Professionals
Those two men with leaf blowers,
the harness straps over their shoulders and around their waists,
protective ear muffs on, off in their world,
they are professionals, they work in tandem,
and perform a glad dance across the courtyard of the city hall
among the dead orange and brown leaves.
And they make efficient work of it,
the clearing away of the leaves,
and the courtyard space begins to open,
and then it is a morning of the sudden shining of a late fall sun
and light gathering in the chrome yellow
of leaves that still throng one adjacent tree.
With every touch of the air rushing out of the blowers,
leaves swirl up as if recalling waving together in place in the wind.
Even the leaves slicked flat to the concrete
lift up and join the wild parade,
like people pitched into a carnival.
Then the leaves lie in their bright brass assemblages —
and the men collect them up in great bags,
throw the bags into the back of their truck,
and drive off as if taking home a winning prize.
Whatever we have watched wither in us
and whatever the painful awe before the cause,
there is nothing to do now except clear it away. Be quick, effective,
going right to it knowing it has to be done
in the courtyard of love and hate.
And stay — and sit in simple chairs at a metal table,
the rain stopped and the sun in our eyes,
our coats on and done up, a fresh comfort taking hold of us,
no one else out here in the clean-edged air,
the two of us professionals in our way, professionals.
Simple Things
Leaves, from eternity, are simple things
— John Clare, “The Eternity of Nature”
Leaves, from eternity, are simple things,
as are raindrops and snowflakes,
all falling through the air.
Once, a middle-aged man
stopped in front of me
as we passed on the street
and asked me angrily,
Where are you going? You don’t know, do you?
I wore a backpack.
I was sleeping where I could —
mostly in parks.
He was right, of course. I know now.
At the time, I thought
he was just a stupid old man
who hated long hair.
He didn’t understand
that I was on a mission.
I didn’t know what the mission was,
but I was on it and it was serious.
Maybe I’m that man now — or not far off.
Maybe I’m also still that young man.
Maybe I’m neither.
I know and don’t know
where I’m going.
My life is my life.
It’s simple.
I’m falling.
No, I’m standing here.
No, I’m falling.
A leaf, a raindrop, a snowflake.
A leaf, a raindrop, a snowflake.
Highway 97
Among the rows of labels
at the wine store I happen upon Highway 97
and see that they make a wine
named for the provinical highway
that runs from Osoyoos
all the way to the Yukon border.
Driving from Vancouver to Kelowna
we took the Coquihalla —
it was a small trip to do with my job;
it worked as a getaway.
And in Kelowna we found a store
where we bought baby clothing,
and after I finished with meetings
we took the long way home.
That slow, winding route —
I followed it with my hand
barely resting on the wheel
as the road curved and swept south
through the Okanagan Valley.
And it wasn’t really me driving,
it was the old highway doing the steering
and carrying us and making us glide,
our unborn daughter, whose hair
would be golden like white wine,
turning and dancing within her mother
in the passenger seat —
it was the Highway 97 wine.
from Kayak Music
The hands of each of them on the other
are the blade surfaces of the paddles
that they turn and pull through inlet water
with strokes for forward, reverse, sweep and spin.
The tide rolls in arriving at the full
and clasps the sand to the pull of the moon.
There is always the water lying down
remembering the way to the fusion
that occurs and is the sun. Rouse the child
waiting to open its eyes on the shore
of morning. The day will sleep. The water
is asking the paddles to propel the kayak.
There is nothing visible that is not
the invisible asking to be touched.
Glass
My mother’s mother worked her entire adult life
as a secretary for a large glass-manufacturing company.
In her adolescence, her teachers had told her
that she should continue her education, become a teacher —
the advice of the era for a girl two grades ahead in school.
But she chose instead to graduate and go straight into a job
and marry a man with a thicket of red hair and sparkling blue eyes.
And whenever a family member or friend needed glass —
a new panel for a door, a new pane for a picture window —
she would perform her magic at work and get that person a deal.
And late at night, with pen and paper, with typewriter,
sometimes right through to morning, she would write out
not product orders or price lists, but plots and images of love
in story after story, in poem after poem;
she would type out not invoices or bosses’ letters,
but the syllables for the music she heard in her head;
and copy down not minutes of meetings, but movements
of lit sea waves that lifted, arced and broke through her —
emblems all around her of the red-haired man and herself
on a shore of wild driftwood and many-faceted sand grains.
Nights now at my computer, where I am the secretary
on the job of my life, when I need the right word
I consult a dictionary she bought me for my school supplies;
when I see assemblages of words and they are subtle signs
and are rays issuing out of the common dark,
I feel she is there, I believe she is advising me
to see past my eyes’ instructions to the beginnings of all eyes —
and then I address the sacred air and I address her;
she makes her way to me bringing me the things of the world
to look through, and it is as if I look through glass.
Debt
Surprise cold. Great plummeting snowfall.
Thank God my kids have snow boots, proper coats.
The year my mother
sweet talked a salesman
into giving her a department store charge card
(Eatons? Sears?),
suddenly we all had winter clothing.
A month or so later, the twice-a-day
phone calls and daily raps on the door
(my mother hid; I answered,
stood there scared, ashamed,
and made up endless stories to keep fates at bay).
She had no intention
of trying to make the payments.
Never warmer outside
in any winter ever again, my younger brothers and I —
except one of us
who could never get warm.
Flapping-soled runners and socks on the hands,
or boots and actual mitts,
it didn’t matter, he was always freezing.
Forty years later, he finds out
he has a medical condition
that makes him feel the cold more than other people.
And me, I’m building snow forts
for my two small kids
to crawl into and sit as in a cozy home
in their expensive snowsuits.
The sun that arrives
to sit low in the sky wrapped in a white cowl
rises through my boy and girl
rising where it begins
and makes the snow world bright.
I tell myself I’ll never have to borrow
to keep my kids protected from anything including cold.
But the cold that my brother
could never escape, his body making him pay
as the temperature went down,
was him always knowing better,
and every degree below zero that we are warm now
is a creditor I must face at the door of the present
and lie to regarding my whereabouts.
