Roche Lake: Fly Fishing

Up late with a bottle, early out on the lake. Loon call
rippling into quiet. Fish jump beside the boat, slap clean
their scales; my brother and I smudged with dirt
and campsmoke watch chronomids rise from the lake bed,
discard their former shell, and woozy, hatch. They swarm
the boat with sound. It’s my first time out—
novelty shines up the rods, the fly box. Supper art
at $4 a pop, a knock-off some sucker will swallow,
thinking it’s real-life.

But the fish are smarter than we think.
Nothing’s biting so we switch to shrimp,
set the bobber at twelve feet after consulting the fish finder,
$150 convenience that replaces what our eyes can see,
our hands measure—watching for colour changes
or dropping a pair of needle nose pliers on fishing line
to garner the depth.

All day out in the boat, filling up the hours.
Nothing to distract us, conversation idles. We change it up,
try a new location, try trolling, try casting.
When to give up, when to try again?
I can’t get into the Zen of it. I strong-arm the rod,
bend my wrist when I’m supposed to keep it straight,
hook myself, hook my brother’s line. Chaplin-style slapstick.
I catch two things all day: a steady pull as my hook
snags lake bottom, a big one I thought
as my line wrapped around the propeller.

Back at camp, we listen for tips: green chronomids,
cinnamon shrimp. How’s the fishing, we ask
then wish we hadn’t. Their ten to our zero
flares even the beginner’s ego.
It’d be easier with worms, spoons,
but skill is what we’re aiming for.
Wanting success, a four pound trout to throw on the grill,
we head back out. Anchor by the reeds.
Cast and cast and cast our intentions.
I can think of nothing worthy to offer
in exchange for it’s one life
and so catch nothing.


------
I've been sitting on this all week trying to make it hatch. Still wrestling with the themes, but thought I'd share it. Sorry I haven't been commenting much. I have been reading and enjoying the poems though.

Last Friday in May

A Leap into the Void

It’s only that our lives
are busy, our hands
plunged in painted

portraits, portions
portioned by
sky’s middle, parallel

pasts, our fingers full
in fact so much so
that we forget

to be thankful for
such finely
featured faces.

Copies

He takes them
but doesn't believe her

She could have taken them anytime
to that shop down the street
that sells nuts and bolts
and copies keys

She could have a set stowed away
in these bags she's taking
held together by a piece of yarn
or a garbage bag tie
or even slipped onto that new ring
of keys she carries around

She could come back one night
jump on a bus or drive back the car
unlock the door while he's sleeping
and slip in beside him
as if she never left

Yves Eyes

Yesterday night, Wednesday, we went into an abstract café… the abstractionists were there. They are easy to recognize because they give off an atmosphere of abstract painting, plus you see their paintings in their eyes. Maybe I’m delirious, but I have the impression I see things like that. In any event, we sat down with them. Then we began speaking of the book Yves Peintures. Later, I went to get it from the car and I laid it down on the table. At the very first few pages the abstractionists’ eyes began to change. Their eyes lit up and in the depths, pure, beautiful single colors appeared.

Paris newspaper, dated January 13, 1955






What did I know? At the time
I was certain that Yves eyes

were brown, not earth’s honeyed hue
exposed by wind, or the chocolate

of cocoa, or blurred like weakened
coffee, but a tender doubled tint—

morning’s shady past slowly
edged in dew’s damp linens,

the shyness of water’s soft fall,
light’s luminal glance

as day’s electricity turned first
on then off. Isn’t absence

what is most real? Someone
dreams a beginning, the impossible

burst of orange— one framed
wooden window. The sky

beyond is not simply scarred by birds,
or cumbersome clouds

seam-ripped by motorized machines
but faked by fingers that study

the blue. And blue,
someone says, is the great trick—

a kind of universal masturbation,
where the hand is always eager

to grasp what it sees.

ten

The city at night
is a tinkling bracelet
of sirens

Long Weekend

Cars double-park on every block
We drag our bags down the steps
throw them in trunks, drive off laughing

We've packed our hopes for the summer
into this long weekend

We bring shorts to run around in
and a suit for water so inviting
we have to dive in
even though it still harbours
strong memories of ice

We take care to bring fleece
just in case the nights
are not quite as warm
as we've dreamed of
all winter long


Here are two poems from the last few days at the Lake - a couple more tomorrow...

Deaths of Trees

Some trees rot at the roots
fungus grows deep down among
their twenty toes
with nothing to stand on
they topple over

Other trees suffer the indignity
of having their skin scraped bare
by humans, boars, elephant tusks
too exposed to the world
they die of embarrassment

Some are hit by lightening
without warning in the night
a flash of pain slashed in two
smoldering black cauterized agony
they are too traumatized to live

Others see the fire coming
from miles away, watch
their sisters extinguish,
immobilized mesmerized
they are consumed

In some parts, a genocide takes
out a mountainside in a summer
men with their machines,
merciless blades slice unstoppable,
they are sent up the river

But this grandma tree
decades of holes sheltering
birds and small furry creatures,
doesn't fight off the scaly moss
bent and warped from
years of wind-battle
still her sparse branches
put out green leaves
each spring

so long

uncertain


from the end of the driveway
we watch a slow shooting star
just beyond the stretch
of our fingers, until it becomes
the low glide of a gull, tiny spark
in an uncertain night



Hey all,
This will be my last poem for a while; I'm taking a week of holidays (actual away holidays, not a just a may day holiday). Happy long weekends to one and all!

k.

Garage Sale

for J


I love her hunched over coffee, pen in hand.
Up at eight to circle ads, she plots our route
while I’m still in bed. Saturday morning
spent in musty garages eying stranger’s
stickered history: hockey skates worn
half a season $10, all manner of racquets $2,
board games with missing pieces
and Robert Ludlum novels 25 cents. Junk, mostly,
but we both know treasure when we find it:
old tins, apple boxes at bargain prices.
She knows there’s a story in every object
and takes the time to ask. That was my grandfather’s axe.
She has the patience I lack, sees the potential
in everything. A rusted ten speed
for five bucks, that she’ll sand and repaint.
I love her hunched over the spokes
polishing with a toothbrush.

The Fundamentalist

Decides today he doesn’t want to be
a painter, raises his salon-blackened brows

to the ceiling’s lumbered frame,
thickens his canvas with water,

while judo-trained knees muscle-
crunch complaints about the foot’s

certain speed when he rushes to draw
a torch from the closet

filled with tobacco tucked in tins—
(in 365 days he smokes

so much that the lip-
dropped ash is enough

to build an Eiffel Tower,
or two). He understands fire

makes the body suffer. The flame
aimed at the morning’s

passing attempt of work,
seared hours singed simply

by the tense tilting
hand. And the sun’s surface

is not nearly as warm as a painter’s
forehead when he’s thinking.

speechless


you didn’t know what to say
that impossible winter –
cold hardening lungs and limbs,
steering columns and shoe soles,
but hardly registering with me except
that some days it was the only thing
i could think to tell my dad
as i balanced on the lip of the visitor’s chair
another cold one out there
and stole warmth from his hands,
crackers from his dinner tray

you chipped ice from our sidewalk,
nudged up the thermostat a degree
and stood each evening
at the living room window
to watch for my frozen breath
unlocking the door just so
i wouldn’t have to
take off my mittens

you turned off every hockey game
to sit on the chesterfield, hoping
with me the phone wouldn’t ring

you made sure the car was plugged in,
alarm set, milk and fruit in the fridge
so there’d be an orange for me
to take as offering, to occupy my dad’s hands
as i poured weak tea into styrofoam cups,
to zest-freshen the hospital room
and fill the minutes’ slow circular shuffling
with wiping fingers on a paper napkin

you packed a sandwich
for my dad that he spoke of – still does –
as if ham and bread were a miracle ,
and gathered just the right type
of newsy, ironic stories particular to men
and this climate – cars and cold misfortune –
that triggered a lift in his eyebrows,
reminiscing and remember-when

you gave me all the heat saved
up in your chest as you waited
with me for sleep, for spring,
for illness to finally thaw
with the season


A couple of questions here, if anyone has a minute... is the order of stanzas/information confusing? Ending too neat 'n tidy? Is it clear that all the "you" parts and "he" parts are happening in different locations?

k.

Junk Drawer

Crammed with rubber bands, sandpaper,
bent nails, loose change—a sanctuary
for the would-be-useful in triplicate.
Allen keys, AAA batteries, candle nubs
for waxing sticky drawers. Advocate
for pro-clutter décor, just open
its stuffed maw and toss in.
Dumping ground for twist ties,
and misfit buttons, a home for all
we’re too lazy to sort,
for thingamabobs and doodads
we can’t bear to throw out.

Stuff

I have come
to get my stuff

A friend suggested
it was too much for me,
I should send someone else.
But where do you hire
a person like that?

No, this is the kind of thing
you have to take care of yourself.
There are too many decisions to be made.

papers: do you keep the notes
from you to him or him to you?
Is it time to throw out the valentines
from the boyfriend now twice-removed?
Who cares the most?

files: who's going to copy
the tax returns, and who
keeps the originals?
Who counts the most?

cds: is it worth fighting
over who really owns the
special edition Miles Davis
even though you're perfectly sure
it was a birthday present for you?
Who listened most?

dvds: who gets Casablanca,
do you split up box sets,
what do you do with
the empty cases?
Who sat and watched the most?

photos: do you keep the ones
where you look good,
or leave those for him?
Who will remember the most,
and who will need reminders?

Traveler's Circle

I found another unpacked case
holding clothes
still smelling like the city

the shoreline
and the woods

receipts from assorted cafes
mark my steps
over concrete paths
littered with foreign paper

the tiled Imagine at the edge
of the park gave up photo op
to flash in my slideshow
when my monitor slows

between lines of words
falling out of my head
like purple bullets

splashes of Peruvian lilies
decorating the circle

a pair of fish inked
alongside Chinese characters
supposedly indicating
Good Money

which I have less of now

but dreams of trains
take me up welded tracks
to places where spring
is still budding

not all spent and over green
like this place
the poppies gone to seed
the lavender already heady
in the afternoon heat

a polished clam shell
glows luminous smooth
with a salty link
to steamed mussels
at sunset

the cedar shingles
of artists homes were gray
as rain sky
trimmed in crayon colors
around the doors and windows

almost the shade of tides
coming and going
under the open windows
were we slept

the dogs jumped in and swam
with more joy than fishes
as cats skulked in deflated seaweed
swatting green bladders

and cormorants dived
between lobster buoys
and gulls spread black wings
against the wind

I never figured out why
it blew so hard after dark
as if the sun’s departure
gave air more space
once light was gone

or why the cat wants
to sleep on the shirt
I’ve thrown on the floor
curled like a seashell
whispering with salt air.

And now for something completely different

...or not. This is a day late, not that I'm losing momentum, but that I haven't felt much like a writer. Like the other long one, I'm sure this isn't ready for other eyes yet, but I'm ready for comments. For those with no Klein experience, it's based on the series of paintings called "Anthropometries". I will hopefully get to some comments on everyone's poetry tomorrow.



Anthropoemetry

1.

He said the routine
is simple as swimming
asked if I knew how
told me I could
breast-stroke in International Klein
Blue’s shallow ocean
where the wave’s edge drifts
in audience-eyed shores
and the moon is usually full
of the sky.


2.

He said touch creates a sense—
a vision. Last night I dreamed
he was coarse-canvas, palms
flattened to my hips, thighs lined
with yes.


3.

He said there is comfort
in performance. Yves Klein—
the ringmaster at a circus
dressed in a dark suit
waves white gloves while he conducts
three women’s bodies and limbs. I stretch
myself onto a painted portion of the floor
skim skin in wetness, the thick
oily crawl, bristles bruising
nipples. And then I think
maybe someone notices
the slight belly-bulge
under my own hands
the smoothness
as they slide up and over
a thick-caged heart’s
impatient sound, the thumping
dull then drowned
by the Monotone Symphony’s
muffled score.

4.

He said the body always
comes clean. Later I am
alone to a steady drip
the empty bathtub
tinged blue. I lean
my chest over the sink,
press my hand to the steam-
fogged mirror and wipe.

nine

Spring is low-down
in the morning she attempted embroidery
with the green horde –
but their long stitches looped
from limb to limb
every last worm taken by the wind
before she could show them
her tight
regular stitches

Her afternoon music lessons
were no better: frogs that overwintered
under a slowly softening log
or a wet clump
don’t leave anything to the imagination
flashed legs and white throats
while they sang
and it turned out
it’s all about the groupies
anyway

Spring wrings her hands
over the pulp
of fallen blossoms
the spent pussywillows
you see just about
everywhere
but what can you do?

those tiny violins

how can you expect a poem
when even your dreams
lack imagination:
overdue library books,
a blurring of words
you can’t identify

when you wake up lost
in the home you own

when it’s raining grey

when days are broken
into units of to do
lonely for checkmarks

when lunch is fifteen minutes
with a dry sandwich
in a dim food court
on a chair molded
for much less
meaty haunches

when you need new shoes
and a few answers
before going any further

when you dust the corners
of your desk drawer
in search of forgotten chocolate

when the mailbox lets you down
with a brassy slap

when perennials no longer respond
to a nudge from your gloved finger,
last year’s garden crumbles
under your breath

when this is the only ink
that sticks

In which I attempt a glosa

My job went suddenly full-time, so I've been neglectful lately. But I've been working on the following slightly dirty poem (apologies to anyone who might not be ok with the blue language, but ach, sometimes you gotta). I've quite obviously fudged the rhyme in the lines that are supposed to rhyme (6, 9, 10 of each stanza, if you've never been foolish enough to try one of these), but I do that a lot, so whatever.

I also want to comment on so much of everyone's recent stuff, and that will happen very soon.


Sight

How nice to register the world in shapes
you might squeeze or eat. Better than words,
plus you can get your hands dirty, like work,
but fun, like playing in the grass at night

from “For Ann, Whose Studio Burnt to the Ground in the Big Futon Factory Fire Across the Freeway from the Coliseum,” August Kleinzahler


The newspaper this morning says that artists have sex
with more people than anyone else—they've done a survey.
It doesn't say quite what they mean by artists, but I get it.
Staying overnight with friends in the city. Purple duvet.
The other guest in that house: a painter with grey eyes,
bony hips, the warm smell of salt on him. He came
to the borrowed bedroom's door and wasn't wrong
to wake me. I let him in knowing already his damp sternum
thrummed for someone else; that he'd soon forget my name.
How nice to register the world in shapes,

like a toddler gumming wooden blocks, how pleasant
to be so intent on remembering things with the eye, the hand,
the tongue, that the rest falls away, all burn-off, dross. Bodies
trump names. We end up in their beds, so many of us—
if the survey's right—to be just once the form desired,
the surface palmed. Great salivating moon-eyed herds
of us, slavish, lunging for that twinge of skin gone hot
beneath the painter's eye. The sculptor's roughened thumb.
Skin a colour to be consumed, consumable and used, like fruit
you might squeeze or eat. Better than words,

their cryptic pictures, for getting what they want and whom
they choose. We're mentioned in the survey, too. I don't buy it.
No one ever bedded me because of the word poet. We're
a lonely lot—our drunken nights end with the air grown still
and fingers wanting not flesh but the clean touch of paper and pen.
My last painter was a redhead with a cock so thick it hurt
and a Nordic beard he blushed under when I told him
it was gorgeous. He was inventing a new colour. I'd kill to see
inside his studio. A space like that lets you wear a purpose,
plus you can get your hands dirty. Like work,

like fucking, art demands certain favourable conditions to click.
Over coffee, my friend Emily says “Really? Artists? More than
investment bankers, hey?” and we laugh, shaking off the truth.
I count all my old flames and clench up. I'm keeping up.
But when will I clear my surfaces of this debris and
see in colour? When—when—will I learn how to type?
And, oh, to grow pickpocket eyes and roam the city
groping invisibly, taking what I want without a thought,
with plain, grasping lust in my nerves. Like the old sight
but fun, like playing in the grass at night.

eight

Footsie

In a world haunted by the hydrogen and napalm bomb, the football field is a place where sanity and hope are still left unmolested. ~Stanley Rous, 1952

At home, the play-by-play shakes
as beating feet and screamed-hoarse throats
shake the televised Toronto stadium
the long view of a North American soccer league
including thunder sticks and confetti in team colours
while your shrieking extends from living room
to dining room, your reach from my leg
to my outstretched hand (the wrist showing
your seven-tooth tattoo even hours later)
because where I stand
is where you stand
in the held breath
between you and walking.

You quiet as I stalk the few blocks
to the park where slowly loosening muscles
and the coarse sweetness of pollen
informs me and the shiny-suited men
arriving in ones and twos of spring;
the kookum who followed the five-year-old
to the edge of our blanket squints
as their feet begin to caress the early evening
also three four soccer balls
for the white man
responsible for your blue eyes.
(In this careful time between egg yolks
and whole milk I watch
as you eat dirt briquettes and tender blades
with black-tongued abandon
add to the confusion
by fathering yourself on strangers
with the outstretched pudge
of your pointing finger:
da-da! da-da!)

As the warm-up ends, avenue aspens
loose fluffy Christmas drag
from drooping catkins
into that slanting photogenic sun -
making all our smiles wider toothier
but the black man so glad to be running
after the simulacrum of a boyhood elsewhere
his face is an architecture
of tooth and cheek
while the toddler scoots among the muscled legs
and quick feet of Saturday night.
Amidst the hum of traffic
and the accented patter of old friends
you ignore me, clinging to the spokes
and struts of the stroller
as we all find some semblance
of balance.

seven

substitution 12

The green infestation of inchworm
arching after newleafnewleafnewleafnewleaf
for the white slivers of nail
you won’t let me clip
as you reach for me again
andagainandagainandagain