Chance Encounter
Overheard one night at the bar
“Meeting her, unexpected,
with another man, that night,
and me, with another woman,
all four of us looking
bemused by what the other
had chosen in each
others absence
… time suspended …
and the halted, faltering
politeness of a nod,
a handshake, ships
passing in the night,
signs and signals
no longer recognized.”
Re-[b]-earth
“Get out and about,” she told me.
Take off your socks and shoes.
Walk barefoot on the earth and grass:
twin pleasures, you can choose.”
I took two canes, one in each hand,
and left the house to walk the land.
In the garden I took off my shoes
to walk barefoot on the lawn;
when grass sprang up between my toes
I was instantly reborn.
I stood in the shade of the crab apple tree
and let leaf and flower spill over me.
Sunlight took away my frown
and freckled a smile on my face.
I was blessed again with hope and light;
earth and grass filled me with grace
I stooped to reach my shoes
and carried them home in my hand,
maintaining as long as I could
my contact with this magic land.
When white blossoms filtered down
they gifted me a flowery crown.
Dreams
All my former lives gather at night
thrusting their way forward
into the half-light of my drowsy mind.
Alive and thriving, they descend
from midnight’s tree of knowledge
and besiege me with grasping fingers.
Do my dreams fish these colors and shapes
from my own interior seas?
Or do they watch and wait for these spirits
to emerge from sleep’s cocoon
and be reborn in fiery blocks of color?
My neighbor’s dog greets the dawn
barking bright sparks of color
into secluded corners of my waking mind.
I dream dark angels with butterfly bodies,
their inverted wings spread over my head.
Water
Here, in Island View, my lawn’s parched grass
longs for water, long-promised but never drawing near.
Do my flowers remember when the earth slept without form
and darkness lay upon the face of the deep?
The waters under heaven gathered into one place.
When they separated, the firmament appeared.
Light sprang apart from darkness
and with the beginning of light came the word,
more words, and then the world …
… my own world of water in which my mother
carried me until her waters broke
and the life sustaining substance drained away
throwing me from dark to light.
In Oaxaca, water was born free, yet everywhere
lies imprisoned in bottles, in jars, in frozen cubes,
its captive essence staring out with grief-filled eyes.
A young boy on a tricycle pedals the streets
with a dozen prison cells, each with forty captives:
forty fresh clean litres of drinkable water. He holds
out his hand for money and invites the villagers
to pay a ransom, to set these prisoners free.
Real water yearns to be released, to be spontaneous,
to trickle out of the corner of your mouth,
to drip from your chin, and fall to the ground.
It is a mirage of palm trees upon burning sand.
It is the hot sun dragging its blood red tongue across the sky
and panting for water like a great big thirsty dog.
Sweet Dreams
Amnesia fades in these amniotic
waters, moving in time to the water pump’s
heart beat. I close my eyes. Nothing is the same.
Do I drift dreamily or dreamily drift?
The tub’s rose-petals bring garden memories:
primrose, bluebells, cowslips, daffodils dancing
sprightly in Blackweir Gardens or Roath Park,
beside the lake or along the gravel paths
where we used to bike, so many years ago.
Photos float before me, pictures of moments
I alone recall. Spring in Paris, the trees
breaking buds along the Champs-Élysées.
Santander in summer, walking the Piquío,
Segunda Playa, beneath the jacarandas.
Winter in Wales, up in Snowdonia where,
on a Relay Run to Tipperary,
I ran down a valley between high hills,
on a freezing night, with only the stars
to keep me company along a ribbon
of road. Autumn in Mactaquac. An orgy
of gaudily painted trees, leaves floating
on this first chill wind, to perch like sparrows,
on my beloved’s hair. The look in her eyes
as I catch a falling leaf and put it in
her pocket to save it for another day.
Angel Choir
(on seeing the Northern Lights at Ste. Luce-sur-mer)
listen to the choristers with their red and green voices
light’s counterpoint flowering across this unexpected son et lumière
we tremble with the sky fire’s crackle and roar
once upon another time twinned in our heavenly bodies
we surely flew to those great heights and hovered in wonderment
now our earthbound feet are rooted to the concrete
if only our hearts could sprout new wings and soar upwards together
the moon’s phosphorescent wake swims shimmering before us
the lighthouse’s fingers tingle up and down our spines
our bodies flow fire and blood till we crave light and yet more light
when the lights go out we are left in darkness
our hearts fill with dreams of what might have been
El Cristo de Carrizo
“Contemplate this crucifixion.
Each of your sins is a thorn
driven into His brow.
Each misdemeanor spears
the sacred side,
draws water and blood
from the open wound.
Your sinful deeds
drive nails anew
into hand and foot.
Christ lives in you.
Your misdeeds nail him
daily to the cross
He bears for you.
He hangs there,
open-eyed.
No death,
no resurrection,
just an everlasting suffering
from these nails
you daily drive.”
Comment: This poem is a very golden oldie. I wrote it in 1979 while walking the Camino de Santiago / the Road to St. James. I should add that this was long before it became fashionable to do so. I walked alone and, save for my thoughts, I was indeed very lonely. In fact, the long days walking, the solitude, got to me. I needed to talk, to meet people, and so, after long discussions with sundry people along the route, I determined to take the bus or the train to the main pilgrimage centres and to walk out from them in either direction. This allowed me to meet people, explore the towns with their churches, traditions, and museums, and to learn much more about the nature and art traditionally associated with the pilgrimage. In this fashion, I spent five days in Leon, two days in Hospital de Orbigo, a week in Astorga, another week in Ponferrada, and nearly two weeks in Santiago itself.
I wrote a collection of poems while I was studying the cities and the landscape. This particular poem is a summary of the conversation I had with the old priest, determined to convert me to Catholicism, who introduced me to the Cristo de Carrizo, in Leon.
In 1613, Francisco de Quevedo, the Spanish poet on whom I wrote my doctoral thesis (Toronto, 1975) wrote a collection of heartfelt mea maxima culpa poems dedicated to his aunt. It bore the title of El Heráclito Cristiano / The Christian Heraclitus. This in turn was based on an earlier cycle of poems, Lamentaciones de Semana Santa / Lamentations of Holy Week (1601), which Quevedo appears to have written following the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola.
These spiritual exercises consist of a set of contemplations based on the Stations of the Cross, Via Crucis, in which the contemplator meditates on each of the moments of Christ’s torment and suffering leading up to his death by crucifixion at the end of Holy Week. The purpose of the exercises is to try and recreate in the mind of the contemplator the sufferings of Christ, to imagine his pain, and to feel his suffering at a personal level. This is an act not only of contemplation and contrition, but also of purification of mind and spirit.
This year, during Holy Week (from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday and the Resurrection), I attempted to follow in the footsteps of Quevedo and to contemplate the current world situation and my own specific situation, as influenced by the lock down in New Brunswick instigated on account of the Corona Virus pandemic.
Lamentations for Holy Week, then, is my attempt to examine myself and my own conscience at a time of great personal stress, a stress that I share with all those who are infirm, frail, in ill health, alone, and getting on in years. These are the people most affected by loneliness and the threat of the pandemic to our lives.
The Cristo de Carrizo is a hand-carved ivory cross, Mozarabic in origin. It shows Christ, on the cross, with his eyes open, looking at the viewer. Christ is not dead, in this crucifixion, but very much alive, and suffering. Image taken from Wikipedia.
The Champion
There I was, in dreamland, half-asleep,
leaning on my cart, when this phantom drifted
towards me. “Help me,” it said. “I’m hungry.”
I woke up from my dream, looked at the ghost,
tall, skeletal, thin, cavernous eyes, cheekbones
protruding, gaps in the teeth, grey face drawn.
“Sorry!” My reply was automatic. I looked
at him again. “I only carry plastic.” The excuse
limped heavily across the air between us.
I saw something in his eyes, I knew not what.
As I walked away, I added one hundred pound
of muscle to his frame. He had played hard.
I remembered him holding up the Maritime Cup.
But I couldn’t remember his name. I pushed
my cart all over the store searching for him.
At the ATM I withdrew cash I could give him.
I would tell him he had dropped it. I could invite
him to the snack bar, buy him a meal and more.
I could tell him to buy what he needed and meet
me at the check out. I could add his purchases
to my bill. I looked everywhere. Nor sight, nor sign.
One opportunity. That’s all we get. Miss it, blow
the match. Grasp it, hold it tight, we’re champions.
Comment: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” “Or my sister’s?” Here and now we are living with realities that we have rarely faced before. Not everyone has kept their jobs. Some are indeed living out on the streets, helpless, homeless, panhandling, hoping. Right now they are lucky. Sunny, warm, hot … though sometimes too hot. At least it isn’t 40 below and freezing their butts off. So what do we do? Turn a blind eye? Say we are sorry? Suddenly recognize an old friend, turn quickly away before he recognizes us, and burn ever afterwards with shame?
I cannot answer for you. I can only answer for myself. I am ashamed of my slick answers, my throwaway negatives, my disguised barbs. “Go get a job.” There are no jobs, or very few anyway, Covid-19 has seen to that. “Do something useful, can’t you?” There’s very little they can do, and seemingly there’s very little can be done for them. “Go home!” They have no homes to go to.
So what are the alternatives? Love? Charity? Comprehension? Embracing their situation? Understanding? How can we understand, you and I, who sit before the computer screen, the cell phone, or the I Pad, scanning this in comfort? Think about it: there, out into the street, but for some good luck, and the grace of God, go you and I. Think about it. Now do you understand?
Dreamcatcher
In my dreams, I track the sails of drifting ships,
white moths fluttering before the wind.
I think I have caught them in overnight traps,
but they fly each morning in dawn’s forgiving light.
I give chase with pen and paper, fine butterfly nets
seeking wild thoughts waiting to be caught, then tamed.
I grasp at something just beyond my fingertips,
but I can’t quite remember what it is.
I wake up each morning unaware of where
I have been the night before.
Thursday Night Football
Once a month, they stick
a needle in my arm and check my PSA,
cholesterol, and testosterone:
blood pressure rising, cholesterol high,
body clock ticking down.
The doctor keeps telling me
it’s a level playing field
but every week he changes the rules
and twice a year he moves the goal-posts.
A man in a black-and-white zebra shirt
holds a whistle to his lips while another
throws a flag. It comes out of the tv
and falls flapping at my feet.
Yes, I’m living in the Red Zone
and the clock’s ticking down.
