Accidents

Rage, Rage 24

Rage, Rage
24

Breakfast time –
butter-fingers:
slippery tableware
totters and falls

A delicate cup
hovers
over the table cloth,
a flying saucer
poised in flight.

It crashes down
and its broken body
rests in pieces
on table and floor.

Bottle tops
screwed up too tight,
or cold from the fridge,
refuse to undo.

Plastic wrappings,
defy all efforts
of inarticulate,
arthritic fingers

So many slips, now,
between cup, fingertip,
and trembling lip.

Comment:

Moo is sulking. He decided that he had no paintings with grubby little insensitive fingers in. Go find another friend, he told me, if you’ve got one, and we’ll see what that one can do to help. So I checked and found this lovely pair of gloves, photograph by Geoff Slater, himself an established artist – which is more than I can say for Moo. Now, now. Cool down. No point in opening hostilities. Especially at your age. Okay, okay. Sorry, Moo. But I do love Geoff’s photo. It is an example of what my hands feel like when I am in arthritis mode. Or should that be arthwrongus? Those cups and saucers are very unstable. Well, don’t shake the table, and keep your relationship stable. Or you’ll be coughing and stamping like a hoarse.

Puns are the lowest form of wit. So – is arthwrongus a pun? If so, it strikes me as the highest form of neologism-style wit. And yes, arthwrongus certainly is what I feel when I knock things around, spill drinks, and generally make a mess of the table cloth. There doesn’t seem to be anything right about that.

And it’s getting worse. Yesterday, I spilled the ink when I was refilling my fountain pen. The day before, I had a cheap bottle of wine – it lasted three days – but on the third day, I knocked the penultimate glass all over the new table cloth. That was a disaster, for the table cloth, a blessing for me. Good riddance, I said. I threw away the last of that bottle and opened a new one to celebrate. And this time I chose a decent wine.

And I guess that’s the secret of growing old. Turning our disasters into opportunities. I like that idea. Maybe I’ll tell you about some more disasters another. But first, I’ll apologize to Moo and see if I can get him painting again. He doesn’t work well with a sulky paintbrush!

Rage, Rage 22 & 23

Rage, Rage,
22

I trace dark contours,
scarred desiccated lines
blurred on the back
of my wrinkled hands.

Blood maps, they are,
unremembered encounters
with immovable objects,
wounds that bleed freely,
deep below the surface,
subcutaneous.

23

When I dream,
I imagine the sky
to be a crystal ball,
twinkling with stars
that tell the time
and my fate.

With silent steps
they creep and steal
hours, days, weeks, years,
whittling my life away,
splintering it
a little bit more
every day.

Time, like golden sand,
trickles through
night’s fingers.

I hold in my hands
an hourglass
through which my life,
secretly, silently,
slides down
and trickles away.

Comment:

“Unremembered encounters with immovable objects,” – oh dear. Anti-coagulants, blood-thinners for short. Moo’s skin is dry anyway. Now that he’s on anti-coagulants, he bruises every time he bumps into something. And Moo bumps into things. He’s one of those people who fall out of bed and go bump in the night. How do I know? He stole my teddy bear and my teddy bear told me. Anyway, his cardiologist calls it collateral damage. A sort of side dish that arrives when ever he stumbles into anything. That’s Moo, not the cardiologist.

As for me, I miss the old myths. I love the idea of the platonic, terra-centric universe. The planets move back wards and forwards around the earth in a slow dance. In order to dance, you need music. So the Platonic creator is a master musician who pays the harp. The stars dance to his music. Fray Luis de León uses this Neo-Platonism in his poetry. For him the sky is ‘un gran transunto donde vive mejorado todo lo que es, lo que será, y lo que ha pasado’. – a large space where, much improved, dwells everything that is, that will be, and that ever was. A lovely thought. Nothing is lost. Everything is saved – but in a state of betterment, all mistakes erased.

Moo would like that. His collateral damage all turned back into perfect skin. Oh dear. He wouldn’t be happy. He’d have nothing to paint. I am sure he paints his bruises when he runs out of inspiration.

Rage, Rage 12 & 13

Rage, Rage
12

So many solitudes,
each of us alone in our minds,
isolated by our memories.

You, my love,
have your own solitude now,
far away, with them in Ottawa.
I am in my own solitude,
here in Island View,
alone with the cat.

You call me on Skype,
and as we chat,
the cat hears your voice,
delicate, distant,
and, running to the sound,
jumps up onto the table.

She sniffs the screen,
but finds no trace
of your familiar smell.

13

She sees shadows,
moving shapes
that flow back and forth
on the computer screen.

You call her
by her favourite names
and her muscles tense,
her whiskers bristle.

Now she refuses to eat
her food and hisses
if I come too close.

She won’t sleep by night or day.
She just stalks the house
moving from room to room
desperately seeking you.

She vomits in my chair
to tell me how she feels
about being left alone with me.

Whatever will I do with her
while you’re away?

Comment:
Old age and solitude. A terrible combination. Old age is not for Sissies. Indeed it isn’t. First there’s the loneliness. Then there’s the aches and pains – Aix-les-Bains, as we used to call them. The occasional confusion – did I take my tablets, or not? How many? Did I double up on my diuretics?

Diuretics – now that’s another question. What did Shakespeare write, in Hamlet? Ah yes, I remember now! “To pee or not to pee – that is the questions.” Now was that a voiced “B” or an unvoiced “P”? And that’s another question. One we have to live with on a daily basis. Daily? Hourly? Every fifteen minutes when the diuretics kick in.

“To be or not to be?” Well, quite simply, I am very happy to be. To be myself, to be left alone, to still be here, to still be on the green side of the grass – though it was pretty brown last year with all that drought and doubt.

Whatever will be, will be. The future’s not mine to see. Alas, it is sometimes mine to clean up afterwards. And ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies!

Rage, Rage 10

Rage, Rage
10

My body’s house
has many rooms
and you, my love,
are present in them all.

I glimpse your shadow
in the mirror, and your breath
brushes my cheek
when I open the door.
Where have you gone?

I walk from room to room,
but when I seek,
I no longer find
and nothing opens
when I knock.

Afraid, sometimes,
to enter a room,
I am sure
you are in there.

I hear your footsteps.
Sometimes your voice
breaks the silence
when you whisper my name
in the same old way.

Comment:

Rage, Rage – and still I rage against the dying of the light and, like Dylan Thomas, ask the ageing of this world not to go gentle into that dark night. Yet, as my beloved and I age, we watch day’s shadows growing longer, and night stealing steadily along. What can we do?

Well, since the winter solstice, we can start counting the minutes as each day adds a minute or two and gifts some more light and strength to the sun. Sunrise today – 8:03 AM. Sunset today – 5:09 PM. That means 9 hours and 6 minutes of sunlight. Well, it would, if it weren’t cloudy, with a cold wind, and a dropping temperature. My guess is that it will get dark much before it ought to. And that’s not nice – no respect!

Of course, my beloved is a sun bunny and a Leo, and she perishes in these shortened days. I was born in them and they don’t affect me as badly as they do her. But I can still Rage, Rage, because there is so much to rage about – icy streets, the usual potholes, roads that hide ice beneath a thin covering of snow, some strange drivers who don’t seem to have bought winter tires. Oh yes, I love them. One came twisting and turning down the same side of the road as me only this morning. Luckily he hit the snow bank before he hit me. But, I ask you, what was he thinking?

So there’s Rage, and Rage Rage, and also Road Rage. Way to go! I think we should call a national rage day and all stay home for 24 hours, just to cool us all down for a bit. Oh dear, that might lead to cabin fever – and that would be an out–Rage.

Dorset Knobs and Old Vinny

Dorset Knobs and Old Vinny

Five Lysol wipes remain in the can.
As rare as hen’s teeth or Dorset Knobs
and old Vinny, they have become precious
items sold in marked up prices online
by people who stocked up at the beginning
of the crisis on commodities they were able
to seize before rationing stepped in
and limited quantities were permitted
to each purchaser who waited patiently,
in line, to enter the super-market.

I place my leather glove on my hand
and move to the gas pump. How many people
have used it, pumping gas with bare hands,
and the metal surface retaining how many germs
who knows for how long? I cannot wear my mask
while pumping gas. Cover my face and they will
not serve me for fear I may flee without paying.
I finish pumping, open the car door, remove
my glove, put on my mask, pick up my cane,
and walk into the gas-station shop to pay.

As I limp towards the door, a man, mask-less,
holds the door open for me, his face less
than a foot from mine. “There you are, sir,”
he says, showing his teeth. “Service with a smile.”

I return to the car, remove a precious sanitizing wipe,
clean my glove, the car door handles, every spot
my gloved hand touched. Then I wipe the handle
of the gas pump and dispose of the precious wipe
in the garbage can nestled between the pumps.

Commentary:

Well, I am willing to place a bet with my favorite bookmaker, at Covey’s Print Shop, that not many of you out there know what Dorset Knobs and Old Vinny is or are. Moo has joined me in my wager and he is willing to bet that very few of you know where the line “où est le papier?” comes from. Even fewer will be able to sing the whole song! Oh dear, our world is only artificially intelligent, not really intelligent. In my teaching days I would ask the class if we were in a smart classroom. “Yes, sir,” they would reply. I’d then walk to the wall, tap it and ask it “What’s 2 + 2?” The wall never answered. I’d try again. “What’s 2 + 2?” – Silence. “Not such a smart classroom then,” I’d say to the students.

But I bet you all remember Covid, the days of taking all sorts of precautions, of wearing masks and gloves, of washing everything that came into the house, of washing hands, and not touching surfaces in public places where the unwashed may have left a winning lottery ticket with your Covid Number upon it. Oh dear, those were indeed the days. And this little poem, a golden oldie, recalls them. Let us hope they do not return. And let us doubly hope they do not return with a mutating or mutated helix of sinister proportions.

Fire Storm

Fire Storm

Yesterday, it was difficult to breathe.
We inhaled dust and ashes as smoke
from forest fires scuttled towards us,
carried piggy-back on a strong west wind.

Today, the wind herds clouds into aerial castles,
pinnacles and pyramids piled upwards,
tall ships’ canvases painted dark, thundery,
raised by fierce wedges thrust beneath them,
lofting them into darkening skies.

Beyond a certain height, water becomes ice.
Particles group together. Hail stones form,
small at first, growing ever larger
until the very air can no longer bear
their weight. Golf ball big, they tumble down
the sky’s steep ladder and fall to earth.

The dry drum roll of distant thunder rumbles.
A scissor-slash of light shreds black skies.
An executioner’s hay wain rolls towards us,
a runaway train destined to tear our lives
apart. It leaves us helpless, clamoring for safety,
our world torn apart, our earth sore wounded.

Death scythes away, downing rich and poor alike.
Who now knows which way thrown dice will fall?
The dye’s sharp edge, once cast, cuts like a blade.
Hail stones clatter on the roof, battering us down.

Carved in Stone 45

Carved in Stone

45

No candles burned at that altar.
A single match, let alone
a candle flame,
would spell the end,
if gas leaked from the seam.

Only the canaries,
confined in their cages,
sang songs.

Doomed,
like the blind pit ponies,
never to see the light of day,
they lived out their lives
down there.

So many died underground,
unable to get out,
buried alive,
before they were even dead.

Commentary:

“Only the canaries, confined in their cages, sang songs.” Yet the miners often sang, in their own cages, as they were lowered down from pit-head to seam. It wasn’t the songs that worried them, it was the silence. The men could rarely smell the gas, but when the canary stopped singing and toppled from its perch, then the men knew that bad news hounded their heels. As for the pit ponies, how did one get them out? Some of those mines, had been dug 5,000 feet deep and two or three miles out to sea. A pit pony should never be confused with a sea horse, and as for the white horses that surge in the waves in so many paintings, well, pit ponies need to be laundered before they can compete.

“Good-bye old friend.” I remember the photo from WWI of the dying horse, surrounded by crying men. The suffering of the animals is what men feared and pitied most. The animals are innocent. They do not ask to be sent underground, nor to be sent to war. They have no choice, poor things. So sad, when a dear, four-footed friend dies, so far away from the light of the sun. As for the men, there were no “safe rooms”, those reinforced rooms filled with food and water, not in the early days, anyway. A camaraderie, yes, but not many people went down to the mines willingly. Rita MacNeil summed it all up in her wonderful song that begins ‘It’s a working man I am.” – How many people, if they ever saw the sun, would ever go back underground again.”

Carved in Stone 44

Carved in Stone
44

The old man, withered,
last house on the left,
leaning on his garden wall,
coughing, spitting up
coal dust and blood.

He’s not old, when you get close,
just grown old, underground,
where emphysema
and pneumoconiosis
devour men and boys.

He spits on the side walk.
Mining souvenirs,
Max Boyce calls them,
and they appear
every time the young man,
turned suddenly old,
starts to cough.

He can’t walk far,
wearing carpet slippers,
soft and furry,
just leans on the wall.

He fell, or was pushed,
into the trap at an early age,
when the coal seams
had grown so thin,
that only a small boy
could kneel before
the coal black altar
of the underground god
and, with a pick and shovel,
he learned to carve and shape
the long, slow death
contained in those seams.

Commentary

Moo’s painting, Coal Face, adorns the front cover of Carved in Stone, Chronotopos II. Coal Face is not the denigration of Black Face, white men pretending to be black by dyeing their faces, although they have some similarities. In Welsh Mining, the coal face is where the men used to dig when, with their shovel and their pick and their little lamp and wick, they knelt to dig out the coal. Knelt, because there was no standing room, deep down underground. Then, when the seams grew thinner, and the men could no longer reach them, the young boys were sent underground.

A day underground left men and boys with coal dust seamed into their bodies, especially their hands and their faces. Hence the triple meaning of black face – where the coal is dug, what men and boys looked like after a day’s work, and the blackening of their faces by white men, for the fun of it.

Faces are one thing, coal dust in the lungs is another. The result – emphysema and pneumoconiosis devour men and boys. Black lung, some call it. “And every time he coughs, he gets a mining souvenir” – a black spot coughed up on the sidewalk – Max Boyce.

Child labor, minimum wage, living wage, work that kills, slowly and silently, – what can I say? Forgive me, for I can say no more.

Clepsydra 41 & 42

41

… fire flares on the water
     rivers and lakes blaze
          that sound is a monster
               a dragon descending
                    breathing fire

so swift so powerful
     come sudden
          from nowhere
              yet another disaster
                   with its ravenous roar         

the dragon refuses to move on
     until sated
          but who could satisfy
               that monster
                    destroy its will
                         defeat its power

will Lac Megantic
     ever be the same
          after all these years
               of grief and tears

will fading memories
     be all that remain …


42

… a stillness between words
    tranquil movements
         the world suspended in space
               soundless the night
                    drenched in silent light

 Aurora Borealis
     draws gaudy curtains
          across the night sky

I can hear my heart beat
    as time softly sifts

a celestial hour glass
     this sky filled
          with unimaginable light
               breaking coloured waves

lit up
     with mysterious flowers
          so graceful
               when decked out
                    in light

 the moon returns
     turns into a mirror

          its silver boat
               suspended in space

silent its light
     enlightening
          the heart’s dusky craters

dawn’s silent glory
     will be here soon
          pointing the silent path
               to even more light …

Commentary:

Ten years or so since the disaster at Lake Megantic. I am sure it affected everyone who followed the news, saw the pictures, and bore witness to the power of conflagration. Moo offered me his painting called Burning Birbi. A Birbi is a Koala Bear in one of the Aboriginal Languages. When the fires hit New South Wales, the Eucalyptus Trees started to fire. When in danger, the Birbi climbs the eucalyptus trees, higher and higher, followed, of course, by the fire. A fate inescapable. Just like the Megantic Disaster. Word has it that it could, and should, have been prevented. I cannot (will not) comment on that here. I will just stress the fear that we all have, those of us who live in a drought stricken province (New Brunswick) surrounded by trees.

The closest wildfire to us, in Island View, was about 31 kilometres away. The closest trees are about 30 feet away from the house. Much too close for comfort. Curtains of flame and smoke, rising up to stain the skies. And the smell of burning also inescapable. Stay indoors, I say. Shut the windows. And hope that nothing comes your way!

Fire, controlled, brings heat, warmth, light. The Northern Lights bring spectacular light flooding down from the skies, not rising up. You can almost hear the sky crackling as the light curtains shift and shimmer and dance their way across the horizon. Fire and Fire Light – beautiful when we can control them, but oh-so-destructive when they flame and flare, out of control.

Do not despair. Just remember we need each other, all of us, each one of us. Together we can overcome most things. Isolated and alone, like the lone koala at the top of his tree, it is much, much more difficult to survive. Select your friends carefully. Maintain contact with them. And be there for each other in times of need, for, as we say in Wales – “a friend in need, is a friend in deed.”

Apocalypse When?

Apocalypse When?

A strange, milk-cloud sky, skimpy, with the sun
a pale, dimly-glowing disc, and my pen scarce
casting a shadow as the nib limps over the page.

Out on the west coast, fires still range free and this
is the result, these high, thin clouds casting a spider
web cloak over the sun face and darkening the day.

The west coast: five or six hours by plane and three
whole days to get there by train, even longer by bus,
all chops and changes with multiple stops.

The wind blew and the clouds came widdershins,
backwards across the continent. Today they reached
across the ocean to claw the sun from European skies.

It is indeed a small world after all. Isostasy:
you push the balloon in here, and it bulges out
over there, in the place you least expected

Now we are all interconnected in an intricate network
of a thousand ways and means. What does it all mean?
Ripples ruffle the beaver pond’s dark mirror.

The forest mutters wind-words, devious and cruel,
that I sense, but cannot understand. High in the sky
clouds turn into horsemen on plunging steeds.

Fear, fire, flood, foe, poverty, pandemic, crops destroyed,
unemployment, and, waiting in the wings, the threat of civil unrest,
leading to the apocalypse, and another war to end all wars.

Commentary:

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. I wrote that particular poem several years ago. Poets, some people say, are sensitive to time and its changes. Certainly, this poem is full of premonitions that still ring true today. We have seen the sky cloudy from the various forest fires that have colored and covered the skies here in NB. We have smelled the burning and seen the sun blotted out, not entirely, but just enough for a slight, subtle chill to settle in. Shivers can come from the weather, but they can also arise from premonitions and fear of the future and what it might hold.

High in the sky, clouds turn into horsemen on plunging steeds. This particular line comes from Ponferrada – Pons Ferrata in Latin. Sitting in the park one day, I saw the clouds lining up, climbing higher and higher, then pouring down from the hills like a cavalry charge. It reminded me of the legends of St. James, the Moor-slayer / Santiago Matamoros, who appeared in the sky at various battles and helped the Spanish defeat the Moors, during the Reconquista, and reclaim the land of Spain. So may poetic moments were born from those days. We would do well to remember them.

Another war to end all wars – oh dear, oh dear, how many of those have there been throughout history? Countless, no doubt, and yet there’s always another one, waiting in ambush, just around the corner. Well, the next war to end all wars may just do that, especially if the unthinkable happens and it goes thermo-nuclear. Mad, the world is going mad and it’s very sad because madness – MAD > Mutually Assured Destruction – will destroy us and our planet. And then we will all be homeless, in the worst sense of the word, for as many demonstrators have said, waving their placards from side to side, ‘There is no Planet B.”