How beautiful the snow blasted world

Snow falls quietly at twilight
gathering flakes whisper as they hit the window

How beautiful the snow blasted world. 

After dinner the snow stops falling and the dog and I go out to walk the territory. The moon glows faintly behind a scrim of clouds; clumps of snow cling to every branch and bush and the tops of the flattened grasses.  The apple trees thrust their branches at the sky like so many gnarled and knobby fists; there's a gaping hole where the barn door has blown off--better call for help to fix that one. 

We circle the gardens, step through the weeds to the pond's edge, where a fallen tree covered in snow casts strange shadows on the ice.  No footprints but ours anywhere to be seen. 

We walk along the dyke at the sea edge, each rose hip a huge ball of snow on a spindly branch. There's just enough wind that we can hear the water ripping and rushing into the shore and out again.

The wind is biting. It nips my cheek, hurries the dog to the door, slips through the stitching in my gloves to freeze my fingers. But I'm not ready to go in yet.

Clouds scud across the sky.  I look out over the grey water towards the islands, invisible in the darkness, then turn to scrape off the cars and clear the drive in front of the garage, savouring the sharpness of the air, stamping my feet to keep them warm.  Why must every pair of boots leak? Time to goop them up again.

I am remembering one night when I was about nine. The snow had been falling all evening. The streets were quiet and huge drifts covered the yard.  My siblings and I were sure that when our mother came into the room, she was going to tell us to get ready for bed. It's time, she said, pausing as we started to moan, then all in a rush--to get your coats on and go play in the snow! Shrieking with delight, we tumbled out into the darkness and the drifts, the world magical and thick with surprise and permission. 

It wasn't until I moved to Montreal and learned to cross-country ski twenty years after that--and more than twenty years ago--setting out across the fields of the Chateauguay Valley beneath a full moon, that falling snow occasioned such delight and anticipation again. But now it does.  

I watch the snow mount up higher and higher and hope the thermometer drops, rather than rises, so that I can ski across the bog, over top of the little lakes and streams, the sheepskill and the insect-eating pitcher plants onto the bushy ledges where the coyotes circle and sing.  There, I'll clamber up to a point where I can stand and look out at the sea rolling unimpeded over the horizon; from there, it rolls all the way to Spain. 

I can only ever get to that place on skis, when the bog is frozen and overlaid with deep snow.  How glorious it will be if that's what tomorrow brings.

Notes
Photos taken 3 January 2017 in West Quoddy, Nova Scotia

Sounds of things you cannot hear

Snow falling on a doe's nose;
twitch of the hairs that line her ears; how
our nervous eyebeams cross and stutter; when
spindrift flurries smash and drop.

Otter prints at the water's edge;
taste of grass beneath the pines;
flank's quiver, heart's thump, and the
sudden savour of coyote paws.

Hunger marches across the pond, by
rabbit trails and pheasant scratchings
crouches near the slouching rushes, where
come night, some creature sleeps.

Somewhere a doe is always watching--
fluttering startle, tail flicker, flattened grass and trampled snow.

This poem--really an exercise--was suggested by what seemed to me to be a found poem in Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods (2008).  In explaining "why the young (and the rest of us) need nature," and what he means by "coming to our senses," Louv recounts a game played by Janet Fout, an environmental activist, with her daughter Julia. "As they wandered through the woods, they would listen for 'the sounds they could not hear:'

sap rising
snowflakes forming and falling
sunrise
moonrise
dew on the grass
a seed germinating
an earthworm moving through the soil
cactus baking in the sun
mitosis
an apple ripening
feathers
wood petrifying
a tooth decaying
a spider weaving its web
a fly being caught in the web
a leaf changing colors
a salmon spawning"

even, "after the conductor's baton ceases to rise" (76-7).

It seemed to me that certain emotions or states, too, like love, fear,  hope, hunger, desire, sleepiness, sadness, wariness and even joy were very often first seen or experienced as if without or below the threshold of audible sound. Likewise, we tend to treat vision, taste and touch as more or less silent sensuous attributes. Still, as my experience of being eye to eye with deer through a pane of glass testifies, looking is not really noiseless, even if we cannot hear one another. It is rather, like so many other things, comprised of sounds we cannot or can hardly hear. What for example is the sound of feeling nervous? Or the impossibly slow trickling onset of spring?

These last dark days

Snow on ice the day after Christmas. We go for a walk and everything is quiet; just one car passes on the road. Our boots crunch against the cold snow; a spring burbles up out of the earth and rushes, ice free, beneath the trees. Silence: the snow has muffled the tinkling of the ice covered branches as the trees sway under their heavy loads. All day we are in twilight. And then night falls, and with it more snow.

Talking Turkey

We saw them for the first time yesterday afternoon, large dark forms bobbing uphill beneath the trees, their tails dragging through the snow.  Birds of some sort.  We got out Peterson's Field Guide to Eastern and Central North American Birds and tried to match the trailing forms to the pictures in the book: quail? grouse? They looked like turkeys, but were they big enough? We argued back and forth--they did't have red heads or obvious wattles; were they bald or not? Did they have stripes? They kept their distance from us and disappeared over the hill behind the house. Spruce grouse, we thought, but then last night I kept thinking, that body form, it looks like an African guineafowl, without the spots.

This morning they were back, clustered under the birdfeeder, chickadees fluttering over their heads. Marike called me out of my bath, and Elisabeth and I crowded at the window with our cameras.

Turkeys, for sure. Those tiny bald blue heads we'd seen on the guajolotes in Mexico, the pink legs and three-toed feet, the enormous breasts and fantails.  We checked Peterson's Field Guide again just to be sure. Yes, there they were, Mealeagris gallopavo, "bronzy iridescent body; barred wings." They seemed to be females, eleven in all.

At first the turkeys watched us carefully and ran away each time we shadowed the window with our cameras. But then they got braver and approached the house again, clustering around a near bush at the back, scratching away the snow. One or two even looked up and peered back at us, eye to curious eye.  Where had they come from? I started looking up stories on turkeys.

Turns out they sleep in the trees, although it's rare ever to see them there.  They were named by Europeans who saw them in North America and thought they resembled the guineafowl seen sometimes in Turkey (my association with African Guineafowl wasn't so daft after all, or, perhaps more precisely, no more daft than many other Eurocentric associations and geographical mistakes starting with the discovery of indians in the Carribean), domesticated in Mexico (the Mexican name, guajolote comes from the Nahuatl word, huexólotl, or "big monster"), and imported to Spain and thence to England and the rest of Europe in the 16th century. Wild turkeys, however, range throughout the Americas, and are once again roaming the forests in North America, after near extermination in the early 20th Century.

There you have it, my turkey talk. Now to go find one for Christmas supper.

Which we did, immediately after lunch--we drove to Aliments d'antan ("food the way it used to be") in Knowlton, Quebec and got a lovely 18 pound turkey, cleaned and plucked and ready for stuffing (not exactly d'antan, but that's okay).  And then on the way home, as we were slipping up the hill in 4-wheel drive in deep wet snow, we saw a wild turkey perched in the branches of fir tree. Proof positive they can fly.

On the etymology of "talking turkey"

"Talking turkey" is an expression that seems to have originated in the United States in the colonial period.  Michael Quinion, cider maker and etymologist extraordinaire explains that

"the meaning of the phrase seems to have shifted down the years. To start with it meant to speak agreeably, or to say pleasant things; nowadays it usually refers to speaking frankly, discussing hard facts, or getting down to serious business. The change seems to have happened because to “talk turkey” was augmented at some point in the nineteenth century to “talk cold turkey”, with the modern meaning. In the course of time it was abbreviated again, with the shorter form keeping the newer meaning. (The other meaning of “cold turkey” is unrelated.)

The most prosaic answer is that the “to talk pleasantly” sense came about through the nature of family conversation around the Thanksgiving dinner table. It is also suggested that it arose because the first contacts between Native Americans and settlers often centred on the supply of wild turkeys, to the extent that Indians were said to have enquired whenever they met a colonist, “you come to talk turkey?”.

Quinion then goes on to tell a version of story about the origin of the phrase that apparently first appeared in Niles Weekly Register (NY) on June 3, 1837. He doesn't find that story very convincing or satisfactory (not getting satisfaction is in part what the story is about), but for what it is worth, here it is, apparently as printed in 1837:

"Talking turkey," "as we understand it," means to talk to a man as he wants to be talked to, and the phrase is thus derived. An Indian and a white man went a shooting in partnership and a wild turkey and a crow were all the results of the day's toil. The white man, in the usual style of making a bargain with the Indian proposed a division of the spoils in this way: "Now Wampum, you may have your choice: you take the crow, and I'll take the turkey; or, if you'd rather, I'll take the turkey and you take the crow." Wampum reflected a moment on the generous alternative thus offered, and replied - "Ugh! you no talk turkey to me a bit." 

This story makes me want to propose a new definition: "talking turkey" is a rhetorical ploy and is always political; it's what the lying party (settler) says they're going to do when they're about to try to trick another (first inhabitant, citizen) into giving up the goods, as in "The World Trade Organization is all about talking turkey" or "Banks have a new policy of talking turkey with citizens when they say 'give us your money and we'll keep it safely.'" In other words, no matter what they say, "talking turkey" is all about lying.

Fall into fall--a month of days

Sunday, Quoddy
It is another warm, sunny brilliant day. Clouds rush westward overhead, a northerly wind rifles the blue water of the bay, and the drying grasses on the nearby hills glow golden in the sunlight. The air is clear, each colour sharp; every needle of the pines is distinct against the sky.

Wednesday, Halifax
Leaves and flowers gather in the bottom of my teacup; outside, the rain falls, scattering yellow leaves on the street.

Thursday, Halifax to Quoddy
With the rain comes a sudden surge of warmth and then fog, clouds of the thick white stuff blanket the highway as we head east.  The trees along the road glow in the dim light: red, orange, yellow, deep piney green. The ribbon of asphalt disappears into the mist. I take pleasure in the colours in even this narrow horizon, the succession of spaces--houses darkened in the rain, the glimmer of a lake, a strip of tidewater meandering through the marsh grass, a sudden flare of yellow and orange as we pass a small stand of maples.

Friday, Quoddy
The sky a bruised blue above a silvergrey sea, the air warm and damp. It could go on like this all day, or any minute now, pour rain.

Saturday, Quoddy
The moon rises, yellow globe above a still sea gone to black. Soon the moon will drop behind the clouds on the horizon, and both lights, the one in the water and the one in the sky, will wink out.

Rain tomorrow, but today, yellow leaves, red fruits on the ash, clothing flapping on the line, northwest wind rifling the blue sea. Scent of woodsmoke as we walk up the road.

Saturday, Quoddy
Today sun, a northwest wind, cool air. Suddenly it is profound autumn. This week I've exchanged blankets for eiderdowns, added an undershirt when I dress in the mornings, dug out the wool socks and gloves and scarves.  In the mornings, headed to school, I passed small groups huddled in winter coats at the bus stop.

Sunday, Quoddy
I stare out at the clouds and grey sea and remember the sensation of waking in the night to hear the wind and the rain pelt the house, the sudden snap of lightening, the distant rumble of thunder in the darkness.

Thursday, Quoddy
A hard frost last night, temperatures below 0; a white rime still lines the wall along the drive and the puddles are frozen over. Ice at the back of the ponds, frost on roof and grass and fallen leaves. It melts and drips from the studio eaves, from the needles of the Mugo pines, turns the porch slick. My fingers are cold.

The apples have fallen from the trees, deer droppings lie all about and moles and voles have dug little hole throughout the yard. Ash berries glow red against the sky; leaves still cling to a handful to trees--the oaks, the sycamore, the hedge maple.

Saturday, Halifax
It is a cool grey November morning--bare branches form a chaotic lacework against the sky, clusters of yellow leaves flutter in the wind, sodden flattened cardboard litters the alley, and condensation forms on the storm windows. This week we had to put the heat on; the furnace rattles in this little house and heat whooshes through the ducts. Those few people in the streets huddle into their jackets. The cold damp seeps into my bones, aches.

Wednesday, Halifax
Snow yesterday. Not much, but just enough in the early evening to cling to rooftops and car windows when I emerged from my office, where I'd been sequestered all afternoon, oblivious. now a cold morning, the sky clearing, condensation blocking out the view. I turn up the heat and start to boil water for tea, but then climb back into bed under the covers to wait for the room to warm.

 

If you had wings

If you had wings, what would you do with them?

I would fly out to the ice edge and see who passes there, what the hooded mergansers fish.
I would watch snow melt in the sea.
I would fly to the hilltop and watch the sun rise over all 72 islands in the Baie des Isles.
The eagle and I would meet in an updraft and I would stare him down:
         my current, my space; I'm here: don't bother me now.
         Go find your own air.
That settled, I would carry on.

Notes
This poem, if it is a poem (perhaps it is a draft for a poem), emerged out of an exercise that I gave a writing class a couple of years ago; it is based on a poem entitled "Wings" by Susan Stewart. One of my favourite poems--up there with Neruda's Estravagario and his Book of Questions, Stewart's poem is an interview based upon the question, "if you could have wings would you want them?"  I changed the question slightly, and then, of course, had to try to answer it myself.

(For some English translations of some of Neruda's poems see http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Spanish/Neruda.htm)

April Sunday Morning / moods in falling snow

Risen from the blindness of sleeping to dull light of morning.
Shadows flare and blur. When I find my glasses: sudden sharp edges.
Fat snowflakes gathering in clusters bomb by the windows--
Oh why get up; just let me close my eyes.
But the dog wants breakfast and the fire must be lit, so I stand up.
Waves swarm the harbour and rush into land--
this battle will be lost. Gritty foam scatters on the beach, 
clings to stone, tumbles end over end.
Lately I'm hearing voices as if
the radio's half un-plugged.
There's this song that someone is singing
in a language I can't understand.
In the newspaper, rows of North Korean children holding red scarves.
No one mentions hunger, just missiles, thermonuclear threat, diplomatic talks.
Crows cackle in the snow, but the sparrows do not sing.

Notes
Nearly every day for a period of years, Robert Lowell wrote at least one blank verse sonnet--fourteen lines of dense thought and rhythm, without any rhyme. I break more rules here--hardly following the sonnet form at all (I am a much less able poet than he)-- but do begin with a variation on one of his opening lines, from "Blizzard in Cambridge" (first published in Notebook 1967-8). My title, of course, echoes Wallace Stevens' "Sunday Morning," a long poem built of eight 15-line stanzas. The second part of the title, "moods in falling snow," is a line from that poem.  And for any line that begins, "Lately I....," I am indebted, of course, to Amira Baraka, whose "Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note" resonates forever.

Pictures were shot through a plastic bag in damp weather, in Marie Joseph and the Liscombe River, on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia.

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.

Nothing lasts

12 April 2013

Bare branches sweep the sky
sunlight scatters shadow
the radio speaks of snow

Yellow coltsfoot splits a stone
blasted wood slivers, rots
nothing stays, nothing lasts

not 
this cold, not 
this wind, not
that streak of cloud.   

Notes

Photos were taken in Beaver Harbour and Port Dufferin today, before the clouds moved in. The overnight forecast is for 15 centimeters of snow.