Kay Ryan - US Poet Laureate

Sometimes those pop-ups you see on certain web pages come in handy, for that is how I found Kay Ryan, US Poet Laureate. Kay would be reading at the University of Southern Florida in Tampa, a mere 40 minute drive away on Wednesday night. We have 2 choices, I tell my husband: go dancing or go listen to Ms Ryan. After all, how often would we have the chance to hear a US Poet Laureate ? Surprisingly, he chooses the poet reading. And I think to myself: this guy really loves me. Or maybe he'd simply rather drive than dance but I'm not so sure that's true.



We head off to USF but, of course, we never truly follow Nuvi, our wonderful little Garmin navigator. Let's try this road, we say, then Nuvi takes us on one hell of a cross-country tour. We see places we've never seen before but it's going to be touch and go. Finally finding USF's campus, we find a parking spot, should pay for parking at a machine but we don't have change, we're late, we rush in. Everyone is seated in the Traditions Hall of the Gibbons Alumni Centre, a large welcoming room whose moveable air walls have fully opened the 3 sections which are filled with people of every age: many students, many mature people, many children; and people of every hue and tone. Obviously poets appeal to everyone. Some eyes watch us as we seat ourselves, even Kay Ryan herself sees us for we are in that embarassingly conspicuous state: late! and having to take seats near the front.



Kay Ryan is a diminutive woman or maybe it's just the lectern in front of her that makes her appear so. Her photo makes her look mannish. But in person she isn't. She sports elegant but casual clothes: I like her blood red sandals, and look at her toes. She reads us selected poems she's written, sometimes several times over to ensure we "get it." She explains. She backtracks. She backfills. She asks us to think. Her words move us. she spills water on her poetry. Laughs. She touches our hearts. People oohh and ahhh as her words bounce off the timpani of their ears, brains, souls. And all too soon, it is over. The evening has passed and I'm left with snippets of phrases and images never before imagined. Behind us, as we rise to leave, a young black boy about 12 proudly discusses with his family the question he was brave enough to pose. Kay Ryan withdraws to another area where she will sign her books and speak to her public. I'd like to buy one or more books but...



It's late, and the line-up is long, and I'm shy. What would I say? And hubby is tired and has had enough. We hurry into the night's dark heat, towards our car but before reaching it, my heart plummets when he announces he's can't find the car keys. Has lost the car keys. Stay calm, I say. I envisage calling a lock smith. Hubby envisages renting a car to retrieve our keys at home (I hadn't brought my purse in which the spare keys reside).



We retrace our steps slowly intently searching. We question the organizer about lost keys and lost and found. He takes us to the administrator, a burly and very kind African-American man who walks with us, small flashlight in hand, to help us find the keys. Nothing. I leave the men searching around the car and walk again to the parking meter, where we'd been stymied but hurried upon arriving. There not 3 feet from the meter are our keys! Thank God! We shake the administrator's hand and thank him for his helpfulness. And drive off into the Florida night...grateful, grateful, grateful in more ways than one.



To read some of Kay Ryan's poetry, simply google her name. I like this one about a turtle: http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/083.html which is on a site that offers American high schoolers a poem a day. Not a bad thing to add to your favourites. Kay plays with clichés. I think I'll try it.



Here's my poem, a tribute to Kay Ryan:



Kay Ryan addresses us not in a dress
but footloose and fancy free - free spirit she.
She turns clichés on their heads and we see
light at the end of the tunnel as black as the ace of spades.

We taste her bitter with sweet ideas
She won't call a spade, a "spayed".
She makes it plain and clear that word play
is the cat's pyjamas
Yeah. The fur goes against the grain
of our brain.
She makes us hold our horses
(when we think we already know exactly what she means)
and laughs, giving us the bum's rush.
Her rare bits don't come out of a hat but
act like eager beavers
playing fast and loose
...up to their necks in allegories.

Knuckle Coral Reef

Beginning,

forming

polyps.

Sexual-asexual,

fragmentation.

Tentacles,

feeders.

Rainforest of the sea!

For more on coral reefs and why we should care: Coral Reef Adventure

Fist Flower

Fabergé...


flexing...

flowing...

flipping...

floating...

Fleur!

The Making of a Pilot

He sits on the uppermost slope of the hill overlooking the boat-houses lining the little bay on the Abitibi River.

The river’s true colour is dead-leaf brown but there are days like today when reflected sky turns it blue as any painted river. Lining the opposite shore, conifers look navy, their needles that dark in the shadows.

His own house is directly behind him. He knows Mother can see him from the kitchen window but he doesn’t mind. She knows the river is a terrible temptation for a boy.

He sits quietly, this boy, bare legs sprouting from wrinkled shorts with toad-bulging pockets. He sits and watches, ignoring grassy pinpricks on the back of his legs. Ants creep over his hands as he leans back, binoculars chest-ready.

He waits. Mother said they’d come soon and he believes her. He listens hard. Usually you hear them before you see them.

He wonders what they honk about, and imagines.
“Hey! You try leading for awhile.”
“Buddy, you’re heading in the wrong direction!”
“This looks like a good spot. Let’s put down here for the night.”
Or his own favourite: “Are we there yet?”
And the standard, “Mom, I’m tired; I’m hungry. I can’t go on anymore.”

All the conversations.
Leaders motivating the flock to follow, follow me!
Dams quibbling with drakes.
Parents cajoling their young.
Rebels breaking off to go it alone.
The old knowing; the young hoping,
Maybe just plain whining in their tremendous effort.

He wonders how they know where they’re going. He tries to imagine instinct. Is it a faint signal or an overwhelming
command? His thoughts circle, does he himself have instinct?
Would he recognize it if he did? Is it like being lost in a Toronto department store but wisely staying put, believing your parents would eventually find you? They did. But how did he know? He wondered, and pondered, and waited.

His ears pick up the faint ululating sound every Canadian knows, a flock is on the wing. It undulates in volume as does the flock itself undulate in the sky faced with a strong head wind. He coaches them: Ssh, ssh! Don’t announce yourself to hunters!
But announce they do: We’re here. We’re here. And here they are.

The binoculars rise to his eyes. He adjusts the viewfinder as best he can to fit and better focus…the binoculars are his Dad’s. He spies on the leader. Watches his neck, his wings, how hard he works. Is it male? How can he tell? Do females lead?

The leader peels off and another tackles the wind. The first leader slips in behind others, not working as hard. The boy begins to appreciate how wind, air, and size affect speed and flight.

He observes the many members in this flock. Looks for differences, similarities. Looks to distinguish and to learn. Looks to understand flight. How it is such slight movement of wings keeps their heavy bodies aloft at all? Why do they change their path and height of flight so erratically? He is mystified and transfixed.

And he yearns, yearns with every fibre of his being to know how to fly. To fly like a Canada goose.



Boy: photo by Bill Liao
Incoming (flock): photo by sandon1090
Incoming (duo): photo by haydensimons
For more photos, visit Flickr

Fall: Feeling Sixty-three

“One Thanksgiving bird,” his wife requested.

With mixed emotions (for he loves both his wife and his warm bed)
He rises before the sun
Stakes out the pond from behind his blind
And waits, fruitlessly.

At eleven, he scopes neighbouring ponds
then drops like a stone
as a honking V of slip-sliding geese disband,
descending the horizon.

Commando-style, all senses alert, he stalks the flock.
Not feeling sixty-three.

He shoots.
The blast deafening already near-deaf ears.
The flock is slow to rise, disoriented by the violent sound.
Where is the threat?

He stands
…almost upon them;
…reads their surprise as they recognize this no-safe haven,
and lift off in calamitous, cacophonous fear.

He surveys his kill:
two birds, not one,
sprawl in graceless death,
their beauty bloodied.

He swings them
by long, warm-feathered necks
into his swag bag.

He swallows and blinks hard
when one’s mate returns,
circling him too close,
bravely foolish in her grief,
her call heart-breakingly unceasing: Shoot me too.

Feeling sixty-three, his voice breaks in the re-telling.

Photos from Flickr and these photographers:

Infowlpursuit

Huskerhunter

Brantnyberg

Fall: Hope on the Wing

In Canada, as lifeless, lustrous leaves litter lake and land,
I savour crisp cold air and survey my limited domain from my simmering hot tub.

I hear their calls.
I scan the sky.
I view the vee:

Geese

in wavering lines
wend their way south,
occasionally north, east or west.
Lost? Disoriented? Seeking known shelter?

Who fails to be touched by their odyssey, their innocence,
their beating hearts and wings,
their iconic shape and pattern,
their white, black and tan,
necks stretched full in hope of safe landing?

How must it be, driven by instinct,
to commence such a journey?
Facing danger, bad winds, bad luck.
Yet rarely alone as many are mated
For life in this fixated flock.
Their calls, though clear,

recede as they advance away from me
and disappear from sight.

Across the lake, gun fire echoes.

These fantastic photos are from born 1945 and Smelter Mountain via Flickr

Summer: The Cat & The Canadas

City cat sits silent watching,
window silled, at Chalet 2.

No whisker twitch, no tail swish,

her back is turned to you.
Her interest’s keen
in what’s unseen

to folks like me ‘n you:

She spots the weak,
the flight, the fleet;
the dew-grass trail of tiny feet.

Her emerald eyes grow wide, grow wide

as in her view, so silent glide:
not one, not two
but two times ten
majestic geese:
Canadian.

What makes she of

all these large birds
descended on her lawn unheard?
They peck, they crop
~ alert, alert!
They cut the grass;
Their rear ends squirt.

She sits absorbed,
transfixed, bewitched.
No whisker twitch. No tail swish.

A motor drones;
the geese take flight.

She’s left alone...
a shadow cat

in dawn’s warm light.

Photos, respectively and thankfully via Flickr by 9stitches11stars, Thunder Thumbs, Rebeckah Fuller, and ertoss

Spring: Laundry Day

She stoops, this spring-fresh day, to disentangle wet, fragrant rags into discernible pieces of clothing. Methodically, she selects each item by size and colour to ensure uniformity on the line as she pegs. She misses hanging his things: heavy stiff jeans; flimsy, oft-times holey shorts; battered socks, his shirts’ ever flappable sleeves. A sweat-stained cap. Sheets, pillowcases, her things, the kids’ things, towels…there are no gaps on the line to reveal his absence, to reveal he is gone. But he is gone.

In the routine thoughtlessness of her task...pick up, shake; peg, peg; pick up; shake, peg, peg, push…she thinks of him.

His hands, rough with a touch ever soliciting involuntary electrically-charged reactions from her body. Still. After all these years. His eyes, his smile, small wrinkles near his ears, the man-smell of his hair as he nuzzled her breasts. She wonders where he is, what he’s doing in that foreign place. Her thoughts skip from reality to imagination. Imagination descends to dark places and worry.

In a gust of wind, she hears them. Turns her face to the sky, eyes searching. Holds her breath as they suddenly appear past the roof-edge, flying in line formation. Their honking loud but not enough to cover their wingsound as they pass directly overhead, the large male leading his smaller female. White cheek patches clearly visible against long, black-stockinged necks.

She holds her breath and watches: this lone twosome on their journey home, flying north to their birthplace. Watches until they become minute silent specks, then nothing at all. The line creaks softly in the spring breeze. Wonders if birds are migrating over his head over there. Birds mated for life, travelling in pairs. Like the two of them. Birds to remind him of home, of her, of the kids. Of Canada. Of this spring ritual.

Pick up, shake; wipe a tear; peg, peg, push.

For the above Kim Denise and other photos, please see www.fotosearch.com and http://www.flickr.com/

Baby Noah

Amazingly, we have had little grief in our extended family but two years ago, my nephew and his wife lost their first baby. I wrote this for them, and now (I hope with their blessing) I offer it to the universe that it may help any others experiencing the loss of a child.

There is a place beneath my heart where you began.

Where we began, your Dad and I,

to love, to hope, to talk to you;

amazed we two had become three. Were soon to be a family.

And you, in turn, and in your way, let us know too, "Yes, I am here!"

Your wee heartbeat beneath my own,

a sign you were becoming, being,

striving to complete our world.

Our babe, an Angel? God decreed.

He changed His plan, despite our need,

left us bereft of you, our precious little one.

There is a place within our hearts where, tho you've gone,

the empty space you left behind wells up with joy, with gratitude,

that we did hold you in our arms

--if only for a little while--

and heart to heart, soft-kissed your brow, blessed you with tears,

named and knew you:

Noah

then, lovingly

we let you go

...safe...

to the arms

of those we love,

of those who wait,

who love you now

at Heaven's Gate.

Northland's Minnie Sutherland©

You’re a goner, Minnie Sutherland,
perhaps were the day you were born.
Too late the System will determine
What happened the Eve of New Year’s Day and why,
Assign blame, and adjust its nuts and dolts.

It’s Hull. Dark. Bright. Promenade du Portage peppered with revelers.
Everyone intoxicated with life, with joy, with booze.
You, your cousin. Street cops, seat-belted nurses too?

What bitter irony, Minnie Blind,
a Nightingale should put out your lights.
You didn’t walk into a car, Minnie Cree, but into a stereotype.
Cop, unthinking, uncaring: “Maudite sauvage! Au cris!
Laissez-la dormir dans le neige.”[1]

Three men...a bridge...Ottawa, Minnie Femme Fatale,
conscious, unconscious,
is darkness, is light, your mind or the sky and stars?

Protectors: cruisered cop, street medic find, debate Minnie Hurt
Draped -- Society’s trophy -- on a cold cop car seat
Once briefly on a hood like a forty year old ornament.
Then…no siren, no hurry: Bright red lights:
U R G E N C E - E M E R G E N C Y
a slow recovery, Minnie Sick, Minnie Poor,
not so quick to bounce back
from New Year’s celebrations.

Thank God for strangers’ care.
But care’s not careful
When they
inadvertently
catheterize
your neck
and you drown
in your own
wonderful
Canadian
native
blood
Under arrest…cardiac arrest.

So…they’ll blame your cracked head, Minnie Dead.

But across this old, cold, vast North Land,
Everyone knows:
Natives
disappear or die sooner than
the Trespassers
who dilute brown skin
with white, with drink, with drugs, with attitude
Until you, Minnie Sutherland,
no longer
exist
at
all

But for your spirit.


[1] Damn squaw! Christ! Let her sleep if off in the snowbank.”
Related article
Unsolved murder (page down)
Book

In Memory of Sybil Mae Smith Beamish

Mom

I was five, I remember, when

You used to

fall asleep

reading to me

stories I knew by heart.

And

I'd correct you

not knowing

you'd worked so hard the whole day through and

had given all you had yet

still made time to read aloud

to me.

And braiding my hair, plait after plait.

My crowning glory was your ill fate

to achieve

amidst kids' squabbles and breakfast dishes...

I did love the ribbons!

I remember the comfort of your arms when I was small;

a hug, a kiss, a smile I had to return even though I was mad.

And singing us awake so early in the morning!

How ever did you do it?

And winter-time on an iced-down slide Dad had made.

You, like a kid, exhilarated,

enjoying the ride, the cold, the starry night

and I, your company.

Funny, I don't remember any other mothers there.

Tea-towel shrouded chelsea buns

rising in the front vestibule.

Door shut tight; thermostat jacked up high...and

"Don't you go in there! I want these to rise!"

Boy, were they good!

The first soft touch of a kitten

nuzzling a bottle I held

I owe to you.

Calling long distance - remember?

"Kittens free to good homes."

and I, listening at the kitchen door

awestruck at your generosity and my good fortune.

Did you want it as badly as I?

Thank you

for making Christmas sparkle

and Santa so real.

And teaching me manners and etiquette

I didn't want to learn

but you persevered in

civilizing me.

I haven't forgotten

any of these things and more

though

you may not recall them

as I have

in my mind.

I wrote them down to show you

we're no different now than then.

An Ode to My Father

Upriver Days
©

With hair slicked back, straight as a pin,
you'd lean into the wind and steer that boat
SLAM! BAM! over waves almost flipping me
into the mud-brown Abitibi.

Half-faced hillocks whose sands sullied the river,
scant beaches, bush breaks logger-made in the northern scrub
slowly slide by as we head upriver,
Johnson-farted fumes trailing in our wake.

We'd bounce the Lobstick's rapids before reaching
The Spot
then fish for hours on hot, still days
as Red Sucker Creek sluggishly bled into the Abitibi.

And once, I remember...
As soon as you'd take a fish off my line,
re-hook a minnow, and
settle back with your own rod,
I'd catch another and the cycle would begin again.
God, it was fun. But who'd believe my catch?

I'd pee over the side of the boat - precariously perched.
You'd kindly look the other way, light a cigarette
to give this modest little kid
a modicum of privacy.
It hardly interrupted our fishing.

Going home at night, shiv'ring in the cold and dark,
we'd strain to spot the lights of the dam
that signalled Mom and home and warmth and bed.

Watching your knife, so sharp, honed thin,
fillet flesh from bone,
the smell of scales and guts and roe
-- enough to make you puke!
I'd gamely package the entrails and carry
the stinky, newspapered mess outside.
I wish I'd learned your technique.

Those were upriver days when a kid and her Dad
would face wet, wind and wild,
scatter ducks,
feed mosquitos,
and come home with pike.

Haiku Reflections on Winter

Today, I shall try some haiku.

For more information, this site is helpful to adults and this one for kids which gives you this mnemonic for the structure:

I am first with five

Then seven in the middle --

Five again to end.

My efforts (not all respecting the 5, 7, 5 rule):

A grim gray wintery day

Walk the dog?

OK.

Woodpecker peeks

'round leaf-bare birch

seeking frozen suet.

January thaw:

Icicles -- Winter's claws! -- drip

Harmless water now.

Black-capped chickadees

cry, swoop, alight, feed, and flee --

skier's wintry friends

Paw prints in the snow

Careful steps in same imprint - -

Let's guess who was here.

Icy roads slip, slide

past homes warmly yellow-lit

in Evening Blue.

Our gay Christmas tree,

shed of her glory, must wait

boxed until next year.

Making haiku's fun!

Challenge? No rhyme, no meter

Just 5, 7 and 5.

Woodpecker and Birch

Woodpecker caresses the Birch with his beak.
It’s a language long spoken, this language they speak.
Is he like a doctor with message forlorn?
Does he query her symptoms?
Is her skin taut or torn?
Is she infested? It’s his job to know.
Will he tap her being?
Wormhole her creamy skin?

Redheaded, he drills her,
Tap-tapping semaphore
(long legend, long lore).
And others hear too or see and alight
For their share of her treasure
Her lifeblood’s sweet syrup.

And she feeds them unflinchingly
generous in her decline:
wasps, moths, bees and flutter-bys,
hummingbirds exotiques,
squirrels who can fly.

Yet it is only her suitor, her physician Woodpecker
Who consistently, diligently attends her.
He excises her loose flakey skin with his beak.

She allows him this liberty…what choice, she?
this patient patient: her skin’s gripped by his feet!
Around and round he works, his surgery begun.
His precision exact; his work ethic strong.
Her being is bored. He mines her unmercifully.

The scar? A necklace. A choker of love and need.
A destructive yet beautiful gift.
His tattoo gives succour to himself and to others.
Her piercings weep.

Yet greedily, always gently licked away.

Birch will live to see many more a sunny day but…
there is no cure.
Her death knell’s been heard
In his rat-ta-ta-tap.