Beneath the lights of St. Augustine
Where conquistadors came ashore
searching for a fountain of youth;
She stands in her famous red raincoat
A legend of the frozen fountain
Where cranes swoop and cry above
the slave market she reigns supreme
my feelings are all ten feet tall
her face on every street. Turn my
face to a biting February wind
And all is safely gathered in.
The tradewinds are in from the Gold Coast
They rattle the palms with their Xmas lights
Like candy canes in the Florida nighttime.
It reminds me when we walked the harbour
the songs of the holidays, the bells of the church
Playing for us by the lighthouse door.
Tonight the trades sing a different tune.
I’m always slow to see the fronts coming in
Last to know, first to regret not putting up shutters
A drowning pilgrim left up on the lee shore.
Too busy singing carols round the Xmas trees
Under the starry dome tonight above Jupiter.
She tried hard to help me, it isn’t her fault
I’m selfish and I’m silly and hard to reach.
But she loved me so strong it made me
weak in the knees. So tonight, for her, I
consecrate the pelicans diving for supper
And the breakers crashing by high tide.
Oh, I wish I had a boat I could sail away on.
Cast alone on a Mediterranean shore in
rainy Algiers, dust from Morocco still
fresh on my boots. The sirocco wind
Blew me here to the English School.
Their wine is bitter, but the avocado is
fresh and the butter melts slowly. Then,
like a pebble falling gently in a pond,
the vinyl drops upon the turntable. And
Joni Mitchell sings, “I’ve been to sea before,
Crown and anchor me.” I look from the
balcony, the sea like chords on Joni’s
guitar. “Down there,” said my host Felicia,
pointing to the alley below,” See that?
In the civil war the French shot hostages
and threw their bodies into the sea.”
But my mind had surrendered to wine.:
“I could drink a case of you, and I would
still be on the feet.” Still on my feet.
I wrote that January night in 1974
so that you might understand a little
better all these years later. Where it
came from. And where it all went.
Talking through a bluegrass band
to a face of fair experience
made moist by the summer heat
played hard by bitterness
stretched tight as a drum head
Friends tell me that you’re still around
in a clapboard house of white, pure white,
encircled by the evergreens
gauging love by golden weights
and friends by measured garden gates .
The pilot light is out
Tell the feeders down along the ,line
That the spark has disappeared
tell the feeders we are going home.
My invitation extends to you
to visit us again sometimes.
I don’t need your change of mind.
Or the passive imperfect tense.
Just say hello and mind the stairs.
The pilot light is out
Tell the feeders down along the ,line
That the spark has disappeared
tell the feeders we are going home.
The moon box
shuttered and perched so high
Inaccessible to most
vertigo for the timid.
The barker snaps
a spine to the rubber man
Or the fire eater
But not the virgin
In the moon box above
Bones on the sill
a few who beat the vertigo
but wilted with the snow
From the curtain rod
I see myself.
The timber wolf,
baring his teeth from
the rungs, I leap and pull
my feet from the barker.
Climbing now.
Combustion
The smoke eaters know
that a new fire burns hot,
jumping from tree top to
tree top, needles exploding
like roman candles as it
hurries past the break. Until
it dies for want of breath.
But the fire that lies below,
an old blaze burning
beneath a carpet of leaves,
lasts the longest.
Sometimes it can last for
years without smoke or
ash. Until the day it says
I can’t live this way anymore,
and bursts into the clearing,
looking for combustion.
He stared through the mist.
Beneath the window, two mergansers
took off down the lake,
swimming a few feet ahead
of a pursuing golden lab.
Always a few feet ahead.
“Now that you mention it...
I could be better. And while
we’re at it, you’re not helping
things much. Not calling. But
I only say this because you ask.”
He picked up the glass. Wiped
a wet ring of scotch on the
counter with a towel. “I know.
I know it’s my own fault. No
one to blame but me. Still.
Knowing that he’s beside you
as we talk on the phone is...
well, you know the rest of
it. But I say all this only because
you asked.” And just as she
hung up in his ear, two mergansers
scurried away, keeping a few feet
ahead of a pursuing golden lab.
We see them as we take our bags to
the car. Tonight’s pink-cheeked guests,
massed by the registration. With weekend
plans. Their secret assignations. Silk
pajamas. One couple will have our laundered
room. They will sigh at the four-poster;
purr at the wrapped milled soap; pass a
hand over the crested velum paper and
envelopes. As we did just hours ago.
I pause as they discover the koi
splashing in the mid-morning sunlight.
I go to speak some sort of warning--
we who have seen the other side
of the fluffy duvet, left our soiled
towels balled in misery at the foot
of the bath. Found a denim shirt
with a mint in the breast pocket
hanging behind the door. Soon
they will know. I slide your suitcase
in the back seat of the car, remember
this feeling forever. Then turn eyes onto
the gravel road for home again.
It was three days before Christmas Eve 1992
The woods lay still on Chemin Blueberry,
A tongue of hoar frost smudging the windows
Of the vacant summer houses, passing ghosts.
Headlights dance like Baryshnikov upon
the reluctant shore of frozen Lac Louisa.
Beside me, my boys laughed because
They were headed to Grandpa’s for Christmas.
The satisfaction this gave me was enormous.
So much so I carried too much speed down
the hill into the switchback headed north.
Gently, like a birchbark canoe easing to shore,
the van stayed straight as the road moved left.
With only the rustle of soft snow braking
our slide, the van came to rest, nose-down,
In six feet of snow beside the deserted road.
When he saw the back end of the van
Standing so high above the ditch, my eldest
let out a laugh of delight. His brother cried.
There was no moving the van tonight, no
rocking it back and forth with boys in tow.
No chance traffic to rescue us holiday makers.
So we set off, two miles of bucking road ahead,
a cold wind that punched you in the chest.
In the summer’s warmth I’d made this walk a
hundred times, to the lullaby of bull frog songs.
Now, no songs. Just the preposterous thought,
Of expiring this way, mere days before Xmas,
My sons clinging to me for warmth as we
perished in the long, dark Quebec nighttime.
What kind of father had I turned out to be?
I grabbed my eldest by his mittened hand,
Lifted the younger into my arms, pulled the key
From the ignition and started the slow walk
Through the ink-black night. Thinking the
whole time, how wonderful a porch light
In the distance beneath a shelf of snow,
And forgiveness in my own father’s wave.
Family Photos
Never thought I’d come to dislike the kid
I see in the pictures. Whip-smart, so eager
for experience, so quick to complete other
people’s sentences. Candy for the girls. Now?
I hate him in the photographs. With that self
assured look, a dancer on the precipice
of the stage. What exactly was the point
of knowing Montrachet from Montigny?
Why it pays to take the outside pitch to the
opposite field? Buy on bad news. The
hard lessons to come aren’t printed yet.
If they were he’d look like Queequeeg,
tattoos of trouble from head to foot.
I want to tell him, “Look out”, but he doesn’t
listen except to his own voice. I recognize
that voice. But it only wants dead air.
My father bombed Cologne in WW II
Freezing in his Lancaster bomber
as he lit up the city in savage beauty.
Years later he sat in Köln cathedral .
Alone, he experienced an epiphany
looking up into its repaired roof where
14 bombs had found the mark.
For the first time in 50 years
he wondered if the young flyer
had done the right thing,
dropping his bombs on this place.
Light shot through the windows of
the sacristy where his cookie landed. .
Seeing a swallow flying in the nave
he decided there was no proper
answer to his question. He had
been young and afraid of nothing.
Not like the way he felt today.
So he put five marks on the pew
And decided to keep on living..
One summer night in my hard-running days
I found myself drunk in Gord Lightfoot’s house.
He showed me a faded blueprint of his yacht
And said, “God, it’s good to be with old friends”.
He’d never met me before in my life. Or his.
Not that it made any difference that night.
We were there because Steve Goodman
Had come to town, and I was the collateral
damage. My girlfriend sat upon on his lap
as he performed The Dutchman song..
I was so jealous that I ended up puking
On Gord’s front lawn in Rosedale. Imagine.
Steve Goodman was gone soon after.
But I still remember his smile. Her smile.
And sailing away with Gord on the lee shore
Of Georgian Bay singing like the Dutchman.
“Let us go to the banks of the ocean
Where the walls rise above the Zuider Zee.
Long ago, I used to be a young man
And dear Margaret remembers that for me.”
In her mind she still walks the backroads
below Mount Nemo, Tessy at her heels,
shaking her fist at the damn speeders—
Remember when she gave the bikers
a piece of her mind for racing their hogs
Too near her as they roared up the hill?
Today she’s following down a new trail
meeting old friends around the bend,
her Irish clan warming up at the piano.
Far away, I hear the words of of Emily Dickinson
“Because I could not stop for Death—
He Kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves —
And Immortality.”
But I won’t be grieving as this voyage starts.
She’s walked those pathways long enough,
content for her to embark on a new ramble.
And I would gladly pack up her memories
so she can lead her loyal dogs, without fail,
along the cool, green slope of Bruce Trail.
I bought a new tube of toothpaste on
Tuesday, long before the old one ran out.
Its label claimed in red type Deep Cleaning.
So, in truth, had the earlier one, but this tube
Seemed genuinely alarmed about my gums
I was still applying paste from the old tube,
But my eyes stayed fixed upon its plump
successor waiting beside it in a glass.
I should simply switch now, I thought.
The transfer will happen soon enough.
And, when I was younger, I might have
Made the switch sooner, without qualms.
But that old tube said, “I have more to give
If you’ll just squeeze from the bottom”.
I paused my sonic brushing, looked at
The worn tube living out its final days
with cracking paint and the words
Deep Cleaning now crushed into
something reading like Dee ing. So I
grabbed the new tube and slid it
Into the drawer by the sink. There
Will be time enough for you to shine.
For now, hail a gallant old warrior in
the battle against tartar and plaque,
Dying in his noble halter just for me.
Thank you, sir, for your brave service.
Variations On A Theme By Ray Carver
Just when he had given up thinking
he'd ever write another line of poetry,
she began brushing her hair.
And singing that Chopin Polonaise
he liked so much.
The one about George Sand, whose
real name was Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin,
the Baroness Dudevant. "She repels me"
he'd said at first. But then he
changed his mind on Mallorca.
Carpenter
A year last summer Flea repaired my life--
drilled mortises, installed a new screen on
the porch door and stopped the damn
leaking of the bathtub faucet. The basics
atwhich I had proved singularly hopeless.
He worked silently, the strong chin steady
as he turned the Phillips head screws.
Measure twice, cut once, and the joints
fit snug. The simple miracle of carpentry.
When he finished, he wiped his big hands
on a towel with a cluster of grapes on
the corner. I watched awhile, admiring
the handyman’s grace, how he patiently
put my house in order. Now he sits at
home, watching the frozen fields. The
mitre lieson a bench in failing light. He
says he doesn’t want us to see him
this way. ”Look to the hinges. Remember
me this way”. I understand. And so I do.
“Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,
Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.”
W.B. Yeats
Her head turns in greeting, but there are no words—
Just the broadest of smiles upon a spring day.
I’ve come to see what dreams are left for us
As expiring stars shoot from the sky above.
Her hand does the tap-tap-tap on chair’s arm
while the Chieftains play Bonaparte’s Retreat.
Her days of wearing the green are almost done.
The plaint of the Ave Maria and Danny Boy
flicker about us in the air like dying smoke.
I place my hand upon her wrinkled neck
And, pulling near to her ear, whisper a prayer.
I’m not religious, but the words are benediction
for the days when she gathered the world
for us in our raggedy pants, our snotty noses,
giving us good love but also the steel spine
she’d acquired through much melancholy.
Precious gifts found under no Christmas tree.
The veil drops slowly as sleep sets her free.
With a kiss on her cheek, leaving time away.
But as I turn to leave I cannot help but see
Her eyes, her ancient glittering eyes, are gay.
Medium Maintenance
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
the heat for melting butter.
“But what does that mean?”
she asks again.
I sigh, look out the window.
A Chinese woman walks by
with her Pekinese dog
on a rhinestone leash,
shoulders hunched before
the wind. She has on the
most elaborate feathered 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,
the clothes she wears are immaterial.
“And medium high?” she asks.
With a medium-high, I say,
you need only tell her
when she looks fabulous.
The rest she already knows
better than you.
The women next to me on the plane is
holding a blue-light nebulizer to her face.
The scent is overpowering, unhappy.
And it reminds me that 80 percent of the
Guys who got hooked on heroin in Nam
Cured themselves when they got home.
Okay, it doesn’t remind me of that.
It reminds me that about 25 years ago
80 percent of psychiatric patients said
they were unhappy, 20 percent said
that they were depressed. Today, the
ratio is 80 percent saying they’re depressed
while 20 percent say they’re unhappy.
Actually it doesn’t remind me of that either.
It reminds me that people who think
that cigarettes are unhealthy will be
the fifth person on a roach clip. Go figure.
But it doesn’t remind me of that, either.
What I want to say was that when I was 15
I decided to read Seven Pillars of Wisdom
By T.E. Lawrence. Understanding very little
I still cut my way through the damn thing.
And that has made all the difference.
That’s what I’d like to tell nebulizer girl.
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.
