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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).