Grief

Wash Day Blues

Wash-Day Blues

“Out, out, foul spot.” Yet,
however much I scrub them,
those blood spots on my clothes
will not disappear. No seas
incarnadine for me. Picking
at scabs, my fingernails draw blood.
with so many ragged edges.

The old, stale liquid flows
fresh again from once-healed wounds.
Why made me open them up?
Was it just boredom? Or that itch
ever nibbling at the mind’s edge?

Tell me, how do we walk away?
How do we heal ourselves?
How do we forgive and forget?
Does the fresh blood wash away
the dirt I feel crusted round me?
Will I ever be clean again?

Wednesday is wash-day.
I scrub again and again
at all my dirty linen. Then I watch
as my wrinkled skin grows damp, scabs
soften, and I open them once more.

Lost

Lost

Where can it be? I put it
somewhere safe, but I
can’t remember where.

So many things grow legs,
go absent without leave,
walk out of my world.

I am slowly losing control.
My life will soon be left
in somebody else’s hands.

They will control my wants
needs, and necessities.
Then I too will be lost.

Placed somewhere safe,
perhaps, there to lie forgotten,
abandoned, secure, perhaps,
but who knows at what cost.

Time and Tide

Time and Tide

Sitting, waiting, patiently,
it’s all I have left, except
for impatience and anger.
They sometimes take control
in an explosion of bitterness.

I can only sit here for so long and
then anguish gets the better of me.
A dropped plate, a spilt glass,
a cup of coffee slithering over
the tablecloth, and I explode.

Such events are becoming
more frequent and much fiercer.
I try to withstand them, to hold them
back, but they rise like the tide
that lifts the Fundy fishing boats
from their beds in the mud,
moon tides, planetary upheavals,
that swell again in spring and fall.

Like the boats in the bay,
I am powerless to stop them.

A Darker Mist

A Darker Mist

Sometimes a dark mist marches over
the sea-salt marsh flats and, a sea-bird
come to land, nests in my heart. This lone
bird brings others and soon a colony sings
its chorus in time with the incoming tide
that threatens to overwhelm me.

My body’s weak clay responds to this
darkness and slips into the chaotic
cacophony of multiple voices
raised to shut me off from the light.

My soul, a seagull seeking the sun,
rises upwards, ever upwards,
in search of the sunshine, that silver
lining that redeems every cloud, belying
the darkness of this gathering gloom.

“You will find sorrow moving through you, like a dark mist over landscape.” John O’Donohue, Anam Cara, p. 94.

Black Paintings

Black Paintings
pinturas negras
Goya

Wrapped in his blanket of silence, the painter paints.
He pays no attention to the shrieks, screams, prayers,
curses, doesn’t even hear them. He sees their staring eyes
as the bull’s eyes at which anonymous soldiers, heads down,
backs to his easel, fire. He sees their mouths as black holes,
slashed across their faces. He sees the priest with his rosary,
but never hears the rattle of the beads or the firing squad’s guns
going off, filling the canvas with smoke, the square with blood.

Back home, in the Quinta del Sordo, his deaf man’s house,
he sits at the supper table, dwarfed by his painting of Saturn,
devouring one of his children. Beside him, old women,
hags themselves, suck soup silently from wooden spoons,
or fly soundless, black bats in the starless sky,
 on the back of goats or on their witches’ brooms.

The great, open wounds of his paintings speak to us
of his hushed suffering, of the calamitous world that spawned
such violence, plague, famine, and fear. Plundering armies,
guerrilla warfare in back street and alley, torture, pillage,
rape, and suffering, pits filled with the dead and dying,
famine walking the streets, and all of it inaudible,
the nightmares of a little child, seen, but never heard.
His paintings speak to us, and they allow us to reconstruct
in our imagination, the many things that the painter, deaf,
but never dumb, could never hear, yet reproduced
using his paintbrush and his taciturn palette as a tongue.

Click here for Roger’s reading.

“It is said that deafness is worse than blindness because you are isolated in an inner world of terrible silence.” John O’Donohue, Anam Cara, p. 71.

Movement

Movement

Not just the ups and downs, but the small things,
moving, that catch your eye – that butterfly
on the bees’ balm, wings folding, unfolding –
that deer at the wood’s edge, invisible when still,
then suddenly surging into empty space, tail raised,
up and away – that crow, blending into tree black,
then one quick flap, and launched into clear air –
that falcon, perched on the pole, frozen at first,
then taking a step forward, wings folded, dropping,
like a stone then a fast strike on an unsuspecting
robin – silence , pierced by the robin’s shrill shriek,
then silence and peace returned after violence.

Slow movement – the autumn leaves turning color,
a day at a time, almost invisible the change, until one day,
an autumn leaf becomes a whole forest, blushing into
its autumn finery – even slower, the fall’s stealthy approach,
and then, one day, the blue skies turn grey, rain falls,
the wind rises up, and the leaves go tumbling, here, there,
playing strip-jack-naked with limbs and branches.

Looking at my inner world, I feel, but do not see,
winter drawing near – its frosty footprints grip my bones,
snow and frost lie white upon my head, blood flows
thin and slow, seeps life and warmth away, day by day,
inexorable, yes, but also invisible, their still, small steps.

Click here for Roger’s reading.

Swings

Swings

They told me that one day
my feet would be up in the air,
and the next they would be stuck
on the ground.

A roundabout, they said,
a merry-go-round,
with all the fun of whatever fair
happens to be around that day.

Someone, not me, flicks a switch,
music plays, the carousel horses
move up and down, slowly at first,
then faster and faster as day, music,
and horses all gather pace.

There are no reins. If there were,
I would heave those horses
back to whatever reality I left.

But what is reality now?
These hot flashes that warm my flesh?
Those cold flushes that make me shiver,
then turn up the heat
until I am sweating again?

Shadows grow. I pull less strongly
on the swing boat’s ropes.
My journey slows. The showman
raises the bar beneath the wooden hull.
 
Wish it or not, my journey grinds
to its inevitable end.

Click here for Roger’s reading.

The Appointment

The Appointment

“We have room tomorrow,” she said.
“But only between 7 and 9 am.
Shall I book you in for 8:15?”
“Sure,” I replied, not realizing
that I had forgotten to remember
the joys of rush hour traffic,
and the crush of crossing
the only bridge downtown.

I left home early only to find
chaos at the end of my road.
School busses, cars nose to tail,
trucks, cyclists, you name it,
it was all there, flowing, slow
but steady, with scarcely room
to insert a razor blade between
bumper and bumper. But that
was only the beginning.

The bridge downtown: it was
like threading a four wheeled camel
through the eye of a very small needle.
Crawlers, creepers, slugs and snails,
racing demons, speedsters, all of them
hustling, impatient, bustling, yielding
not an inch of space. My car became
a shuttle, weaving a thread of progress,
inch by inch, through the maze
that confronted and confounded.

I got to my journey’s end at last.
“You’re late,” said the girl at reception.
“You’ve missed your appointment.
Shall I book you in again?
Tomorrow at the same time?”

Click here for Roger’s reading.

Alien Nation

Alien Nation

I used to love the trees, the way
they stood there, patiently,
through all four seasons,
bending to the will
of weather and wind.

I planted many of them,
cultivated them,
watched them flourish,
treated them as siblings,
stood beneath their branches,
my back against a trunk,
their life force flowing
through me, renewing me,
as leaf-filtered sunlight
freckled hands and face
and danced in my heart.

Now, I fear them.
People have treated them
so badly, polluting water and air.
I fear their darkness,
their slow-burning anger,
their dryness, the ways
in which they gather,
shutting out the sunlight,
whispering dark secrets,
plotting to destroy us.

I fear the fire they have stored
in root and branch, a fire
that may one day come
to burn us out and leave
the land for their offspring.

Click here for Roger’s reading.

Black Saturday

Black Saturday

Doubt and Despair

1

This is the day we go into ourselves
to work out who we really are.

It is the teeter-totter day
when the world balances on a knife-edge:
Yesterday, the dark deed was done.
Today the body is in the morgue,
far from the crime scene
where black and yellow ticker-tapes,
keep sight-seers seeking thrills at bay.

Today, there is no centre to hold.
Things gyre and gimble in the wake
of troubling scenes misinterpreted,
called fake, and deliberately misunderstood.

The unfortunate lie chained so they can’t
escape. Take these chains from our hearts,
the watchers say. Take these irons from
our wrists, your knees from our necks.
Forsake your vicious choke holds.
Go away and leave us alone.

2

A birch tree lies on my power lines,
and I am powerless.

No phone, no radio, no tv,
and all because of a snow-laden tree.
Why did this happen to me?

“It’s a day, man, a day.
It’s nothing but a day.”
“Imagine,” says my wife, “being
without power all your life.”

I clench my fist and pump the air.
Nobody sees me. No one seems to care.

A ghost’s voice echoes in my head:
“Stop moaning, bro,
at least you ain’t dead.”

Sun, wind, melting snow.
The lame tree rising, slow.
Then, at last, the lines are free.
Power is back again.
I breathe more easily.

3

For forty days
I have wandered in this wilderness,
walking from room to room,
climbing stairs,
descending to the basement,
sitting at the computer,
sitting at the table,
writing in my journal.

I have watched the minutes
as they turn into hours,
the hours turning into days,
days into weeks, then months.

How long, I ask, oh lord, how long
before peace and love, friendship and joy,
return to this world
where they used to belong?

4

A turkey-vulture flew
over the house this afternoon,
hungering for who knows what,
as I too hunger for things
I have forgotten
and no longer know.

Freedom to walk
in now forbidden places,
freedom to shop for groceries,
to stop at the liquor store,
to buy wine and beer,
other things that I adore.

For forty days
I have sailed in this Noah’s
Ark of a house.
Like John the Baptist
I have lingered here for forty days.

Strange and wonderful are thy ways,
oh lord, in heaven, where souls and angels
admire your beauty and sing your praise.