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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.