Cedar Driftwood, Slocanada, 31 July 2018

Given you’re alive now as you read this,
Poor thing, let’s say that death, any death,
Was something you, any you, every you ever
Was, earned. Wouldn’t you point proudly
To all that you’d done to achieve this, just
Before you accepted your just reward? And
What of all the fine and sublime passages,
Large and small (alright, mostly small
For most of us) that intervened between
Your slowly assembling, infant awareness
Of your goal as a beast, your human goal,
And the goal itself, the goal which you, each
And every one of you, has lived, like all of us,
To earn? The swimmer sat on the old,
Disintegrating cedar log, thinking, absurdly,
Of the vanishing, soon-to-be-gone cedars
Of Lebanon, and of Humbaba, their mythical
Guardian. Cedars, too, had lives worth living
And lost them, whether they knew it or not,
Whether they cared or not, whether they fell
Or were cut down or not. And the swimmer
Thought, alone with the waves and logs,
That every cedar conceded the evening was
Hazy and gorgeous as the ax of a dimwitted god.

Visitations, Slocanada, 30 July 2018

Human beings, thought the swimmer,
In general and in particular are more fun
To ponder and to dissect than to interact
With, except, perhaps, when they’re allowing
Me to talk to them about themselves, and
My self, and the others. Thinking so
On a long, slow swim across the green
Mouth of the clean, invisibly deep bay,
The swimmer reached back to the beach
Bestrewn with fellow humans this evening,
The small boys in black wet suits skipping stones,
The visitor with her coiled skein of oxygen
And a glass of red wine in her chair, the noisy
Brother of the quiet, older sister, self-possessed,
Talking softly and comfortably to her mother
In a way few teenaged daughters ever do,
The grown men goofing with a waterproof
Phone, taking pictures of each other as heads
Suspended like painted balloons on the waves.
The swimmer’s daughter once plotted, playfully,
To sink the head of a store-window mannequin
Staring up to the surface from down in the weedy
Rocks, mainly to delight herself with imagining
The horrified reactions of people she knew.
Humans, thought the swimmer, smiling, drying
Off on a log in late sun. The whole sick crew.

And on the Eighth Day What? Slocanada, 29 July 2018

Once God had rested, did it occur to Him
That now He had to start all over again? That
Is the beauty of this indescribably cruel
Universe: whatever happens to you or your kin,
The cosmos itself will keep going, will win.
Might as well strip off your costume and swim.
The best proof there was never an anthropoid God
Is that no such God would ever begin this thing
Forever requiring more of Him. It requires
Nothing of you, unless you let them, not you,
And certainly not Him, boss you into things.
The water on your naked skin reminds you
You are a part—not an owner, not a slave of things.

Golden, Slocanada, 28 July 2018

The swimmer hauled out on the rocks idly

Scratched bug bites while reading an old

Paperback translation of Zhang Xianliang’s

Grass Soup. Four young friends in bikinis

Discussed mothers, careers, boyfriends, and

Dreams of owning actual real estate one day.

Reflecting late sunlight, clear water shone

Beaten golden.  A little thunder rumbled

Opposite the cloudless west, and a hiker

Called down from the trail to the shore that it

“Looks like the cold water’s gonna come up

Again!” No one on those rocks was hungrily

Poor. No one on those logs was capital rich.

Everyone basked in the light and laughed.

The swimmer looked up from internal concerns

About lightning, distance, and risk to notice,

Actually, no one else, rich or poor, was left.

“China has an old saying,” Zhang Xianliang

Wrote, decades after getting out of prison.

“Even if I had not wanted to write poems,

Poetry had a way of wrapping itself around me.”

A Pillar of Fire by Late Afternoon, Slocanada, 27 July 2018

After more than an hour spent crawling
Through cool waves contentedly, the swimmer
Sat on a driftwood log waiting to get warm
Again. Direct sun was blocked by a column
Of cloud to the west, an epiphenomenom
Of the wildfires even further west. The sun
Would be blocked by the top ridge of Valhalla
Soon enough, a full hour and more before
Official sunset. The evening breeze kicked up,
Enough for a bit of surf but not enough
For whitecaps. No sails, no kayaks, no motorboats
In sight, and only the sound of boys on bikes
Laughing and insulting each other invisibly
On the Molly Hughes Trail behind a veil
Of summer green. The swimmer grew warm
Again. Is there any comfort as kind as a body
That, having moved well and shivered hard,
Returns to equilibrium? Is there any contentment
Quite so fine as the solitary, open-air, sunset kind?
The pillar of cloud glowed with the sunken sun.

An Evening Breeze, Slocanada, 26 July 2018

One red sail and one canoe negotiated
Their purposes cross-wise to the waves.
A boy ahead of his mother and father
Set their cooler down by a log in the shade.
Another evening breeze for another summer
Evening blew invisibly from the sunset haze.
Forest fires piled up again in the Okanagan.
Two hikers gave the swimmer a hello wave.
The boy’s older, quieter sister joined the family
As they settled, her first appearance in days.
People, as the song sang, come together,
And people they fall apart. Every family,
Every friendship, every romance is a phase,
So? So are seasons, hours, arrangements.
The breeze rose and dispersed on the lake.
Even words rarely belong to one phrase.

Three Good Swims, Slocanada, 25 July 2018

On the first swim, the chop was up
And a wave would occasionally surprise
With a snootful of lake to be snorted out.
The up and down was strong enough, close
In to the shore, that sometimes a blurry rock
That seemed well below reach would rush
Up and threaten to skin a kneecap, then sink
Back into the deep. On return the little strip
Of the stony bay that passed for beachfront
Had filled with various old, familiar or newly
Familiar folks, some with small children, who
Exchanged greetings and asked how was
The water? The second swim was quieter,
Longer, around the downed cottonwood,
Past the kayak haul-out, the shady cabin
That had once been a graffitied shack, now
Restored, the handful of people sunning
Like plump seals on the basking rocks below
The decaying mansion, up to the boathouse
At Bigelow, then back. The landmarks below
Were the bouldered edge of the underwater
Cliff into the depths, a few long disused sets
Of rails for taking silver ore down to boats
A hundred or more years ago, ghost trees
Whose timbers would scare daughter to see
Beneath her when she swam deep. Two
Friends left on the beach at this return, one
With whom to discuss research as the sun
Sank into the high haze of wildfires blowing
Smoke from the Okanagan. A last swim,
Shorter but straight out into the middle
Of the waves, with a turn to survey village
Homes along the bluff above the shore.
One woman still left, tethered to a long, long
Oxygen tube leading away from her nose
To a portable generator hooked up
To an even longer, orange extension cord
Draped over a branch of the fairydoor maple
Hanging over the stones. She coiled
Her tube like a lasso over one arm and joked
As discussion turned to mobility for invalids
Out of doors. Then, once she’d gone, her tank
With her, the unplugged orange cord still dangling
In the heavily green-leaved branches, no one
But the swimmer out of water, alone on the shore.

Empty Beach with White Caps, Slocanada, 24 July 2018

After a good long swim in churning clarity,
At six in the afternoon, one sail on the lake
And not another body on the pebbled shore.
The sound of lake surf, softer, less regular
Than breakers from an ocean, quicker too,
More like the fluttery breathing of an infant
On the chest. One sweeper cottonwood
Downed in the waves by a recent storm
Still poking up a bouquet of living green,
Like any other body, determined to go on
Respiring as long as it can. Only the mind
Ever despairs or draws its own conclusions.
A few brightly colored kayaks, a beach chair
Left behind with no one in it anymore. Hold it
All to your bare chest and listen to that breath.

Shafts of Light, Slocanada, 23 July 2018

At three the shore was lined with cheerful
People sunbathing, splashing, kayaking,
Sitting in folding chairs, chin-wagging,
Shooting the breeze, the warm and subtle,
Obliging breeze. An hour later, the clouds
Above the Valhalla ice field had gathered,
And I had the beach to myself for a while.
Shafts of light, foolish fire, shot through
From time to time as voices had earlier.
It’s all nonsense, you know, existence.
Nonsense and none with any choice in it,
Although, in one of our own peculiar corners
Within the general nonsense, we squirm,
Like this dragonfly larva molting on the rocks
At my feet, to get out of our obligations
To be whatever the sunlight shapes us to be.

Maple Tree and Fairy Door at the Shore, Slocanada, 22 July 2018

How many good memories are enough?
The linguified brain collects them like the children
Collected armfuls of beach glass along this shore
Not long ago—happily, competitively, dropping
Some of the best finds as they stooped to grab
More and more. One boy was determined
To take every last piece of his home with him.
One girl only cared for the thickest bits of cloudy
Shards, another only for the bluest and for any
Painted porcelain. That was a good memory.
Today on the stony beach devoid of children,
I spotted an abandoned cache beneath the maple
Where, another summer, to enchant daughter,
I had painted a tiny red doorknob near the roots,
A fairy door. Someone has amused themselves
Recently by precisely applying a bright green wad
Of chewing gum over the faded red dot. It’s still
A good fairy door. If no other children take them,
Come winter, the waves will rescatter the glass.

Hidden Garden Musician, Slocanada, 21 July 2018

The violinist was so good, so unexpectedly
Excellent against the backdrop of Goat Mountain
And rural clouds drifting from provincial wilderness,
That even in a village oddly rich with musicians,
Competent players, a summer music school,
This evening’s breeze and birdsong tuned
Themselves to her bow. The grass ruffled,
And the driftwood arranged among the flowers

Ached to become, if not alive, if not leafed out

Again, then something that sang in the hands.

Midnight and Change, Slocanada, 20 July 2018

How do we know one outcome better or worse
Than the one that didn’t come out? We only
Have one, however much we compare each
Other’s outcomes to each other’s. Science
Is the art of comparing paired situations
While attempting to eliminate every difference
Except the one and then comparing those outcomes.
We do it again and again until we get pretty good
At the prediction of what we should do if we want
Something to happen, and what we shouldn’t do
If we don’t. But still we get up in the morning
Or afternoon or evening of each life, each in one
And only one complex situation, confused as to how
We got here. Body, mind, self, and awareness
Wrangle in our brains again and we pretend
To make decisions. Sometimes we’re even convinced
That something awful or delightful will happen
And we grin or grimace. Sometimes, we’re even
Proved right. But at the end of the day, that day,
That morning and evening, we’ve no known way
Of knowing, no way of testing, whether
We’re in a worse or better world than we would have
Been, could have been, had we not been right.

Robb Creek Bridge, for Diana, British Columbia, 19 July 2018

Whatever it is, off the tops of our heads, gods drink,
Ambrosia, soma, mercury, it tastes good to them.
They grow strong on it until it makes them
Increasingly silly and weak. We find them
Lying around, fishy godheads lolling, looking innocent,
If not dead. That’s when they’re ready to drink
From us again. They’re real, you know, no more
Unreal than any thing named. But although we
Made them, and we feed them with our songs
And such, and they need us to get around,
They aren’t at all like us, even the ones we make
Just like us, least of all the ones most like us.
They’re real, yes, and often powerful, but not quite,
Not quite yet, alive. They come to the creek
In the evening, in their boats of books and palaver,
And they sip the pools of poems we left them.

Heat Lighting, Slocanada, 18 July 2018

In a rather obscure, vatic language, thunder
Crossed the lake, eastward from the wilderness,
And a body alone in bed could smell the sudden
Woodsmoke, might as well have been brimstone.
A wet early summer had come to the wedding
Of ashes at last. Wind carried it. Lightning
Started it, although nothing’s ever started,
Nor finished, never. When Beethoven grew deaf
His internal ears were liberated. They burned
With the late string quartets, like nothing else, never.
Now the woods around the nearly pristine lake
Were burning. The moshlim sang the end
Of everything near and dear was near, but
The wilderness, as the ancestors who named it knew,
Became itself by dying in fires and was renewed.

Wolves, Dogs, Dogs, Coyotes, Slocanada, 17 July 2018

We used to be like this.
We used to answer to the voices
Of cousins who were half like us,
The yips to our barks, the barks
To our yips. Howl this.

The village dogs were allowed to bellow,
Bellow their after-midnight barks,
Including a few pipsqueak yipes.
And then, from the cliffs, the hybrids
Weighed in, strangled weird, and howling.

Ask your offspring why wolves teeter,
Handsome social predators, on the lip
Of complete extinction, while their cousins,
Skinny, lippy, skulking omnivorous canids,
Invade the massive cities of their enemies.

Echo, British Columbia, 16 July 2018

This intersection hasn’t changed very much,
Despite a decade of snows, rains, waves
Of heat like today’s. What does that say?

Pancakes, Slocanada, 15 July 2018

After the pancakes with berries and cream,
The two elder breakfasters sat at the table
And discussed the bizarre shortcomings
Of memories and dreams, while the younger
Two scampered out to run in the woods
And gardens, pick more berries, squabble,
Dance in the garden sprinklers and check
The site of the old tree fort beside the creek.
The morning, fine as it was, and full of good
Food, hospitality, sunshine, forests, flowers,
And leisure, likely would not long haunt and alter
Within the dreams and memories of the elders,
But they both knew that if the two girls lived long
Enough, this day, and, or, other summer days
Much like it, would remain shifting, golden,
Glimmering ghosts in the minds just then at play.

Beach Glass, Slocanada, 14 July 2018

It was there if you looked. If you looked, it was
Everywhere. The pebbles and rocks of the shore
Presented a uniform, glintless grey at a glance,
Even in the brightest summer sun, but children
Invariably made an obsession out of digging
Through the stones for bits of glass. Adults
Were most impressed by the older, thicker pieces,
The butts of wine jugs more than a century old,
From the days when this shore was a dock
Where steamboats picked up ore and disgorged
Passengers, many of whom first stayed
At the dockside hotel (burned down in 1903).
Occasionally, heavy crockery emerged, or
A painted fragment of a vase. The brightest
Pieces, smooth or sharp, thick or blade thin,
Especially the bits of vivid blue, were most
Prized by the industrious kids. One boy
Had worked out a method involving a shovel
And a t-shirt that worked like sifting gold.
He could haul out a basketful of varied glass
In less than an hour. It was a good trick.
One old compositor was so impressed by it,
He imagined the shards and bottle necks
As bones, as a charnel yard under the stones,
And maybe real bones under those, hearths
From the earliest human settlements after the ice.
Now those would be exciting to find accidentally.
He only had to toe the pebbles to catch the bits
Of green, clear, brown, smooth, sharp, blue.
If you composed a mosaic, you could mean
Something significant about all this with it.

Dive, Dives, Slocanada, 13 July 2018

Maybe it was better to consider resemblance
As not between any two things or even any
Two moments (which felt like discrete things,
Misleadingly, when so named) but as rhythms
Within change. Diving into the lake repeatedly
This afternoon, the water was always the familiar
Golden green near the surface in the sun,
Bluish green when a cloud intervened, and
Darker green down where it started to crush
The lungs. The rocks within reach just before
The sudden drop-off twenty strokes from shore
Felt familiarly slick to the fingertips. Temptation
Was to think of the familiarity as inhering
In the rocks and the shore, the drop and the water,
Or maybe in the weather, but that was wrong,
Or no, not wrong, unhelpful to the effort
At understanding, unhelpful to this quest.
The molecules of water, swimmer, algae,
Atmosphere, were churned and churning
Replacements for earlier examples, and
Saying percentages were new, percentages
The same was a distraction. It was the way
In which they were changing, the changes
That were familiar and irrelevant to measures
Of the substances ushered into existence,
Then together, apart, and out of existence
By the change. It wasn’t only that change
Was in everything, but that change was the only
Thing that had any patterning, and the patterning
Itself was one way of differentiating. The going
Away created by going the sense of some things
That stayed, variable rates with familiar
Directions and waves. This was Dive’s Dive we were
Swimming in, after all, all of us, fish and waves,
Where it never mattered whether matter appeared
Steady or its distributions equal, because
The sameness was in the steadiness of the ways
We all got new deals we kept losing. What we kept
Was the losing, the many distinct ways
Of getting by losing by getting and losing.

Harold Bench, Slocanada, 12 July 2018

You used to be able to keep your feet
On the ground and savor the cedar planks
For their warmth. But that was years ago.
Even the new, higher, composite bench
With the new, more informative plaque
Has been in place a couple of years at least.
A red kayak glides past, itself and every other
Red kayak you ever watched glide over the lake.
The children, you thought, were to have been
Here an hour ago, but children have always
Been late for you. After a short but bracing swim
The sun is quickly hot enough to sting
Your neck and shoulders, reminding you
That this is not the exact same skin you once
Lived in, even though it retains the memories
And scars of past sunburns, injuries, and
Little wars. Time to change, to synchronize
Your experience with the common mind. Time
To clamber off the awkward bench, put on
Your t-shirt and see where your daughter went.

Old Creek Road, Slocanada, 11 July 2018

The arrangement is powerfully familiar: water
Rushing noisily over sizable rocks tumbling
And eroding down this canyon in the woods,
A maintained but muddy gravel road running
Alongside, practically hugging the rapids.
Behind you a slope was dynamited years ago
To squeeze space for the road. Now it calves
Rockfalls cleared away by someone often, often
Enough to keep the road mostly passable.
You found the turnout you expected to find.
In front of you someone vanished around the bend.
The light in the forest falls at the right angle,
Green and tree-filtered and silent except
Or because of the constant hoarse roar of the stream.
It all seems in order, just as you remembered it, so

In a way, yes, you have been this way before.
You’ve been like this, you’ve passed by here,
And you will never be some way absolutely new
Anyway. Perfect newness would have to eliminate
You, you whose partnerships of borrowed thoughts
Sharing aging brain cells tumble over themselves,
Examples of those very quasiperiodic, cyclic
Exchanges of difference and similarity
They’re trying so helplessly hard to explain.
No one steps into a different river even once.

The Last Misty Day in the Forecast, British Columbia, 10 July 2018

The mountain pass was dreaming it was
The recent past condensed and evaporating
In a memory palace of every forgiving forest
Ever healed its wounds and closed its canopy
Over the sawtoothed dreams of its children
Again and again and again. It was green, dark
Green, mostly, with floating silver shawls.
One hundred-twenty thousand years ago,
Neanderthals ambush-hunted fallow deer
At close quarters with wooden thrusting spears
Beside a lake in closed canopy forest like this.
A nifty trick for a hominin, to survive in this.
Broken woodlands, coasts, and grasslands
Were what our ancestors’ bodies evolved for,
But the mind of a biped contains its own beast,
And that beast wants to flee into the woods
And lose itself as the monster guarding them
While wanting those woods to be itself, to turn
Inward into the woods more closed than any
Trees, however triumphant, could ever be.
These trees hide woods never were these trees.

Demolition, Slocanada, 9 July 2018

At six a.m., the truck backed up outside
The window and unloaded a claw. The claw,
By six-thirty, had grunted its way across
The street and positioned itself behind
The grey two-story wooden building slated
To be torn down. Within another half an hour,
At least half-a-dozen white-haired men
Were lined up on the sidewalk opposite,
Watching steadily and commenting
As the claw ripped into the old building.
A young girl and her father came out
Into their front yard to watch as well, the girl
Crunching a cucumber she’d just pulled
From the garden. Agency is agency, no doubt
About it. The claw with the human inside it
Backed up and swung its rear end, seeking
Purchase, then opened its maw and reached
Into the guts of the building, much as a beast
Would wriggle its haunches, lean forward,
And tear into an oversized carcass. The front
Was the last of the ruin to lean and crumble.
Startled bats escaped the collapsing attic.
By eight there was nothing left but rubble.
Homeless mice scampered over the ground.
“That was more exciting than I expected,”
Said the girl. An older man joining the others
Just before they scattered, teased them.
“Know how many men it takes to tear down
A building in this town? One to tear it down
And ten to stand around watching!” Once
Everyone else had gone and the claw stood
Silent and emptied of agency beside the pile
Of broken lumber, the girl’s father returned
To contemplate the beast. Part crane and part
Skyhook, it sat waiting for a Paley or a Dennett
To make it into an argument for the origin
Of design, purpose, agency. A mystery.

Middle of the Lake, 8 July 2018

Tack! Ready? Ready! The girls pretending
To be crew flattened themselves on the deck
As the sail sagged, swung, and billowed.
A perfect day for it, the skipper said.
The girls ate watermelon and drank cokes
Later in the narrow cabin that felt as good
As a fairytale doll’s house to them. Later
Still, they climbed over the sides and clung
To the ladder in their life jackets as the boat
Floated in a deep bay, the underwater cliff
Beneath them dropping hundreds of meters
Into dark water. “Are there any truly novel
States in nature?” asked the cosmologist.

Clouds, Sun, Clouds, Slocanada, 7 July 2018

We may try to begin at the beginning, we
May try to narrate the end, but it’s pretend.
We’re always in the middle so long as we are
Anything at all. One man sits at a picnic table
In front of the village laundromat, waiting
On a friend who wants to talk to him, but
She’s currently sidetracked across the street
In an impromptu chat with another friend
She happened to meet. Further down,
Other men are preparing the old hardware
Building, a ramshackle centenarian,
For tomorrow’s demolition. Word is, a rescue
Dog in training will be brought in and tested
In the ruins before they start to clean it up.
A breeze ruffles the thinning hair of the man
At the table, still waiting for the friend. Sun
Comes out and goes back in. A young girl
Runs up to him. “I’m starving!” She says.
“How long now?” The sun comes out again.
A white-haired, rugged man with a milk pail
Ambles by and, a propos of nothing, begins
A jeremiad about the absurdity and pollution
Of long-distance shipping. The sun goes in.
The girl runs off to the sandwich shop.
The friend arrives and talks to the man
Who is upset about shipping. They consider
The parlous state of the planet while the first
Man goes inside to check on his clothes.
One machine has unbalanced. The girl
Returns with a pineapple sandwich. The sun
Finds another cloud. That mobile rascal.
What we experience is not what happens,
Although it’s sufficiently similar to have
Allowed our ancestors to propagate, so
Here we are, as we are, infinitely far from all-
Knowing, but not entirely in the dark.

Becker’s Beach, 6 July 2018

Ulli Becker was worried. She came down for a dip,
Hair up in a quick bun, wearing the familiar
Black shades and bikini she always wore to swim.
She scanned the windy whitecaps, the slate
Clouds hinting thunder over Valhalla on the far side
Of the lake. “Jörg is on the other side
With our guests. I’m waiting for them
To kayak back,” she said. We said we’d seen
No kayaks in an hour. She thanked us, swam
Briefly, and went back in to her house.
We packed up when the thunder rumbled,
But still no sign of returning kayaks. How
Was it we ever evolved to handle these odds
In our heads? So many unfortunate events
Are both extremely unlikely in the event
And frequent enough in sum that any
Bayesian would sermonize on updating priors.
Jörg and the kayaks would almost certainly
Return, as Jörg had always returned, adventure
Leader that he was, from every country,
Every tour, and every blessed, risky thing.
It was another lottery, one one didn't want to win.
But Ulli was worried, a little, nonetheless,
And the whitecaps nodded assent from duress.

Under the Apple Tree, Slocanada, 5 July 2018

We have memories of past futures, when
We or others talked often about some future
Date or looming event, possibly for years
In advance, and we have memories, years
And years old themselves now, of those
Dates and events as they eventually passed,
And the two sets of memories about them,
As future, as past, sit together in the head.
There’s a bit of vertigo comes from pulling
Both sets out together, because a part
Of the memories of past events as future
Remains the feeling we had about the future,
Which sits strangely with the memory
Of that future as long past. Today, some men
In the village were discussing the World Cup
In progress in Russia, one of the men being
A disappointed German fan, his team having
Crashed out stunningly early in group play
For a favorite and defending champion. Ah,
How differently he had felt back in Brazil
When they had won! And with that, I recalled
An old acquaintance who had talked for years,
Back in the aughts, about how one day
She would make the most fun of turning forty
By going to Brazil for the 2014 World Cup,
How she would samba and party and be wild
And free. I could feel, thanks to memory,
That sense of Brazil 2014 as an enchanted,
Distant, and unlikely future, even as other memories
Of my own 2014 of four years ago, practically
A lost world to me now, swept in alongside
That old futurity with unsettling simultaneity.
And the men discussing the fates of their teams
Laughed and sighed in the little cafe
By the vast, quiet lake of today.

Fairytale Cafe, British Columbia, 4 July 2018

The improbably tall and willowy daughter
Of the owner, who has always been kind
And generous to body’s own daughter,
Comes through again with a chocolate
Discreetly placed alongside the cup
Of cauliflower soup. Grace notes, grace
Notes are the most eloquent spandrels
Of human collaborativity. We have a way
Of knowing how to say what we alone can
Say: hello, I take kindly to you, I’m open
To being and/or accepting you as a member
Of the same team. I like you. Like me.
Body is bemused by this, as always, noting
On a napkin to be pocketed and hoarded
For later compositions that, “despite how oft
I have thought of, but never well expressed,
The beauty in the cruelty that emerges
From forming fictive kinships, figurative
Blood loyalties, even simple friendships,
The bonding necessarily derived
From exclusion of those beyond the bond,
It remains a kind of merciful dream to see
The sly hand of fellowship extended under
The cover of simple kindnesses to someone
I already consider a kind of kindred of mine.”
Daughters wave to each other and smile.

Raised Beds, Slocanada, 3 July 2018

All novelists incline toward autobiography,
Even the outright fantasists hiding behind
Their wizardry. They want to tell the truth,
A truth, a story containing great truths. Whether
A clever, layered, polyvocal bit of autofiction,
A ripping good yarn meant to sell well, a horror
Story curdling with the author’s terrors, all
Hold old temptations to attempt some truth,
Themselves a truth they feel a need to tell.
To do so, to get close, novelists must steal
From the best remnants of evolving memory,
Even as they’re buried to their bloodshot eyes
In research about other times and lives, even
As they’re dreaming of breaking nature’s laws.
(Anyway, nature doesn’t have laws, except
Insofar as we are natural, novelists included,
Making laws from forests of facts and spittle,
Natural as paper nests spit by paper wasps.)
Differing only in the degree of decomposition
From which memories are drawn, and also
In the daring with which they bury revenants
Of personal anecdotes whole in the loam
Of their fiction, novelists garden corpse selves.
A compositor, incompetent at coring stories,
At cooking, composting, or gardening, literally,
Pondered this beside another’s summer garden.

Recurring Laundromat, Slocanada, 2 July 2018

A year before yesterday, a poem forecast
The need for the future to reach back
And orchestrate the past of a holiday
Just passed. Just passed again, that holiday
Showed up in another text, and the text
And the holiday alike echoed, closely, their pasts.
The future had done its job again, and another
Future would now be calling all on. Lined up,
The past events tugged into cycles, orbits,
Periods, and sequences by the future’s pull
Looked powerfully like repetition, like beads
On a string, all the countable things. But no,
Not really. The future may be a potent ghost,
And we may be haunted enough to converse
With it continuously, chattering and planning
In our classrooms, town halls, heads, and beds.
But it can only conduct a kind of tidal orchestra.
Each individual wave is strange in its own way.
The day after the holiday, clothes were churning
In the sturdy, circular machinery of washers
And dryers down at the laundromat. Campers
Soaked and muddy after the long weekend
And mindful of their future plans descended
To get their clothes clean by dividing the past
From its waste, renewing the sense that transformation
Was neither linear nor constant but could
Be trained, again and again, to begin again.

Slocanada, 1 July 2018

Scheduled events absorbed the morning
And the early afternoon: pancake breakfast
At long tables decorated with small flags,
Parade with fire trucks, vintage cars,
And bagpipers, more red-and-white flags,
Children’s game booth, face-painting booth,
Bocce tournament, beer tent for grown-ups,
The singing of “Oh Canada,” the ceremonial
Cutting and distribution of the giant cake
With red-and-white frosting under the pines,
The Great Canadian Dog Show consisting
Entirely of local pets known to everyone, all
Competing in half a dozen categories
And drawing cheers and laughter as often
For misbehaving as for completing a trick.
Then a gap in the late afternoon. Nothing
Slated until the fireworks scheduled for ten
At night, just dark enough, over the lake,
If we’re lucky and there’s no more rain.