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.

 

 

To De-Clutter is Divine

to de-clutter is divine
(like this stark clean Geneva font
size14, easy on the eyes, especially both of mine
in recovery from two different operations)

the ironing board is up
my steam iron ejects the last of its calcium deposits
thanks to cups of distilled water I pour
into the wee dragon’s throat all afternoon

stacks of clothing surround me
good clothes and ‘work’ clothes stained with paint
from boxes labelled his & hers winter & summer
then another stack, clothes to give away at long last

1990’s pants worn once to a funeral or a wedding
red T-shirts which never did suit us
nearly-new garments too tight or too bright
even for Sally Ann & Value Village connoisseurs like us

I stand and iron cotton and linen and mystery fabrics for hours
our village Donation Store deserves clean ironed clothes on hangers
for someone younger, taller, more willowy, let’s just say
but we’ve laughed a lot, modelling our old selves for each other

Finding More Light Choka

 Sorrow Bay Grief Point

Sad Rocks Desolation Sound

Old Fears Blind Alley

Morbid Channel Grim Look-Out

Good Hearts Cove Safe Harbour 

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

The Choka form alternates five and seven syllable lines and ends with the second seven syllable line. Chokas can be any length and do not demand rhyming endings or even metre although the ear will always look for rhythm in any line or sentence. Or at least mine does. I always read my work out loud, prose or poetry, fiction or non-fiction and even then, my idiosyncratic take on some words may not please another reader's ears. I am often guilty of wanting to make people laugh by juxtaposing images as in this choka poem where I wrote down names from two wall-mounted maps in the Egg Island radio room, delighting in the nuances for some long-ago sailors who were obviously having a terrible, no-good, very bad day to call a stretch of water 'morbid channel' or a point of land 'grim look-out'!

Angels in our Hour of Need

A beautiful nurse called Emmanuel
wheeled my love away
“God is With Us”
so declared his mother or
perhaps the father
of Emmanuel-whoever named him
this cheerful young man
God in green scrubs and nitrile gloves

And with a surgeon named Magdalena
meaning great and strong
I know we are in not just good- but great- hands
and we are seen with such kind eyes

As for myself, I try to be a stalwart care-giver
to keep track of meds, glasses of water, juice, broth
I scold, cajole, and cheer the burps which emerge 

from his cracked and opened body

But yesterday in the waiting room
before Emmanuel flew in
& Saint Magdalena wielded her scalpel
for hours on end
I say, ‘remember to breathe like a sniper settling shaky hands’
‘In for five, hold for five, out for five’
 

And there we sat side by side
at some ungodly hour before the dawn
practicing our box breathing
like a pair of Navy Seals

Sweet Peas at Visiting Hour

now here comes a wizened old man
pressed blue jeans clean cotton shirt
dusted-off cowboy boots (no hat)
silver hair damped down slicked back

he hurries for the new-fangled swirling doors
holding a shiny tin can low
below his leather belt
where you’d expect pliers reins tin snips

the can stripped of its wrapper
pork & beans chili con carne peaches perhaps
a humble tin can filled with sweet peas
I will add thee sweet peas in a tin can 

to the very short list
of things in this world
that money can’t buy

PS: thank you Guy Clark for the first two things
true love & home-grown tomatoes

A Poem in Response to the Federal Budget of 2024

The highlights are not entirely unexpected
    housing  health  defence
A well-chosen trio of new parks
  which I want to explore and soon
Some smart strategic nuances make me cheer
  here early this morning alone at my desk
(Amateur policy wonk
Sociology nerd
Subscriber to the weekly Angus Reid polls
Part-time poet always and forever)
Like faster approval of medical professionals from far beyond
   these fortunate borders and pharmacare at last
Long overdue disability pension supplements and more for mental health
Which makes me remember certain faces, voices, cups of tea
Some highlights make me despair
   school lunches for another 400,000 kids
   confronting hate with money for training to educate and protect us
   from Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and all the other-isms which divide us
   turning some of us into simple-minded braying bigots, fearful, blaming, abusive
Oh let me not go down that path
Let me remember two hungry children, one five year old hiding under a bed
His eight year old brother on a tall cupboard in a dingy one room hotel suite
Hiding so a drunken father would not beat them
Let me remember their rescue instead, the breakfast I bought them first
 

PS: Life is not Fair, granted. I must resort to prose because I am angry despite my best efforts to be pure and distilled and even-tempered. Phooey to that well-mannered avoidance tactic! Paying our fair share of windfall income sets off a lot of squealing and squawking. So be it. Go hungry for two days and sleep under a bed or on top of a cupboard. Imagine choosing between rent, food, heating or asthma inhaler ($100 without a plan). Think hard before voting for a wee neo-fascist nitwit with limited life experience beyond his safe and privileged seat in a wealthy riding.

Bear Bells: a poem

The dogs commence their canine chorus
In a mishmash of keys, minor & major
Spreading eastward from the lake
& the creek which divides this village

A baying hound anchors the bass line
The Rottweiler an irate baritone
Down neighbouring blocks, dogs of assorted heritage
Yip & howl & growl

Much umbrage is taken by all
Meanwhile the black bears shamble along
In trios, duos & solos
Sniffing beach rocks for the faint trace of picnics

Or juicy berries, all gone by fall
& plums & apples & walnuts & grapes
All fallen or picked, dried, frozen, canned
The bears follow their noses

Ignore the howling dogs
Whose people, raking leaves
Baking bread, sawing firewood
Hear only the Sunday bells & shrug or smile

As the caterwauling opera subsides
& the bears head into the trees
& only the shushing creek sounds
& the bells echo in these mountains

Apples: a poem

       
20 pounds for ten bucks
Granny Smiths from Keremeos
Perfect crisp green apples
Far too many for us

The rest stayed in their plastic bag
Inside our sturdy old cooler
Out on the deck, Nature’s fridge
Twelve steps up from the earth


Two batches of baked applesauce
Peeled, chunked, drizzled with honey
Dabbed with butter
Into the freezer for later

Handy stairs for the Bear
Who shoved the cooler down them
While we slept, weary to our bones
The plastic bag neatly left for me
Under the maple tree

We Walk Among The Bones

For Barb Yeomans & Dick Callison

My old friends guide us
past the stone wall, their row of roses
all hardy rugosas, the massive oaks and maples
planted one spring five decades ago
wind-shorn of their red and gold leaves

We walk down the long gravel driveway
to the land they first laid eyes on
the once-dense forest of white pine
cedar, fir, hemlock, larch and birch
to the meadow high above the old mine

A mule deer spies on us near the cedars
until we spot her too and she slips away
across the coulee dividing the forest
bought to foil a lurking land shark
visions of view homes dancing in his head

We make our way to their Someday Place
to their youth and their summer dreams
to their morning coffees on the wooden deck
built to hold their teepee high and dry
ringed by golden larch, most lovely of trees

We’ve seen and heard two winter wrens
one solitary squirrel, a crow flying high
on this raw November day
but we are all chilled now, the light gone flat and grey
only the birch trees glow, broken bones on the forest floor

A femur here, a tibia there
branches like ribs and collarbones, cracked
the virus is creeping down the tree-tops
rotting the tree from the inside out
encased by the famously beautiful bark

We walk to their big house slowly, carefully
we help each other over fallen logs
still talking
still laughing
still dreaming  

Crow Vendetta Renga

                         Crow Vendetta Renga*

Now they dive-bomb me
when I work in my garden
Hitchcock comes to mind…

Beady-eyed adversaries
take aim: foul ammunition

Aha! they cackle
What a putz, a pushover.
Let’s crap on her plants!

Unfazed by stones that fall short
These crows jeer, “We’ll be back!”












*first published in Crowlogue: Prose and Poems by the Clayoquot Writers’ Group (Postelsia Press: Tofino, BC) 2010

Once Upon a Glacier: a prose poem

 Once Upon a Glacier

Today, every steep flank and wind-razored edge of these mountains gleams in the pale winter sun. A bluebird day. Pure white, pure blue. Below, most humans live on three alluvial creek deltas, fanned out into Slocan Lake, a long lean trench deep and cold and clean. Fed by waterfalls amid creeks like blue wrinkles on the topo map of an ancient watchful face, this lake shimmers like the silver which lured thousands to dig here, get rich here, or just die trying here. 

Our glacier, downgraded a decade ago to an ice field, looks more like its former self today,
fresh new tons of snow clothe its raw exposed shoulders and mineral-rich throat. The filthy smoke and ash of wildfires are whisked away by the wind and layered and frosted by a giant’s hand. Our son hiked up there once with a posse of boys and two patient guides. They could see their own tiny villages from where their tents were pitched, below the green ice cliffs and grubby seamed snow of the glacier. 

It was, his ten year old self told us, just like being an astronaut.

While We’re Away

The postmaster paused
for less than five seconds
before she blinked her big grey-blue eyes
behind her glasses and said,
‘No, no, don’t worry about forms,
I’ll tell the staff they can collect your mail.
They adopted our cat.’

Leo, or Leonardo de Catprio, by his long name,
so handsome, so calm, so silvery grey
a legendary mouser, that big bruiser
and a soft warm form so cozy on the bed
where, sadly, her young son’s allergies flared

I told her how my husband
had spotted Leo
early one morning down the alley
on the prowl
in and out of two ancient sheds
And how I’d once heard him being called
at midnight, a loving plaintive call
Leee-oooo…Leee-oooo…

We extol his virtues
And the kindness of such good neighbours
Who keep a watchful eye on our place while we’re away
And who will pick up our mail
No questions asked
No federal forms or signatures required
In this village where our postmaster
knows all our names, and likely our virtues and vices
And those of our cats and dogs too.

The Better Late Than Never First Poem for Poetry Month!

There was an old woman from Sandon

 who searched for a new home to land in

She knocked on a door

 with a red light hung o'er

& declared she'd just wash and haul sheets in!

 

Sandon is a near by ghost town with a handful of permanent residents and a few more who arrive to spend the summer in their turn of the last century houses or new board and batten cabins. There is a Sandon Historical Society who runs the museum, which is housed in an old red brick building and a replica station building of the old Kaslo to Sandon and Sandon to Rosebery and Nakusp rail lines. Cross-country skiers can warm up in the 'station' and we love the abandoned railway trackbeds to ski on for miles on gentle grades and a few chutes from Cody, an even smaller ghost town further up in the mountains. There is an historic, and still-functioning hydro-electric station, the Silversmith Power & Light, which celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2023.

But back to the limerick. As well as a grand opera house, a hospital, haberdasheries, hotels, churches and many bars to heal and/or entertain the thousands of miners who once lived and worked the silver, lead and zinc seams from the 1890's onward, there were at least thirteen brothels. For some reason I thought of the avalanches, fires and floods which plagued the town and a displaced old woman who had lost her home and needed another one fast!

 A wintery photo of "downtown" Sandon, well worth the visit.