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

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.

Samarpan

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?

Orford Lake

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. 

Nympheas

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. 

Cuffs And Coins

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. 

Fulham Road

We prepared to cross Fulham Road--

me and a girl who’d picked me up

on the Russian freighter. It was the

fall of 1977, and we were in London

on our way to-- well, it doesn’t matter

now. It ended badly. She stepped from

the curb, looking the wrong way. I

saw the snot-brown Vauxhall headed

straight for her blind side.

Instinctively, I threw out my arm to

restrain her. Just in time. The buffeting

announced that we were still alive.

She said, “Don’t patronize me.

I know where I’m going. Never do that

again. And another thing. Stop telling

people who pick us up that you’re a

writer. That’s not for you to say.

That’s for others to decide.”

I looked her in the eye. She was

serious. And I wondered if I’d made

a mistake in saving her from the

Vauxhall. But then, this was 1977.

And everything was different then.

Little Big Horn

On the escape west from the Mississippi

rolling from Belle Fourche to Lame Deer,

across Wyoming into the Black Hills,

sunflowers nodding on the road bed,

a highway so straight you could sharpen

a straight razor on its white lines. 

Crows hover in a luminous sky

feeding on stinking carrion by the roadside.

Battling the car’s third gear ever west

along the Powder River and Reno’s bivouac.

till I look down at the Little Big Horn.

Rattlesnakes roll like drunks in the switch grass.

Destiny waiting among cottonwoods filled

with Cheyenne, Sioux, Bloods and Lakota.

Real life waits back at the fort, the women

in their crinoline and the Gatling Gun

left in its box so we might move faster.

We have even crated our silver sabers.

The hair on my neck rises, heat burning the

scratchy buckskins round my groin.

This is madness, of course, a wild gamble

against all that heaven holds dear.

Elizabeth’s beautiful smile, the years to come,

one more sunrise over the mountains.

Now, spur the horse, grab the bridle

and dive into a hell of our own making.

Bachman's Warbler

"My luck is always bad”, he said

one morning over his skim latte.

“I don’t know what it is about me.

I waited for months to visit Boston and

then spent the weekend sick in bed”

And I said, “Bad luck? Bad luck?

You don’t know bad luck, let me tell you.

Bad luck is the Bachman’s Warbler,

that’s bad luck. Had a memorable song,

a high, sweet trill among Georgia pines.

Died out completely in the 1930s. Or

so they thought. Then nine years later,

birders foundBachmans, a pair of them,

a few miles fromeach other. Heard that

fine “trrree, trrree” song once more. So 

they shot them both and called it a day.

A Split of the Atomic

The physicist Wolfgang Pauli was

first to discover the neutrino, a

particle so small as to be invisible;

with his eye fixed on the theoretical

he never saw the possibility that

his wife might be drifting away.

When told she was leaving him for a

colleague, the distinguished man

could only think to respond, “A

chemist? You say that you’re leaving

me for a chemist?” But she did.

And history was still made.

The Portrait Painter 1603

Four hundred years ago they steadied

their gaze for him, the unknown painter.

Twelve subjects in Gloucester. In Norwich,

twenty more sat for his measured stare.

In ruffled shirts and beaded gowns,

quill in hand, coat of arms on the

periphery. Vanity now lost to dust.

But not the wondering eye, the dun

palette singing in the gallery, travelling

artist lowered to base commissions. Did

he sympathize about the late spring as

he mixed the cinnabar and orpiment?

Did he ask after sons and daughters?

Did he work in silence, mindful of his rank?

No matter, the unseen hand still moves

in raw brush strokes like fingers, eyes

pooling warm tears of recognition.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy

Bruce's career is unmatched in Canada for its diversity and breadth of experience with successful stints in television, radio and print. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he is also the best-selling author of seven books. He was a featured columnist for the Calgary Herald (1998-2009) and the Globe & Mail (2009-2013).

Not The Beep

I phoned the winter place in Florida,

got my father’s voice still vivid

on the message machine. Not

expecting to discover Dad there,

I almost hung up the call; but

hearing him once more, I stopped

to listen to the voice of Pater.

I could see him recording the message,

seated alone at his sun-splashed office

desk, the text written in his clear

engineer’s hand. “If you have a

facsimile please press the number

sign now.” A fax? He’d barely learned

to use the computer the last year.

He could have been describing

the wild tribes in Borneo. Then,...

“We’re not here at the moment...”

Not here. It might have been the

first time it had truly registered

since he’d gone. That he had

taken the time to let me know

that he would always be there,

just a call away if I cared to

simply leave him a message

.... after the beep.

Check Up

He looks over the top of his glasses and asks,

(in a Russian accent) do I have any

“pre-existing conditions? You know...

a sickness or medical condition, for which

you exhibited symptoms, or for which

treatment has been received or taken,

and/or which existed prior to the effective

date of coverage, whether or not that

condition had been diagnosed by a physician...”

Half way through the insurance screed

I remember the summer of my double hernia.

I was ten, drowning in that hospital smell,

when my father’ visited. The popsicle he brought

was unconditional love. The Russian’s eyes glaze,

his pen hovers over the page. I wonder,

Who will remember the popsicle when I’m gone?

Who will audit the stitches and medications?

What will happen to the medical history that

shows a tendency toward aortic aneurysm--

the condition that finally killed my old man?

Before I answer, he jabs the needle into my arm.

“You have ripe veins,” he says dryly,

a flicker of humourbriefly flashed across his face.

The extracted blood hits the glass tube,

months spill into the ether. Genome awaits.

He taps the tube with a bony finger. Distracted,

his smile fades. “Yes, very good veins.”

Variations On A Theme By Ray Carver

Just when he had given up, thinking

he'd never write another line of poetry,

she began brushing out her hair.

And singing that Chopin Polonaise

he loved 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 when they

disembarked on the shore in Mallorca.

HoneyBelles

The humidity peels like acetylene.

On the slanted light, blue herons tiptoe

on alligators. My mother squeezes

pulp from a bowl of new oranges.

Telling small lies in the fungibles.  

She recalls now the tangled dance of

flyer and singer, struggling for a path

forward. Followed by the dark acts

of contrition behind closed doors.

Walls rising to collect the survivors.

Sanctified by coming-through,

They sit now in a room swallowed

by Florida heat. The dining table still

beckons for seven hands. My mother

passes the bowl around and says,

“The Honeybelles are the best this year,

no doubt about it. Here, take one.”

Swimming In New Orleans

I watch you swim toward me,

your body moves like zydeco

above and below the water line.

The red bricks of the Church of

the Immaculate Conception,

gatherer of Cajun souls, float

over your shoulder in the haze.

Jazz from the French Quarter

still dances across the afternoon.

Seeing your steady strokes

I dream of the gator, floating

close by in the bayou. For the two

of us there is no tomorrow

or yesterday. Only this moment,

this splendid moment, as glory

swims ever closer to the sun.