Animals

Easter Seals

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Easter Seals

So, I’ll put my cards on the table:
it’s Easter and the seals are dancing
in the garden, and they are ring-tailed,
like raccoons, and they’re dancing
because it’s Easter and they’re Easter
Seals after all and you can’t blame them
for dancing when their time is upon them
and they’re in season and everybody
dances when the time’s right, don’t they?,
because I know I do, and I’m dancing right
now, dancing with joy and happiness
because last night, for the first time in two
years since I started my cancer treatment,
I only peed once, at half past three,
and I went to bed at ten and dammit,
that’s five and a half hours of sleep,
for the first time in two years, and I
usually pee every ninety minutes
and that’s five or six times a night,
but last night, I peed just that once,
and I went back to bed and I slept
for another four and a half hours
until eight o’clock in the morning
and that was almost ten hours straight
for the first time in … well, you remember,
I don’t need to repeat it yet again …
but boy, do I ever feel good this morning,
and yes, I’m laying my cards on the table
and I’m dancing, just like those Easter Seals.

Comment: I finally finished my poetic journal, A Cancer Chronicle, and I put it up on Amazon last Friday. A Cancer Chronicle is sub-titled ‘one man’s journey’ and in it I write about my reactions to the treatment I received for prostate cancer. I met many people at the cancer hospice during my eight week stay, most of whom were a lot worse off than I was. I admired the courage of my fellow sufferers and learned so much about human beings and how they face adversity. I was particularly impressed with the bravery of the women who were suffering from breast cancer. They were so strong, so courageous. In spite of their troubles, my fellow patients reached out and helped me from the first day of my stay. They pulled me through the difficult days and shared their experiences with me. I will never forget them. If this book can comfort just one cancer sufferer, I will be so happy.

It’s just a guess, but I am assuming that finishing A Cancer Chronicle took a weight off my shoulders and allowed me the peace of mind to finally sleep. I do hope that this is a milestone and that my recovery will continue. Pax amorque / Peace and Love.

Why?

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Why?

Curiouser and curiouser
the vanishing smile
on the ginger cat
and wild dog dingo
grinning like a coal-scuttle,
why, oh why?

Who put the cur in curious?
Why was the dog-watch curtailed?
Cynicism, some say, and why
do we kneel before him,
heads bowed, waiting
the thumbs up, thumbs down,
of placet, placetne,
why, oh why?

Comment: Raw poem. I dreamed it up last night, but it wasn’t like this when it started. Cur: means why or what for in Latin and curs were large, mongrel dogs, bred for herding cattle in the Middle Ages. Cynicsm: because the cynics were also called ‘dogs’ partly for their shamelessness and partly for the faithful way they guarded their philosophical tenets. In Mexico, the Dominicans were often portrayed with dogs at their sides. The explanation: domini / of the Lord, -can / dog; hence they were the faithful guard dogs of the Lord. Placet: it pleases in Latin; the thumbs up sign that allowed the defeated gladiator to live, not die. “In any event, the final decision of death or life belonged to the editor, who signalled his choice with a gesture described by Roman sources as pollice verso meaning ‘with a turned thumb’ a description too imprecise for reconstruction of the gesture or its symbolism” (Gladiator: Wikipedia).

Minus

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Minus

“The earth is geoidal, i.e. earth-shaped.”
These words, dictated to me by the geography
master when I was about fifteen years old,
taught me that teachers didn’t really know
all there was to know. Nor, indeed, did they
need to know everything. “I don’t know,
I’ll check and tell you later,” breaks the myth
of infallibility but sets up sympathetic links.

“What do groundhogs eat?” the little girl
asks her classroom teacher. “Spaghetti,”
comes back the instant answer from one
who doesn’t know that every day the child
watches the groundhog that lives in her yard
devour delicate New Brunswick violets.
“Spaghetti, with mushroom sauce, of course.”

Then one day comes the spelling test:
“How do you spell minus?”
“M-I-N-O-S.”
“Wrong. Try again.”
“M-I-N-A-S.”
“Wrong again.
You think you’re so clever.
Everybody knows it’s
M-I-N-U-S.
Don’t we class?”
The class breaks into shrieks and giggles.

Everyone knows how to spell minus:
even the one who has just read how Theseus
followed Ariadne’s thread to escape from
the Minotaur who roamed the Labyrinth
beneath the Cretan Palace of Knossos.

That one was present too, in her own mind,
at the Siege of Minas Tirith, when Gandalf
held five evil kings at bay and Aragorn fought
the nameless Dark Lord who dwelt beneath
the shadow in the land of M-O-R-D-O-R,
a Lord not so powerful M-I-N-U-S his ring.

Not On My Watch!

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Not On My Watch!

The black-and-white cat
sits in the window and watches
the ginger cat who lounges on the porch
and watches the five deer
who stand in the woods at the garden’s foot
and watch the neighbor’s little dog
who watches the raccoon
who disdainfully removes the garbage can lid
and fishes out the food, scattering
paper and wrappers and cans
as four crows sit in the tree and watch
the wind as it whistles the papers
round and round in a windmill
that wraps itself round the feet
of another neighbor who is watching
the raccoon with open-eyes
as a seagull flies above him
and bombs him from above,
damn seagulls, and the bird poop
falls right on my neighbor’s watch face
and he cries out
“Oh no, not on my watch!”

The Return

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The Return

I opened the car door
and he ran across the parking lot
and jumped into the back seat.

“Where have you been?” I asked.
He thumped his great tail, sniffed,
and licked the hand I placed on his shadowy head.

As we drove back home, he thrust his head
between the seats and placed his paw upon my shoulder.
Then he licked my ear and the side of my face.

I pulled into the garage and let him out of the car.
He raced to the end of the drive, surveyed the neighborhood,
and drilled an invisible pee into the snow.

I whistled, and he ran back to the door,
whimpering and scratching, impatient.
I held the door open and he bounded in.
“You’re back home now,” I told him.

He ran to the cat’s bowl and lapped some water,
scoffed her kibble, and lay down in his usual place.

At night, he lies beside me in bed,
a fluffy spoon carved into my body’s curve.
In the morning he walks through the kitchen
and doesn’t make a sound.
The cat senses he’s there and bristles and hisses
at rainbow motes dancing in the sun.

He’s sitting beside me now,
head on my knee, as I type these words,
one-handed, because I’m scratching him
in his favorite spot behind the ear.

Vixen

 

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Vixen

Meductic,
New Brunswick.

She climbs up from the head pond
a ripple of red and orange over the highway.

 As quick as a fox, they say:
black socks, brush winter-thick
held high and proud,
as quick as a shadow
melting into dark woods
on the highway’s far side.

She is followed by her cub
who is not quite as quick.
He is struck by a truck
and ground into the gravel.

 The fox-stink of memory
clings to my nostrils
like slow-motion death
dreamed at night
frame by bitter frame.

 Now a night-time of silence
falls from the lips of fading lovers.

Raccoon

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Raccoon

Two footprints on the dew damp chair
show that he has been here.

We know he visits at night.
The cat wakes up, jumps off the bed,
leaps to the window, and hisses.
Then she falls silent.

The raccoon steals food from the feeder
and shuffles the pottery shards
we leave out to gather water for the birds.

We never see him.
Sometimes we hear him grunt;
occasionally the wind chimes rattle furiously
as if caught by a giant gust..

We peer into the dark,
turn on the outside lights,
but his absence greets us
like a long lost friend.

Last night, nothing:
this morning, an empty feeder,
those footmark in the dew on the chair:
we know he was there.

Full Moon Fading

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Full Moon Fading

Full Moon fading outside my window
still draws up water, attracts high tides,
drags the wolves by their drawstrings
struggling, bedraggled, out of my chest.
Soon to be invisible, they clutch and claw
as they climb the moon path’s golden light.

The piper has paid his rent and packed
up his pipes, leaving me at last alone.
A silence rules my lungs. Five deer stand
silent in the woods beneath my window
and I watch them as they watch the piper go.

My body’s house lies drained and empty.
The Fading Moon flushed out my body,
leaving it high and dry like a great white whale
abandoned, breathless, on a summer shore.

It’s all over now, the cough, the splutter,
the sharp reality, the aches and pains
that told me I was alive. I miss my music.
I miss the swish and roar of my incoming,
outgoing breath. I miss those Full Moon
fingers tinkling the tides of my inner being,
making me strive to keep myself alive.

Pibroch

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Pibroch

This morning, the bailiff, Mr. Kovdrop,
evicted the two gnomes from my lungs.

Landlord Bodie placed an ad on Kiji
then rented the free space in the left lung
to a tiny piper who took up residence by my heart.
This piper piped a pibroch, sad to play,
on his worn and wheezy bagpipes.

A pack of miniature wolves infiltrated
the midnight forest flourishing in my other lung.
When the pibroch played, they pointed their noses
at that spot in my throat where the full moon
would have been, if she could have broken in.
They mingled their howls with the bagpipes caterwaul
and I lay awake all night with my heart beating
arrhythmic suspicions on its blood red drum.

The drum played, the pibroch wailed, the wolves howled
and my body lay scarred by an absence of moon and stars.

White Wolf

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White Wolf

The white wolf of winter
exits her den-warmth and
shakes cold from her coat. Snow
flies, whitening the world.

She points her nose skywards,
clears her throat until
cold winds howl a chorus:
crystals, crunchy crisp.

We cower behind wood
walls, peer out through steamed
up glass. The white wolf draws
near. She huffs and she puffs.

The snow drifts climb higher,
blotting out the light. Night
falls, an all-embracing
Arctic night of endless

snow snakes slithering on
ice-bound, frost glass highways,
side roads and city streets.
Outside, in the street lights’

flicker, snow flies gather.
Thicker than summer moths,
they drop to the ground, form
ever-deepening drifts.

Our dreams become nightmares:
endless, sleepless nights, filled
with the white wolf’s winter
call for even more snow.