summer somewhere

They all add up, they do:

a leaf, and a leaf, and another.

Soon the trees are bare.

But look around you:

Even in the naked cold of winter,

even when the sun

can only just be bothered

to peer above the corn-stubble

of yesterday’s horizon

it is always summer

somewhere.

While girls cry in stairwells,

boys are playing hockey in the gym.

While someone is falling—

asleep or whatever—

someone is knotting a tie;

someone is boiling an egg;

someone is packing their school bag

and thinking about their day.

speak

all these words pour out of me
like water and like water, wash away.
i long for something permanent,
something that will stay.

i wish i was a sculptor--i
could carve the contours of our love
in stone for all the world to trace.

but i am a musician. all i can do
is from this distance
kiss the air beside your ear
over and over, say
i love you.
i love you.
i love you.

i wish i was a painter,
could mix the reds and blues of you
and paint a sunset half so beautiful.

but i am a musician. all i have
is this guitar
to laugh, to moan, to cry, to say
i love you.
over and over, say
i love you.
i love you.
i love you.

the captain, from his deck chair, on the shore

this lake. it moves with several movements:

the non-directional ruff of waves
the soft aimless surface flow
the deep slow draining of the basin
          from my beach out to the Atlantic
and a ten thousand year upswelling of rock
          pressed down by ancient glaciers
          that imperceptibly empties
          the drinking-bowl of the continent.

it seems futile: my grandchildren
will not recognize this coast as i describe it.
i look down to write.
i look up and things have changed.

that wave. that rock. the shiver of distant rain.
a shrill brown plover, a swan. the details
always shift.
                         i could map for you
each stone, each stick, each cracked black shell,
could blue the world with ink.

futile.

every map is a memory,
a plea for permanence.

every poem is an anchor
dropped desperate from a boat
and dragging the stony sea floor
hoping to find purchase
to hook a crack,
                          to slow us down
before that deep slow draining
(here out to the ocean)
carries us beyond the familiar and loved
into the unknown.

so it seems i write today
from this chair on the beach
because i am afraid to die.

so it seems each smooth grey stone
sits waiting for the tide.

so it seems each purple martin wheels
desperate in flight:
catching at the wind
that keeps it aloft
suspended above the waves.

Groundhog

We went outside
to read poetry.
At least, that was
the official plan.

A seat on the grass,
the shade of a tree,
far enough away
from the front doors
that the cool kids
wouldn't see us,
wouldn't mock us
for caring about such things.

A little Bukowski.
Some Atwood and
Alden Nowlan. But
nothing much was
sticking to our ears.
Sunshine
drowned out our
literary ambitions.

Democracy insists
we each take a turn
so we soldiered on
around the rough
approximation of a circle,
our voices lost
under bus wheels;
our pages bleached
by birdsong. Finally

the groundhog
who lives under the pine
that grows crooked
just outside the frame
of this poem
emerged to save us from
the common drudgery
of learning to love language.

Not yet full of
summer fat
but well beyond
the shadow of winter,
he humped across the lawn.

A girls' phys-ed class
(black shorts, grey tops, shrieking)
agreed he was the
cutest thing. And so
they chased him
low and frantic
amongst the bees and clover
towards the road.

We watched,
not quite horrified,
and hoped
they would recognize in time
that he was just another poem

not worthy of such attention;
that they would grow
bored with chasing visions
and drift away.

them kids...

...are talking nothing in the corner
making plans to steal a pig
lure it into a van
with a leftover donut (exhibit A)

name it Rick
teach it to attack trespassers
teach it to fetch me a beer from the fridge
now that would be cool.

raise it up fat
beneath an umbrella
behind the shed
in one of their yards
until the day:

hot dogs
pork tenderloin
bacon
the teen male dream--unlimited meat
no effort no cost

and then
in the space of a single breath
one of them grows up.

what about all the shit?

reality does not stride
long-legged and overdressed
on to the scene,
waving its arms and directing traffic.

it was sitting always at the table,
waiting to be acknowledged.

questions arise:
the availability of a van.
fencing.
food.
feces.
butchery.

i don't know. there'd be a lot of blood.
you could use a chainsaw.
could not. you'd get a disease.
from a chainsaw? impossible.

but it's too late. adolescence is only
immortal untouchable driven by appetite
until the day it is not.

sure as the sun crosses the sky
and descends into red
behind suburban fences
too weak to restrain pigs

the conversation shifts
from the grand petty crimes of youth
to the safe and sanitized diversions
of middle age.
you playing golf this weekend?

What I've Been Doing

Not much poetry lately. Been writing, though. Dove deep into my own local musical and cultural history in the last month. Here's where my head's been at:

http://hundredmilemicrophone.blogspot.ca/

I'm still working on poems and songs--never you fear. But there are only so many hours in a day. Everything in it's time.

~tom

You Will Grow Old - A Sonnet

I'm encouraging my Writer's Craft class write sonnets today. OK, I'm forcing them to write sonnets. They resist the strictures of structures. They chafe at the yoke of Iambic Pentameter. They know the obligation to rhyme is an opportunity to be lazy and say dumb things, yet they say dumb things anyhow, just to be done. 


Why am I making them do this? It's an effort to sensitize them to the music of language. It's an effort to get them to see art as a complex but rewarding game. It's an effort to get them outside of the comfort of free verse, to acquire some internal sense of discipline that they can bring back to their freedom. Because without a sense of purpose, "freedom" is just another word for "lost."


In fairness, I thought I'd better write a sonnet of my own--it's been a while. So here it is. 

you will grow old

you will grow old, and one by one will fade
the words to songs that stirred you in your youth;
the things you rage against will become truths
too big to contemplate. you will get paid

to do a job which you suspect consumes
the day, the soul, the world that moves through time
and gives you nothing in return. the crime
is that you will accept your empty rooms

as inevitable. your children will
abandon you. the swimming pool will rot.
the unpruned trees will die. your secret plot
to find the bastards one by one and kill

them all will be reduced, in time, to bland 

and acquiescent wringing of your hands.