When I was alone on the far side
watching condensation roll down a wall
of my Dehli hostel room one Xmas night
the future seemed a river bed of dreams
a path strewn with shiny pebbles.
This morning, I awake to discover that
some great soul has deposited a
new pebble where the waters flow.
Welcome to the world baby Oliver.
I have come so far to find you
sleeping happily in my arms today.
When Walcott found the Burgess Shale
in 1909, high above the town of Field,
he could not account for how the
humble trilobyte had swum so high,
probing antennae pushed into the
face of God. Only to appear 500 million
years later, like passengers
beneath the hooves of Walcott’s horse,
baking under summer sun, a mile
above the primordial sea. Nothing
prepared Walcott for tectonic
plates that vaulted like dolphins
from the earth’s molten crust
up to the realm of snowy hawks.
So he told himself that a biblical
flood had swallowed the teeming
earth and left trilobytes washed
upon the lonely mountain scree.
And Walcott died a happy man.
I’m perched like Walcott tonight,
35,000 feet above the Rockies,
bouncing rudely off a nimbus cloud
like a man astride a pack horse.
When the turbulence sends us dancing
you grab my hand fiercely, I whisper
“It’s okay”. But honestly, I haven’t
a clue when we will touch down or
when trilobytes will surface next.
She is Queen of Georgian Bay
standing in the swell of the lake,
bones white against the churn--
she has the sympathy of the sun.
I wade in to join her, and the waves
crash down and nearly tear the strap
from her fine shoulder. Where can
I hide my hunger on the public
beach? For you I will be a swimmer
stroking your hands in the waves.
For you I will be the wet sand
clinging inside your bathing suit.
For you I will be the final wave,
the biggest one that makes you
shout, “Oh God, here it comes.”
Till the riptide pulls me slowly
away to the lee of Georgian Bay.
Le Nouvelle Vage
I’m at my day job, pouring wine,
when a man sidles up beside me
and, with a smile, says my name.
As often happens these days I’m
at a loss to recall him or his name.
His features look familiar to me,
but the rest— it is like trying to
recall that French movie I saw one
Friday afternoon at Cinema Lumière.
The film I recommended to everyone
i knew for its verisimilitude. I think.
Was it Truffault? Jean Renoir? Rohmer?
Was it comedy? Absurdist? Surreal?
Beats me now. So I pour some beer
for the guy and we chat about football.
When I get home he has tweeted our
meeting, says we need to chat more.
I look at his, name, his bio, his avatar.
Was it Truffault? Jean Renoir? Rohmer?
Was it comedy? Absurd? Surreal?
Before I go down for good there is work
to do. Applying sanded grout to joints,
spreading grey adhesive like putty
upon clay tiles baked by Italy’s sun.
Fitting them like jigsaw puzzle pieces
Smooth the cool surface with my hand.
Yes, that is fine, worth putting feet upon.
Now I am ready to burrow like a worm.
Let others worry when order will return.
Dalits Rising
A friend said, take a bag of marbles,
pull one out for every year you’ve spent--
then look at what’s left, mocking
you from the bottom of the bag.
That’s how long you have left, pal.
So I count black marbles from the
jewel box I brought home for Blythe
from my journey to the Taj Mahal.
Shining lime-white in Agra’s evening sky
its pale marble skin cooled the night.
Below, ghats sparked trails into the sky
souls rising to heaven like fireflies.
Dusted by paradise, the sigh of jasmine,
the squawking song of the parakeets.
The fevered brow of the tea-wallahs.
The sand cranes cried for evermore
gone to close-up like Shammi Kapoor.
The sunset was so tender
The sky burned deepest blue
The dogs howled in anger
But the meaning all was you.
Another marble lifted from the box.
Looking upon us, my arm around your
tanned shoulder in the summer night,
I thought of Hector, pausing from the
doomed defence of Troy to visit
Andromache and Astyanax, high upon
the walls of the besieged city.
Before he would slay Patroclus then
be cut down in turn by Achilles.
Hector shimmered in bronze before
his wife and baby boy, knowing their
life together was over. Sensing
what lay ahead-- Hector’s death, sweet
Astyanax cast from the walls of Troy,
her own enslavement in Hyperia--
Andromache allowed herself a tear.
But Hector would not surrender.
“Andromache, why so much grief for me?
No man will hurl me down against my
fate... And fate? No man has ever escaped
it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you--
it’s born with us the day we are born.”
Keep this poem-- when something
happens to me. Remember that I was brave
in the face of a destiny I could not avoid.
And content to place my arm about your
bare shoulder this night and look
without fear at the approaching Greeks.
The woman in the row behind me says
that her arthritis feels like her hands are
in hot tallow. Her husband says he hasn’t
smelled a thing since the wedding in Victoria.
A nerve is pressing on his sinus cavity.
“They could operate but who needs it?”
The small lady next to him, the one whose
back pack smacked me in the head as
she entered, says she can’t taste anything
because of her allergies. Or is it her
sensitivity to lactose? No matter. It’s so
bad that whatever tastes do penetrate
the mists are simply too intense to
bear. I know the feeling. On the field
the shortstop takes a strike. “Another
ball,” says I Can’t Taste. “This pitcher
is wild.” The batter turns the next
pitch around, lining out into the glove of
the centre fielder for the second out.
“Another hit,” chirps up Arthritis.
“They’ll have to take him out now.”
Two pitches later, the runner on second
lights out for third, beating the catcher’s
peg by a good half second. “He never
had a chance,” clucks Taste Lady. “Do
you want to go? I’ve seen enough.”
And so the three of them decamp in
the middle of the sixth with the score
tied and the go-ahead run on third. They
seem very happy as they disappear into
a late-summer night, searching for their cars.
Without smell. Without taste. With arthritis.
Augustus Welby Pugin helped design the
Houses of Parliament at Westminster.
Fathered eight kids by three women.
Served a spell in gaol for debts. Then
converted to Roman Catholicism. The
greatest English architect of his century,
whose sandstone triumph screams Britain
had a French father. Touché. It’s said that
Pugin didn’t make much money from his
mastery of the Gothic. Most of his best
work torn down, abandoned or changed
while he lived. The bastards wanted to
put plaster where Pugin wanted God.
Except in the church in bloody Ramsgate.
That one he had to pay for himself.
They say his genius was in drawings.
Too much the artist, too little the business
man. Then, as the world opened to him,
he went mad at age 40 and died from
exhaustion, just like that other Gothic
prince, Bram Stoker. Today we think
that quite young. But then we never
laid the cornerstone for the British Empire.
In my twenty-first summer I sold
mutuels at Greenwood racetrack.
What I knew about the ponies
wasn’t worth knowing. Still, sad-eyed
men in snap hats, programs folded
like accordions, shirts stained
yellow with old sweat, came to me
looking deeply into my eyes for
the meaning of the fifth race on
a Tuesday night under grey skies.
High on the action, I slipped them
tips-- seen the splits on Ramblin’
Willie?-- that died by a head in
a photo. They never held it against
me, and I ended that summer
owing money, too. Had to
take a less tempting job. But
all of us--the decrepit touts,
eager boys like me-- would
give all our Tuesdays for
the sacrament of another race,
tickets scattered at our feet,
my horse gently coasting to
an eighth-place finish in the
lengthening shadow of evening.
Kafka
Upon his death, Kafka requested
that all his manuscripts be
destroyed. The Trial. The Castle.
Amerika-- ashes. But when poor
Franz died of TB at age 41,
little known outside gloomy
Prague, his good friend Max Brod
considered his last request. And
promptly ignored it. So Franz Kafka
became a world-famous author
against his express wishes.
Think of that next time you take
thirty seconds to order coffee.
Me Ma' is slipping from my life
the past rushing behind those eyes
watery blue in the failing light.
And my Irish has gone with her.
The lace curtains, the novena candle
Her brothers singing the Ave in
choir loft, the Lachine spinster aunts.
Who will I tease about the troop
shows? Or ask aboutthe wartime
telegram saying Burke was gone?
She was raised by French nuns,
she hated them for beating her.
Now she greets the Filipino nurse
with a look of mad mischief.
On good days she knows my name
when I show her wedding photos.
On others we watch the birds
that fly past her window garden.
She shows me the women she hates.
And the men that she likes. But
the trappings have now failed her.
The sad music of The Chieftains,
the brandy snifter in her purse
in case of dire emergencies.
The weathered photo of her father
reading the Montreal Herald in 1937.
So I close the door quietly behind
while she watches golf on the TV.
The past, I see, is now a distant shore
where I can visit, alas, no more.
I walk in the office. His back is
to me, concentrated on the
new computer he has just
mastered. Checking the
market, no doubt, or cursing
another idiot politician. Absorbed
in some stock or mutual fund,
he does not look like the
sheltering wall of old. The stony
break, a simple rustic, he
stood ready till we were could
stand and see the fields on our
own, stretched before us. Stood
ready to take us back if a
rough wind blew in or a storm
rolled through. Sheltering wall,
he turns to see me enter his
office. He lowers the paper,
takes me in as if we have
never met. Then a smile emerges.
Without saying hello, he tells
me, “Go get Peter, and we’ll
grab something for lunch.”
Jack Pine
Standing on the crevasse,
jack pine against the odds,
last honest man leaning on
the wind, a lesson in survival.
Like a young man, tilting hard
against timberlines. Battling
elements. Blown by the sky.
The choice in life lies between
putting out roots in thin soil
or wandering the scree line.
The jack pine on his crevasse
or the whistling wind.
Knowing you, knowing me
Put me down for the latter.
Filling my arms with night.
Each night I made my way to the wings,
to hear the tenor sing The Flower Aria
at the Royal Alexandara Theatre. So
close in the wings I could smell
the onion sandwich on his breath
as his voice soared for “un seul desire...
un seul espoir... O ma Carmen...” Close
enough to see where Eva let out
The stitches on his doublet so he
could make the high C each night.
I was young and a bullfighter then.
Soaring on Bizet’s splendid staircase,
in love with the mezzo on the far side
of the stage. She loved the baritone.
Or was it the conductor? No matter,
she sang Boheme in my shower.
Idedicate this poem, not to her,
she married the conductor, but
to Don Jose, downstage right,
braid flashing, beading sweat, his
heart in every note of “La fleur que te
ma jette...” clutching tight the prop
rose that carried all my hopes.
While switching hands
on her cell phone
she asks me, “Am
I high maintenance? What
does that really mean?”
I tell her that I think
she’s medium-high, like
a setting on a stove.
“But what does that mean?”
she asks again.
I sigh, look out the window.
A Chinese woman walks by
with her Pekinese
on a rhinestone leash,
shoulders hunched before
the wind. She has on the
most elaborate hat.
So I say, “With a woman
who’s high maintenance,
you must remember to
tell her that everything
she wears is perfect.
With a low-maintenance
woman, clothes are immaterial.
“And medium high?”
With a medium-high, I say,
you need only tell her
only when she looks fabulous.
The rest she already knows
better than you.
On the train between Jaipur and Benares,
(in the days before I knew you...)
speeding through the Indian night--
the air heavy with bidhi smoke.
Travelling alone because I could.
And what was left to hold me?
Seated in a charpoy, second class,
my eye was captured by the sindoor
on a memsahib; it burned vermillion
beneath her chaddar. A life proscribed,
fine. Sure of her port of entry.
And me? Drowning in nickel valium,
Protected by the Rajdhani Express.
I dreamt of wandering the Champs Elysee,
not knowing who you’d be when I
found you waiting beside L’Etoile.
Now that we know, would you
have it some other way? Would you
still board the train for Mumbai
with me and say, yes... this is splendid
as we settle into sleeper class for
a journey into the heart of night?
When I was a boy, wasting slack
summer, I’d sprawl on my belly beside
the CNR railway tracks, listening
for the dayliner on its clickety-clak
from Sherbrooke into Montreal. Most
days the train flew by. But on special
July days kissed with mystery the
ratty flag would rise from the back
of the two-car train, and a bundle
of mail would tumble into the weeds.
Or a passenger descend, blinking
against the sunshine at me behind
the tiger lillies and feverfew. Like a
ferret in the undergrowth. Today,
the engineer smiles as he passes,
consults his silver watch without stopping,
at precisely3:23. His mail bag
empty of surprise. The train does
not stop beside the tickweed anymore.
Mr. Parrott does not stumble off
the train after half a dozen pilseners.
nor would I wish it so if he could.
Standing beside you, looking at the Water Lillies
at the Art Institute. Monet obsessed with his
pond at Giverny. The shuffle of light. Pads
emerald on the shore. Rough brush strokes.
The hues of midday sun and endless sunset,
precise in Monet’s vigilance, reflect the love
Monet had for Alice Hoschedé, his second wife.
The widow of his patron, who took him in
and raised his boys after his first wife died.
Were his ordered rays and reflected desire
kept secret or did he confess to her
over absinthe at dinner one summer night
in Normandy? I hope he took it to the grave.
The best things are those kept close to the
heart. Like this moment in Chicago. The
secret life of a wanted man. Where no one
can find us behind the nympheas.
Passing through my father’s room
on the way to find shoe trees, I see
he still hangs his best pants, cuffs first,
from the sock drawer. Still keeps small
change in a jar with coded colours
for the dimes and nickels and quarters.
His cuff links burnished in a small bowl.
It has always been this way, an order
inviolate, like Ozymandias in the sand.
When my children were born I too
became a pant hanger and coin collector.
Tradition received is tradition honoured.
Now I wonder if my kids will long remember
Cuffs tucked clinically in the drawer.
Coins in jars on the bureau top.
Or simply the idea of a man facing
evening with his bureau ordered just so.
