Not Yet

We call Night the privation of relish in the appetite for all things.

 John of the Cross, quoted by Roland Barthes, Fragments d'un discours amoureux

She dreams of a soft boiled egg.

The inaudible tear the yellow flood the 

pouring tender not quite flesh on

crusty bread. The tang of cheese. Of

sourdough. Sharp scent of torn basil leaf. Creamy avocado

plucked from the tree that shatters its fruit

on the kitchen window.

Every possibility is in front of us then.

Every--

Thousands of days 
filled with sunshine. And the rushing 
sea.

And the wind, cool 
on the nape of the neck.

Strong coffee in the afternoon.

A girl in striped pants.  The sensation

of sand 

between 
your toes.

How can it be afternoon?

So soon blue 
.

She picks up her scarf.

Wait. 

Don't go.

Not yet.

(This can't go on. 
 This--)

Not yet.

They sit on a grassy hill by the side of the road.

Cliffs tumble to the sea.

She pulls a bottle from the hamper, 

breaks the crust of bread with her hands, her 
red lips black, the 
fading light.

Cool wind on the nape
of her neck.

She gathers her scarf.

(No. Who twisted 
you;

who

so that) I'll be leaving now

(who twists)

her posture

(someone is 
going

away)

Oh please, 
linger.

A thousand afternoons of light five

thousand ten:

twenty-eight years of days of

sand between your toes 

of cobble beaches and

(sucking sounds)  

rocks 
they tumble 

(what we call night

what we call)

endless oncoming 

(relish
what we call)

waves 

Here is my scallop bed,

here is my island.

Come

dive with me.

We paddle to the island; we 
stand in shallow water; we pluck

scallops, sucking out

flesh

(the inaudible tear the sudden 
flood the

pouring) 

salt bathes 
her tongue,

the afternoon shimmers
glimmers, tumbles--

oh,

the failing

light. 

Wait.

Don't (who has

who has
twisted
you around like

who has
)

Don't. Not yet. Not

(who

so that in part-

ing

)

While there is still 

light (while those,  
le

stelle) while those

stars still shine

still (lucevan

)

into 

night

She 

shines (seashells) she turns
(on the seashore) she 
stops (seashells) she 
lingers

she (seashells)

winds her scarf

she sings

(le 

stelle) in
her sleep

Notes
Quotations are distortions of phrases from:
St. John of the Cross via Roland Barthes, Fragments d'un discours amoureux
Rilke's Eighth Duino Elegy, trans. Stephen Mitchell in The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, (New York: Vintage: 1984), 197 and
 Puccini, E lucevan le stelle, sung by Beniamino Gigli, 1938


Photos are from this album: "Taylor Head Barachois," http://www.flickr.com/photos/karincope/sets/72157629294954786/


This poem was my response to an exercise I set my Strategic Fictions class.  We read--and looked at--various love stories as models for our own writing.  I asked them to think about the following questions:


Why, when we think of love and writing, do we so often think of poetry?  Is it because poetry is a kind of writing where not simply each word, but each beat, each syllable, each space and line break count?  Poetry (and love) both call for precision it seems—and sometimes, though not always, an economy of gesture.  But perhaps we think of poetry and love together too, because what we wish of each is a delightful surprise of the ear.  And what do we reap? Often, too often, dissonance, boredom, waiting, rhythms utterly out of step…We also tend to repeat clichés, and others’ words, over and over. Is there a way, nevertheless, to make such suspensions, such repetitions, work?


I do not know if I have succeeded. But as I tell my students, what is most important is to try.

Time Changes

Another clear cold day. The sea is frozen out to the headland; a skim of brittle, pockmarked ice creeps up the beach with the tide, and the pond is solid again.  It snaps and groans and echoes in the cove, stretching and shifting beneath its closed skin.

The sun is high and bright and warm as it streams through the windows.  A time change today.  So early? I think. Already? 

I remember when it happened in May, the second Sunday in May, which was--or is my memory failing  me now?--also, often, Mother's Day. White or red carnations on everyone's breasts in church; white for those whose mothers had died, red for those whose mothers were still alive. Why then do I remember my own mother wearing a white carnation?

It couldn't have been so; her mother was still vibrant, active, a nearly daily force in our lives. We'd go see her later that day for a big supper, and play badminton in her back yard, careful not to trample her garden, the petunias velvety, nodding, colourful, like playful tiny faces. I always wanted to touch them.

May in Columbus, Ohio was sometimes cool, cooler than April--too cold for short skirts and knee socks--but spring was out full blast by then, the trees leafy, gardens in full bloom. And now and then it could even be hot.

I catch a whiff of the smell of freshly mown grass (a Saturday job in those days, not a Sunday one); I recall the wood stacked neatly in a sparse pile along one edge of our grandparents' backyard, everything clean and in good working order, neatly organized--not like at our house.  A sudden downpour, notes of spice and musk in the perfumes on my grandmother's dresser, bottles ranged and doubled on a mirrored tray.  Perhaps this is why I treasure the scent and colour of amber?  The ticking of the clocks; the cardinals at the birdfeeder; the large dial thermometer nailed to the maple tree.

Marike comes downstairs and opens the door.  Cool air streams into the house and I am suddenly back in Nova Scotia. Still, even here, the birds have begun to call and sing from the trees.  The last couple of days have been mild and everyone is expectant.  Spring will be here soon they say.

I find this funny.  I'm going on my nineteenth year in Canada, and I've grown used to waiting so long for the spring to come, that I hardly believe any of these signs.  I'm not sure winter has truly arrived yet--I keep waiting for it to get worse, for here, on the shore, March is the bitterest month; the time when the surface temperature of the sea reaches its nadir.

But perhaps, this year, we are already there.  Is this false hope brought about by an exceedingly early time change? What happened to bring it on so early? Or are my memories of my childhood faulty?  Even here the animals are already shedding, the birds singing, the ground muddy and earthy smelling. Two days ago we startled an otter in the marsh at high tide; it watched us through a hole in the ice, and then swam to another hole and popped up again and again, growling a little each time, before swimming out through the culvert and into the bay.

Perhaps the earth and these creatures know something I don't.  All along the shore streams rush and tumble into the water, sweeping away ice and stones and mud. The sap has been flowing all week too--a friend in Cape Breton is sugaring off.

I count the weeks: a bit more than a month of this term left.  I take a deep breath: relief--or oxygen--reaches all the way to my toes. Just then the ice on the pond flexes, hisses, growls; it sounds just like an enormous outdoor belly.  Hungry.  I am, too.

Images:


Birthday tulips--March 2012.


My mother sends me a snapshot of a vase of forsythia she's brought indoors and forced. An early March practice in Ohio, early May in Nova Scotia. Photo by Marcia Cope, St. Paris Ohio.

When Peace Tastes Like Hunger: A Raptor Fable

We're eating lunch when suddenly, in front of the house we notice a commotion. An eagle is hovering at the edge of the sea ice, diving, skimming the water, banking sharply, hovering again, its enormous wings beating the air.  It scoops the water with its beak, climbs sharply, drops suddenly, intent on its prey and oblivious to us, closer to the house than any eagle we've ever seen.

We see something thrashing in the water, what looks like a fish jumping, though the water just off of the point is so shallow no large fish could swim there.  Then we realize the prey is a seabird, a dovkie or black guillemot in its winter plumage--we've seen at least one of these around.  It snatches a breath of air, and dives under the water again; the eagle dares not follow it, but drops and swoops above the small bird, like a fighter jet. Dogging.  Terrorizing.

It looks as if this battle can end in just one way--the little bird thrashes a bit more each time it comes up for air. Then two crows converge on the eagle--like us, they've been drawn by his strange movements, his repeated rise and fall over the water. The eagle turns for a second or two, distracted by the crows as they fly past him, and the little bird whips itself into the air and flees, flanked by the crows.  They fly over our yard and the eagle will not follow, but banks and rises, circling to the east and out to the islands.

Hunting is hard in the season of ice.  Peace tastes like hunger.

Sobering to think this is also true for us, two-legged raptors plundering the earth. It's an uncomfortable thought as I watch events unfold in Egypt: demonstrators on one side, and an illegitimate regime backed by nearly two billion dollars a year of American military aid on the other.  Is that what the powerful believe too: peace tastes like hunger?  I watch for a miracle, for the arrival of canny crows.  They create their own problems, but we'll worry about that later.