Tulips: a Poem about Eyesight

"My eyes are dim

I cannot see

I have not brought my specs with me

(forte gusto) I ha-a-a-ve not broughhhht my specs with me!" 

 

So the old pub singalong, author unknown, song goes.

Poking fun at yet another undignified symptom of aging

Which my eyes have been doing for lo,

these many years 

But now with two separate operations

on right and left eyes

(the left still a startling red & white & blue eye

its sunburn peeled away, a graft from my inner eyelid applied) 

I long for clarity in all things

for the exact edge of the snowline descending Goat Mountain

for the love lighting up his green eyes

when he sees I've made rhubarb & apple cobbler...

for the tulip bulbs which arrived in our good neighbour's topsoil

unannounced & which now gladden the eyes of all who walk

or drive down our alley, to see

a waving bouquet, bright red & yellow tulips 

 

Scallops & Prawns in Vermouth: a Poem

 This savoury concoction was first witnessed in a field

at a Tomato Festival somewhere in the south Okanagan

where master chefs battled like respectful lovers

taking note of what works best for others

for cooking, like loving, is about pleasing others

including oneself but this is not the primary goal 

we chefs, unselfish lovers, tend to be self-critical 

 

Here then is my adaptation from that sunlit day thirty years ago

strolling among the wine and local craft beer booths 

the long row of tasting tents with All Things Tomato for sale

our seven year old son roars off with his dad to the field tomato bowling

while at the Master Chef's Tomato Finale big tent

I scribbled notes on an envelope in my daypack

 

Left-over Vermouth Seafood Delight 

Select four large Digby Nova Scotia scallops

Encircle each with two big B.C. prawns & toothpick each trio

Chop two tablespoons of sundried tomatoes finely

Splash on a generous dollop of your father-in-law's leftover dry vermouth

Pour over the scallop & prawn combos & marinate for thirty minutes 

Crush one large clove of garlic into one tablespoon of butter

Heat gently in a stainless steel or non-stick saute pan 

Remove the seafood appies from marinade & into the garlic butter 

Chop a tablespoon of chives or parsley

Sprinkle on top after four minutes

Or use some of the boozy sun-dried tomato slivers

Then serve with a still-warm crusty French baguette

& a martini if you like the strong stuff

or a chilled glass of Oliver's finest Stoneboat Pinot Gris 2022

Bon Appetit, mes amis!

 

 

 

Pathogenesis: a Poem about Plagues

 Pathogenesis can be parsed in two

even by those of us without a Latin underpinning

grammatically speaking

'patho' root of pathology

the study of decay and death

& the causes thereof, aka genesis

the beginning of bacteria 

galloping viruses, microbes

fleas, rats, sneezes, sewage, infected blankets

toxic water, mouldy crowded dwellings

shared with chickens & bovines

a world of human migrations

& privations, like the caves

upon which the Neanderthals

-yes, those early low-brows get a bad rap-

impressed their paint-wet palms, left carvings

were wiped out by sub-Saharan viruses

carried by at least six other groups of Homo Sapiens

Neanderthals wiped out yet their DNA lives on in us

likewise one-quarter million in Mexico City

seemingly vanquished by 126 Spaniards

not so, viruses, smallpox specifically

travelled first with scouts and did the job

even Montezuma who ruled, hence his revenge

on gringo travellers ever since

Most heartening, to me, is the story of early Haiti

where renegade slaves used yellow fever season cleverly

thwarting the French and subsequent European hordes

Less so, the fact enslaved Africans from known epicentres

of malaria went for higher prices in Louisiana

prized for their immunity not their humanity

There is more, much more about human folly 

but also smart public policy

waterworks, sewage treatment, vaccinations, ventilation

yet greedy hoarding of vaccines by the world's wealthiest countries

penalized the poor who most need affordable public health care

(May God damn the International Monetary Fund & World Bank cabals!)

& yet more, fascinating more, from paleontologist's discoveries behind scholarly paywalls brought to this keen reader now prosily proselytising: Read This Book!

 

Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues by Jonathan Kennedy (Signal Editions, an imprint at McClelland & Stewart in Canada): 2023

Obscurity Becomes Us

 Aldous Huxley once uttered this pithy wisdom:

 "I am afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery."

To which I added my own snarky wisdom which is that over a million Canadian artists and writers

understand and concur. It doesn't matter if we like blanched celery or not. Half our working lives

are spent in shadow and darkness and that's due to the sheer lack of sunlight in the northern hemisphere.

Ha! Had you going there didn't I? 

It's up to us to figure out how to get our particular creations to market, like the unfortunate piggy 

in the old time nursery rhyme played on the toes of infants round the world

'This little piggy goes to market (if she can find a publisher for her deathless prose or rice paper sculptures or West Coast Interpretive Dance, and et cetera)

'This little piggy stayed home (and raised a family, worked part-time for cash if she could manage it, volunteered to look after aging elders or other family members in a state of dependency and/or incompetence, oh, and kept the household humming with meals, chauffeuring, laundry, cleaning and possibly grew a garden and maintained an orchard with all the production and preserving work that entails, if she is rural or of that practical bent anywhere else)

'This little piggy had roast beef...(but considering what we know about red meats and our gastro-intestinal tracts and soaring colorectal cancer statistics in the western world, we may need to amend this to 'this little piggy became a free-range gluten-free vegan and a righteous pain in the ass to everyone near by when she shopped at the market')

 'This little piggy had none...(and this is why we have to make school lunch programs and thank those stalwart women and a few good men who show up and feed kids, women and men at the Salvation Army and Mustard Seed and community food banks across this resource-rich nation because there is no sense blaming the poor, like Thatcher and Reagan infamously did with their mean-spirited divide and conquer politics, 'the poor you have always with you', as Matthew said and John and many other kind leaders and front line workers have reiterated for centuries)

'And this little piggy …” (and here the exhausted mother or father on bedtime duty seizes the pinkie toe, voice rising to falsetto, “… cried wee wee wee all the way home which is good because it means the piggy in question escaped the market and ran away from the would-be butchers but then had to go through it all again the next time the market called and the piggy's family desperately needed the money, said the pragmatic prose poem writer and snarky social commentator, moi. But I can do that because nobody is paying me, I don't run ads and I am writing today for the pleasure of it and tossing this piggy into the mudbath of its dreams to happily amuse itself and lose track of time and obligations!)

An Old Acquaintance Approaching

From two blocks away, I recognize him
A wrecked lower back I think
All that heavy work, decades of it
One leg splays outward, the left
More than the right, turned inward
But still he keeps his shoulders squared
His arms swinging like pendulums
Straight ahead, steady & slow  

His hair is iron grey now
So is the beard but his broad face
Remains blank, unsmiling
Closer now, I think perhaps it’s pain

‘Good morning, ___!’ I yell
Waving like a friendly maniac from my deck
Just to watch his slow recognition
That rare shy smile at last

----------------------------------------------------------

This poem is from a series I am calling The Village Poems which are based on my observations while living in New Denver, B.C. and Eastend, Saskatchewan. Many of them are written in April, Poetry month, and as such, are a series of one draft and a half wonders, as I freely admit. Others are taken from my memoir, Light Years: Memoir of a Modern Lighthouse Keeper (Harbour: 2015) and are much more polished poems. Be that as it may, I will keep working at my village poems because I love writing them and trying them out on my Revolutionary Ladies Luncheon Brigade (you know who you are) and on this blog with 24 followers at least one of whom has passed on to the great writing studio in the sky, bless you one and all! This particular poem came about because even though we've been away from New Denver from 2001 to 2021, I still recognized certain villagers by their posture and walk from at least two blocks away. It aroused feelings of compassion for them as we are all aging and in a village or a hamlet or on an island, small places, many of us look out for each other. We notice if chimney smoke isn't rising from a roof portal during winter and we notice limps and stoops and heavy bags and parcels and if we're kind, and many of us are, we offer a helping hand. 

Finding Our Light Choka

 radio static    dead air

waiting    to hear you

finish each sentence

faithful  constant   patient you

say "Over" then I flash

shining brightly   steady   true

From Light Years: Memoir of a Modern Lighthouse Keeper (Harbour Publishing: 2015)

The Cautious Mussel-Pickers Kouta

This month has an "r" in it

so we venture forth;

rockbound quarry clings, silent.

We clutch plastic bags. 

 

From Light Years: Memoir of a Modern Lighthouse Keeper (Harbour Publishing: 2015)

A kouta is a Japanese form which was once a song form consisting of four lines with beats per line of either 7 5 7 5 syllables OR 7 7 7 5. I have used the former structure to write this poem commemorating our attempts to pick some of the thousands of mussels clinging to the black volcanic rocks surrounding Lennard Island Lightstation. Truth is, we are not big fans of mussels but hey, it was free protein. In the cold months (with an 'r' in them like January or April) when there is traditionally less risk of red tide, a paralytic toxin which shellfish injest and eventually eject. But in the meantime it can cause death and suffering beforehand to people. So after checking marine sites online for warnings of red tide in our area, we'd try to pick two dozen or so to have a big pot of them immersed in tasty sauces.