Still Growing Up

Sedimentary accumulated effort
through generations of other people’s time
resulted in a comfort that dulled
awareness of lessons unlearned or lost.
I never thought about it very much
but if I had
I’d suppose adults had to start somewhere
Had they once been kids ?
Who knew how they grew ?
They never talked
about their experience
and conversations stopped
or were changed
when I entered a room.
I figured if I were patient
time would pass
and of course
it has, without a plan
oozing between my toes
seeping down drains unsuspected.
I was lucky enough
to get involved with
marriage, parenthood and a careerette
but not quick enough to know
from where time came,
to divine its composite parts
or where they went,
counting the pocket change
of a lifetime.
I realize
before the coins hit the table
how my penny could not
put numbers on the faceless clock
within my heart.

Pedagogy

What wondrous interplay,
Sun-shadowed light and dark,
Writhing ripe branches straightening with hope
Bright speckles sliding with feline jungle grace
Summer boughs’ fond wave
Bidding Eden’s season adieu.
The yet-gentle wind
Practises in a minor key
Its annual dirge.

Nine feet of proud sunflower stands straight
And erect.  Building-sheltered from annoying gusts
Trained tall to where it knew
The morning sun’s diurnal arc
Drew the perimeter problem it could not face
(Because its head was so very small).
Colder nights, longer shadows and weather drear
Undermined a bright career.

Quite near an unsvelte sibling stood
Solid, strong with hawser-corded vertebrae
Shoulders severely stooped
From daily trudging its huge head
Along the honour path of the sun
Bound to bask always in Nature’s benevolence
Protecting as best it could
The environs, health and happiness
Being strong with light and hope and joy

The Cape

Let me fish off Cape St. Mary’s
let the fiddle’s cry
draw me all the way home
to a place I’ve never been

Let me squat in my rude library
let the tears and the aches
(though ache and sorrow prevail)
become as unimportant
as they really are

Let my head be clear in the morning
let unachievements, disappointments
settle as their true substance merits
quiet and even

Let the mind conceive
feelings yet to be born
receiving in balance
benefits from heartbreaks past
and learning from fractures old

Hespeler Damn

“I’m going to stop the car.  Please all stay inside.  I won’t be long.”  After that announcement, I got out.

 I was in a daze.  An epiphany will do that to you. I walked back less than a hundred yards, hopped the ditch and sat on the little rise.  It wasn’t really true
that I needed to think.  I’d done that while driving.  I needed to honour my soul with a few quiet moments.  That’s all.

 The jangling of the bedside phone had started the day.  We had returned to the solid pre-War hotel after a relaxed country inn dinner in St. Julien.  The early
call request I left at the desk was due to the mighty Citroën requiring service at a shop in what used to be the lovely Graves region, now inside town.  The request was straightforward: Please wake and breakfast the kids and phone Château Mouton Rothschild for an appointment to visit their museum.

 Returning with the rejuvenated car, packing the family in and setting off north up the Bordeaux peninsula, everything seemed to fit into the plan.  Until we approached the Rothschild Château.  Disquietude resulted from no cars or people in evidence and no one telling us to keep off the manicured front lawn.  A most elderly couple on an ancient bench were the only human indication.  With
great effort we managed to point at the ground and say, “Château Rothschild, ici?”

 Reply:  “Oui.”

 So we were stumped.  But after further thought, “Château Mouton Rothschild, ici?”

 “Non, non.”

 Then, “Où est le Château Mouton Rothschild?” This earned an expansive wave to nowhere discernible and, “Là.”

 After consulting the map, we did arrive at Mouton, we did tour the museum and we did run into a ferocious Comtesse, halfway up the stairs at the side of a huge primary fermenting vat.  Evidently we were mistaken for nosy journalists, corporate spies, Americans or all categories at once.

 Beating a retreat we decided to drop in to a highly reputed but relatively new property.  Wine glasses were in hands but after one sip, my wife shocked us all by shrieking dismay and spitting at the same time.  Determined to show up her behaviour as an unnecessary touch of theatrics, I then attempted a tasting.  I pulled in a generous gulp and too late realized that she was right.

 We next visited a very old small chapel with huge, well-worn flagstones set into the floor.  The gentle afternoon sunlight on the soft limestone was very evocative of pilgrims past and ages gone by.  We were all mellow and tired enough that a country lunch was the order of the day.  At a nearby intersection we treated ourselves to sandwiches of impossibly fresh crusty bread, sweet butter and loads of beautifully cured ham.  The satiated family relaxed back into the Citroën and proceeded down the small country road. 

 Over a rise, closer to the road than Château Palmer, was a decrepit stone building of pleasing proportion but unfortunate condition.  Several shutters hung askew and several windows showed none at all.  The front yard was crammed with weeds of every height and one of the stone pillars meant for the gate was largely a heap of rubble.  Out front, seemingly employed as a permanent chicken coop, was an old Deux Chevaux with a moderate-sized tree growing right through it.  Before we got to the dwelling we had to go by an untended real estate sign plonked in what had once been stately rows of glorious vines.  Even before I saw the manageable number of acres on the “À Vendre” sign, the clicking inside the headbone resounded with a cacophony of possibilities.  My wife had some familiarity with French.  The children could attend a local school.  I would hire the ancient vines, trimmed or replaced, and my happy days would be spent tending the once-productive soil.  A quick calculation of the value of acreage, buildings and equipment multiplied by a safety factor of two still yielded a manageable sum.  We could do it if we disposed of all Canadian assets at a fair price.

 And yet, the children were too old to start school in another culture, in another language.  Madame might find the draw of weekends in Paris too powerful to ignore, and what would this fifty-year-old man do in a decade, if it all didn’t pan out ?  And yet.

 With dizzied brain and swimming vision, I stopped the car and went back to the knoll.  Lungs full of fresh air and a brief moment of mental anguish and I knew with a certainty that yes, this was a genuine opportunity and possible way forward.  In addition, I knew both that I was not going to seize the opportunity and that I would neither forgive nor forget that very instant.

 And I never have.  And will not, even though after a quarter century, half that family carried by the Citroën are no longer present – nor are the assets for that matter.  And still.  And still.

Retirement

To this point
the ability to waste time
bears all the hallmarks
of a gifted amateur.

Now the need for re-evaluation is prompted
by the idleness of constipated hours
clogged in retirement sloth
instead of indolent intervals
thieved from youth.

The rehearsed strategies of
books, music, dreams and wine may
support as life-polished panaceas
easing the laborious tock
of inflicted minutes,

But the miasma
of pleasures glimpsed darkly
brightens to a present spectre
of hope and anticipation
unavailable from fancy’s past poverty.

Now an obligation exists
to weave new fabric in deserving fullness
as dreams yet undreamt require release.

Saturday Night in King Township

Fiddleheads notice
Stars still shine
New moon stands nearly upright
So late at night
Blushing through country clouds
Precision pointing
To the earth’s roof
Where it is light
Still, but not always

Summer sheet lightning
Shyly receding from freshly washed fields
Chill-encouraged performance
Of the Great Canadian Band
Featuring their all-time favourites
With special appearances
(By Permission of the Management):
Three kinds of frogs and twelve crickets

Voices drone with indistinction
Homily-laden mufflings eliciting applause.
From another marquee with sides rolled
For flow of evening air and starshine
Neil Diamond, Elvis, The Village People
And a host of many-octaved others
Thump the ritual rhythms of formal fun

In distant counterpoint
The urgent wail
Of commerce moved by diesel

Billy’s Blues

I’m tremendously enthusiastic
About Billy Collins
I enjoy experiencing his poetry
So very much
I’ve read his words inside and out
Now it seems that I’ve read
Most of his oeuvre
Some of it many times oeuvre
(Many might decry the brass
That dreadful diction showed)
But sadly now
I’m at the end of his road
And I’m quite naturally
Sad and lonely.

To write lines like Billy
Is not nearly so easy
Soon forced are we
To admit there will not be
Another Lawrence of Poetry

Freedom

My current car is sick
Its non-operable disease
Has something to do
With its engine

Use of my sister’s car
has permitted uninterrupted mobility
to visit my boat and other friends
and I’m grateful

But if the driving exhilaration
were to disappear
either due to no car or
no continuing ability to drive

Well then, we’d have to back off
reload, and come out shooting
reconfiguring the environment of transport
New Hampshire style

Some Tea for Old Times

The lumbering pre-war Nash brimming with two parents and five children led the plume of dust down the worn country road one sleepy June Sunday.  After what seemed like a long drive the road crossed a meandering meadow creek and went up a hill.  Nearly at the top, it made a sharp turn.  It ran by a line of huge spruce trees and stopped beside a big yellow brick farm house.

 Before the car had completely stopped, a large barrel-chested man ambled around the corner from the rear.  At the same time a dainty woman approached from the front.  He was the Captain and she was the Princess, or nearly so, as a long time ago her father had been the Mayor of the Royal Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg.  So bird-like tiny was she that her wrist bones stuck out.  She always had her hair gathered into a roll at the back of her head.  The Captain was huge.  He was so strong that, in an attempt to lift his Austin back onto the road, he had broken a couple of ribs and cracked some bones in his back.  The doctors put him in a body cast that went from his waist to his neck.  With a shirt on, he looked normal.

 Wanting to relate to the children, the Captain asked one of the boys to sock him in the chest, with all his might.  The well-mannered tyke at first refused but was soon goaded to deliver a mighty blow.  Too late, everyone realized the event was going to end badly.  Embarrassment and tears followed, but the cast remained intact.

 Over the years, the siblings moved on, the parents died, the Captain and his Princess moved to the big city as confirmation that they were not cut out for farming.

 On a more recent sultry June day, I piloted an air-conditioned car over a smooth, black-topped road.  It was without dust or gravel but it was leading to the same memory-laden destination.  The front grass now needed attention but the field beyond the spruce had been worked and laundry flapped on the line sagging from the back of the house.  As I went around the corner, an old couple presented themselves at the top step.  I approached them directly and asked their pardon.  I explained my brief visit as an attempt to recapture a childhood memory of the Captain and his noble lady.

 The mention of the Captain animated the pair and in thick European accents they urged me to stay for a cup of tea.  We sat in the front room, which had the same wallpaper I remembered as looking old sixty years earlier.  The couple said they had been on the land for some time, working the farm on behalf of their son who taught at a nearby university.  Over the years they had heard only scraps of information concerning the Captain in Tibet or ship-wrecked off Cape Horn.  We had a grand visit.

 Before long I felt uneasy in absorbing so much hospitality.  When asked if I would like another cup of tea I noticed I was drinking from an ornate cup and the farmer was using a more simple cup.  Only then did I notice that his noble lady had no cup at all.

Long Ago and Far Away Is Neither

Seventy-five falls behind
Without the soft sound even
A paddle might make
Easing a canoe
Along an evening shore

The emotions wash
Patterns formed from little
Little things cemented firm
With chronological grit
Providing private slide shows

Do not back into the future
Turned against time
Like a horse on a swept hill
Withers against the wind
But before the turning
Others must know
Of the thousand things
A glance or a chuckle
Sent from the bygone

Long ago and far away
Both pleasant fables
Are immediate, accurate
And infinitely resonant

The Life of Leather

Long days of paddling and portage work
Hauling over beaver dams and dragging upstream
Trudging through waist-deep moose marsh
Suction so strong, boots purloined
Breath held, groping dumbly to recover
The delinquent item.
The campfire warmth lures energy’s return
But the sting of smoke confounds.

Beans and bully beef in the billy and
Strong sweet cocoa work their tranquil magic
Gradually they gather by the entrancing blaze
Crouched at circle’s edge
Watching steaming boots drying
Inverted on sticks angled to the embers,
Considering the likeness of steam and smoke,
A conclusion aided by flame licking leather
Now the smouldering stick breaks
Boots tumble into the sparking conflagration

Shoe leather burns with such an interesting flame
Just imagine a leather jacket being dried.

Highway 90: Part 1

NY I-90; Mile 278 to 349

Some young poets strive
to conjure the combination
of words and phrases
that will support the burden
of immortality;
hopefully to be achieved
by their own early demise.
In some instances
it works.

Some poets of a certain age
audibly labour at their craft.
They attend pubs
venting five-pint assessments
of other writers, social injustices
and The Internationale.
They’ve studied and read
experienced and felt
knelt at St. Paul’s
more tired than Dr. Johnson.
Some will burble through
mediocrity’s crust
recognized at last
not as good poets
but authors of excellent prose.

Some young people
with no discernible preference
love life with its fears and cadence.
Their myopia permits
them to see much
and focus on nothing.
Eventually they are found
nervously seated
in the third row
barely right of centre.

Highway 90: Part 2

The History Prof. minces
with excellent flourish
dominating the lecture hall
theatrically raising
the robed right arm
with practiced gesture
from lower left
to vast upper right.
The hand holds no sword.
The blade instead
a tongue specifically sharpened
to cut the good Doctor’s audience
to a class of manageable convenience.

Highway 90: Part 3

He knew, objectively,
he had a talent to amuse.
Greatness grasped, intuitively.

My understanding, incomplete
and ponderous, prohibits
attempts to stand on any shoulders.
From my own insecure perch
I see and feel.
Life’s crossword puzzle offers
words and phrases to escape
the maze and muzzle
of unachieved deprecation.
I might hope to gaze
as a flea
along for the ride
at the ass of eternity.

Denedus 140 Yds.

Still
it sits
at the corner of the lake
and waits
until it decides
its journey must continue.

Gradually
at first
nearly unnoticeable
momentum builds and
it is carried over the cusp
starting its rush.

Certainly
nothing could
surge so smooth, exactly
following the glacial polished contours
unless magnetized
from within.

Fiercely
thick smears
torrent their will
to quick finish with the rapids
proceeding to the pool
that awaits with welcome

To collect and compel it
to Shiningwood Bay
and the Sea.

Worn

Women walk wearily
forlornly slow
along the sidewalk
that lies mute
outside the back door
of the cancer hospital.

Cheekbones seek egress
from charts of stress
smoking through thin lips
prewrinkled from hours
of deep drawing
gasses into macadammed lungs.

Frightened faces understand
that fate fingered
the loved one, who
lies heavily
on the quiet side of the
seventh floor post-op room.
Prêt-à-porter.
Trusts mature, insurances pay.

Not a surprising lurch
yet still obscene
that the failed patient
attends theatre and church
faultless in
a Northern Black Mink.
Throw it over my shoulders
she said,
I must go out for a minute.
Got a light ?

Benefits

 “Do you know the chair in my living room ?” She asked.

 “Yes,” I said.

 “Not the bentwood rocker, but the recliner.”

 “Yes,” I said, and knew she needed to tell a story.

 “Well, the other night I had a dream,” she said.  “You know I never sit in that chair.  It was his chair and anyway, my feet don’t reach the floor.  I woke soon after going to bed. Looking at the green numbers on the radio, I’d been asleep for just over an hour.  Wide awake now, I felt intensely that he was there.  But that was silly, of course, so I quickly drifted off to sleep again.

 “The next thing I knew was that I was in the recliner.  I mean right in; it would have been hard to get out.  Instead, I turned over and tried to get comfortable.  The damn chair won’t let you lie on your tummy, so you have to toss from side to side.  Just when the chair was starting to make me really angry, we must have come to an understanding because I remember feeling comfortable and then drifting off.

 “When I came to, he suggested, ‘Let’s go to the midway down at the Ex.’  I was relaxed and happy as two years ago we had spent the whole day there. 

 “We arrived at the adult midway which was great because there were no wailing lost children or rowdy youngsters but lots of Smarties and marshmallows to eat.  We walked, holding hands, and enjoyed being together.  Time seemed so soft and gentle as we ambled but when we came to the edge of the midway area, I started to turn back, seeing in front of us a Red Cross blood donor clinic.  I was in no mood for that but realized he had left my hand and was walking toward the clinic.  There were canvas cots there and as he stretched out, I could feel myself getting angry.  I asked what he was doing when he could see I didn’t want to join him and we had been having such a wonderful time together.  He was very patient and polite but gently told me that this was something he had to do.

 “I wasn’t buying it.  By now I was really, really mad and I felt like telling him so, but in his gentle way he told me that he had to stay and asked that I go on.

 “Well, I did.  I went home but I was still angry.  The day had started so well with all the Smarties and marshmallows and the happiness of walking hand in hand and yet it hadn’t turned out as I had wanted.

 “When I opened the apartment door, there was the recliner right in front of me and it seemed that the happy times had started there.  Now it was different.  I went to bed and tossed and turned and couldn’t get comfortable and was still angry, but must have fallen asleep.

 “I sat bolt upright in bed with my nightie plastered to my dripping neck and shoulders.  I was aware that I had been in a deep sleep but glad that I could remember part of the trip to the midway.  I could smell the warmth of his body.  Then I remembered the recliner and thought he must have fallen asleep there.

 “I rushed out to the living room but the recliner was empty.

 “Damn chair,” she said.

 “Yes,” I thought, “Quite right.”

Ode to The Rock

Christ I’d like to cry
A couple of deep, involuntary sobs
Would be such a purgative
Like a Saturday night puke
Or thirty kilometres of paddling.
What power, the shocking beauty of this country
Combers crashing against straight slate walls
To Second Bay
Where youngsters went to pet
Now there is a parking lot
With yellow lines
To ensure conformity
Not less; different.
The same short pants, the same frantic grasps
The same waves, different generations.

A Summer Storm

The wedge of blue hoped,
But white aggressive puffs
Drew shut the door
And seemed to say
That the heavily watered sky was leadened
As anchor for a dismal day
While an early summer storm anguished.

With splashes of far fantasy
Taupe desert dunes, azure swelling sea
Drawing true to the happy climes,
Surely one’s stronger with
Imagination’s shimmering thread
Than bereft of it and becoming dead.

Thornton Burgess Revisited

It should be said,
He’s dead.
Lying in the intersection
neck askew
Cars pummel past
without asking
if they could swerve
an inch
to miss the rich red coat
lying there.

He was wonderful
A friend of mine
from the ravine
his legs were long
tail full
destiny so complete
He foraged
across lawns and front yards
at gentle times of day
very early
or very late
depending upon your hour glass
being half full.

His family in the woods
still patiently awaiting his return
Not knowing
but expecting
with fuel provided against winter’s famine.
Not expecting
but knowing
that one prowl
must be without an end.

No screeching brakes
No squealing tires
No kiss my ass.
Seeing the traffic stopped at the light
he sauntered across,
never trained
for the impatient bugger
that ran the light
and ended
such a lovely saga.

A Tribute to
Reddy Fox

Anonymous, Observed

From my evening reverie
the sad demeanour of the homeless man
shocked me back to reality
as he perched upon the railroad span.

His hunched shoulders gave him away
body language betraying emotional zeal
too starved to cope with days’ end rays
bouncing up from sunset-striped steel.

Of nature’s splendour slight interest was shown
perhaps thoughts drifting at the end of day
but his attention focused as he looked down
obviously anguishing out his best way.

Far below rested the glinting track.
Did he see a chance to leave town ?
Did he want to change, improve, go back ?
Or escape from this planet ?

The undecided wretch stands
two blocks from a gentle harbour
replete with raspberry reflected homage
to the glory of the day that was
and the promise of tomorrow.

From my evening reverie
the sad demeanour of the homeless man
shocked me back to reality
as he perched upon the railroad span.

His hunched shoulders gave him away
body language betraying emotional zeal
too starved to cope with days’ end rays
bouncing up from sunset-striped steel.

Of nature’s splendour slight interest was shown
perhaps thoughts drifting at the end of day
but his attention focused as he looked down
obviously anguishing out his best way.

Far below rested the glinting track.
Did he see a chance to leave town ?
Did he want to change, improve, go back ?
Or escape from this planet ?

The undecided wretch stands
two blocks from a gentle harbour
replete with raspberry reflected homage
to the glory of the day that was
and the promise of tomorrow.

Refugee

Once was a babe born
gender distinguished
from half the population
otherwise lacking special demarcation

The parental rogue ruled
through restless energy
and an intimidating temper
neutralizing usurpers except
the Pediatrician
who had the temerity to dress down
the late-arriving unit

Perpetual maternal mumblings began with
No matter how unhappy I was, I always
smiled when I saw you
Which contracted to
No matter how unhappy I was, I always smiled
and later she began to speak in code
Unhappy, I smiled
and latterly snipped by hunched shoulders
and slow big tears the code became
three syllables
Un happ y

The old girl had help dealing with life
as she knew it
her siblings and mother insisted that she
look on the bright side
which became harder
drugs were unknown
alcohol was unacceptable and
food became the drug of choice

As a locus of interest and attention
she was pleased to have produced
a baby boy
among whose few problems were possession
of eyes and ears that worked and
an amazingly observant
and independent spirit

The I.O.D.E.,
the knitting group, the bridge club
and the book club
provided regular social beacons
that lighthouse-like shone the way
from one vacuum
to the next

Usually civil and fun
friends enjoyed Coalported tea.
Only one spoke aloud through the meniscus
sweetly saying that
she would never let her husband
go off to war
And she didn’t

The ambulatory brother
flowed from room
unnoticed to room.
In hard fact
he already had begun
to prepare a hiding place

The bundled brother
tolerated the chin chuckings
and tummy tickling
busily listening to all the talk.
He had hardened his response
before he could walk

The returning officer strode
through the welcoming circle
the brothers made.
The still-small boy
was easily caught and whooped
into the air
with gusto
On the downstroke
he was to be shoehorned into
a flying boot

The youngster was having
none of it.
Such a fuss
thundered so quickly that
the leaves wished they had
somewhere to hide
behind the bleak black
winter trunks
that had once been
their glad green mansion

The big man
was sensitive enough
to fully comprehend
that he had been publicly chastised
and suffered the sting of knowing
that the good Doctor would have been pleased

The older boy absorbed
the rapidly developed tableau
and realized there would be
more strife to come and so
while he stood his ground to fight
he took flight for
another country.
His insides he made disappear.
They weren’t regrasped
for many a year.

The Palette

Moonglow and city shine
cloudless sky handsome grey
You feel open and free

At dawn you emerge
from underground parking
round a corner and stop
awestruck
Across the street in the park
the flaming vermillion tops of
the still-full fall maples
catch the morning rays
as the new sun cascades over the top
of a building and plays
against the near indigo
of a crisp autumn morning

Caught in disaster or
personal orientation
not everyone can say
Thank you, Lord, for a lovely day

But there are those who
still live in the old ways
with faith and interdependence
their strength is an inspiration
they don’t ask why
they seek understanding
and forgive

© Richard Clare Moss 2011