September? Already?
It's true. You've run as fast as you could, but time is always quicker, and the ninth month has finally caught up to you and commanded you to get back to work.
So, this Poetry Friday, we bid a fond adieu to August and look into the belly of the beast that is September.
And what better way to look forward than to look back? At least, that's the sense we get from Stewart Coles' haunting, enigmatic, elegiac "What September Swallows" (from Questions in Bed).
Friday, August 31, 2018. The last day of the month, and while it is not technically the last day of summer, it certainly feels like the end of something.
And we hate endings. Particularly the endings of very warm seasons.
So today, this last Poetry Friday of August, feel free to pour yourself a glass of your favourite beverage, head on outside, and say goodbye to the month with George Sipos' "August" (from Anything but the Moon).
At 3:00 a.m. you pee, let the cat in,
and realize you've left
the water running in the garden.
Is it worse to have forgotten,
or to know that this late in the summer
it matters little either way?
On hot afternoons years ago
you threw a ball against
the back of the house for hours at a time
till your father yelled to stop or the bricks would come loose and
the wall collapse.
It didn't of course (though
who knows whether the house
still stands) but the point was
that anything, however unlikely,
was thinkable then — the ball
going thunk against brick,
coming back to you.
Above the rows of yellowed pea-vines
droplets rise from the sprinkler,
lose momentum,
fall.
Year
after year
you plant a garden, then lose interest.
Night after night
the cat
scratches at the screen.
you let her in.
Don't ask us why — you probably wouldn't like the answer anyway — but this Poetry Friday, we're fascinated by the lyric poems of subterranean lurkers. We honestly didn't think we'd unearth any, but what do you know? Goose Lane publishes a vast amount of really interesting work.
Granted, today's poem is not exactly a poem of the CHUDs (Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, look it up), but rather an ode to their unique perspective on life and society. Still, though... mole people!
So today, this Poetry Friday, dim the lights and entertain yourself with Peter Norman's weird and wonderful "The Mole Men of Zug Break Into Song" (from the gun that starts the race).
We don't pay enough attention to our appliances. Their thoughts, their feelings. We take them for granted, and when they break down, we cast them aside like...well, like broken appliances, really.
Today, that attitude ends!
This Poetry Friday, please settle back and enjoy New Brunswick poet Sue Sinclair's strange and original "The Refrigerator" (from Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada).
Then give your nearest appliance a hug.
It's life is longer
than you ever guessed;
it has travelled further
from what it knows. At night
it looks through the window
to its distant
relatives, the stars. They hum
to one another. Discuss
concepts of time
we don't understand.
When you come home
in the afternoon, it listens
to your troubles, the celibate
friend to whom you confide
everything, steadfast, the eternal
roommate whose sexless,
guileless life is comfort.
You never know how it longs
for intelligent conversation,
can't wait for you
to sleep so it can think
of something besides the lemon
hardening at the bottom
of the crisper. But it has learned
patience.
With a certain grace, a swimmer
waiting for the plunge. Solid,
rectangular, it faces the world
without regrets. It keeps
to itself, won't sleep
on the end of your bed,
but it watches. Reliable,
dependable. The habits
of an introvert: it knows when
to turn itself on and off.
Happy belated New Brunswick Day!
Yes, belated. The day was celebrated proper in these here parts on Monday, August 6, so this post is four days late. Yet Poetry Friday always falls on a Friday, so never the twain shall meet. You can't argue against the laws of time and space and provincial holidays.
Anyways, let us celebrate, however late, our lovely landscape with the work of New Brunswick poet Elizabeth Brewster and her poem "Where I Come From" (from Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada).
