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Image:  Maelstrom, 12” x 12”, oil and cold wax on canvas

We are well into storm season now – not just politically, but weather-wise too.  Another big one is pummelling the west coast as I write – they are calling it a bomb cyclone.  I thought atmospheric river was a scary enough term for these massive storms, but now we have another level of warning to terrify us.  At any rate, with all this going on, I decided on Storm Warning, from my chapbook Level Crossing (Alfred Gustav Press) for this week’s Wednesday Poem.

Storm Warning


We ignored the signs all morning – that wreath

around the sun, then the fires the floods the freezing

extremes defying disbelief in a sky feathered

all morning with signs.  We ignored the wrath

of the fevered wind and the first percussion clouds

rolling in behind silhouettes of the dead trying with

opaque hands to feel their way home again, ignoring

the signs of mourning wrapped around the sun.

This poem is another triolet, that little eight-line poem in which line one is repeated as lines four and seven, and line two is repeated as line eight. It is one of a dozen I wrote over a two year period some fifteen years ago. Poet David Zierothpublished them in his delightful Alfred Gustav Press chapbook series, in which he asks authors to include a comment about their poems. Here are a couple of the observations I made there about the triolet:

“In the process [of writing the poems] I realized what I love about the triolet is how much freedom its tiny scaffolding supports, how far you can travel without fear of collapse. How it insists on precision, sharpens focus.”

and:

“You might say the triolet is shaped like a figure 8, the way its refrains start and finish the poem and create a kind of intersection in the middle. You might say our lives are a lot like that, too. This sequence … uses the form as a way of looking at our everyday lives, the implications of our actions in any given moment, the Möbius strip we ride daily.” 

Image:  “Looking at pictures Jeff took at Panama and since. He has some pretty good ones but the best is one of Christine looking out the porthole. I hope to get prints of a few of them.” (Jack Shreve journal entry, April 7, 1936, Tasman Sea)

Last weekend, Tom Wayman was on Pender Island reading from his latest books, The Road to Appledore (memoir published by Harbour) and How Can You Live Here (poems, published by Frontenac House).  Tom started the Vancouver Industrial Writers’ Union in 1979 and over the years gathered together numerous men and women who were writing about work. The group met, in various iterations as members came and went, until 1993.  As it happens, several former members of VIWU now live on Pender (Kate Braid, Zoe Landale and me) or nearby in North Saanich (Kirsten Emmott) – so we joined Tom at his reading. Afterward, we got together for a mini reunion at our local pub. So, for this week’s Wednesday Poem, here’s another one about work, from Waiting For the Albatross (Oolichan), a collection of poems I crafted using segments from the diary my father, Jack Shreve, wrote at age 21 while working on a tramp freighter during the Great Depression.

Luck


1.

The cat has been chasing cockroaches ever since supper – good luck!
When we hit the warm weather we’ll get bed bugs too!   Tough luck.

Robbie smashed three teeth on one of the funnel stays. 
Went ashore to have the dentist yank them.  Tough luck.

Last night cook cut his hand open with a meat cleaver.  Bled like a
stuck pig and had to have three stitches taken in it.  Tough luck.

Al found a great big worm in the soup! Bob saw a grub
in his biscuit.  Three of the boys found maggots.  Tough luck.

Len lost his little finger in the machinery.  What it didn’t cut
off it crushed.  Mate cut off the rest and sewed it up.  Tough luck.

Took a minute to sharpen my knife and my hand slipped, cut my thumb.
Mate said to get out the needle and cat gut, joking, tough luck.

One of the firemen was tight and tried to sell a pair of new boots he’d bought.
When he got no bids he threw them over the wall – tough luck.

Cameron was tight last night and fell overboard!
Jackass.  Lucky he didn’t drown.


2.

Don’t get me wrong about this trip.  I wouldn’t have missed it
for the world.  Too bad young Sullivan couldn’t get anything.
It makes me realize I was very lucky to get placed so easily.
Boys swapping yarns to-night; I don’t think I’d care for their
experiences, how they rode the rods, the rows they had.
While the work may not be interesting, it isn’t too hard;
I expected lots worse than I’ve had so far.  Don’t get me
wrong.  I wouldn’t have missed this trip for the world. 

About the poems:  Luck 1 is a ghazal, a form based on couplets that feature a brief refrain, just a word or phrase introduced at the end of the first two lines.  It is then repeated at the end of line two of each couplet.  The final couplet usually includes a signature, either the poet’s name or a pseudonym.  Luck 2 is a triolet, an eight line poem in which line one is repeated as lines four and seven, and line two is repeated as line eight.  In this poem, I’ve been very loose with what I repeated and where.  More about these and many other forms can be found in In Fine Form (Caitlin, edited by Kate Braid and me).

Image:  Options, oil on canvas, 24” x 24”

Over the past weeks and months, as I tuned in to election campaign reports that have been dominating our news, I was often reminded of a challenge of sorts that the late Governor General’s Award winning poet Steven Heighton tossed out to his fellow poets in 2011. At the time, he was promoting his latest books at a reading in Vancouver. Introducing his poem “Some Other Just Ones”, Steven explained that it was his response to Jorge Luis Borges’ poem “The Just”, in which Borges portrays a few ordinary people doing ordinary things and ends with the line, “These people, without knowing it, are saving the world” (Steven’s translation).  He then casually remarked that he assumed all poets would probably want to add to what Borges started.  When I got home that night, I re-read both poems and began to think about how I might contribute to the conversation.  For this week’s Wednesday poem, then, here is what I came up with:  More of the Just, another from my chapbook The Time Being.


More of the Just

Esas personas, que se ignoran, están salvando el mundo – Jorge Luis Borges


The mother who comforts the tearful child who bloodied her son’s nose.
The estranged friends who get over it.
The citizens of warring countries who refuse to take up arms.

The flash mob dancers.
The driver who screeches to a halt in the crosswalk and blanches.
The estranged friend who calls first and the one who gladly answers.

The teenager who shovels her elderly neighbour’s driveway, anonymously.
The publisher who chooses not to sell to the chains.
The driver who apologizes to the children he just missed.

The ham radio operator who keeps the Morse Code alive.
The husband who reads poetry to his ailing wife.
The publisher who sells, instead, to the staff and the staff, who form a co-op.

The sand artists.
The ones who walk down city streets smiling at strangers.
The husband who doesn’t get the poems, but reads them anyway, beautifully.

The father who teaches the winter sky to his neighbour’s kids.
The mother who comforts her bloodied son without laying blame.
The ones who stop and talk with street people.
The citizens of countries at war who march arm in arm for peace.


after Steven Heighton’s “Some Other Just Ones”


Both Borges and Heighton wrote list poems, so I wanted to do the same – but rather than use free verse as they did, I decided on a terzanelle.  Using (and slightly tweaking) the line repetition feature of this form, I could introduce some characters in one stanza, then revisit them later.  Other characters would be interspersed throughout, appearing just once in the unrepeated lines. My hope is that the form helps create a sense of movement, an ongoing goodness.  Given how this form works, I decided not to use Borges’ final line in my poem, as Heighton did in his, but instead used it as an epigraph.

Details about how this form works are provided in the Villanelle chapter of Kate Braid’s and my book, In Fine Form (Caitlin).

 

Image:  Digital photograph: Red Fox (New Brunswick)

My good friend Diane MacDonald is a marvellous photographer. Most weeks, we choose one of the trails on Pender Island, and meander along, pausing often to chat or take pictures of the beauty that surrounds us.  Last week, Diane told me about how, a day or two earlier, from her deck, she spotted a heron patiently hunting in the shallows. Nearby, a deer was grazing.  For a change, she said, neither heron nor deer took any notice of her; they just went on about their business, allowing her to get quite close.  She took photograph after photograph of the heron; then after some time, decided she had enough to work with, and turned to leave. Of course – just as she turned, her camera no longer at the ready, the heron took flight, its reflection vivid in the still water.  Diane’s lament: “If I had just waited one more minute I’d have had a great shot,” reminded me of my poem Shutter (from The Time Being), written about some of my own might-have-been photos during a trip back to New Brunswick some years ago. 

Shutter

I almost caught that blue-winged teal standing
with her wings wide open, then three blue-jays

fleeing, peanuts in their beaks.  I’m told
that mangy fox we watched cavorting

in the ditch beyond the covered bridge
(where we listened to deep echoes in the stillness

of old wood) dashed right behind us once
we’d turned away.  An osprey left its treetop

nest just before I had my camera
set; two bald eagles circled low

as we sped along the highway, past lupine
fields electrified in pink and blue.

All this and more is what I saw – and still
I called everything today a near miss.

Image:  Enigma, acrylic on paper, 10.5” x 10.5”

This past week, both British Columbia and New Brunswick wound up their provincial elections. Much of the talk during both campaigns was about whether voters want change after multiple terms of the same government: three of the New Democrats in BC and two of the Conservatives in NB.  All this brought to mind my poem, Change (from The Time Being), so I’ve chosen it for this week’s post.  More about its form follows the poem.  Meanwhile, as I write, the election results remain too close to call in BC, so it will be a few days yet until we know whether the NDP or Conservatives manage a majority or if the two elected Greens will hold the balance of power.  In New Brunswick, they chose a Liberal majority, retained two Green MLAs, and elected their first ever woman Premier.
 

Change

Something has to happen
as we sit inside my car waiting out a downpour.
A stranger's hand

starts tapping at the window
where we talk of triolets and villanelles,
how something has to happen

to give a form's refrains
a fighting chance.  More irritating tapping interrupts;
our hands begin

to fumble for some coin,
the windows fogged with talk of variations
making something happen

He's talking at my window - 
another version of the stranded tourist scam.
His palsied hand

reaches in so he can take the change
that changes nothing
from our hands.
Something has to happen.


The events in the poem took place one stormy Vancouver night when poet extraordinaire Molly Peacock was visiting. I can't remember now where we were going - probably to dinner somewhere, or perhaps I was dropping her off at her hotel after dinner.  Regardless, we sat and talked in the car, waiting for the rain to let up a bit.  Several days later, she wrote in an email, “…something HAS to happen to that hand through the car window…” which gave me the impetus for the poem and its first refrain.

Change is a villanelle, a form that features leapfrogging refrains.  Line 1 of the first stanza is repeated as the last line of stanzas 2, 4 and 6.  Line 3 of the first stanza shows up again as line 3 in stanzas 3, 5 and 6. I’ve tweaked the refrain lines to suit my purposes. There are also rhyme and metre elements to the form, which I’ve ignored. These details and more examples of the form can be found in Kate Braid's and my book, In Fine Form (Caitlin).

Image:  Just Ducky, oil on canvas, 12” x 12”

I’ve been in full fall mode lately, loving this, my favourite season - so today’s Wednesday Poem is another one celebrating autumn.  Autumn Pantoum (from my book Suddenly, So Much; Exile Editions) is yet another one featuring birds. The form I chose for it is a pantoum (see blog # 20, On Hands and Knees, for how this works).  I do love how the refrain lines tumble and cascade through the stanzas, ending the poem where it began, but that first/final line containing so much more at the end.

This poem, like last week’s, also builds on a line borrowed from another poet.  The opening (and closing) line, in italics, is from Elegy 10 in George Bowering’s Kerrisdale Elegies (Talon), which to me still stands out as one of the best Canadian poetry books ever.  And, earlier this week I got an email that makes it even more fitting to post this poem now.

There is a proposal to install the Bowering Collection and Reading Room in Special Collections at the University of British Columbia. Fundraising is underway for this and there is a pretty short turnaround time:  $500,000 needs to be raised by the end of December.  So far they’ve raised @$137,000 in donations and pledges.  All donations will receive a tax receipt issued by UBC. If you have any questions about the pledge or donation process, please do not hesitate to contact Katherine at katherine.kalsbeek@ubc.ca or 604-822-2819. UBC has also set up a designated giving page https://give.ubc.ca/bowering-collection


Autumn Pantoum


Each quick appearance is a farewell —
the leaves blush and wave goodbye;
goodbye, goodbye to green, everything
eventually dies.

The leaves blush and wave goodbye,
even the junco trilling hello
eventually dies
down, rejoicing becomes requiem.

Even the junco trilling 'hello
cold' is a sign of beginning, of winter coming
down.  Rejoicing becomes requiem.
This small bird sings for angels and ghosts.

Cold is a sign of beginning, of winter coming
with white ideas of ice and snow.
This small bird sings for angels and ghosts
rummaging at dusk under a grove of oaks.

With white ideas of ice and snow,
mallards abandon the lake and rushes
to rummage at dusk under a grove of oaks,
butting their beaks at the leaves.  They mutter.

Mallards abandon the lake and rushes —
I hear them after dark when they should be asleep,
butting their beaks at the leaves.  They mutter
goodbye at last.  Listen,

I hear them after dark when they should be asleep.
Goodbye.  Goodbye to green.  Everything,
goodbye at last.  Listen —
each quick appearance is a farewell.

 

Image: Leaving, acrylic on canvas, 18” x 24”

This Thanksgiving weekend it will be twelve years since we moved to our home on Pender Island. To mark the occasion, I’ve chosen Leaving (from Belonging, Sono Nis) for this week’s Wednesday Poem.

This is another of those rare ‘gift’ poems.  A friend had recently told me she was leaving her 25-year marriage, and as I thought about all that must mean for her life, my mind wandered off to partings of my own. Just two of several I recalled were how hard it had been when I finally decided to leave a political group I’d been in for several years; and then, decades later, what it had been like when I left a job I’d thought I’d stay in until I retired.  Once I finally picked up my pen to write, the poem simply emerged, all but intact.


LEAVING


We take one step at a time when we leave
a love, a job, a belief
after spending days, perhaps months, years
dismissing doubts,
their presence, ripples in the air
that can be as soft as moths
wings we pretend are only
the ordinary in and out of our breath – 
clouds against windows
clear, and one day we see our world differently,
feel our hands press against that glass,
the cold of it flinging us back
one last time
into the heart of a home we have known
where each piece in its usual place
seems rearranged
as if we are already gone

 

Image:  Photograph: Robin in Berries

We are in full election swing here in BC, as well as in New Brunswick and Saskatchewan; and the pundits are all trying to predict when the next federal election will be. All this on top of the intense electioneering south of us and so much other distressing, often horrific, news from around the world. Which brought to mind my poem Whisper Songs (from Suddenly, So Much; Exile Editions). So I’ll make it this week’s Wednesday Poem (even though it’s a tad early for the wintery references...). This series of seven poems is known as a Crown of Sonnets. I won’t normally post such a long poem here, but this one really needs to be read as a whole. A bit more about the form and the unusual, for me, process of writing the series follows the poem.


Whisper Songs

"…there is a phenomenon called the "whisper song" in which the bird sings almost inaudibly, as though in the back of its throat, so quietly that one must be very close in order to hear it." — John A. Livingston  (Rogue Primate)

1.

An ordinary draft disturbs the curtain,
lets morning whisper in, a brief surprise —
sunlight wavers, then goes out again,

a candle snuffed, another shuttered eye
and day descends weighted with regret.
More cloud, more cold; rain turns to flurries

turn to rain — even the weather forgets
what it's supposed to do.  Voices scramble
into the room, the news a breakfast of threats

I wish I could ignore.  Listen to the babble
and destruction pouring in, the gossip and thunder,
the conviction.  I'd rather sweet nothings — fragile

vows, nonsense words, the lust of love-birds,
the hustle of buds bursting the seams of winter.

2. 

The hustle of buds bursting the seams of winter,
a dream away — these days reluctant stubs
of their summer selves.  Chimney-smoke lingers,

the air sweet-scented with indifference.  A mob
flaps at the feeder, another squabble in the chill
drags on.  (What whisper songs?)  Seeds like crumbs

from the table of unlikely gods are trampled and spill,
attracting mice — and mice find all the flaws
in our foundation.  We poison them.  A little

life is taken just because it crawled
to us for shelter — and we are not ashamed,
refill the feeder because we want to be awed

by finches and chickadees, their antics, the untamed
feasting outside our window, unafraid.
         
3.

Feasting outside our window, unafraid
though a merlin lives nearby, sparrows festoon
the bamboo, preen their muted plumage and wait

their turn the way we wait for change.  In the woods
sap begins to run, a sure sign.  Spring thaw
always starts with a trickle.  It dawdles, then pools

in our hearts, hope tiptoeing in to sprawl
on the couch — an old friend who never left.
When the cold snap comes hope fades as fast as the hawk

snatches food.  Somehow I never expect
a varied thrush in its talons.  From the brambles, a clamour
in the key of grief, a slight shudder when the breath-

less wind settles.  Hidden in Douglas firs
a flicker clings to the bark and starts to hammer.

4.  

A flicker clings to the bark and starts to hammer
in a language we think we understand.  The tempo
insists we listen again, dares us to measure

the space between each beat, imagine echoes
that live there.  Out of the shadows, a coyote appears,
a grey hesitation.  She holds something in her yellow

stare, poised on the periphery where need meets fear
and contemplates.  The flicker changes his tune
to laughter — the song, a haunted mockery piercing

the air, mocking the coyote's indecision
or mocking mine.  Then the coyote, in one smooth leap,
leaps over thorns into the afternoon.

Above the garden long since gone to seed,
overcast hours drift on, seamlessly.
 
5.

Overcast hours drift on, seamlessly
shifting tenses.  A wayward breath is intent
on shaking loose the silver gleam we see

in the drop that clings to a leaf — the not yet
and the irrepressible now.  The wait for a wish
almost granted; the song in a whispered moment

almost heard.  Perhaps I've grown deaf to riffs
floating over my head, euphonious hymns
from a world beyond my eager reach, my stiff

wings.  Far off, two bald eagles hem
a ragged cloud, then ride thermals — feather
and wind, adrift and dreaming, carry them

into the infinite.  When they return they offer
no answer, only an elegant will to endure.

6.

No answer.  Only an elegant will to endure
where anything can happen (and soon).  We know  
too much and too little to rely on gestures

toward faith we keep making.  (A prayer said, sotto
voce, against aggression; then after it happens,
the vigil, a crowd gathered in darkness, holding

hands and candles.)  A wing-beat before sundown,
the feral world around me seems to retreat
in the last light, a quiet so intimate even

rooks rephrase their accusations, their bleak
prophecies — though the roost is in the crosshairs
of survey crews and planners.  Who will speak

up for troublesome crows, when all across
the city, rush hour idles at the crossroads.

7.

City rush hour idles at the crossroads,
a grey hesitation filled with echoes, imagined
and real, incantations from restless shadows    

where a coyote stands in the rain.  As night beckons
to fragile, sotto voce vows, a delicate
light wavers around neglected questions

in the irrepressible now.  In the not yet,
an eagle and hawk drift toward spring thaw
while unlikely gods pause to contemplate

the reluctant heart — how it can still be awed
watching sparrows feast, undeterred.
Bursting through seams of indifference, today at dawn

a whispered song was sung (and almost heard) when
an ordinary draft disturbed the curtain.


I was still working in my paid day job in Vancouver when I wrote Whisper Songs, and had little time to devote to poetry.  But I was itching to write!  I’d had the Livingston epigraph in my mind for a while (a long-time favourite from a favourite book on the environment – ground breaking when it came out).  One evening, sitting in my study late at night, I wrote the epigraph on the top of a piece of paper.  After a while, the first two lines of the poem seemingly dropped from the sky. I loved their rhythm, their possibilities – but couldn’t seem to take them any further.  So the next night, I went back to the lines, thought about them, and took up my pen again – another line.  But no more.  This process felt magical; it was like I entered a new and delicious space, but each time, only briefly (usually when I get into that creative zone, time disappears and hours pass). It went on for days and days; often I would start by tweaking the lines written the night before, then finding my way into a new line or two – rarely more – until the poem was finished.

A Crown of Sonnets is a form that combines a traditional sonnet structure with a particular refrain pattern.  The refrain is what drew me in:  There are seven sonnets; the first line in the first poem is the last line of the last poem.  In addition, the last line of the first sonnet is the first line of the next and so on throughout the poem. In Whisper Songs, I’ve used three line stanzas with very near (sometimes distant!) rhymes (patterned aba, bcb, cdc, ded) and a closing couplet (ee). And instead of counting strong/weak accents to determine the metre, I used – usually five – strong accents per line.

 

Image:  Bluebird, acrylic on canvas board,10” x 10”  (mounted on wood panel)

Well, we’ve just passed the fall equinox, which to me calls for an autumn poem. So I chose Adieu (from my book Suddenly, So Much; Exile Editions) for this week’s post. It’s another poem with a bird reference at the beginning, in a line I borrowed from Patrick Lane (1939 – 2019), one of my all-time favourite poets.  His line (in italics) which opens my poem is taken from Little Birds, in his book Too Spare,Too Fierce (Harbour).

The other reason this poem resonates with me just now, is that a few weeks ago, I went on a tour of our beautiful Pender Island cemetery. It was led by a representative of our local museum, who gave us an overview about the graveyard, then walked us to a couple of areas where early settlers rest – and told fascinating stories about their lives, the legacies they left for us. I will be honoured to lie in that field when my time comes
 

Adieu



There is not much time.  The birds sing of winter
though the leaves light up the air with their dying.
Sumachs scorch their fingers, burn at the end to hail
heaven where poplars

drizzle down from their great green heights to the ground
wearing gold, a last fling with the brilliant
chill.  Is this praise or defiance; is it God
or the coffin

that leaves us trembling when we drift away
from the gravestones and the unknown: — how long do we have;
are the dead we mourn part of the song or are they
simply gone


It will be a green burial for me, so no coffin.  And at the end I am sure I will be thinking of Dorothy Livesay’s marvellous epigram:  “I shall lie like this when I am dead / but with one more secret in my head.”
 

Image:  For the Birds (study), oil and cold wax on paper

I’ve been thinking about sandpipers lately.  How I miss seeing them during their migration through my home turf back in New Brunswick.  They arrive every year to feed on the mud shrimp and other treats they find along the Bay of Fundy Shores, especially at Shepody Bay near Johnson’s Mills.  That’s just a few miles from where I grew up, but I wasn’t really aware of these delightful little birds and their passage until I was an adult, visiting from British Columbia, where I now live.  The sandpipers feast on the mudflats from July to September every year, almost doubling their weight as they prepare for their 72-hour, non-stop flight back to South America.

This week’s Wednesday Poem, then, is Bird Watcher at Dorchester Cape, from my book, Belonging (Sono Nis). I used ‘poetic license’ when it came to the title.  Dorchester Cape isn’t, technically, where you go to see the sandpipers – but it is very close to Johnson’s Mills, and at first I confused the two.  So when I wrote the poem, I used Dorchester Cape; when I discovered I had the place name wrong, I left it in the title anyway … because to my ear it just sounds better.

Bird Watcher at Dorchester Cape

But occasionally, when he least expects it,
in the glass of a wave a painted fish
like a work of art across his sight
reminds him of something he doesn't know

            "Poor Bird"      P.K. Page

How could she miss them, pale tan on the mud flats;
a myriad of peeps here somewhere, come from away to feed –
she stands at the edge of a gravel road straining to see.
The tide nibbling in and the bright bluebells
twitching with Queen Anne's lace in the wind, at first
fill up her eyes.     Then the land begins to lift:
again and again, all those birds, blurred air, composed profusion
the perfect music of a fugue, this synchronicity
in a winged field.     Something inside her shifts.
But occasionally, when she least expects it

a lone sandpiper stays behind, too intrigued
with its small patch of tidal land to fly
off in the hope of finding what it already has.
Dashing this way and that, it drills in familiar ground,
each spot offering something
undiscovered, something the whole flock missed.
The solitaire scatters prints along the shore
until suddenly, in the wash of the oncoming tide
it halts; stares at the water as if
in the glass of a wave a painted fish

appears, brilliant fins stiff in its liquid home,
an exotic body rising from the depth of somewhere else
and with each breath of the bay, drifting closer
to the sandpiper's feet, a colourful puzzle.
She observes the stillness of the bird –  
imagines it will soon take flight,
half hoping it will find
its designated place in the flock, returning now,
a curvature of movement, brown and white
like a work of art across her sight,

a restless sketch, sunlit into diamonds and topaz,
the radiance luring her gaze away
from the odd sandpiper enchanted, she thinks, by the tide.
She blinks in disbelief at jewelled air,
the like of which she's never seen before.
The glitter flutters briefly, then the show
dissolves to camouflage.     Her heart beats wild as wings
when the solitaire breaks its trance to race
straight into the multitude, whose safe shadow
reminds her of something she doesn't know.

 

Bird Watcher at Dorchester Cape, is a glosa on P.K. Page's glosa (Poor Bird), which is a glosa on Elizabeth Bishop's poem Sandpiper.  Page describes the glosa form as "... the opening quatrain written by another poet; followed by four ten-line stanzas, their concluding lines taken consecutively from the quatrain; their sixth and ninth lines rhyming with the borrowed tenth." (Hologram, A Book of Glosas, Brick).  For a change, in this poem, I abided by all the elements of the form rather than omit or vary bits – though the rhymes here are as often close as they are perfect (meaning only some of the sounds in the rhyming words are similar, as opposed to having all but the beginning sound in those words match).