Poems

El Greco’s House

EL GRECO’S HOUSE
Toledo

Downstairs,
we walk narrow, white-washed corridors
and gaze at hand-carved black-oak beams,
older than these grandfather clocks whose
long hand, short hand mark time
in a distant century.

On an open hearth in a tiled kitchen,
cook-pots hang from an iron tripod.

The original paintings have long gone
but copies of haloed heads gaze down
at us from walls where cobwebs age
with gathering dust.

A goose quill pen and an inkpot
await the maestro’s return.
They are poised to sign the contracts
that litter the desk with their thick
black promises of wealth to come.

We climb worn, creaking stairs
and visit the artist’s studio with its
three-legged stool, an easel
by an open window, paint brushes,
and an untouched canvas
crackling in the summer breeze:
a white sail spread before a voyage.

Snowy Day

Bleak Mid-winter
from
All About Angels

The reverse side of a tapestry this fly-netting,
snow plugging its tiny squares,
clotting with whiteness the loopholes
where snippets of light sneak through.

Black and white this landscape,
its colorless contours a throwback
to earlier days when dark and light
and black and white held sway.

Snow piled on snow.
The bird-feeder buried and buried too
the lamps that can no longer shine
beneath their cloak of snow.

The front porch contemplates a sea of white,
wave after wave cresting whitecaps,
casting a snow coat over trees
with snow-filled nests standing
shoulder-deep in the drifts

while a slow wind whistles
and high and dry in the sky above
the sun is a pale, thin penny
drifting through ragged clouds
that threaten to bring more snow.

Snowy Day
for
Meg Sorick
who misses the snow
and offered to come and dig us out.

1. View from office window with IMac and pencils.

2. Bird feeders and the mountain ash from kitchen window.

2a Same scene, two hours later

2b Same scene, another hour later

3. Back porch, bird table, and picnic table from living room.

3b Same scene, two hours later

4. Cat’s eye view of snow from Princess Squiffy’s vantage point.

4a Same scene, two hours later

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5. Princess Squiffy turns her back on the snow and seeks an alternate reality

6. We finished with 63 cms of snow (25 inches), plus drifting of course. Almost shoulder high in places. Other snowfalls in the province ranged from 70-80-90-100 cms. All in all, we were lucky. A wonderful neighbor came and helped us dig / plow ourselves out earlier this evening, and now we can get to the road and our driveway is snow free. Paul: thank you so very much.

At Giverny

At Giverny

At Giverny, Monet found the peace
he had sought at Argenteuil, but never
found. In this photo, he walks between
irises and nasturtiums on the gravel
path leading to the Japanese footbridge
that spans the lily pond. He stands now
on that bridge and sees himself reflected
… eyes, mouth, whiskers, hat …
all floating, half-drowned forever
in the fragrant colors he turned into
plants and flowers. Illusive, yet real,
the ghost of his smile haunts the lily
pond’s depths in this two dimensional
recreation of light and movement, held
forever in the camera’s instantaneous
capture of this selected moment. Now,
in the first home we have owned, this
Christmas Eve, with snow on the ground,
and a chill wind blowing a Queen Anne’s
lace of drifting flakes against the window’s
fly screen, anniversary flowers brighten
our table, while under the tree, presents
… including this book you gave me …
are piled as everything waits, breathless,
as past and future, hand in hand, dance
slow motion paintings to the flickering
rhythms of the fire’s impressionist flames.

Mice

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Mice

“When the cat’s away, the mice …”
they said, with a knowing wink, but
there was no play and you left me
with an emptiness I couldn’t fill.

It was our daughter’s fourth birthday.
She and I baked a cake, though to tell
the truth, I did little more than watch
and all encouragement from the side
-lines. So competent, she was, I called
her ‘Mother Two’ when she told me to
do all the things she wanted me to do.

Her cake turned out fine. She used
a whole packet of icing sugar, layered
so thick there was more icing than cake.
It was just a bit liquid too, and we could
not be bothered to wait until it cooled.

Drinking hot tea, munching a slice of
her birthday cake, I sang a line or two
of Happy Birthday and then fell silent
as I wondered what you would be doing.
Later, we fed tiny cake crumbs to the dogs
who sat there, begging, not wanting their
own food, drooling, missing you, just like us,
and all of us waiting for you to come home.

Freedom

Freedom

We are all so lonely,
locked in our cardboard castles,
no view beyond the battlements,
save for the wild lands, the forest,
from which the enemy might come.

Wild beasts, we cage ourselves
in our isolation and bang our heads
on the bars we built to protect us.

Sometimes, at night, we ascend
to the topmost turret to observe
the stars that dance above us,
tracing our lives in their errant ways.

And is this freedom, the night sky,
with its wayward planets, trapped
in their overnight dance and weaving
our futures, for ever and ever, amen?

Warning: Raw poem … written last night at 8:0-8:30 pm (according to the notes in my journal) and typed out this morning. “Beware the jaws that bite, the claws that snatch …” And be wary of that which lurks beneath the forest’s dark and is never seen in the light of the sun.

Doppelganger

Doppelgänger

When I walked in through
the hospice’s glass door
I met myself walking out.

A curious sensation:
seeing two separate versions of me
side by side in sympathetic union.

When I got to my room,
I looked in the mirror:
how long had I been like this?

My two-faced, double head
joined at the neck,
a Siamese twin of myself,
never knowing which was which
nor whether I was coming or going.

What grief there will be
when the mirror shatters
and nothing remains
but a black space
adorning a broken
wall in an empty room.

Balloon Lady

Balloon Lady
(Oaxaca)

Moon face floats
its yellow balloon
across the window
and I conjure up
magic images
of the lady in the square
who sits in her fortress
surrounded by balloons.

Nine o’clock at night:
the coyotes prowl
with their cell phones
and offer synthetic joy
in tiny plastic packets.

The lady gathers
her flock of colored balloons
and, Pied Piper of legend,
she leads her legion of children
away from the square
and back to their beds.

I meet her on a corner:
she is a red-yellow-blue-green
tower of contentment.
No hands, no face:
but below the balloons,
two tiny, slippered feet.

Stepping Stones

Stepping Stones

Two years ago
today,
a lovely lady
read me
a death sentence:
my biopsy result.

She poured me
a poisoned chalice,
my personal
Gethsemane,
a cup from which
I had to drink.

I sat there in silence,
sipping it in.

Darkness wrapped
its shawl
around my shoulders.

‘Step by step,’ she said,
‘on stepping stones.’

I opened my eyes,
but
I could no longer see
the far side of the stream.

Comment:

I am searching for a title for the poetry book I wrote in 2015, while undergoing treatment for prostate cancer. My original idea for a title was Echoes of An Impromptu Metaphysics. I was reading the Spanish metaphysical poets during the treatment period and their voices resonated in my verse. The second attempt at a title shortened the original to Echoes. However, that didn’t really gel with what I was writing and what I was writing was not a metaphysical treatise: it was something simpler, and more personal.

We have all, as writers, gone into ourselves in that search for our own unique authenticity. My Echoes were authentic in the sense that they echoed other writers; but did they portray me and the search I was making? I wasn’t sure that they did.

I abandoned Echoes for a whole year (2016) and returned to it in January 2017. The space between writing and revision was most beneficial. I had begun blogging in April 2016, and the blogging experience had sharpened my vision. Reading other authors allowed me to see what I was doing that they weren’t. Preparing my own writing for perusal by a wider audience developed my critical skills. Is this really me? Is this how I want to portray my world?

I still don’t know. I am still looking for a title.

Silence

Silence

When I wait for words to come
and they refuse,
I know that silence is golden
and spreads its early morning sunlight
across the breakfast table
where yellow butter melts on hot toast.

Light from the rose window in Chartres
once spread its spectrum over my hands
and I bathed in its speckled glow.

My fingers stretched out before me
and I was speechless;
for in such glory,
mortal things like words cease to flow.

So much can never be said
even if it is sensed: fresh coffee,
poutine à pain, bread baking,
flowers bursting into bloom,

the sense of immanent beauty that fills me
each time my beloved enters the room.

Sanctuary

Sanctuary

We thought for a moment that, yes, we
were angels and yes, we were dancing
together on a pinhead with so many other
angels, and all of us as bright as butterflies
spreading our wings with their peacock eyes
radiant with joy and tears sparkling in time
to the celestial music that wandered up
and down inscrutable scales that bonded
the universe and set planets and spheres
spell-bound in that magic moment …

… and I still feel that pulsing in my head,
that swept-up, heart-stopping sensation
when the heavens opened and the eternal
choir raised us up from the earth, all earth
-bound connections severed and all of us
held safe in the palm of an Almighty hand.

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