Bumper Crop

The highway stretches
a hot grey ribbon
frenzied traffic evaporating
over the horizon
while on either side
wide green spaces, trees
introduce the country
to the city beyond.

Nervously facing traffic
the juvenile groundhog waits
mustering momentum for crossing.
If it manages one double lane
a boulevard will render rest
encouragement for the other half.

Does it know
that wild thing
why it must make
that crossing?

Does it notice
far beyond on the other side
the activity there?
Crows, undertakers
       carrion-eaters
zealously perform their function.

 

Country Life

We read the advertisement
for the estate auction
north of Luskville
beside the Ottawa River;
drove up to a dingy farmhouse
the auctioneer already
rattling prices on
wardrobes and washstands
the crowd bidding eagerly
on old quilts and scatter rugs
as I wonder whose body
they warmed and whose step
they muffled on long
northern winter nights.

Rain began to muck the grass
and everyone moved to a field
beside the broken-roofed ban
where two flat-bed wagons
held the sum total of a
man's existence. Block planes
and draw knives, hoes and
shovels take the block.

Generations of Quebec
dirt-scratching. He'd cut ice
from the Ottawa river, set traps,
hunted waterfowl. Decoys
and traps go quickly;
quaint articles in demand.
Red plaided Quebecois joyfully
raise bids on pick-axes and
shovels, themselves pick up
inflated tabs; neighbours
swelling the estate.

A handful of countryfolk
full in years and lean in pocket
bid slender for rusted wire
and nails; scraps with frail value
but high in practicality in marginal
farming. Before we turn to leave
we share a whispered confidence.
The old man had been murdered.
That old myth re-surfacing
yet again, of sock-stuffed savings.

 

Canard

The richness of tradition
embroiders the very air
as swallows execute
diurnal aerial forays
a shifting haze
melts over canelli
sun-faceted oriel windows
lean over narrow streets
dreamily recalling
nocturnal assignations
the water lapping
darkly on 
baroque splendour
decaying under the
inexorable weight
of progress where
beauty is an impediment
yet gondoliers still paddle
and their songs
swift sightseers
through the ancient gate,
crude iron foundry
lost under stone seraphim
leaning caryatids
and David's star on top
a biblic horoscope;
the ghosts of
innocent Shylocks
still lurk behind
mullioned windows
scribed into
slanted posterity.

Counterpoint

There is no fire in this night sky
nor even wan mirror-image
in the cloud-muffed night.
Everything hushed in the
muff of falling snow.

In the dark hush sounds
the rising wind, furious
at the storm's dalliance.

Through a tributary of the 
ice-sodden creek we trek snowshoed
then pause    arrested by
an inner sense of difference.

Grey ashes strewn in the
narrow defile barely seen in
the shadowings of trees
overhanging the creek banks.

Grey creeps through the
litter of snow. A sweep of
handheld branch and the sound
becomes live, a smouldering
bushfire; its incandescence

luminous, exciting the night
sending sparks exploring the air
vapours lazily rising
wafting the richness of pitch
to our frozen nostrils.

Early Harvest

The sun edges through
clouds gleaming
like a silver dollar
as we dip our paddles
fluming runnels in the lake
rippling pearl sounds
and all around the water
reflects dark clouds.

There looses a crow's
dark taunt and a pair
rise like sooty rags
off the tops of the pines
circling this lake.

The lake silvers
in our wake on this
wind-blathering day
shoving our backs
so the canoe darts
sleek as an otter
to a rock-littered inlet

where we beach. As
we poke slanted branches
the soil yields garlic
and the air blossoms
with its garish fragrance.
Wild strawberries hide

their insufficiency under
weeds as we greedily pick
for late afternoon jam.
Gulls screech  riding crests
and updrafts as whitecaps
scatter the lake.

The clean feather-edge
of swallows slice
the storm-filled air
picking off insects
that skip our
unresisting skin.

 

The Snarling Chihuahua

Taz experienced the puzzling
and bleak miseries of abuse
confusing the very small animal,
causing him to quiver with fear
and anticipation of more pain.
Finally abandoned, how
would the vulnerable
creature understand its
unspeakable agony of fear
and pain had abruptly ended. Its
young brain and memory
patterned in trauma. Now, it is
loved and reassured in new
surroundings with gentle souls and
stability, salving its hurt to a
degree that evaporates 
to usher fear back in whenever
strangers whose unfamiliar presence
threatens a return to terror; the
dog resilient but forever
in the permanence of memory
a helpless, beaten cur.

I Heard A Strange Bird

I heard a strange bird the other day
jawing an elegy for summer
feathered in black
he lamented the past

beaked hollow strings
for might-have-been things.
Yet it spurned my sympathy
was looking for privacy

and all the same sat there
calling its sorrow.
That damn old bird
recalled time standing still
living the past instead of tomorrow.

Have Kayak, Will Paddle

Imagine you, in the great blue sea, paddling serenely along, the pellucid water, the warmth of the sun, eagles coasting high above, and there's a seal clownishly straddling a rock, trying to maintain balance, to keep it self from slipping off, into the water. The sun makes all of us do things like that; we're eager to capture its warmth on our bodies.



Imagine peering into shallow shoreside pools of water, and seeing within a plethora of colourful creatures, starfish in pastel colours, languidly waving their arms.




Imagine waking to a misty morning, hanging over the landscape like faint off-white gauze, casting a dreamy other-world look of surpassing beauty over everything. Imagine the mist lifting and the sun beginning to greet the day, illuminating trees, rocks, sandy beach, your neat little tent and the perfect kayak you painstakingly built from a kit, sleek and super-manoeuvrable.

photos courtesy of J.S. Rosenfeld

South Thormanby Island

Paradise on Earth

Well, actually, the most stunning visually beautiful places can be found right here on this lonely little Planet Earth. Think North America, imagine British Columbia, and you're fairly close. For any adventure- and nature-lovers who dream of viewing and temporarily living within the very bosom of nature, as hackneyed as that phrase may be, it's close and it's possible.

It helps if you're reasonably physically fit. And if you've gone to the trouble of spending many leisure hours during the winter months working on a pattern of a kayak you've ordered out on the West Coast, and completed it to your satisfaction, making it completely seaworthy, cramming as much supplies into its limited hold as you can for a week or so of recreational aspirations all on your own, you too can have the opportunity to see these views firsthand, and snap photographs of them to share with others.



Photographs courtesy of J.S. Rosenfeld

Time, Warped

Photograph by: Pat McGrath, Ottawa Citizen

Time, Warped

Ghostly fog surrounds the tops
of buildings obscuring their
mannered height. It is as though all
has been swallowed within the
avariciously hungered maw of an
alien invasion with creatures unknown
moving stealthily under cover
of enveloping grey, the incessant rain
dampening our spirits
not theirs as they estimate the value
of all we treasure, the warmth
and light of the sun, blooming flora,
the now-silent birds. Astrophysicists
inform we have yet an estimated
billion years before our sun collapses
and with it life on Earth. So,
what's the hurry ...  ?
you extraterrestrials - unless of course,
we ourselves are the lurking danger
and those who intrude represent the past,
our past, when Earth-escaping pioneers
set out on a planetary
reconnaissance mission
and this reality we now live
is simply time, warped within itself
replaying its backward reel.

Letters Home/Sylvia Plath

She would be a meteor
a fabled Amazon of letters
not for her the
half-life the shrivelled ego
of the forgotten woman
who penned disappointment;
she wrote this way
to encourage capricious fate
so in its dark unknowing way
it would know her for the
winner she willed herself to be.

She met a man with whom
she could meet her jealous Muse
with a voice like the
thunder of God
knew without knowing
what dark forces moved in her;
that the huge, sad hole
she was destined to fall into
was merely removed in time.

Letters to Mother
celebrated success after success
and unbridled pride
the sure knowledge that no one
was as gifted as feted as
joyously filled with life and
promise as herself    as her
dear, lovely Ted with the
voice like the thunder of God.

Joy brimmed her letters
spilled from the pages
tripped off alphabets spelling
beauty and talent and pride and
determination and that intense
preoccupation with all that
mattered; self. Why didn't
Mummy ever twig, respond to that
outpouring, warn that no one

as happy as her daughter
could possibly pen those arcane
depths of despair, loneliness
and unperceived loss? The
letters transversed a one-way
street with no room for
marginal notes, no corrections
no warnings, no hint of cessation.

Gregarious Mourning

Human nature is unchanging
consumed with curiosity
drawn to scenes of disaster
the more gruesome
the greater the attraction.
Why so compelling?
To judge the contrasts
between one's good fortune
not to be so dreadfully afflicted
while finding an unwholesome
satisfaction in strangers' woes...
Compensating with a
mass stampede
to become the first
to be among those others
of like emotive persuasion
in hushed silence, gathering
to grieve in solidarity
with disaster, depositing
offerings to propitiate
tempestuous Chance
or simply offerings 
of flowers, wreaths,
Teddy-bears to accompany
those departing spirits
to their precipitate
netherworld. Empathetically
gregarious mourning.

Life In The Universe

Convinced that we are not alone
in the vastness of the universe
astronomers dream of extra-terrestrial
life; an intelligence not unlike our
own. Great dish telescopes revolve

to the music of the spheres
picking up radio waves and the
scientists working feverishly
to decode - to no avail
             finding  nothing in that

dense, dark, frigid infinity to
convince that mindmates may exist.
Themselves training devices our
way, picking up signals and
frantically unscrambling. Myself
I constantly turn my radio dial

looking for signals of intelligent
life right down here. Those
beings could be coming up with
the very same results. Nothing

Nothing out there.
Nothing down here.
There is no intelligent life.

Night Migration

Autumn has arrived with
an icy blast of Arctic
reminder, as though the
diminishing of lighted days
has not forewarned
sky travellers. This evening
as the hours stretch into
night, the vast twinkling
arras of sky rescues itself
from the velvet black
of deep space unlit
by a new moon, bright and
generously illuminating
the clear sky. This night
there will be none of those
chirping calls from
warblers embarked on
fall migration, sending
their clear, sharp signals
in the language of avian passage
in the night. Absent the
protection of dark night
they leave the field
to nature's lurking predators.

Sunday Plaza

The windows lighted
merchandise tantalizingly arrayed
stores stand empty of customers
like great ships
anchored in a bay;
gaping parking lot
large and grey
as placid water
and overhead seagulls wheel
cry harshly
then coast on stray winds
now and again
strutting the ocean of pavement
or landing on light standards
like drifting buoys --
scan the deserted sea;
conquerors
surveying the battlefield
assessing booty.

Changing Belfries

Strolling Yonge Street at night
you know you're in the Big City
neon zapping the summer dark
advertising businessmen's luncheons
"Bare Fax Revealed!"
overblown photographs
of overblown blondes, brunettes --
but who looks at the hair?

Crowds throng like lemmings
at intersections moving as one
huge organism shifting feet
up Toronto's jazzblaring strip
then down again
fundamental steps in some
arcane orgiastic rite.

"Adult Entertainment", woos
the middle-aged couples gawking
the weird and funky swingers
and among them all tourists
gape at the spectacle of
unbridled zest for life.

Sure, the street's alive
and throbbing with action
pick-ups and let-downs
even zombies approach vacant-eyed
with outstretched hand
panhandling as though the
streets were running gold.

Store windows lighted like day
merchandise colouring stares
eating places steaming the glass
punk rock reminding everyone
of life's essence; sexdopebooze.

Heady stuff and cheap
entertainment strolling the street;
painted ladies and chest-bare men
sizing up and speculating.
Above, bats squeal, loop the sky
bounce signals off buildings.

Deus Misereatur

Unwilling to accept responsibility
for his own actions, man's first
collective decision was to create
the Creator. In that Supreme Being
would rest the authority to
affect us all; that Spirit would

move us to behave as we do. We
gratefully give ourselves up to
His protection, His mercy; ourselves
giving no quarter, showing no mercy
to those who deny His existence.

Time has changed our perceptions
for once a whole pantheon of Gods
saw to our needs; gave way to an
Aten, finally a Jehovah, heir of El.
Man is adaptable and with his

changing imperatives he recognizes
the need to alter allegiance to
the new Supremacy. In this era
the computer is the latest
manifestation of Divine Presence;

the seat of bureaucracy its temples.
Number after number is sacrificed to
appease the God whose fodder we are.
Recognizing safety in anonymity
we embrace the liturgy of ciphers

and comforted, we exist blindly
in a uniform dance of submission.

The Storm

               The sky
grey as antique pewter
greasy with dark clouds
the air heavy
with wet promise
and nearby a robin
lilts a paean
to the joys of
drowned worms.

               The wind
chugging through
the trees in the park
like a runaway locomotive.
        The trees
scattering their seeds
upon the ground;
defying biblical injunction.

Perspective

What rain   my father
used to say ---
               it's only
                        God,
                                crying.

Oh, he was an
irreverent man
and I was left to
grapple with the
compelling vision
of a broody God
crying fits like me
hands fisted in hard balls
of angry frustration
showering the earth
clouds insufficient
handkerchiefs
to stem the overflow.

 

Canoeing

Our paddles sluice
the dusk-dark water
as night draws
the evening sky
close overhead.

Cedars and spruce
hang tipsily over the bank
leaning their dark reflections
over the lichen-clad granite.

A fish lunges
the taut skin of the lake
and overhead a kingfisher soars
beaking his lunatic call.

We drift the lazy water
clap echoes off
the tree-line
watch dragonflies etch the air.

Mist rises from
the edge of this day
and the humped hills
finally swallow the sun.

The Ascent

The ascent to Noon Peak
rose sharper than
our expectations,
moss cushioning the granite
white pink clover
stippling the rising swell
tree roots writhing
gripping our climbing feet
we clambering like
mountain goats
to finally stop
lungs sharing the searing air
tearing through our breath
the heat radiating
from us as though we
were heavenly bodies;
the center of a
universal blaze.

 Birthday Card

From their parents' example
our children have become
innovators and value
unadorned honesty. For
his father's birthday our

son laboured to fashion
his very own sentiments.
On good quality paper
Gothic lettering worked

painstakingly in gold leaf
the legend stands out:
STAND AND DELIVER

 

The Last of Her Line

The last of her line of warrior queens
Penthesilea spurred the flagging Trojans
to combat with brave words and Priam had
faith until the oracle showed him her
limp form on a funeral pyre.

But the fleeting glory of the Amazon
inspired the armies of Troy, dispirited
by nine years of encirclement, by Hector's
death and they followed her wild mare to

the battlefields and fought as they never
had before, lancing and axing the Greeks,
driving them back to the beached ships
with newfound fury, their wild warcries

crowning the seagulls' wails. Blood
gored the plains of Ilium and heads rolled
like stones on the breach of Achaean
       offence
until Achilles, still mourning Petroclus

joined the battle to confront the warrior
woman. The air thundered with battle
the cries of the dying, the speared, the
gutted. Facing each other, the half god

the Amazon each scented victory. Ah,
Penthesilea's spear glanced off dread
Achilles' shield, his greave and in his
turn Chiron's pupil pierced the warrior

woman through her breast, penetrating
the horse to stick her body like meat
upon a spit. Plucking the helm from her
head, Achilles looked with rage on the

dead beauty of the woman whose courage
matched his and he lusted helplessly
for those slack limbs to entwine his
that dead mouth to catch his, that gone

breath to sweeten his life. There is
no victory in conquering
     there is no glory!
he cried in anguish and tried to die.

Achilles slaying Penthesileia, Athenian black figure amphora C6th B.C., British Museum, London

Talking Back

I thought that
talking to photographs
of dear departed
was the last desperate act
of a senile mind
never realizing that
people locked away in their heads
often have nowhere else to turn.

I always dreamed about a
captive audience to receive
my unprotected thoughts
so wrote this fellow
whose poem had been so
poignant. He responded
saying I'd been the

only one to answer
the silent echo of his need;
the convict locked away
behind bars of steel
Letters chatted back and forth
and one stranger whose body
was a prisoner

communed with another
whose head was also
that way. He wrote
wistfully of memory
of birds winging forests
and his incarcerated

birthday celebration.
In the last letter he
asked me to wish him luck;
getting ready to put on kneepads
go before his parole board.
Looks like he's no longer

sending letters in search
of captive company. Guess
he doesn't need me anymore.
Wonder now if photographs
ever appear to talk back.

Ruin

The wall stands
on the Ontario landscape
rough grey granite
drywall, no mortar
gluing its oneness
hints of a fireplace.

Now the underbrush intrudes
forest pushing back memory. 
Birds loop the lonely air
and forest creatures
shelter under its shadow.

It could be the
ruins of Ilium
of a Minoan palace
or even Dresden. The
causes as diverse as
a wooden horse

         Santorini
or Allied bombers.
This wall speaks of the
inevitability of time
flux wrought by nature
by the nature of man.

Evading Finality

The constant companion of age
is loss, as a slow but steady
diminution of friends and
acquaintances takes place, and
dismay at the inevitable trajectory
of life's passage from vitality to 
decay and death become everyday
realities that no power on Earth
or the heavens above can erase.
Delay, however, is another option.
Our most intimate inner circle,
companions for life in experiencing
its voyage throughout the years
together begin to signal the
finality of the long and fruitful
collaboration, when steadily but
certainly they begin their leave, we
remaining in their vanishing act
much less than we were, regretfully
bidding our last farewells to robust
levels of hearing, eyesight, taste, 
mobility and finally, communication.
Gradually accustoming ourselves to
life on a slower track, evading finality.

 

Mourning and Night

In the news, morning and night,
updates on the latest situations
unfolding half a world away, yet
closer than ever before as nations look
on in fascinated horror while one among
them descends into the madness of nature
itself gone awry, a government mounting
a frenzy of bloodshed against its own.
A civil war of uncommon brutality
where reason and compassion have been
buried deep within the dark recesses of
a mass psychosis, a raging will to destroy,
no cost too great to bear through the
unbearable horror of atrocities as
civilians, children, suffering agonies
beyond mere swift death, assaulted by
a regime that found their loyalty wanting 
and bringing to bear a base inhuman 
punishment the globe decries, exulting in 
its sanctimony, blaming the terrorists
whose goal is his extermination. Once more a
cataclysmic shudder of imperial defiance
to observing opinion as bombs and fighters
dismember, decapitate and clench tight the
living heart of a nation, destroying lives
and cities, pulverizing schools, hospitals,
mosques and homes for after all, what
need is there of their civilizing presence
when those who used them are themselves
extinguished as a totalitarian tyrant makes
a sweep of the detritus of humanity with
the audacity to find fault with his rule?

 

The Message

The message clear enough
for even cross-eyed optimists.
Soon enough the heavens
would tire of the spirit of
benevolence that took even it
by surprise, sufficiently so that
the sun managed to smuggle
minutes-worth of bright lashes
on the gloomy landscape below.

Those other light flashes would
not be held back forever, taking
their leisure behind the carbon
flavoured cloud cover. Soon
enough the sky gave voice to
the storms' triumphalism, discreet
distant baby-thunder to begin
until the fully orchestrated sound

of massive kettledrums, cymbals
and a brass chorus of gleaming-bell
tubas announced the arrival on
stage of the upended lake above
massively emptying into the
cringing abyss below, Earth's
creatures leaping for shelter from
the inundation of the powers above.