Tea steeped sunrise (inventing a flock of lunes)

Just before

dawn, rain. The peepers

stop singing.

Wan light seeps

through the window, shakes

me awake.

Cold air on

my toes. I toss logs

on the fire,

open blinds, set

water to boil. Tea

steeped sunrise,

loon calling.

How do they know how

soon the rain?

Notes: (inventing a flock of lunes) 

Anyone who knows much about loons, the birds, as opposed to lunes, the poetic form (more on that in a moment), knows that loons rarely flock; they tend to appear as loners. Still, we have sometimes seen them gather on the open water off of Quoddy, out among the islands, as the seals do. And in the summer now and then, we hear them playing call and response with the coyotes on the hill. The lune, on the other hand, a poetic form also known as "American Haiku," can be multiplied and assembled in what poet Craig Santos Perez calls "flocks of lunes." He stretches his out sideways, as if in flight; my lunes, on the other hand, float, as if isolated on the water, rather more like loons.  Here, in Nova Scotia, it is said that the loons' cries predict a change in weather: rain, or the end of rain. 

Typically, lunes come in two forms. One, invented by the poet Robert Kelly, consists of a 13 syllable verse, divided into three lines thus: 5 syllables/ 3 syllables/ 5 syllables. The other form, invented by poet Jack Collum, is composed of 13 words, divided similarly into three lines: 3 words/ 5 words/ 3 words.  While lying awake two nights ago, and thinking about Craig Santos Perez's flocks of lunes, (which work on the Kelly syllable system), I began to compose the poem above in my head. Perhaps because it was the middle of the night, I scrambled the organization of the syllables, and composed instead according to a schema that runs 3 syllables/ 5 syllables/ 3 syllables. When I realized my error, I tried out a number of revisions, but in the end, preferred the simplicity and spareness that my stripped down version of the lune gave me. Who says mistakes aren't generative? And why can't we invent novel forms of lunes? What is poetry for, if not such small, but sublime, pleasures?

Image note: The photograph is of the view from my front windows, overlooking West Quoddy Bay.

Sea Smoke

 

Just before dawn every autumn, or early in the winter, as the temperature of the air drops well below the temperature of the sea,  the rising sun pulls moisture from the water into the sky. The fog billows up like smoke and runs eastward, towards the sun.  If there is a bit of a breeze, it can look as if the water is boiling, though of course, it is not; it is cooling down.

Early in the morning last Friday, when the thermometer dropped to around -20C, the sea smoke began to form giant clouds over the off-lying islands. Here's how it looked from our house--or, more precisely, from the porch:

 

And looking back into the house:

 

Sea smoke is also called "artic steam fog." Brr! Nothing steamy about it. For us it means that soon the sea will freeze.

The Beauty of the lobster trap

First flowers of the spring
they'll soon be sunk
and other breeds
waylaying

Notes

All photos taken April 18 2013 on the West Quoddy dock.  Lobster fishermen were supposed to set their traps on the 19th, and haul today, but bad weather and high winds delayed the start of the lobster fishing season for several days. The traps still sit on the docks in the fog and drizzle and the boats are all moored.

The Sound of Snow

Why do we wake when we do?

Up at 3:30 (not yet midnight
in Vancouver) my head full of
chores.

Sleet spatters
the windows
snow blankets
the yard our
black roof 
goes white.

Snow slickens decks,
sifts through 
bright cord and
stone-weighted
lobster traps.

The dog
goes on 
sleeping.

Everything 
is quiet,

and then 
the wind
arrives. 

By daybreak,
freezing rain.

 

Notes

Photographs were taken on the West Quoddy dock this morning in a sudden, freezing downpour. The vertical stacks continue my first efforts, a few days ago, to "tear space open," as photographer David Hilliard puts it. Too windy for a tripod, but perhaps wind blows through some discontinuities rendered here.

In English, the word sound is itself, a cacaphony.  It carries four distinct and major meanings: 1) health; 2) "strait of the sea;" 3) a noise; and 4) to measure a depth of water.  The first of these meanings, health, stems from the Anglo-Saxon word sund, (related to Gesund in German), while other meanings stem from other roots.  "Sound" as a "strait of the sea"--Desolation Sound, for example, in BC--apparently emerges from a different Anglo Saxon word sund, perhaps derived from swum, Anglo-Saxon for "to swim."  In this case, a sound is 1) a swimming; 2) the power to swim; and thus, 3) a strait of the sea that could be swum across. "Noise," perhaps the most typical contemporary use of the word sound, comes to us from French (son), via Latin (sonum), but is also linked, speculatively, to the Anglo-Saxon word swin, or melody. Finally, the use of sound as a verb--"to measure a depth of water"--also emerges from the French sonder, to test or measure the depth of water.  This usage (sondar in Spanish and Portuguese), is thought to come from a marriage, in Latin, between sub- (under) and undare (from unda, a wave). But lexicographers also note the following Anglo-Saxon words: sund-gyrd (sounding rod), sund line (sounding line) and sund rap (sounding rope). Throw me a life-line--I'm not swimming today!

This poem was built of "12 true things," which is to say, a dozen small observations.

Suddenly Sparrows: A Report on Certain Signs Lately Observed in West Quoddy

9 April 2013

Suddenly sparrows and
constant singing.
They begin before sunrise.

Cluster of ducks at the point.
Geese root in dead grasses,
and the pheasants are silly.

Yesterday lobster boats launched,
traps mount on the dock:
steep wakes slop against shore.

Muddy boots and scent of earth,
rushing clatter of ditchwater,
still no frogs.       

Notes

Pictures were taken on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia near Gammon's Pond, in West Quoddy and in Marie Joseph.

West Quoddy Harbour Auhtority User Fees

7 April 2013

Notes

This is an experiment in visual poetry, in which the images must speak for themselves.

Pictures were taken this morning at the West Quoddy "Harbour Auhtority" dock.  I was trying out a technique of vertical image stacking I encountered in the photography of David Hilliard (see http://www.davidhilliard.com/). Such vertical stacking, he says, "tears a space open;" by making your focus discontinuous, it mixes memory and observation. It seemed a format particularly suited to the infinite vertical scroll of a blog.