Joy of Words

The Screws

The Screws

There is no science to sciatica,
just a series of sensations
most of them involving pain.

I don’t know how or when it comes,
but one day, it knocks on your door
and makes you clutch back and buttock.

It’s like a hawk at the bird feeder,
flown in from nowhere to shriek
and shred, unawares, one small bird.

Was it the flannel I dropped yesterday
when showering?  I stooped to pick it up,
lunged forward and, was that it?

The pain came later. It kept me awake
all night, my worst nightmare.
No comfort anywhere. An endless

wriggling and every movement a knife
blade stabbing at my buttock and groping
its slow, painful way down my leg.

The screws, my grandfather called it,
a metal screw screwed into his leg,
leaving him limp and limping.

I googled it today, sciatica, and they
suggested an ice pad for twenty minutes,
repeated twenty minutes later.

“Yes,” I muttered, “yes” and found
in the fridge the ice pack we used
to use in our Coleman’s cooler.

My beloved helped me undo my pants.
“This,” she said, “will be icing on the cake.”
“No,” I said, “it will be icing on the ache.”

Tomorrow, I will call the pyro-quack-tor.
She will bend me to her will, straighten
my back, cure the pain, set me right again,
provided she doesn’t read this post
and will permit me to enter her domain.

Commentary:

Moo doesn’t paint pain, even though it occasionally emerges in his paintings. This painting of his is called Grey Day and I guess a Grey Day is rather like a Blue, Blue Day, something to be avoided, because you feel like running away. And that’s the problem with “The Screws” – it’s hard to face the pain when it’s behind you, unless you are a contortionist and can twist and twirl and see yourself in the mirror. I suppose another solution is to have eyes in the back of your head, but not everyone is that gifted.

As for the pyro-quack-tor, my apologies, Chiropractor, mine is excellent. I limp into her office, crawl onto the medical bed, and then, thirty minutes later, I hop off it like a man reborn, and skip down the corridor, waving my sticks and grinning as if I were a Gorilla in heat. Oh dear, not the sort of condition in which one should drive the zoo bus!

As for my joke – “This,” she said, “will be icing on the cake.” “No,” I said, “it will be icing on the ache!” This takes me back to my old school days – Aix-les-Bains / Aches and Pains. I remember one of my school friends going to Baden-Baden for his summer holiday. A double-barreled name, wow, very foreign. He asked me where I had been and I replied “Cardiff-Cardiff – this is Cardiff.” They used the English version back in those days, not the Welsh one – “Caer Dydd – Caer Dydd.” Doesn’t sound quite the same in Welsh. And how about Cas Newydd – Cas Newydd [Newport] or Pen y Bont – Pen y Bont [Bridgend]. And let’s not get into Llanfair.p.g – Lanfair.p.g – [Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch – Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch].

Try saying that one twice in quick succession. You’ll be sitting in the railway station a long time, just waiting to find out where you are. That, of course, is if trains still run to Llanfair p. g. “Gentlemen will please refrain from …. ” and if you can finish that little ditty off, in public, you have more courage than I do! Besides which, my voice broke long ago, and I haven’t mended it yet!

Clepsydra 23 & 24

23

… gulls on the wharf-side roof
     fishing boats
          returning to port
               white wakes trailing,
                    pointing to where they’ve been

where have I been
     all my life         

where is the wake
     that tracked me to and from
          so many unimportant places

so often have I waited
     for that moment of reunion
          port station airport

birds leaving nest
     only to return
          then leave again
               are not more faithful

sweet brevity of life
     a stone memorial
          on the harbour wall
               raised to all
                    who went to sea
                         and never returned
                              dying in the waves’ embrace …

24

… a watery grave
     no church no candles
          just cold waters sliding shut
               as down to the depths they go
                    

sinking from level to level
     never to rise again
          not till seas run dry
               burnt up by the sun’s candle

even then they’ll walk no more
          with their beloveds
               hand in hand
                    on diminishing land
                         or sea-licked sand …

Commentary:

“Birds leaving nest, only to return, then leave again, are not more faithful.” A lovely photo, from Avila, of storks, bouncing on their nests, waiting for the wind to lift them up aloft. I thought of using sea side photo from PEI, but this image caught my eye, and my words. A verbal – visual link. Not easy to spot, but there, in the sky above them, a parent waits. As soon as one chick takes flight, the watching parent will drop, fly under the fledgling’s wings, and tutor the young bird in the art of soaring and flying. I have spent many a happy hour, just sitting there, watching them.

And here’s the photo from PEI. An osprey, returning to the nest, after a fishing expedition. One hopes for such moments. Then, suddenly, one day, the magic happens, and verbal and visual joining hands in a single moment of magic. And listen to that baby bird, beak open, shrieking, waiting for the parent to arrive. I can still hear the screeching, although we are in the age of silent, but colorful, pictures.

In the picture below, the Grande Réunion – you can see the White Geese gathered at Bic. They return every year, so beautiful. The first time I saw them, I thought they were a drift of late snow. Then they rose from the field, and flew up, into the air. I have often seen snow falling but that was the first time I saw snow actually rising, after it had settled. A memorable moment.

Moments of magic, as I said, and each of them linked – verbal to visual. Silent dialogs with my time and my place, now shared with whoever has ears to hear and eyes to see and an imagination to reconstruct the alternate realities.

Drink up thy Tizer!

Drink up thy Tizer!

I wonder how many people actually remember Tizer, the Appetizer. It used to be sold in grocery stores and corner shops. Don’t forget the Tizer, shrieked the adverts. I hated the stuff – but others loved it. Sweet, sticky, a little bit like dynamic Lucozade – and who remembers that, I ask. The same people as had cod liver oil poured down their throats when they were little children in the United Kingdom. An old and almost forgotten generation with its own traditions. But this post is not about Tizer, it’s about cider. Good old Somerset / Zummer Zett scrumpy.

I met Scrumpy when I went to Bristol University. It was an alternate drink to beer, and many pubs sold cider, in one form or another. A pint of cider – sufficient unto the evening was a pint thereof. After a couple of months, one could manage two pints of Scrumpy. Our drinking competitions including drinking a Yard of Ale. Someone always brought one when we went on a coach trip and we always ended up in a bar, in the middle of nowhere, trying to drain our yards of ale. I remember one lad bravely trying to quaff a yard of cider – scrumpy at that. Honk city – and it had nothing to do with the geese. But it was spectacular.

My own adventures with scrumpy really started in my second year at Bristol. The boarding house I lived in stood close to the Coronation Tap, one of the best cider house in England, if not in Bristol. First night I went in there and asked for a pint of scrumpy the barman suggested I have just a half. In my best Somerset accent, I said no, I’d appreciate a full pint. The barman duly placed it before me. As he did so, the man standing next to me at the bar suddenly woke up from his meditations, poked me in the ribs with a boney finger, and announced “Ah, lad. That’ll put lead in thy pencil.” I looked over at his pint of scrumpy and saw a slice of lemon floating in it. “What’s that lemon doing there,” I asked. “I’m waiting for the cider to eat it,” the man replied. “Better for the scrumpy to eat the lemon than to eat my insides.” Another night, at the Cori Tap, I met an old gaffer who wouldn’t touch scrumpy. I asked him why not and he replied that one night he’d managed to down seventeen pints of scrumpy. “That’s a lot,” I said. “What happened?” “Oi spend three weeks in ‘orspital, in bed, doan I?” He muttered.

In my third year, Hamburg University Athletics Cub arrived by coach to participate in an athletics competition with Bristol. The Cross-Country Club became the Athletics Club, in the summer, and we specialized in distances from 400 > 800 > 1500 > 3000 > 5000 > 10,000 metres. Thirsty work on a hot summer’s day. We took the Hamburg athletes back to our apartment building and spent the Saturday night slurping scrumpy down the Tap. They slept on the floor at our place, and next morning, a Sunday, they went shopping early. When they came back to their coach, they all grinned happily at us, and waved their bottles of Tizer in farewell. I looked around and saw that they had twenty cases of those bottles stored in the bus. “Ve vill have gut trip to Hamburg, no?” I started to laugh and they all joined in, waving their bottles at me. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that Scrumpy came in barrels, not bottles, and that they had not purchased cider at the local stores. Alas, they had bought 20 cases of Tizer the Appetizer. Somehow, in translation, cider had become Tizer – oh the glories of discourse analysis and the meaning of meaning.

St. Mary Redcliffe

St. Mary Redcliffe

Time and Temple Meads
have begrimed your wand-thin spire,
the tallest in England.

You waved goodbye
to the Cabot boys,
Nova Scotia bound,
as they set sail.

Starling lime your belfry,
gift and inspiration
of Merchant Adventurers,
that gentlemen’s company.

Worms wriggle and gnaw
at your ship’s figure-head,
harbored now, bare-breasted,
sturdy in your oak-beam nave.

Rust rustles and creaks
at the Edney Gates,
wrought to last centuries
by Bristol ironmasters,
themselves apprenticed
to learn time’s laws.

Commentary:

Yesterday, via Zoom, I met with the Canadian Alumni of Bristol University. Sarah Price (Bristol Alumni Association) and Heather Proctor (Alumna) set the meeting up for us. Golden Oldies, all of us, we sat there and reminisced about our days, so long ago for most of us, at Bristol. I graduated in 1966, the same year I came to Canada. Most of the other alumni graduated long before I did. My last visit was in 1986 when I met with the Spanish Department, much changed, and talked abut my most recent research. One alumnus had visited just last year and talked of his returning to his old hall, his old room, his olde department, and all the changes that he had seen.

Most of those gathered had been in halls of one sort or another. Their experiences and friendships seemed very different to mine. Digs out in Knowle, Bristol, my first year. Then rooms in a rooming house, up by the Clifton Suspension Bridge, with other members of the Cross-Country team, for my next two years. Summers in Spain and France distanced me enormously from both England and the university. I remember coming back from Spain one summer and standing at the bus stop in Clifton, waiting for a bus to take me to Temple Meads Railway Station, a Number 18, if I remember correctly. Well, the bus arrived and drove towards me at enormous speed. It didn’t look as if the driver had any attention of stopping. So, I ran out into the road, waving my arms. He braked, gave me a very strange look, and asked me what I wanted. I said I wanted to go to Temple Meads. He said well get on the ****ing bus then. I looked at a great expanse of green metal, with windows, but no door, and asked him “Where’s the door?” Of course, after three months in Spain, like an idiot, I was standing on the wrong side of the road, and the wrong side of the bus. Such bitter-sweet memories.

I suppose I wasn’t a very good student. My only talent was speaking Spanish fluently. I worked hard at that, completely immersed in Santander, playing soccer on the sand, wandering through bars at night, learning to drink from a porrón and a bota without disgracing myself, and fishing on the weekends for panchos and julias in the Bay of Santander. I also learned how to row an old battered row boat, un bote. And it was all marvelous fun.

I also wrote a great deal of poetry and even managed to publish regularly in the Nonesuch Magazine. St. Mary Redcliffe, the poem above, dates from those days. I loved that church and visited it regularly. I wonder how many other Bristol students went in there and walked around inside. I also wonder how many stood with Jorge Luis Borges by the polished, black slate of the city hall, with its coal mine on the green, and gazed at their reflections in those shiny azabache mirrors. As I wrote yesterday on my blog – “How much can we know, your life of mine, my life of yours? At what point do those twin railway lines meet at the edge of time? Or are they doomed to a parallel universe where mind and mind, rail and rail, neither meet nor understand?” Sometimes, we can take a great joy in working out the answers to such questions. 

Clepsydra 22

22

… winds kiss words from lips
      sand creaks
           squeaks underfoot
                    creeps between dry toes

the sand cleanses
     purges
          brings closure
               each magnificent moment
                    lighting a candle

is this beach an altar
     under the rocks’
         shadow church
              it doesn’t matter

mindfulness
     holding each memory
          each piece of colored glass

wave after wave
     climbing ashore
          washing footprints
               memories away
                    closing
                         door after door …

Commentary:

“Wave after wave climbing ashore, washing footprints, memories away, closing door after door.” Everything turns out in black-and-white – here a crow, there a seagull. What does each say to each, when they meet upon the beach? Silence and stillness. No sound of wind or wave, no sign of the tide rising or falling, and what do the birds say to each other, when they meet like this? Two solitudes, mine and thine, and somehow the silence must be broken, or in our separate solitudes we will remain. What if I open my solitude and show it to you? Will you then open yours and spread it willingly before me? Or will you turn away, crow spurning seagull and there’s no going back.

And did my feet, in ancient time, walk upon the beach in Santander? Did they wander over the cliffs at Cabo Mayor? What did I say to the sands in Swansea Bay when, sitting on the steps by the railway station, I dusted the sand from between my toes, placed socks upon my feet, and did up my sandals? Private places, private memories, private conversations live on in the privacy of my head.

A dozen heads, all crowded onto the computer screen, zoomed in so they can be together for an hour or two, repeating their memories to each other – how much did they really share? How much can we know, your life of mine, my life of yours? At what point do those twin railway lines meet at the edge of time? Or are they doomed to a parallel universe where mind and mind, rail and rail, neither meet nor understand? Tell me, if you can, what the crow thought of the gull when they met, that morning on the sand.

Gone out

Gone out

“She has lived.
Now she has gone out.”

And all too soon
I too will go out
and people
will be able to say
he has gone out.

Or not.
Maybe there’ll just be
a silence.
Few people know me.
Even fewer care about me,
know who I really am
what I’ve actually done.

What have I done?
Nothing, really.
Nothing at all.

But I have struck a match or two,
lit some candles,
and allowed them to shine
in the darkness …

…

and soon, I too,
like those candles,
will go out.

Commentary:
The opening quote, changed and adapted, is from Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim. I was reading it a few days ago, by candlelight, as we had a brief, and totally unexpected power outage because some idiot ran into a power pole on the highway below us and cut off our power.

Reading by candlelight is so inspirational. It brings back memories of my childhood in Wales, summer evenings in the bungalow, no power, no running water, reading by lamplight or candle light. The candle’s scent, the flicker of shadowy thoughts across the page, each word held for a moment or two in a magic, shimmering glow. I recall also the candles on the high altar, lit for midnight mass, and the church all a-sparkle with shimmering light, incense, and flowers.

Power outage – I often think they should be called power out[r]ages. Then I think of the war zones, rife with suffering, where power outages are only one of the many outrages from which people are suffering. “Man’s inhumanity to man.” Robbie Burns, I believe. I regret calling that driver who took out the power pole an idiot. Shame on me. I found out later that he was a human being, suffering, just like me, from the attributes of ageing. A heart attack took him and his leaden foot, dead on the accelerator, sped him into the power pole.

DOA – dead on arrival at the power pole, and at the hospital. “He has lived. Now he has gone out,” snuffed out like the candles I blew out when the power was finally restored. It’s so easy to relight a candle, so hard to relight the beauty of a lost human life.




Tell us about a time when you felt out of place!

Tell us about a time when you felt out of place!

I think it would be much easier to tell you about a time when I felt as if I was in my proper place. There were so few of them. As for the original question – Tell us about a time when you felt out of place – I think that a time should be replaced by the many times. Learning languages has always been more of a pain than a pleasure, for me, anyway. In the Basque Country, Northern Spain, at first with my parents, and then on my own. Sitting at the table or standing in the kitchen, listening to people chattering away in Spanish some days, in Basque, on other occasions. I was reduced to interpreting looks, smiles, scowls, meaningless sounds … how could I have felt that I was in my proper place? Etiquette – I knew nothing about their etiquette. Culture – I knew nothing about their culture and they knew even less about mine. I lived in a world where waves of sound battered at my body and I stood there, a rock on a seemingly deserted linguistic beach, being gradually worn down by the endless waves and the eroding tides. How could I have felt anything but ‘out of place’?

The same thing happened when I became immersed in French culture. I spent some time in the South of France, in an area where Provencal was still spoken. Between the two languages and the differing accents, I was lost, lost, lost.

Something similar happened when I came to Canada. Here, it wasn’t the language that baffled me, but the culture. I remember trying to learn to skate. My cousin played Junior “B” hockey and volunteered to teach me. Well, I learned very slowly (a) to keep my balance and (b) to move forwards very slowly. However, I couldn’t skate back wards and I couldn’t stop. In spite of that, I decided to try and play hockey. The park close to where I lived in Toronto had a frozen area where the little kids played shinny. I asked if I could join in. After three falls and a total inability to stick handle in any known fashion, they stuck me in goal. I used the goalie’s stick to try and stand up. After the third or fourth goal, one five or six year old whisked up to me, stopped in a sideways shower of ice, and said “Sir, please sir, you’re allowed to use the stick to stop the puck, you know.” I retired from ice hockey soon after that, and from skating. I did learn to cross-country ski, though. I also earned the name Wapiti (white-tailed deer) long before I saw one or knew what it meant.

And that is all just scratching the surface. I could say more, so much more. But I’ll control myself.

Clepsydra 21

Clepsydra 21

… she left me
          at the lighthouse
               rising tide
                    beach diminishing

and grew smaller
     as she walked away

I search the sand for sea-gems
     sand-dollars
          cerulean sea-glass
               rarest of all the reds

ground down
     polished
          sanded to perfection

so many worlds
     in a grain of sand
          their words going unspoken
               carried away by the sea-wind

the wind that haunts
     caves and cliffs
          hooting like a ghost train
               in a forlorn
                    tunnel of love

love lost
     love found
          an old love
               rediscovered
                    only to be lost anew

what is this thing
     called love …

Commentary:

Listen! “Can you hear the music?” “No, but I hear singing even though there’s no one there.” I know, I know, we have had this conversation before. Moo didn’t have a painting along the lines of ‘what is this thing called love’, so he dug out this one – Walking on Air – the painting, not Moo. But then, Moo’s a silly old romantic and verses and songs settle in his mind. All too often, when he walks he finds he’s ‘walking on air’! The two of us, Moo and me, have always loved that song. Great to work it into a commentary on a poem (again).

Love – what is this thing called love? And how many types of love are there? We use the word so frequently, or infrequently, if we are Mr. Grinch. But what does it mean? Love of self, love of other? And how many others can we love – I know that Minnie had a heart as big as a whale, but how many loves can fit into it? Love of father, mother, daughters , sons, brothers, sisters, cousins – how far do we go? Winning sports teams – everybody loves everyone on the team when they win they cup. That love is so much harder if they lose it – especially if there is a goat on the team, and I don’t mean greatest of all time! I mean sacrificial.

I love you with all my heart! Does that include the pacemaker and the stent? What does atrial fibrillation mean in that situation? Good questions. Neither me nor Moo have the answers. Write your answers on a postcard and send it to – where? With Canada Post on strike, you will need a team of real snails. Hitch your postcards to them. Threaten them with the salt shaker. And off they go. Snail mail is back. Or you could place them on a dog sled, hitch up the huskies and Mush, Moo, mush! Away they all go hauling the mail. Why does it always be the mail? Why can’t it be the Femail? Mail – Femail. Oh, but I love that. There, you see. We’ve just added another meaning to love. Let’s hope none of the huskies lies down to rest. That’s called a Canadian flat tire. Oh, I love that one too.

I am running out of time, space, and ideas. And that’s only one word from the poem that we’ve looked at. Oh, shame and scandal in the letter-box.

Clepsydra 18-20

18

… as free as the birds
     a sky full at North Cape
          where shores retreat
               year after year
 
the big red mud diminishes
     under advancing waters
          sea-threatened cliffs
               undermined roads
                    houses
                         the lighthouse

gulls follow the fishing boats
     herring gulls
          blotting out
               sun and sky
                    above the reef

with its seals
     basking in sunshine
          knowing themselves
               being themselves
                    thinking themselves safe

kings and queens
     of their sealdom
          never questioning …

19

… an osprey
     sudden the swoop
          turned into a stoop

water shattered
     total immersion
          then emerging
               with lusty thrusts of wings

claws clasping
     imprisoned prey
          prised from the sea
               raised to the skies
                    up and away
                         murderer and victim

oblivious below
     the black horse
          with cart and farmer
               gathering seaweed

all of them
     having no doubts
          safe in the security
               of their roles …

20

… while lost in the labyrinth
      I searched for a thread
               on life’s loom

a thread woven
     by an unknown
          unseen hand
               a hand and thread
                    I could never control

yet one day
     that thread
          will lead me out
               from the dark

then shall I see
     the sun’s great candle
          beneath which red rocks
               wave and water battered
                    crumble

here at North Cape
     in a way that nobody
          can understand …

Commentary:

The osprey “emerging with lusty thrusts of wings, claws clasping, imprisoned prey prised from the sea, raised to the skies, up and away, murderer and victim.” The words are based on the photograph. A quiet day, somebody shouted, and pointed, and clickety-click, I was lucky enough to capture the whole thing on my digital camera. This one shot summarizes it all.

The stanzas (16 & 17) that precede this moment are available here. Clepsydra, the book, is one single poem, one single sentence, that rambles on and on. Each stanza stands alone, each poem (numbered) stands alone, and the whole book stands alone as a single sentence summarizing what I have seen and where I have been. Bakhtinian Chronotopos – my dialog with my time and my place. In this case, my many dialogs with my multiple times and multitudinous places.

Albert Camus lent me the phrase ‘murderer and victim’. ‘Nous sommes, ou meurtrier ou victime‘. Quoted from memory. I hope I am not too far wrong. My memory fades as I age. Louis Aragon suggested I borrow his line “rois tombés de leurs chariots” – that I found in his collection Il ne m’est Paris sans Elsa. Here, I have applied it to the seals at North Cape, PEI – “seals – basking in sunshine – kings and queens of their sealdom.” Intertextuality – texts talking to texts and recalling segments of texts within other texts.” Wonderful. Alas, I fear the coming days when the memory may no longer be so clear. ‘What will be, will be’ said the Osprey as he pulled the flounder from the sea and carried him too his nest in a nearby tree.

Absence

Absence …

… makes the heart grow
callouses scabs you can
pick at with your finger
nails bleeding fresh blood

they remind you that you have
a heart feelings something
buried so deep you need
a pick and a shovel to dig
a shaft with wooden slats
placed carefully at the sides
so your mine won’t collapse

you dig deeper and deeper
until in the gloom you see
the feathered fluttering —

a broken-winged canary
sacrificed in its cage
so part of you can escape
flee the mine
and come out alive

Commentary:

A golden oldie. Moo thought Poppy Day (11/11/2024) would be a suitable painting. Those who survive rarely forget those they were forced to leave behind. Kindred spirits, they travel though life together, the live one carrying the other on his shoulders as he would have done earlier, had he been able to.

Moo still has a teddy bear. He tells me he has always slept with one. His first teddy was an Australian Koala, a real stuffed koala given him by his Australian family, back when he was born. Moo was reading a book on the Battle of Britain (15 September 1940). It had a picture of the gunner from a Bolton Paul Defiant, sitting in the gun turret. Behind him, he had his little teddy bear. Moo couldn’t stop crying. He thinks he might have been an air gunner in another life, and when he saw that teddy, it brought back so many memories – flak, night fighters, search lights, tracer bullets, pain, flames, and then the unending darkness. So many did not come back, especially the tail-gunners. Their absence is still a presence to someone in their families. And so it should be.