Monthly Archives: May 2018

Wonder World

 

The saddler’s leather
The vane of a feather
The needles that come from a pine
Electrical static
And the smoke aromatic
And the shivery feel up your spine
Hot summer hazes
The Moon, in its phases
The whoosh in revolving of doors
Cheeses so smelly
Hot food in your belly
And the sauna’s white steam in your pores
A pussycat’s tongue
An aria sung
The shadows that blot out the stars
The drizzle that’s staining
The snow, when it’s raining
And the sound of flamenco guitars
Bumblebees lazy
On summer days hazy
The waves from the pavement, of heat
The hummingbirds hover
We cannot discover
The speed of their wings, as they beat
The things in the Sea
Like the wild Manatee
And the squid with its fluids of ink
And the dolphins a-playing
And the predators preying
And the jellyfish, purple or pink
The eagles espying
The rabbit they’re eyeing
The spider that’s spinning its web
The spring ice that’s melting
The hailstorm that’s pelting
And the tides of the flow and the ebb
So, all is connected
And shan’t be corrected
”Tis part of the master design
And all things imagined
Belong to this pageant
That’s wrought by the Artist Divine.

 

 

 

 

Dangerous day

 

Yesterday, in my little corner of the world, we ran into some coincidental calamities, or nearly so….. all in the space of ten minutes.

I was driving east on the main street of town and was attempting to make a legal left turn to go northbound.  A southbound vehicle on my intended route had his signal on to make a left turn, into my path,  where it was strictly prohibited with numerous highly visible signs.  When westbound traffic was clear, I began to make my turn, and he came out right in front of me.  Had to slam on my brakes to avoid a collision.  He acted as if it were my fault and made various rude gestures.

After that heart stopping moment, we continued up the street and I had to brake sharply once again.  A little girl in a saggy diaper was running around in the middle of the roadway.  I stopped abruptly and put on my flashers.  My wife got out and took the little girl by the hand and asked her where she lived, quickly leading her to the side of the road.  She called over to a woman who was doing some gardening and asked her if the child was hers.  The woman came running out, picked up the girl, said an embarrassed thank you, and went into her house.

Five minutes up the road from there, just as we were leaving town, I nearly ran a dog over.  It was off leash, but obviously owned by someone, having a collar and tag.

Maybe my planets are out of alignment, or something like that.

A farewell to a life

In one of the back bedrooms of your emptied house,
you sit for a moment on the stepstool you were using
to dust out the vintage cobwebs.
The others are out by the front porch,
having a celebratory coffee.

The last thing now to do, before the painters and cleaners arrive,
is to take down the faded pictures.
And, one by one, you lay them in bubble wrapped boxes.
Geez, you know, the floors are quite a bit of a different colour
where things used to sit in the years.
Vivid squares and rectangles left by absent pictures.
The bunnies of dust, forgotten gum wrappers from the kids,
lost cat toys. It’s so hard to comprehend them, to look at them,
and you think that they seem to have absorbed all of the living,
all of the emotions, from this life of yours now.

Whoever said a house is not a home surely did not live here.
Sometime, more than once, yes more than once,
the fine bones of your heart were broken,
and then mended at oddly changed angles.
Fit for the flight of a fairy’s fancy? No.
But well enough to see you to this day.
It’s the first time you ever hired a Mover to do the gruntwork.
A realization that you, your friends, and even your “kids”,
are a little unsuited for it now.

In this early summer heat, you look down at spindly arms and legs,
amazed by the smoothness of the hairless skin, by the blue tattoos
that have formed underneath, unerasable.
By the freckled speckles of liver spots,
which you imagine denote the locations of towns and villages
along your rivers of pain.

What now, when I get up from this stool? you think.
Put a damper on the coffee crowd out front?
No.
Pull your hat down a bit, wear something of a smile, grab a coffee.
Jump into the pickup with son and grandson.
Off into the unknown.
May just be….the flight of a fairy’s fancy.

number fifteen

A green caterpillar, stripy, with soft padded sticky feet.
It twirls and caresses the finger, then drops thirty storeys.
A shattered shard of mirror, six inches from point to base.
Tempted am I to challenge its edge.
A fish net, made of basket-woven reeds, with a long greasy handle.
It holds water too long. Stupid. Where is fish?
(a slimy smile, coin-eyed, with tendrils, hovers just below the ripples)
A tiny tiny nematode, directionless, inchworming under my microscoptic eyes.
How many have I, down, down in the warm bottom of the bowel?
Children of the tape worm.

All of these have come to me
in the wild eyed apprehension of semiconscious sleep.
The sweetest of dreams to thee.

 

My precious

This morning, I cried.
Over foggy coffee, fiddling with my phone,
I watched a woman in her hospital bed wake up with new lungs.
How long she bore the breathing mask I do not know.
There were doctors and family gathered ’round.
They took off her mask and said “breathe”.
Her eyes.  Her eyes as she looked from one to another.
She looked as if she would cry from joy.

I cried because she made me realize how precious our time is.
She had surely looked death in the face, and was reborn.

All of my aches, pains, complaints, all of my worldly sins,
I can bear perhaps a little more easily now,
after seeing this angelic scene.

Someone once said Go, and sin no more.
Our lives are worth so much more.

Pierce my heart with cast iron arrows

Fifty years on,
in my sad unpacking,
this time of letting go,
I find,
pressed between panes,
a polaroid.
A face is fuzzily framed
in one angled corner, and
I think it’s you.
A blur of bouncy ponytail,
laughing eyes and bunny teeth.
Looking up,
waving goodbye
to balloons released,
bound for a section of cloud
on some other tangent.
Nothing between but blue.

Was it the day
we went downslope
into the forbidden ravine,
inventing a tent out of bedrolls and branches?
Jelly sandwiches.
Red rolls of caps for fun.
The contraband camera,
the stolen tarot deck and decoder book.

My life.
My love.
There was no other.

How will I find that cloud tangent now?

The picture that bothers me

On my desktop, I’ve been in the habit of saving thousands of pictures from the internet.  I have loaded them into a screensaver so that each one dissolves into the next, after a few seconds.  Most of them have been collected because they elicit some kind of emotional response from the viewer, or at least from me.

They may be beautiful, awe inspiring, humorous, sexy, cute, etc.

One is particularly horrific, but for some reason I saved it, and have left it on there.  Out of the thousands of images in this screensaver, it seems to show up like a bad penny when I have left the computer running for any length of time.

It is apparently from World War Two, and I remember reading some of the background behind it.

Fuzzy, and in black & white, we are shown a large pit piled with dozens of dead bodies.  On the rim of the pit kneels a man in a shabby overcoat, hands tied behind his back.  An SS Officer stands over him and holds a gun to his head.  The most disturbing things for me about this image?  The man’s face at the moment of his death.  You would expect a countenance contorted with fear, but what you see is him looking at the camera with a blank expression, seeming to ask “Why?” Then there is the cold and sneering face of his executioner that reminds us of what we, as a species, are capable of.

Someone had to have taken that picture, and that leads to another disturbing thought.  Why was it taken?  As a trophy?  As a proof of body count?  As a warning?  In those days, there were no cellphones, so it couldn’t have been taken covertly.

Why have I kept it?  If it was through prurience, please forgive me.  But, I do not think so.  I was not searching for something of this nature, and it shocked me on first viewing.  I keep it as a reminder of our baser instincts, and of the need to be personally more kind to those around us.  I have seen a soul about to be lost, and the emptiness within its eyes.

Amanda

We were out celebrating a friend’s birthday at a little tavern in town.  The waitress I had been used to seeing was no longer there, and I asked the owner Chris what had happened.  “Oh well, you know, she just up and left.  Took the kids and went out west.  Family problems.”  And so, we were served by Amanda, an odd sort of girl who apparently was in for just her second night.  I could see Chris watching her closely whenever he had the chance.  She was painfully conscious of it too.  Very thin she was, almost emaciated.  Tattooed here and there, with obvious sores on her arms and face.
In guilty hindsight, my first thought was Chris, why would you hire her?  She’s in pretty rough shape.  I saw that she was desperately trying to keep up on this busy night, and it so happened that one of the other waitresses had called in sick, adding to the confusion.  She came to our table, penciling down the dinner orders from our party, and getting a little flustered by some of the guests who either couldn’t make up their minds or kept changing them.  When she came to my wife and I, I just said “two meat loaf, please, and we’re good for drinks.”  She made brief eye contact with me, and gave the slightest smile.

In a face that was not used to a smile.  I knew her eyes.  She was, or had been, a user.  The furtive glances.  The jerky movements.  Tough as nails underneath. I know this assumes a lot, but, as the evening wore on, she gave me a brief searching look more than once, as if something had passed between us.  I have known two people in my life who went down that frightening rabbit hole of hard drug use.  One is dead, and the other in custody.  It is something that you feel utterly helpless to deal with, no matter your compassion.
As we got ready to take our leave, Chris came to me and asked “What do you think of Amanda?”  She’ll work out, Chris.  Give her a chance, eh?  She’s trying.

Live ones today

I posted an ad on Facebook (what a fool).

I done dood it all wrong, I think……

Ad said “I have 3 old bicycles, free to a good home”

“They have been stored outdoors in a shed, and are a little rusty here and there”

“One has a broken seat.  We no longer need them.  They are adult size.  May need tires,

or maybe just some air.  First pickup at (my address)

***

The following are some of the responses:

Pictures, please!  (NO)

What are their measurements?  (unknown)

Are they functional?  (perhaps)

Will you deliver to Collingwood?  (30 miles away)  (NO)

Can you hold them until Monday, and I will come and get them for sure.  (NO)

I just want one.  Show me a picture of the best one. (NO)

Can you just take the brakes off one of them, and sell them to me?  Mine are broken.  (NO)

Show me some pictures of the rust.  I don’t wanna waste my time.  (excuse me.  you are wasting MY time)

What size are they?  (Please read ad)

I’m coming in half an hour!   (someone else said they were coming in 20 minutes)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

CHANGED AD TO READ:  THREE BIKES AT CURB.  PLEASE STEAL.