Autobiography
1.
Intimation, and the whole
of the poem. Ringo Starr: his early morning meander
in A Hard Day’s Night (1964), a scene originated
as the young lad too hung over
from the night prior
to do much else. One knows the language,
and the frame of reference. Love and terror; the body
and our means. This long tidal reach, across
forty-five navigation locks. The possibility
of leaving everything intact
is overwhelming.
2.
Invasions, glance. Rhetorical, amid
the constant shift. Embanking floodplains,
a triptych of valley, gateway,
estuary. The Tower of Babel, and
the full weight
of cultural history. Some greyhounds
can sink
like a stone.
3.
Rarified: capturing the shadows
of a wordless art. Beatlemania. He walked the day’s breath,
the glint of light on the cut. Britain’s shoreline
of liquid history: this medial
muddy
watercourse. Ringo Starr, with each
dense step. Strolled solo, monochrome
and sepia, his perambulation
along the River Thames towpath,
the embankment in Kew, Surrey. The Neolithic page,
horizon. One of the very best
in London.
Summer, pandemic
1.
Reading Etel Adnan’s Seasons, I perch in precooked car
awaiting our cat, in his follow up appointment
to recent dental extraction. This body as a means
to dialogue, and his teeth held
in synaptic space. From this lone parking lot
in Ottawa’s east end, veterinarian staff report his outbursts, frustrated
at their prodding. He is such
a mood.
2.
I read my book: a constant shift
of mourning, shallows. She mentions stiffness,
rain, and wind. Under sun’s corrosive eye,
self-conscious breath, of breathing. Face-masked.
And yet, to say the truth: three
withering dandelion heads on the passenger side,
half an orange crayon on the floor mat.
A shadowed road. A crosswind.
3.
The hottest Vancouver on record. The hottest Ottawa
on record. The hottest Toronto
on record. The hottest Pakistan
on record. Our own details
have betrayed us. Adnan: Our civilization’s
growth is cancerous.
4.
As we move through, seasons. Clouds, this
breezeless air. An asphalt
of reflected heat.
This is a time travel story: for sale, cat’s
Elizabethan collar, newly worn. The painkillers
we administer, with the usual contusions.
At nine years old,
his age
is finally matched to mine. Old enough to undermine
the logic
of the pre-determined body.
5.
Confronts the table leg,
the chair leg, his
water bowl, and loses. This plastic cone
a rhetorical theatre
he can’t conceive. A week’s worth of
auto-generated
hang-dog expression.
6.
Four teeth removed, including, ironically enough,
his feline canines: costs enough
we could have purchased
another car. Our cat is now
a car. Small engine roars, and roars,
and hums. I drive him finally home,
a threaded language for every future.
Seven poems on a return to the world
1.
To live is neither vertical nor horizontal. To ripple, outward. Outward, in.
This stretch of fourteen, sixteen months.
I could imagine my body a map. Beyond imagination, comparison.
A nesting of dolls. If you will. Of the fact of this writing.
2.
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]
3.
Exclusions. Suddenly, a sense of rhythm.
This puff of smoke. We count trees. We ask for their names.
We write out dead relatives. The names of wildflowers.
Upon reflection: the only access to the infinite.
4.
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]
5.
Hide in the bushes. Someone walks past. To re-learn conversation, speech.
Grammatical patterns, in soil. The point of a finger.
The way of apprehending anything. An element of structure. Someone
wants a baby to hold. We haven’t any.
We listen for the bees; avoid wasps. Scan exteriors for vespiaries.
6.
[
]
7.
We survey mosaics. Underneath the groundswell, flowerbeds; the pavement.
Another radius of blocks. A hesitation to emerge. Scathed, in the essence.
This might be an elegy. An elegy to what.
