Post Script
Post Script.
You need to know that I want
Unabashedly sentimental songs.
Think Van Morrison
In his earlier, less angry days and
Dylan, in his later, gentler ones.
An instrumental of Annie Laurie is a must,
As too Mark Knopfler,
Who so magically supplied the soundtrack
For my days here.
You’ll need really good food for after.
Excellent, piping hot coffee and brewed Orange Pekoe in china pots,
Kentucky Fried Chicken,
Pizzas made to order,
And a Build Your Own ice cream sundae station
To add the requisite whimsy.
Display a very few pictures of me,
Not huge Bristol boards packed full of them,
So popular these days.
Black and white predominating, if you will,
My unwavering preference.
Flowers?
Yes, my nod to tradition,
Scads of calla lilies, but white only,
The yellow look fake somehow,
Oh, a few off white roses, would you,
Champagne they call them now.
And in the middle of everything
Position one commanding vase of
Fat white peonies,
Because their fragrance, their sheer deliciousness
Outdistances all the others combined.
Everyone there ought to tell
One story about me that stands out for them,
And not just of sweetness and light.
The dark, too.
You all know
I was more than one shade.
A piper would be wonderful at the close,
Just one, as there was for my father,
A whole band of them he felt excessive
And I must agree.
Then let me go.
Knowing that most days
I cherished this life of mine
And that while briefly here,
Laughed probably more than most,
Loved a few of you beyond measure,
And with providence in my corner
Was able to write a few poems
I would not change one word of
Even now.
Escape Hatches
Escape Hatches.
A writer has to get out of the way of a great poem.
It can barrel down your brain at three in the morning, announcing itself, demanding brashly that you wake up, pay attention.
It can arrive with less fanfare, creeping stealthily into a corner of your brain when least expected, while you’re on the expressway or in a fast food lineup, wholly intact, ready to deliver itself.
Some may be difficult to hold onto, like children running ahead of you in a playground. You can see them but they will not be corralled.
Others visit you fleetingly for but an instant, offering up a potent word, a loaded image, deftly uncovering a long forgotten moment.
They all ask the same, merely this: Take heed. Do it now. I am already planning my escape.
If This Is Your Final Destination, Welcome Home
If This Is Your Final Destination, Welcome Home.
Always the smell of tiger balm
takes me back to Kuala Lumpur in 1980,
the sweltering airstrips,
the sea of expectant upturned faces
of the refugees waiting en masse
at the bottom of the airplane stairs,
on their way to Canada
and to second unimaginable lives.
Plane load after plane load,
week after week, three years running,
we ferried them across oceans.
After days and sometimes weeks
in crowded buses
they waited to be next in line,
these survivors of Pol Pot and
his merciless Khmer Rouge,
these witnesses of unimaginable horror.
We delivered them to Gander, to Montreal
and to Toronto,
away from all they had known,
everything they owned in small tidy bundles
at their feet.
We chose our words carefully
for the interpreter,
Trying to prepare them in some small way
for what lay ahead.
Where do you begin?
How do you tell someone how cold feels?
We played them music
we wanted them to hear,
hits of the day, Blondie, REO Speedwagon,
handed out sandwiches and Pampers
and wet naps.
They in turn watched our every move,
accepted anything given to them,
suspiciously at first,
then with vigorously nodding heads,
pouring forth their thanks,
holding up their solemn, silent babies proudly
for us to hold.
When we dimmed the cabin lights,
hearing their guarded whispers
to one another,
sharing late night confessions in the dark
high above the ocean,
these people for whom
no sadness had gone unknown.
It was boarding them I remember most.
Even when I urged them
up the aircraft stairs, off the blistering tarmac,
beckoned them toward me,
they held back, tentative,
and only when I descended the stairs
took the first of them by the hand,
would they dare take the first step
toward this wild and inconceivable freedom.
I see their faces clearly now and I ask:
Who among us could possibly measure
the courage we asked of them.
At what cost?
I’ve been thinking about social media a great deal. It is an unequaled tool for writers, manna from heaven actually as a way to connect with readers, old and new. But at what cost, I wonder? In its formidable wake, what is it that we are relinquishing?
Are we forsaking the art of conversation? The glorious handwritten letter that flutters through the mailbox? The relaxed, cozy, stop and chat????
Here is a poem that resulted from my musings:
Bowed in Prayer.
At the Olive Garden on a Friday night, on my own,
I have just ordered the Tour of Italy and
notice the family huddled into a booth across the way,
six of them, three each side,
their heads collectively bowed over a cornucopia of glowing electronic boxes,
their fingers tapping away at microscopic keys,
the light reaching up to their faces at speeds
impossible to imagine.
So enchanted is the group with the cavalcade of data
pouring forth beneath them that I count a full two minutes
before any of them notices the waitress,
standing waiting at the head of their table.
Shall I come back, she asks graciously,
exhibiting a patience far above her pay scale.
Yeh, the one nearest to her finally pipes up,
the closest he’ll come to a conversation all weekend,
and he didn’t even lift his head to say it.
So It Begins
So It Begins.
If I’m looking for the seeds of
my intolerance of injustice
I need look no further
than a Grade Nine girls’ only Health class.
Sister St. Cletus calling us up to the front,
two or three at a time, those still seated
charged with critiquing, in turn,
on a scale of one to ten,
each of the girls’ personal grooming.
The plump unkempt Rosario
newly arrived from Sicily suffered most.
The bookish pale Margaret also paid dearly.
It wasn’t just that the exercise was callous, arbitrary.
It was its pitting girl against girl for reasons entirely inconsequential,
the time and sheer energy it exacted,
the pitiful tears shed privately after,
when those same girls
could have been banding together and begin to
change the world.
I asked my friend Chuck what the boys did.
Turns out their Health class was held outdoors.
They ran the city streets in all weather,
he said proudly,
in matching shorts and tees,
a pack, cohesive,
strong
and growing stronger.
The Trouble with Science
The Trouble with Science.
If it’s true,
as grim neurologists now claim,
that our memory is far from intact,
that the very process by which we retrieve the past
is flawed, random, that it plays fast and loose with
fact, detail, even colour.
Then how exactly do I conjure
what was us.
If it’s all up for grabs,
if all bets are off,
what exactly was true?
The way you looked at me that evening on the boardwalk,
was it as tender as I picture it now?
And your kiss. As deeply felt?
Did you profess your love in three languages
or was it just two?
Before you round the corner do you actually
turn to look at me
one last time?
Are you in the blue shirt
or the red?
Are those actual tears?
But science falls short. It overlooks
the power of the human heart
which has a memory all its own,
where the moments of our lives never alter,
fade,
or grow old.
Where a look remains as tender
as when first it was delivered,
a heart quickens just as it once did.
Yearning ever as fervent,
passion as acute.
And in that special place
the moments worth remembering lie in wait for us,
inviolate,
undefiled by synapse
and the waywardness of time.
I Am a Poem
I was thinking about the sheer power of a poem this morning over my third coffee, watching the ebb and flow of the sea from my perch here in the main room. Ruminating on all that a fine poem can do, exactly what it can deliver to us. And this resulted.
I Am a Poem
I remember when you’ve long forgotten.
I return to you the details that still matter,
The ones that got lost along the way.
I tell your story.
My lines are your lines.
My words, entirely yours.
Exactly what it feels like to not be chosen.
That time you felt like giving up
And almost did.
Under a leaden sky one long ago winter morning
When he bid a cavalier goodbye.
Your saddest songs, your deepest regrets,
I hand them back to you, intact.
I resurrect them all.
I hold fast to the anguished moments you find
too painful to remember.
I speak the words you are afraid to say.
I lay them bare.
I am holding fast to them all.
I am ready when you are.
I am a poem.
And Something Else the Priests Never Mention
I get the feeling this is a way station.
Especially on days like this one when I think
this can’t be as good as it gets,
when I am 24th in line at the DMV
(I count to torture myself)
or when the robot’s soulless voice tells me my wait on hold
will be approximately 33 minutes.
But on the way to where exactly?
If it’s to wander mindlessly from cloud to cloud,
footless to boot, it would appear,
in shapeless generic shifts that by the way
do nothing for anyone unless they provided a belt
and even then,
I’m not exactly delighted with the quid pro quo.
Especially on days like this one when I think
this can’t be as good as it gets,
when I am 24th in line at the DMV
(I count to torture myself)
or when the robot’s soulless voice tells me my wait on hold
will be approximately 33 minutes.
But on the way to where exactly?
If it’s to wander mindlessly from cloud to cloud,
footless to boot, it would appear,
in shapeless generic shifts that by the way
do nothing for anyone unless they provided a belt
and even then,
I’m not exactly delighted with the quid pro quo.
Who among us would forsake a life of debauchery
for a reward that doesn’t include a simple flat screen,
let alone feet.
And wings that probably hurt, stuck on our back like that,
not to mention how do you clean them.
let alone feet.
And wings that probably hurt, stuck on our back like that,
not to mention how do you clean them.
Don’t get me started on the whole halo thing.
I mean,
think about it.
think about it.
September
September #1
Obligatory backpacks bought,
duo-tangs and the cornucopia of Sharpies,
heralding the dull march back to classrooms, schedules.
In this forlorn wake a trail of
unhurried pancake breakfasts,
scrabble games that last for hours
and lying perfectly still on the sun-scorched dock,
until perhaps trailing a finger,
but only one.
September #2
Boats pulled out for the season
children rushing to school
and like a switch was flipped overnight
the water in the bay now darker
somehow
deeper
Undercover
Late August
slyly
slowly
the light becomes a
miser.
Compulsory
The school uniform, penance.
The wool knee socks even in summer.
The black serge tunics
shiny, slick, crisp, from too many hot irons.
Warmer
The geese now heading south
emit unearthly,
unsettling sounds overhead, clearly the desperate pleas
of those who seek release.
