Wednesday Poems
Estranged, acrylic on canvas, 30” x 30”
Phil Ochs’ song “There But for Fortune” comes to mind often these days, with
addiction frequently in the news. Most of the time the reports focus on the unhoused,
the tent neighbourhoods in cities and smaller communities, and the tragic death toll
from drug overdoses. The addictions I’ve experienced weren’t drugs, they were
alcohol and cigarettes, both of which I was able, eventually, to kick. So today,
two poems. The first has to do with the years I used alcohol as a stress reliever
(Rough Edges, from The Speed of the Wheel Is Up to the Potter; Quarry Press);
the second, with my awkwardness around street people in need
(Eye Contact, from Bewildered Rituals, Polestar Press). As the refrain in Phil Ochs’
song says: “There but for fortune, go you or I.”
Rough Edges
Coming home, I am a razor
sawing through the purple hue
and scent of a spring evening,
rough edges slashing silk
to permanent ruin.
Each sip of wine nestles me
gently into muffled cloud, yet I
want to hurl this drink at the wall.
In an instant of no particular decision,
the air is thick with crystal slivers ─
white paint, a sudden burgundy mural
of dribbling fingers.
I try to erase this witness
to my weakness. Nothing works.
I invite no-one over,
afraid of questions ─
what caused those faded marks,
now pink rivers spilling out
from posters too small
to conceal articulate stains …
(What could I say,
lifting my favourite red
to lips in idle conversation.)
So I spend nights alone
toasting failures,
eyeing the clean canvas
of another wall.
Eye Contact
Days repeat themselves in a grey
weight of clouds, pressed against
her shoulders like a drenched coat.
On this street, she reflects
an absence of trees ─ seems only
a remote flower, a petal
sealed within a bud that spring
keeps missing.
I've been striding past her
every day now, for weeks.
Each time, my body taut
as a thread about to break,
as if it will
if I look straight at her,
smile and nod when she holds
out her hand for a quarter.
I pass into the store,
pretend I do not hear
her winced plea,
knowing I'll save the change
for her anyway ─ will come out
head clamped to avoid her glance,
drop the silver where I expect
her palm to be.
But yesterday, she'd
curled her fingers to her coat
against the cold, and the sound
of money tickling concrete
broke my practiced trance.
For an instant, our eyes met awkwardly.
Then mine sidled away like thieves
and her gaze spilled to the pavement
to capture metal seeds.
Image: Great Blue, acrylic on canvas, 10" x 20” (Sold)
There are many reasons why I feel lucky to have grown up in Sackville, New Brunswick.
This small town is home to Mount Allison University, and I benefited from many visits to the
Owens Art Gallery, the swimming pool, the annual winter carnival and more; we had a
skating rink, a movie theatre, lots of school sports and activities … But most of all, we had
the Tantramar marshes, which were my playground. And we had a poet who wrote about
this place I so loved. We learned about Sir Charles G.D. Roberts and his poetry in school –
which to me meant that the possibility of becoming a poet seemed a pretty ordinary thing.
Years later, when I began to publish my poems and meet other poets, I heard over and over
again that it was different for them; in school, they never learned about any Canadian poets,
never mind one who wrote about where they lived.
So, to honour my luck and my roots, and in keeping with it now officially being spring, here’s
Revisiting Chance and Change, from Suddenly, So Much (Exile).
Revisiting Chance and Change
Yet will I stay my steps and not go down to the marshland, -
Muse and recall far off, rather remember than see, -
Lest on too close sight I miss the darling illusion,
Spy at their task even here the hands of chance and change.
— Sir Charles G.D. Roberts ("Tantramar Revisited" 1886)
Odd, how the hands that held you back are the ones
that draw me near, urging me into a landscape you
would think ruined, bleached pylons rising
in reeds by the dyke where I watch for herons — blue
beacons guarding the sullen decay of wharves, forsaken
when the tides altered course. An island was born,
left you hesitating on the hill, yet bequeathed to me
this rhythm of the Tantramar.
We greet changes to childhood haunts
awkwardly, want home to stand still while we
wander off making strangers
of ourselves, hoping for the familiar
when we return — marsh hawks still tipping
their wings to the few grey barns that remain,
beams sagging into an old scent of cedar and hay.
It’s more than a hundred years since you kept
your distance but the river
keeps rushing in with the wind nipping at cattails,
the mud flats are as red as ever — and there
is the place I imagined myself
tucked inside a redwing’s solitary call. The ground
is under water now, restored to wetlands —
Listen
the bobolink is back
One more note; in addition to redwings heralding spring
(see last week’s Wednesday poem), my mother always said
a sure sign of spring for her was the return of the bobolink …
Image: Cycle, acrylic on canvas 16” x 20”
The redwing blackbirds have been filling the air with their
unique song lately, heralding the approach of spring. This
always reminds me of when, living near Trout Lake
in Vancouver, I managed to haul myself out of bed by 5:30 a.m.
to ride my bike around the park for awhile. It was, for a time,
my way of getting ready for another day at my desk; a way
of making sure I got a chance to enjoy the dawn and get some
much needed exercise while I was at it. So for today’s Wednesday
Poem, here’s Cycle, from Bewildered Rituals (Polestar).
CYCLE
For now, the sun has crashed
the gates of last night's rain.
We are the lovers of dawn,
thrive on early rising to emerge
from drowsy houses. Leave the sleepers
to their dreams, we spin
through morning mist and willow green
and I, for one, haunt this park
with longing.
This small hour a fantasy
to follow my breath, wherever;
peddle my desires to herons in the trees.
Widgeons grazing in the grass
take flight at each arrival,
whistle from the sun-striped lake
until we pass.
We, who come to sip of peace, unwitting
cause the birds' routine
of fearful feeding.
But I'll think no more of contradictions,
fling my mind to flight with sea gulls,
gather canvasses of clouds.
Off-key as the crows, I compose
symphonies of freedom.
Even as I leave,
duty driven to my day,
the ghost of myself remains
there, just past that clump of reeds
bursting with the crescendo
of redwings.
(Image: photograph, hellebore)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
This past week has been Victoria’s annual flower count – that time of year when
those of us lucky enough to live on the south coast of BC boast about our early spring.
So many blossoms, though, how can we resist – snowdrops, hellebores, daffodils,
camelias, cherry blossoms and more brighten our days. Still, so many other parts of the
country remain snowbound, or are waiting for the piles of ploughed snow to melt.
So this week, I’ve chosen a kind of cross-country piece for my Wednesday Poem –
Cedar Cottage Suite, the title poem from my 2010 chapbook (Leaf Press). This haiku
sequence starts with flowers, but … ends with snow. Oh – and this time, in addition to a
photograph or painting to accompany my weekly post, I’ve included a link to my
YouTube video, if you want to hear me read a few of the haiku.
Cedar Cottage Suite
1.
Shaking out folds
from sheets dried on the line –
petals, too!
*
Wind last night;
I wake to my neighbour sweeping
pink debris
2.
Some kind of plastic
trash in the north lagoon
reflecting sunlight
*
Two mallards paddle
in and around thick rushes –
where is their nest?
3.
Seed husks cling
to new leaves, leggy
stems wobble
*
Under lush
magnolias, a sleeping bag
rolls over
4.
Beside the path
heron walks away from me
on tiptoe
*
What a dive!
An osprey catches dinner –
who weeps for the fish?
5.
High in the cypress
a flicker bursts out laughing
while I walk to work
*
That dragonfly
keeps changing lanes: dangerous
driver
6.
Voting day –
old crow dives, leaps gently
off my head
*
Sudden storm: even
crows wake up shrugging flakes
off their shoulders
7.
First snow: someone placed
the orange ladder against
that tree again
*
Late afternoon –
shadows slide off benches
abandoned to snow
(Cedar Cottage is the name of the east end Vancouver neighbourhood that includes
Trout Lake in John Hendry park. We lived there for 25 years before moving to Pender).
Image: Fiddler in a Blue Fedora, acrylic on canvas, 24” x18”
Just one of the many things I love about living on S,DÁYES (Pender Island) is the many marvellous concerts we get to enjoy. Ptarmigan Arts, Stoney Pocket, the Concert Society and others support performances by both local and off-island musicians. Last Sunday, Island Chamber Winds, conducted by the island’s own Ben Litzcke, treated the audience to music from the 1800s to today, much of it unique and rarely performed. There were two French horns, two oboes, two bassoons and two clarinets, and oh, those instruments sounded fabulous together! Next week we get to enjoy Tom Allen narrate a chamber musical, J.S. Bach’s Long Walk in the Snow, telling the little known story about the young Bach’s “400 km odyssey”.
I’ve often wished I were a musician. And though I did learn to play the piano and guitar at a very basic level, the art of it never came naturally to me and, despite my best intentions starting out, eventually I gave up on both. So today, my Wednesday poem for this week is Strum the Guitar, from T’ai Chi Variations in Suddenly, So Much (Exile).
Strum the Guitar
All your life you've tried
to synchronize fingers and string,
a fascination that began
tangled in laces and cats' cradles,
the imagined music in a mute guitar
on a cottage wall —
begging your uncle to play,
though an inkling that he'd forgotten
how, crept between his evasions
like betrayal. Years later
you spent hours with the gift
your mother could not afford,
feeling your way into the rhythms
of protest and love. Now you reach
a moment in this sequence
where you can break an opponent's arm
or waltz with what your own two hands
have abandoned, hold
the hope of harmony
in your arms again.
Image: Twist and Shout, oil and cold wax on panel, 20” x 20”
(design based on ice patterns on a pond)
The Four Nations Hockey Tournament ended last Friday with one of the best games ever.
Not just because Canada won, not just because we’re all feeling very Canada-proud these days,
making the win that much sweeter, but because it was good hockey. Really good hockey.
The kind I love to watch – great skills on display, fast end to end skating, crisp clean passes,
few penalties, amazing goal tending … How I wish the NHL would get back to that kind of play –
I’d watch again, if they did. Anyway, a poem that features skating seems in order for this week,
so here is Surfaces, from Bewildered Rituals (Polestar).
Surfaces
The hollow scrape of blades
moves skaters through crisp air,
this cold, a particular winter
of toques and scarves and gloves
as superfluous as buttons.
Jackets flap in the wind
of our movements.
So many trajectories,
a community singing on ice
the lake almost large enough, people make space ─
pucks and sticks
pause for these wobbly legs to pass
and no one points to laugh.
The only borders here
are where lifeguards hack at the ice,
check for thickness and rope off
spots too thin for safety.
We slide or glide or stumble
away from treacherous areas
into indiscriminate welcomes
to all who venture onto the lake,
this surface beneath our feet
the only skin of concern.
In the centre of a city,
echoes of unhurried sound
take me back to the Tantramar ─
redwings in the rushes,
their harmonica call a microcosm
of what I miss.
What is it about place that seeps
into your soul
mindless of miles, however far you move ─
plays out the string and holds you,
tempts a false nostalgia.
I catch myself believing
this momentary release from rancour
holds the possibility of a city
reclining into country life, as if back home
there was never anything like a frozen pond
abandoned to power, boys
claiming ownership of the top, slap shots
tripping girls' attempts at circles ...
At some point every conversation
comments on the relief
of outdoor skating: no one dictating
now to the right, the left,
backward only, just couples,
muzac piping out the pace.
Our music is disparate voices
mingled with the language of blackbirds
ducks and crows, our patterns as random
and predictable as their flight.
Wings slant and turn snug in the sky,
feet sculpt curves and crossroads into ice.
Such a freeze is rare here ─ the need
to get to the middle, irresistible
just to see what it's like to look
at the path from the lake for a change.
Searching for perspective, almost everyone
explores the iced-in cat tails and reeds
where the heron hunts when it's water
where we turn from relics of summer
locked in the frozen surface:
styrofoam, cellophane, plastic trash,
lost tennis balls and toys.
We look without seeing
how fragile our smiles
when it's youths who feel free
to nod to the aged,
whites to the black or the brown,
then skate or stroll away
from subtle assumptions behind
who welcomes whom
We sing in the same
clutches and gaggles as ever,
leaving implications, like our litter
for someone else to face.
Written sometime around 1990 when Trout Lake in East Vancouver
froze enough for us to lace up our skates and get out on the ice for a few days.
Image: Embraced,
acrylic on wood panel, 8” x 8”
On Valentine’s Day, CBC broadcast a wonderful love story from
New Brunswick. My high school English teacher’s widow, at age
90 has found love again – and it all came about through a fabulous
seniors support program set up some time ago in the rural communities
that encompass her home at Murray Corner by the Northumberland Strait.
Here’s the story: well worth checking out! I decided to honour them with
one of my love poems, this one, Making Love, from Belonging (Sono Nis).
Making Love
Making love with you I feel
my body wrap around the earth ─
a warm cocoon, content long after
making love with you. I feel
at home with everyone all day,
cannot imagine indifference after
making love. With you, I feel
my body wrap around the earth.
This one is another triolet – a wee eight-line poem with two refrains, each appearing three times.
I often shake things up quite a bit in form poems, but here I kept the refrains intact, using changes
in punctuation to shift emphasis. Enjoy! (For more about this form, and more examples check it out
in In Fine Form: A Contemporary Look at Canadian Form Poetry and my Wednesday Poem #31.)
Image: Winter, acrylic on canvas, 24” x 24” (sold).
Well that second snowfall from last week stuck around for a while, and even now some shady trails and driveways are a bit icy. The other day, when I ventured out to bring in some wood, I heard a high-pitched gushing sound and worried that the neighbour’s pipes might have frozen and sprung a leak. But as I investigated, it turned out their pipes were fine (whew!); what I heard was an extended orchestral suite, compliments of the many juncos that hang out here. Which reminded me of a snowy spell back when we lived in Vancouver, when variious birds flocked to feast on the seeds we’d scattered for them. So today’s Wednesday Poem is Carnival Yard, from Cedar Cottage Suite (Leaf Press).
Carnival Yard
Thrushes back! Juncos!
Yard’s a-hoppin’ – towhees, too…
Winter carnival!
Whee! to winter! Yard-
hopping, too! Carnival’s back:
Thrushes. A junco.
Hoppin’ juncos, yard’s
a towhee carnival! Two
thrushes. Winter’s back.
Winter yard: Juncos,
thrushes, towhees hopping back
to a carnival.
Back yard towhees hush;
juncos stop hopping. Winter
carnival at rest.
This sequence is another one inspired by the form Brian Bartlett created, which combines haiku and anagram. For the anagram, I varied some words, but limited myself to using the same letters in each haiku (except for when I replaced the ‘g’ in hopping with an apostrophe).
Image: Leftovers, oil and cold wax on wood panel, 12” x 12” (sold)
Last weekend, Pender Island got its first snow of the season. It wasn’t much and didn’t last long, but we all braced for the worst, what with the forecasters being uncertain about just how much we’d be in for. As it happens, the second snowfall was larger, and is sticking around. Still, I was reminded of what I thought of as a west coast idiosyncrasy when I first moved from New Brunswick to British Columbia. Years later, I wrote a poem about it, so here, to kick off February’s Wednesday Poems, is Out of Season, from Bewildered Rituals (Polestar).
Out of Season
Beneath a street lamp, the soft chaos
of snowflakes falling, as they nudge themselves
between gusts of air like a picture
of someone breathing;
then driven straight against their inclination
into angled arrows, they are weapons
of a wind that comes up out of nowhere,
as if to ridicule
the stubborn faith of people here
in out-of-season rain gear.
I cannot acclimatize myself
to umbrellas in the snow,
a hopeless coastal habit of denial …
or, is it a kind of resistance to lingering winter,
and in my condescension of mere difference
have I missed their February sense of it:
that tomorrow will bring rain poking holes
in the feeble snow, for crocuses.
Image: In the Woods, oil and cold wax on canvas, 12” x12” (sold)
January here on Pender has given us unusually glorious weather – crisp sunny days, perfect for walking in the woods. We should be getting a big dose of our annual rainfall this month, but that’s not happening – which is a worry. But in the meantime, there is much to enjoy. All of which reminded me of my father’s love of nature and being in the woods. A sentiment he expressed beautifully near the end of his 1936 diary chronicling his first job away from home on a tramp freighter during the Great Depression. So, here is Land, from Waiting for the Albatross (Oolichan) – a collection of poems I crafted using segments from his diary. (For more about this book, check out my Books page)
Land
i.
A Bluenose type schooner sailed right by us this morning
and left us gaping.
Woke up and noticed we were lying off Cape Canso.
I could see land
outlined against the sky and three lights.
Gerry called me at 5.30 and told me there was land all along
the port side. I got up to have a look-see. Huge cliffs with a sheer
drop to the sea of at least 500 feet.
Quite thickly settled all along
the shores and a lot of the farms are still of small frontage but cut
straight back into the woods for several miles.
We passed Fame Pt. at 10 a.m. Fred and I were on the poop
watching a car speed along the highway; up and down hills, around
corners and finally out of sight
with the dust slowly settling behind him.
ii.
The smell of the woods is wonderful.
You begin to realize you are nearly home,
sighting Seal Island, Cape East, the Magdalens,
smelling the wonderful smell of the woods.
After supper, admired the scenery, how the hills
changed colour at dusk. I almost got the channels,
when I smelled the thickly forested shores
and began to realize we were nearly home.
To get the channels means to be excited and anxious to get ashore, especially after a long time at sea.