Aging

The Return

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The Return

This time last year I returned to KIRA for a visit after my one month artist’s residency. I have been back several times since, but each return is always more difficult than the last. Memories are golden and the reality of the return is never quite the same. Here’s the link to last year’s post on my first return to KIRA: KIRA Return July 2017 .

You can never walk in the same river twice (Heraclitus). This is what makes the return always so difficult. It is like the spoken word that, once spoken, can never be reclaimed.

I guess the return is more difficult for some people than for others. There are so many places to which I have never returned: Cardiff, Gower, and Swansea (Wales), Bath, Bournemouth, Bristol, Christchurch, Frome, Gloucester, Hengistbury, and Wick (England), Oaxaca (Mexico), Avila, Bilbao, Elanchove, Madrid, and Santander (Spain).

These place names scratch memory’s surface, no more, for there are places within those places, also never to be seen again, save in old photos and dreams. Yes, my dreams are tinged with sadness, the sadness of remembering. There is also the great joy of having been there, of having borne witness to this moment and that. Time and memories slip through grasping fingers like water or sand. The ephemeral: it will never last, even though we catch it for a moment in a photo or a verse.

 

Therapy Garden

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Therapy Garden

Sitting, absent-minded,
empty,
waiting for the sunlight to heal
my old bones and fill my fragile form

with light
so that I may shine,
a lighthouse on the land,
sunshine pouring out from me,
light enough to enlighten
the unenlightened
in their soul’s dark night,

no moon, no stars,
and me,
walking unafraid,
knowing I need fear nothing,
even in terminal darkness,

for my body now overflows
with this therapeutic light
that floats its boat on an inner
sea of tranquility.

Old Man

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Old Man

He stops old friends
in the supermarket
and, when he starts to talk,

they stand there,
tapping their feet,
trapped in a doldrum
where no winds fill
their sails to move them on.

He has turned into
a babbling book of hours,
life’s moribund albatross
a warm scarf heavy
on his reluctant throat.

Caught in multiple mirrors
surrounding the barber’s chair,
his tongue is an open razor
constantly stropped.

Old Man

15 May 2002 Pre-Rimouski 109

Old Man

An ancient mariner lives in my brain.
Many seas has he sailed, seen many things.
A knapsack of memories, a snail shell
on his back, weighs him down.

His life: a broken record
on an unstable turntable.

He stops people in the street,
tells again the story of his ship,
trapped in the doldrums
where winds no longer blew.

Ghost days weight heavy.
Does he wait for the black patch
carved from the bible
to summon him home?

Photo: The Museum for the shipwreck of the  Empress of Ireland, Pointe-au-Pere, Quebec. The Empress sank off Ste. Luce-sur-mer on 29 May 1914.

Age of Spillage

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Age of Spillage

Fingers turn to butter, permit cups to slip,
flying saucers to take off, stall, and crash.

Broken bodies rest in peace and pieces
on kitchen floor, waiting to be swept up.

Worse: bottle tops refuse to open.
Plastic wrapping, flagrant in its

defiance, wages its guerrilla war
against ageing, in-articulated

arthritic fingers. So many slips, so
many precious things all liable to

fall and break. So hard to bend and pick them
up, even with my new mechanical claw.

Anniversary

 

 

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Birthday
a year ago today
… but it wasn’t my birthday

Buy a balloon.
Make sure the color is bright.
Fill it with all your sorrows,
then let it take flight.

Look: up and away it goes
and all your sorrows go with it.
You’ll feel much better now.

Buy yourself a party hat
and a birthday cake.
So what if it’s not your birthday.
It’s always someone’s birthday.

Don’t forget the candles.
Take a match and light them.
Now let your cares go up in smoke.

Diagnosis

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Diagnosis
(sonnet)
posted apparently a year ago today

Diagnosed with a terminal illness
called life, I know it will end in death.
For more than seventy years, that end
has lived within me, walked beside me,
sat at my bedside, and shared my sheets.

We have shared so many things: laughter,
joy, victory, defeat, the soul’s dark night,
the winding ways of fortune’s labyrinth.
When cancer called, we faced it together,
and life won out for a little while longer.

Hand in hand, we are together again,
our ménage à trois, engaged in a three
-legged race, blindfolded, unsure of who,
what, why, where, and especially when.

Triage

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Triage
A stitch in time

1

Banality or stupidity: how
did the knife slip from its intended path
and end up slicing through my finger? Blood

everywhere, oozing, then pumping, flowing
freely, deep ugly, red, between fleshy
cliffs, the wound’s edges. Chaotic, shrill pain,

short, sharp shocks, cold water flowing, flushing
out the sudden gulley, cleansing, thinning
my life’s liquid. Little finger, left hand,

right down to bright bone. Instant recall, first
aid course. Sheet from paper towel, staunch, press
down, pressure, find gauze, bandages, scarlet

ink, my blood, not royal blue. Take bathroom
towel, run down corridor to garage,
leaving fresh blood spoor, the cat following,

sniffing, licking the floor, hand clumsy on
steering wheel, drive to emergency, fast.

2

Three nurses attend me. The first completes
the triage, stops the bleeding, bandages
my hand, gauze pads press down, sends me to wait.

Second nurse inserts needles, kills the nerve,
cleans the wound, sews my little finger up.

Three stitches. A tubular dressing. Time
now for third nurse, anti-T-jab, checks me
for PTSD, smiles sadly, sends me home.

MT 1-1: Monkey Teaches Sunday School on Mondays

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Monkey Teaches Sunday School on Mondays
(With apologies to Pavlov and his dogs)

Younger monkeys e-mail elder monkey
and expect an answer within two minutes.
Elder monkey drools and writes right back.

He is turned on by the bells
and whistles of his computer.
“Woof! Woof!”
His handlers hand him a biscuit.

Elder monkey has grown to appreciate
tension and abuse:
the systematic beatings,
the shit and foul words hurled at his head.

The working conditions are overcrowded.
Elder monkey is overworked.

Yet he has managed to survive,
to stay alive and fight
what he once believed was the good fight.

Now he no longer knows:
nor does he drool anymore
when bells and whistles sound
and his handlers bait him
with an occasional, half-price biscuit.

 

 

I will record and post the whole of Monkey Temple, poem by poem, with voice recordings. I’ll use two key trigger elements: first, the grinning monkey in the picture and second, the MT 1-1 designation, standing for Part 1 Poem 1 … this will continue 1-2, 1-3, 1-4 etc. If you are enjoying these poems and readings, keep your eyes open for those two triggers and catch your favorite monkey as he goes about his monkey business.

Monkey’s Clockwork Universe

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Monkey’s Clockwork Universe

Some days, monkey winds himself up
like a clockwork mouse.
Other days he rolls over and over
with a key in his back like a clockwork cat.

Monkey is growing old and forgetful.

He forgets where he has hidden the key,
pats his pockets, and slows right down
before he eventually finds it
and winds himself up again.

One day, monkey leaves the key
between his shoulder blades
in the middle of his back.

All day long, the temple monkeys
play with the key, turning it round and round,
and winding monkey’s clockwork,
tighter and tighter, until suddenly
the mainspring breaks

and monkey slumps at the table
no energy, no strength,
no stars, no planets, no moon at night,
the sun broken fatally down,
the clockwork of his universe sapped,
and snapped.