contoured seat, with its worn finish,
on a creaky swivel
on a broken tilt
on sticky wheels.

Back when a government office
was green-walled, bad fluorescents,
with black phones, on boxy desks
on cracked linoleum
with curling edges.

And a stunted plant
in the corner,
big glossy leaves
pale with dust.
It survives desiccation, neglect,
the cool breeze
from the constantly opening door.

Bureaucrats
who file paper, process claims
and were never trained
in horticulture,
someone else's job.

I take my place
in a long disorderly line
of petitioners, and supplicants.
Admire the fortitude
of this indestructible plant,
indifferently unloved.
And knowing it wouldn't take much,
imagine the beauty
it might become.

I heard the phrase "dusty leaves", in a context I now completely forget. But it immediately evoked an image of a neglected plant: broad-leafed, dull green, in the corner of an old-fashioned office. I see a dingy bare-bones place, with those heavy wooden chairs, sturdy furniture, old technology; before anyone had heard of ergonomics, and when civil servants made do.

I had no idea where this was going when I stared to write: it was simply an exercise in description -- which is more about the wordsmith showing off, and rarely makes a very readable poem. But when I found myself identifying with this humble but indestructible plant, I think I found the key to the poem.

I like the word-play here (and "play" is the perfect word, since it's a lot of fun!): just on the verge of being over-done, but not enough that it gets in the way.

How Not to Die
May 2 2013


How not to die
being kept alive
longer 
than anyone would want.
Machines beeping, whirring, wheezing
into inert cachectic flesh,
my anxious mind
locked-in,
speechless.

How not to die
in pain
or short of breath.
But also, how not to die
with meaning
left unaddressed.

Of self-consciousness,
a very private man
intruded upon
by strangers.
And how not to die
undignified

loathing his dependence,
wiped, suctioned, turned
on his bed of nails.

How not to die
is like the holy grail
of medical science,
a war on death
where the casualties
are the nearly dying.
So like friendly fire in the fog of war
keep out of range
of high calibre ordinance,
heroic intervention
however well-meant.
The complicit silence
of Oz-like men
and futile quests.

How not to die
anywhere, except
an ice flow, on a constant sea;
knowing it's time,
showing you care
for those left behind
by leaving them be.
Succumbing to the numbing cold
as if an airtight door
had whispered closed
behind you,
the quick compassionate end
for which all of us hope.

How not to die
before learning to trust
the primordial sea,
its water
salty as blood.
To dispense
with my useless body
as it always has,
inscrutably
as life began.

This poem came in response to an article by Jonathan Rauch, in The Atlantic of May 2013. Here's a link: http://theatln.tc/Z5MKL2.

I've read numerous pieces on the same theme, and have written tangentially about this before. I feel very strongly about end-of-life care. About the overkill of medical technology. About the push-pull of doctors and patients:  the pull of professional hubris; the push of families, who are poorly informed, as well as susceptible to guilt and unrealistic expectations. My philosophy of medicine tends toward therapeutic nihilism, anyway. But especially so when it comes to ICU deaths of the frail elderly and the unsalvageable: to heroic interventions that prolong death instead of prolonging life.

So I credit this piece with encouraging me not only to write this, but with the refrain, How Not to Die. I'm thrilled by the misdirection of this title:  as if the poem will be an instruction manual in immortality, when it really says the opposite -- a critique of our death-denying culture, of heroic high-tech medicine, of cruelly misplaced resources.

After Ourselves

April 30 2013

I know I will give it a name

as hard as I resist.

Something sentimental, honorific

or simply descriptive.

Except 
it’s never the same

imperceptibly shifting, day-to-day,

the light, different

the thickness of air.

Which is strange, because it’s always been there,

unchanged, for eons.

Will always loom over my life,

a massive brooding presence

keeping its distance

receding as quickly

no matter how hard I walk.

Its majestic indifference

keeping me small,

interceding

between me, and the sky.  

I am not mystical, or religious.

I understand

plate tectonics, inanimate rock.

But the lush green forest

wrapped around its shoulders

like a densely woven shawl,

the ragged clouds, streaming off

its white luminous crown

hold me in awe.

Intrude on my dreams

like an igneous wall

between me, and the sun.

Like a lover who spurned me

more than once.

Mere naming

will not tame this mountain.

But we cannot resist

naming the world,

in our own image

after ourselves.

Reducing nature

to strict taxonomy,

navigating creation

by azimuth, and degree.  

The laughable conceit

that man has dominion.

That I could conquer its peak,

even if I hauled myself up

by the skin of my teeth,

scratched my way

to the very top.

Before the mountain

in its infinite whimsy

flicked me off.

Ian Brown is a fine feature writer for the Globe and Mail. I often find myself envying his turn of phrase, his poetic sensibility. He’s on a sabbatical at Banff, occasionally contributing articles to the paper. This weekend, he wrote about the ineffable allure of mountains, their paradox and attraction.

Shortly after reading that, I heard an item on NPR about some fractious goings-on at the base camp of Mt. Everest. I thought about the purity and idealism of the authentic mountaineers – who respect the mountains they ascend, and understand it’s not at all about conquest or altitude or numbers of ascents – and the corruption of this laudable ideal by commercialism and instant gratification.

I suspected I’m more attracted to the wide open spaces and big sky of the prairies than I am to a mountainous landscape – which has an almost claustrophobic effect on me. And, of course, I prefer my own boreal forest. But I cannot deny the powerful mystique of mountains:  how they endure, recede, imperceptibly shift; and most of all, their majestic indifference to our petty conceits.

Ersatz Citrus
April 28 2013


I know how futile
it seems
cleaning house,
making your bed
only to sleep in it.
At best, a momentary pause
in life's tendency
toward chaos.
Because life descends
into disorder,
as implacably

as gravity.

But in its defence
there is simple pleasure
in physical effort, the Zen of routine.
In modest ambition;
because it can only be so clean,
no utopian dreams
of perfection.

A task
you complete with your hands,
and ends
with the satisfaction
of something tangible.
When you can stand back, basking
in order
the illusion of control.
When you let slip
your bourgeois pride
that the things you possess
the people
with whom you spend your life
are taken care.

My mother kept a clean house,
even with all those boys.
She was not the touchy-feely type
who could easily say
"I love you",
3 words that come and go
and sometimes mess you up
depending.

Not that the house matters now.
Because cleanliness
is an ephemeral art;
if not Godly, then comforting,
with gleaming hardwood floors
that smell of polished wax
ersatz citrus.

So her clean house
was incidental.
Except that's how I remember it;
a good woman
taking care.
 

I'm editing this the morning after-- transcribing into type from my impenetrable hand-writing, tweaking the lines. And totally surprised to find how much I like it! Because it was written incredibly quickly, on impulse, and out of thin air -- waiting for the spaghetti to boil, unwatched; and hemmed-in by the timer, about to go off.

Actually, now that I think about it, not quite out of thin air. I had been listening to a podcast of author, humorist, and diarist David Sedaris being interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air. Apparently, he’s a bit of a compulsive cleaner. I suspect this interview was circling around my head as I sat down to write, and led me to reflect on my own penchant for neatness.

I used to be a "neat-freak" -- unpleasantly obsessive. I blamed this on my mother. And she, it turns out, blames hers: the mother (my grandmother Esther) who raised her in the early 20th century, when the germ theory of everything held sway, and when women were judged on how well they kept house. So it goes, the sins of the mothers. But with the sensible gift of age, not to mention a new dog, I've learned to let go, and that the world goes serenely on, despite my laxity.

We are not a demonstrative family, either. Although in old age my mother has learned to say -- without self-conscious, hesitation, or irony -- "I love you"; me, not so much. But actions speak with equal, if not more, sincerity; and this is how I choose to shape my understanding of the past.

Tapping Out
April 27 2013


In the art of Brazilian jiu jitsu
you save your life
by tapping out.

Pinned by this hard relentless man,
the sharp point of an elbow
crushing your neck,
breath ebbing, vision edging in,
you simply tap
and all is forgiven.

If only life
could be so simple;
grace in submission,
and absolute mastery
so sure of itself
compassion is a tap away.

Or you can hurt your brain
trying to understand
motivation, misdirection
indecision.
Talk things out
in a civilized way,
without ever resolving
who has the upper hand
where either stands.

The martial artist
sees in white and black,
a zero sum game
of winners and losers,
who carry no grudge
feel each other's pain.
Who believe in respect,
leave ineffable love
to the dreamers, and theorists.

I crave this kind of clarity,
the mechanical body, methodical mind
in real time.

Crave instant relief,
with the ease 
of lifting a finger
a gentle nudge.

Crave a worthy opponent,
the certainty

of touch.

Breaking Up
April 25 1013


In another spring, in the season of love
I watch the lake
breaking up.
A man
standing alone
on an ice-bound shore;

his back to the sun,

lost

in penumbral shadow.

In late afternoon
the water glints blackly.
By morning
a thin crust of ice
is back,
turning to slush
washing over the edge,
in a steady breeze
undulates gently.
Then open water, again,
growing day by day.

Fissures appear,
and heavy wind
cracks them wide,
pans of ice, in every size
kaleidoscopically shifting.
As if in a race to survive
in the shirt-sleeve heat
of a long-delayed spring,
that came late, but quickly.

Until one morning in May
when the lake I remember
reappears
from hibernation.
Only die-hard ice
persisting
in narrow inlets, overhanging shade.

Remnants of a hard winter
that so quickly slipped my mind
in this green and temperate world.

In the succession of seasons
how we forget the feelings
we felt so intensely
let rule our lives.
When we were young, and foolish
and the future set,
impregnable as ice
3 feet thick.

As if every spring
was unexpected,
the fortress of winter
could never end.

Belongings
April 26 2013

Entering the house
for the last time
how clear it seemed,
the light distilled

unnatural stillness.
A layer of dust
had evenly settled
over everything,
leaving motionless air
cleansed.
As I breezed in, trailing freshness,
disrupting
the oddly comforting calm.

Soon, they will be objects
auctioned-off, passed on
newly possessed.
But now, they are still belongings,
and contain the essence, the spark
of a previous life.
When they held him
felt his touch,
when the kitchen buzzed
and they cleaned-up after.

The things we use, and live with
contain a little of us,
are changed
by familiarity.
But not forever,
because even things
are temporary.
So I was reminded of times past,
but also began
to see them as inanimate,
indifferent to the life
they once had served.
Still, it was soon enough to see
the ghost in the machine
leaking out.

There is a painting I always admired.
I know where it will hang;
but will I see his hand
straightening up
surreptitiously dusting?

The clothes will go to the Sally Ann,
where the down-on-their-luck
are grateful to dress
in suits, newly pressed,
a dead man's shirt and pants.

Given free,
no forgetting

no forgiveness asked.

Perfect Pitch

April 23 2013

Other drivers see me in the slow lane

tapping on the dashboard, head bobbing

in my sound-proof booth

of glass.

As if enthusiasm

might excuse

my untuned ear.

I am the woodpecker

who starts at dawn

outside your bedroom window.

The gaggle of geese

in their ragged V

complaining all the way north.

The puffed up warbler

trilling sweetly,

his proclamation

of territorial war.

The birds do not sing

for beauty

as we understand it to be.

Only humans make music

for no reason at all.

Antidote to reason

beauty, or not.

Imperfect pitch

is fine, behind the wheel

no one listening in.

To feel the ecstasy of speed

becalmed, at 5 pm

in a sea of traffic,

big rigs revving

a chorus of horns.

Watching gulls

free-wheeling overhead.

 Birds are a symbol of freedom and agency. But, of course, we anthropomorphize everything.

External circumstances are beyond your control. But our can control we own state of mind. This is a cliché. But by the inexorable logic of survival, and our own helplessness, it’s what we do.

Language is what distinguishes (elevates?) humans from other animals. That, and music. Our cortex light up, our synapses jump, and there is a widespread activation and coordination of the brain when we listen to music. This activation is not only more widespread than language, but more powerful, because music enters directly into emotion -- without cognitive processing, without decoding or interpretation. It is raw and elemental. And a mystery why so uniquely human. What was it  in evolution that so exquisitely tuned out brains to this hypnotic combination of rhythm and pitch?

I envy those with perfect pitch. Mine is only good enough to let me know that I’m off, but not good enough to let me find the actual note! I heard a reference today to Tom Cochrane’s iconic song Life is A Highway, and thought about racing down the blacktop, cranking it out at full voice …and not giving a damn how good or bad I sound!

First Responder
April 18 2013


It was the second bomb
that crushed
my spirits.

Desperately wanting to believe
in the triumph of good, over evil
I seized on the sight of people
swarming in
to help.
Unskilled, unprepared
unfazed by blood,
giving comfort
if nothing else.

Who were taken
in the second blast.

And the men with stunted souls
who feel no pain, but their own
I can only hope
are eternally damned,
whatever one's theology.
As little solace
as this might grant.

A pressure cooker
set to explode.
A simple utensil
stoking distrust
in the everyday
the unknowable other.
But the pressure builds up,
I cannot contain
the numbing refrain
of atrocity.

Reading headlines
it's easy to forget
the 99%,
who, like us, stumble through
unhistoric lives,
well-intentioned
our minor transgressions
unworthy of news.
Overwhelmed by the few
who hate,
claiming attention
dispensing death.
And easy to forget
how certain they'll suffer
in some self-inflicted hell,
justice, or not.
And forget, as well
how such ugly destruction
is redeemed,
by the many others
rushing in
to help,
no second thoughts.

How easily I fall
into despair,
the gall
of impotent rage
corroding away
at my marrow.
And so, how fiercely I cling
to each selfless act,
no matter how futile, or small,
how dutiful
or daring.

As if one good man
could reach out a hand
and repair the world.

April 15 2013, 2 bombs went off at the finish line of the storied Boston marathon. 3 were killed (so far, including an 8 year old boy) and well over 100 gravely wounded, whose injuries included amputated limbs. They were constructed of everyday kitchen pressure cookers, lethally fortified with nails and ball bearings, intended to maximally maim as well as kill.

This poem was written 3 days later, at which time there were no claims of responsibility, and no idea whether this was the deranged act of a lone wolf, or a more highly organized and ideological act of terror. But either way, I don't think the ultimate resolution of this tragedy will alter the intent of the poem.

The 2 bombs detonated 10 seconds apart. I suspect, because they came so close, there was a minor glitch in synchronization. But one can't help but wonder about intent, since there has been a pattern in other terrorist incidents of intentionally consecutive blasts, a tactic calculated to kill first responders. Whether in this case it was accident or intent, and as horrible as this second wave of killing, it reminds me that the vast majority do not wantonly and unfeelingly destroy lives: they rush in to help, with no thought for their own safety or the gruesome scene.

The headlines give a skewed view of human evil: the bad things and the bad guys scream out; while all the small anonymous acts of goodness go unacknowledged. And it was because of the 2nd blast that the role of first responders -- both the professionals and bystanders -- became especially prominent. As I felt myself sink into despair, this widespread demonstration of altruism and selflessness became a lifeline, an antidote and counter-balance to the evil that comes to seem omnipresent and immutable. It's not only that bad things make headlines ("if it bleeds, it leads", as the the hoary journalistic cliché has it), it's the nature of human memory: negative things are much more likely to stick with us. Which is sensible, from an evolutionary point of view: remembering where the lions are is much more conducive to survival than remembering where you can see the most beautiful sunset. So we are descended from those who were best at remembering the bad. (The rest, I'm afraid, were eaten!)

So I am grateful to the commentators who pointed out that it took 1 bad person to do this, while at the exact same time hundreds of people were reflexively acting with bravery and selflessness.

There is a concept in Judaism that has great resonance here; the concept of tikkun olam: the human responsibility to fix what is wrong with the world. Which presumes that things can be repaired -- a reassuring thought to someone as pessimistic, misanthropic, and nihilistic as me!