The Red Zone: it’s a familiar concept. Monday Night football talks about it all the time.
“Success percentage in the Red Zone, offense and defense.”
It’s not just football. Other sports, soccer, rugby, have their red zones. So does life, my life, for better or for worse, and now I know I’m in the Red Zone.
I can see the goal line. I can feel the tension rising. I know the clock’s ticking down. I can sense it, but can’t see it. I no longer know the score, and I don’t know whether I’m playing offense or defense.
They tell me it’s a level playing field, but every day they change the rules, and today I wonder what the heck’s the name of the game I’m playing.
… now I am absent from myself but can an absence be a presence
I guess it can like when I lose a tooth I lament the loss of its presence and run my tongue around the tender gum
a space where my tooth once stood where the candle flame once flickered and flared before it disappeared …
38
… I grieve for my mother standing in the garden her magnolia bleeding ivory petals as soft as spring snow
some settled on her head crowning her with youthful beauty as she walked towards me eyes shining arms held out
yet when I try to recapture that scene I only see a winter garden with withered blossoms on a leafless tree …
Commentary:
“Can an absence be a presence?” Good question I asked Moo that and he showed me several paintings of trees in winter and vacant faces that he had knowingly filled with sorrow. But I preferred the image of “I only see a winter garden with withered blossoms on a leafless tree.” So I chose my own photo. Moo was very upset and asked me to put in one of his winter paintings anyway, so here it is.
Now Moo is very happy, and he needs to be, because he has had a bad day. I am so glad I am not Moo when he has a bad day. His cardiologist wanted Moo to wear a Holter. Moo didn’t want to wear one. But he listened to his specialist, and obeyed. He was very stressed when he went into the hospital. The acquisition of the Halter was meant to take 15 minutes, maximum. Moo sent 75 minutes sitting in a cold room with no shirt on, terminals attached, and no Holter available. “Can an absence be a presence?” Indeed it can. And Moo is still very upset and very stressed. Nobody’s fault. Things happen. “The candle flame once flickered and flared before it disappeared.” Now you see it, now you don’t. And Moo laments the absence of what should have been a presence and then became a delayed presence. Oh fickle life and times!
I still grieve for my mother, standing in the garden, her magnolia bleeding ivory petals as soft as spring snow. I remember that some settled on her head crowning her with youthful beauty as she walked towards me, eyes shining arms held out. Yet when I try to recapture that scene I only see a winter garden with withered blossoms on a leafless tree. Maybe Moo, with all his stressed out Moo-ds saw that scene more clearly than I did. So, Moo boosts me, and I boost Moo, and that’s what best friends always do. So you go out and boost your best friend too. Blessings and blossoms. And may you all help each other to fare well.
35 … to save myself I must grasp it firmly as I would a nettle not with my hands but with my teeth
but my hands are tied behind my back a cloth is bound over my eyes and I cannot see …
36
… I struggle and squirm until released I float ashore and stand on the sea wall calling out to the moon begging her not to hide her scarred face
I entreat the ebbing tide to carry me with it out to sea past the island beyond the lighthouse into deep water
waves stronger than any
thing I have known thrust rough fingers under my arms lift me up then drag me down
to the depths where I can finally rest in peace …
Commentary:
Mors omnia solvit – death solves everything. But does it? What about the crossword, the jigsaw puzzle, the unsolved ? What about the problem of life itself? What is it? How does it function? And what is that poor bird doing lying on its PEI beach half-covered in sand? What problems did he have solved?
” my hands are tied behind my back, a cloth is bound over my eyes and I cannot see” … so how can I tell where I am going and why I am going there? Simple questions – yet there are no answers, none that are given to me anyway. And who am I to reason why? Is my detiny, as always, to just do and die?
I do not know. The bird on the beach does not know. The ebbing tide doesn’t know, or care what it carries out with it. And what are we anyway? Why do we search for meaning in the meaningless? For answers in the absurd? And why does Sisyphus roll his rock up the hill, release it, then walk back down, pick it up and carry it up again? And why must we imagine that Sisyphus is happy? Our daily work – ce boureau sans merci – why should we be thankful for it? Because there is nothing else? Because otherwise we would be abandoned? Or just because?
Oh, ho-ho-ho-ho, tell me if you know, who the… where the … why …. the what for … where did that one go? Even poor old Alf and dear old ‘Erbet, somewhere on the Somme, didn’t know the answer to that one. And they had their little dugout made a mess of by a bomb. Well, at least they found another hole, but when that other shell went over, it left them still wondering! And don’t we all?
… my heart so broken I can’t count the pieces nor solve the puzzle
scars are trenches deep defensive lines gouged into my face
every night the black dog returns and I wake up from a dream to find myself pincered
attracted by the light squeezed tight between cave walls
my top half struggles to be free my bottom half hips down is held in a ferocious grip
I scream the way a stuck pig screams when the knife flashes and the hot blood spurts
all at sea I move up and down on dark restless waves
I reach for a life raft but find only an apple bobbing as it floats …
Commentary:
Moo thought I needed cheering up, so he did this painting for me. U R My Sunshine, he said to me, then gave me the painting for today’s post. I think he was rather taken with the phrase ‘attracted by the light’ … hence the nice, bright, sunny painting. Whenever I feel down, Moo reminds me that every cloud has a silver lining. Today’s clouds over Island View certainly do. They have actually brought rain and we need that rain so badly. We are in the middle of a drought, in places it is a severe drought. Wells are drying up, the river and the aquifers are low, we need rain – and now we have some. Too late for the apple orchards and the farmers who do not have enough winter feed for their cattle. Too late for the local deer who do not have their usual post-summer glossy looks. And too late for the trees that look drab, having lost their usual fall glow to appear very pale and peaky. Let us hope that a little more rain, on a regular basis, will change all that, and give us the sort of silver lining that, next year, will produce golden apples and brightly colored fall leaves
The blood light draining from the sky midges of color skimming the beaver pond colors skipping across the lake the water alive with color
the low moon skinny dipping across the surface each ripple a leaf of stained glass torn from a cathedral window
twin sticks angled stark in the water poised on thin stilts waiting
this angel now stripped of all garments save a blue-grey gown feathered around her
Commentary:
I love the great blue herons (GBH). They appear from nowhere, perch for a while, then vanish. So many on PEI. One evening I counted 60 or 70 in the bay. Such stealth. Such patience. Such beauty. Then a quick strike and GBH – grievous bodily harm to some small fish or frog invading their fishing space.
They build colonies in the trees by the waterside yet each creates its own free space when they fish in the waters. Flying, such power, such grace. Sharp beak our front, legs out behind, and the power surge of their wings thrusting them onwards.
Such a pleasure to stand still, to watch them and to thrill to the sudden spearing lurch of the attack. The house we borrowed in PEI had a little stream at the back. A GBH fished there. Quietly. Unseen. Scarcely moving the waters. A loner, just like me and mine. An only. As we are. Stately in his loneliness. As my beloved is in hers As I am in mine. A shadow on the waters. A shadow, while the sun still shines.
When I lost my place, I tied my hanky in a knot, to help me remember the number of my page. Last night I looked in pockets and sleeve, but I couldn’t remember where I put my hanky.
At midnight the stars dropped liquid fires and they pooled like letters on the fresh snow of my dreams.
One night I caught some falling stars and I joined them together, one by one, till they stretched their daisy chain across the garden. Words grow like flowers in the Spring.
Once I could accelerate the universe. But now I slow down when I spell my name. There is a circlet of gold on the sky’s bright brow. What gave these stars the right to write my future in expanding letters? A satellite moves in a straight line, north to south and starlight crumbles in the wake of artificial knowledge spanning the eye ball of the planet. Who will repair these broken tunes? Who will glue these scattered notes back into the piano’s frame?
My tongue stumbles against my teeth and trips on my lip. A leaf of fire scorches the deep bell sound of my throat.
Commentary:
I looked over my shoulder, backward into time and space, and discovered this poem, penned more than a quarter of a century ago and abandoned in an old folder. Moo tells me he hasn’t painted for some time – I wondered if he was on a rotating striking, like our posties (Canadian for mail men and women), but he assured me that he had been sleeping, not sleep-walking in circles. Anyway, he felt inspired, put paintbrush to postcard and gave new life to my Book of Life. Thank you, Moo.
Do you remember when we used to tie knots in our hankies to remember what we had to do? Paper tissues put an end to that. No point in tying a knot in a soggy tissue, even if you could. And as Francisco de Quevedo told us – no point in looking in your hanky after you’ve used it. No point in searching for diamonds and emeralds, let alone pearls of wisdom, they just won’t be there. Good one, Franky. Of course, he was writing in Spanish, not English and my translation can’t do him justice.
It used to be fun watching the night sky out here in Island View. So clear – the satellites passed overhead and followed different paths from the stars. No Platonic dancing to ethereal music for them. Tone deaf, the lot of them, cutting their own little paths across the night sky. We used to get Northern Lights too, Aurora Borealis. They were always spectacular. Great crackling curtains of light hanging down from the heavens almost to the rooftops. Moo wishes he could paint everything h sees. I wish I could write down in verse every thought I think. If each of us had our wishes fulfilled, we’d have two books of life – one in color and one in black and white!
… but the light cannot last forever so where do I go when the door in my head slams shut
then I know I have lost the key to my mind’s labyrinth I struggle but I realize there’s no escape
Ariadne’s thread the one that should lead me out of the labyrinth turns into a woven web trapping me leading nowhere
the minotaur half-bull – half-man bellows stifles all thoughts
my heart turns to stone indigestible in the throat’s gorge or the stomach’s pit and my mouth’s too dry to spit
in this starless night when fear descends with the dark a guillotine slices its way through muscle and bone to sever all hope
no glow worm can worm its way into my mind to enlighten the path …
Commentary:
“… the minotaur, half-bull, half-man, bellows and stifles all thoughts …” I asked Moo for a painting of a Minotaur, but he didn’t have one. So I pottered about and found this photo of Los Toros de Guisando, a pre-Roman set of sculptures, in the Province of Avila, carved by the Celts. Not exactly a Minotaur, but certainly a set of taurine images that baffle with their size, silence, and presence. Indeed, they conjure up the images of the poem’s next verse ” … stone, indigestible in the throat’s gorge or the stomach’s pit …”
This is the cave painting, circa 5,000 BC of a bull, as found on the wall of the Caves of Altamira. Alas, he cannot bellow. Or should I say, Thank heavens, he can neither bellow nor pursue us. He stands silent on his cave wall. This photo comes from a glass ash tray my father purchased as a souvenir when we visited those caves (circa 1963-65, before they were closed to the public). Intertextuality – this bull as text and the long history of his multiple appearances. Metaphor and magic, mysterious and marvelous.
The idea that “religion is a glow-worm that glows in the darkness” is a metaphorical observation on the nature of faith. Its most famous expression comes from the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. The statement suggests that religion appears most valuable and needed when people are in a state of ignorance, uncertainty, or despair.” Wikipedia – AI Generated. Our poet, that’s me, in case there are any doubts, refers back to this idea when he writes “no glow worm can worm its way into my mind to enlighten the path”. This too links back to the poetry of St. John of the Cross and his references to the dark night of the soul when hope seems lost and we despair of everything. Then we link to Goya’s etching – The Sleep of Reason – “when reason sleeps, monsters are born.”
However dark the night, someone has walked this way before us. We can follow in their footsteps and hope for the dawn. When it arrives, we can rejoice. But never forget the law of circularity, what goes round, comes round. Night will come back, the way will again be dark, but the light will always return once more. Images and symbols, metaphors and mystery, even the unspeakable can be spoken in the ways in which the ancient artists, sculptors, painters, saints, and philosophers have shown us.
… I become more aware of the world outside my mother’s womb
I listen to the house’s heartbeat the occasional creak intruding rarely the house inhaling exhaling
I pay attention to my own bodily sounds my heart rate slowing increasing
now I can hear the faint tick-tock of a distant clock
a sunray illuminates a dust mote that dances before my eyes
light without sound silent butterfly wings seeking celestial light …
32
… did I write these words for me or did I write them for someone else
does it matter when the only thing that counts is the beauty released, when the butterfly breaks free and takes flight …
Commentary:
“The only thing that counts is the beauty released when the butterfly takes flight.” Sounds beautiful, doesn’t it? Just like the old poetic adage “beauty is truth and truth beauty.” But is it true? There are some very ugly truths and it is very hard to beautify them, even though we do our best to do so. I have always hated simplicities like “lipstick on a pig” or “silk purse out of sow’s ear”. And then there’s ‘a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ Probably true. Yet an ugly truth is still an ugly truth however much the spin doctors try to spin it.
And for whom does a poet (he in this case, the poet being me) write his poetry? Did I write those words for me, or for someone else? Good question. I certainly wrote them in the hopes that someone, somewhere, perhaps you, whoever you are, might read them. But I don’t know you, can’t know you, how could I know you? But if I don’t know you, how could I write for you? Did Cervantes write the Quixote for himself, or for his readers? And who were his readers, did he know them? He certainly didn’t know me, because he passed away on April 23, 1616, same date as William Shakespeare and the Inca Garcilasso de la Vega. The same date, you notice, but not the same day! Puzzle that one out, if you will. Meanwhile, he died 328 years, give or take a month or two, before I was born, so I don’t think he had me in mind as he penned his words, much as I didn’t have you (specifically) in mind, as I penned mine.
Carpe diem – seize the day. Don’t wase it on such idle philosophical speculations. Speculation / peculation – go buy yourself a lottery ticket – you may even win the jackpot. Of course, if you wish, you can be like me. I never buy lottery tickets and that would put money in my pocket every week (think of it as winnings!) except I never take it out. And remember – “Keep your water weak and your cider strong, keep your hands in your pockets and you won’t go wrong.”
… but before all that did I emerge slowly from the grain of a granite heart as a sculpture emerges from stone
I broke out of a silent world left the flesh-and-blood house where my mother lodged me abandoned that amniotic silence broken only by my mother’s heartbeat
my own heart responded to that rhythm until I materialized and slipped into this waiting world
only to be held at the hips trapped a climber in a cave half out yet not able to break completely free
and me visited all my life by the nightmare of that pincer grip until the doctor forceps in hand pincered me and drew me forth white meat from a reluctant lobster’s claw silent dangling upside down a special lobster blue at the bottom red at the top breathless motionless
until that first slap broke the silence and wailing I came into that waiting world …
Commentary:
Nice painting, Moo. I like that. Its original title is Walking on Air, and I guess that’s what it might have felt like, dangling up side down, held by my feet, trying to walk on my hands, and look at all those suggestive colours. Colors / colours – English or Canadian? Does it matter? Red is still red and a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” Ecclesiastes, if I am not mistaken. “Great knowledge brings great grief; for in much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.” So, we live and we learn, but what do we learn? Only the wisdom of all the wise people who walked this way before us. “In my beginning is my end …” – T. S. Eliot – “and in my end is my beginning.” In blood we begin our days, and in blood will we end them, just as the day begins with the spilling of the sun’s blood and ends in an evening of glory. Except when it’s cloudy, and then, of course, we have to guess what’s happening.
Guess-work – we guess how it began and we guess how it will end. And there’s the Clepsydra for you – drop after drop of water and people gathering knowledge, only to know how little they know, for, as Erich von Richthofen said, in the Medieval Course at the University of Toronto, a long time ago, in the 60’sixties of the last century which was also in the last millennium – “The more I know, the more I realize how much I don’t know.”
… diagnosed with a terminal illness called life I know it will end in death
I have seen many pass that way two-legged humans four-legged friends and none have come back
I recall holding the dog’s shaved paw while the vet slipped that last redeeming needle into the exposed vein
the dog’s eyes pleaded for release her tongue licked my hand oh so trusting even at that for me so bitter end
and did the poor dog know what was coming did she live her life as I have led mine waiting for that last word to be spoken the last order given …
29
… two of us me and my death walking side by side everywhere sharing the same bed sleeping between the same sheets
I wonder if we dream the same dreams
my death how would I greet him when he came as executioner not friend
I re-create him as a man or as a dark angel with all-comforting wings
is he open-eyed, while I am blindfolded not knowing the way afraid of falling
this death is it cruelty or merely love
the path is ahead is new and totally unknown …
Commentary:
Many of the images in these two pieces are exercises in intertextual examples, Stanza 29 in particular, drawn from the Neo-Stoicism of Francisco de Quevedo (1580-1645). His advice, set out in poem after poem, is to embrace death before it comes. Prepare for it, mentally, and be aware that it is the natural end of life. As Dylan Thomas also writes, “Every morning when I wake, oh Lord this little prayer I make, that thou wilt keep thy watchful eye on all poor creatures born to die.” The Dunvant Male Voice Choir gives us this version of it. Remember to turn your sound on! I like this version, not just for the music, but also for the views over one of my favorite childhood beaches, Rhossili and the Worm’s Head, not far from my home in Gower.
As I grow older and creakier, as my ailments accumulate, one by one, so I realize that indeed I have been “diagnosed with a terminal illness called life.” It’s funny to think of life as a terminal ailment. “Take two Tylenol and when you wake up tomorrow morning you’ll be feeling much better.” And yes, like every sane person “I know it [this terminal ailment] will end in death.” So, don’t be sad. Carpe Diem – seize each day and enjoy every one of them to the best of your ability. Remember the inscription on the Roman Sundial – horas non numero nisi serenas – I count only the happy hours. Whatever you do, have no regrets. If you do have some, make your peace with them now – or as soon as you possibly can. And, when the call comes, go willingly. Step with pride and joy onto that new and unknown path that will lead you to an eternity of joy, acceptance, and love.
