On White Rock Beach

Autumn sun still hot on my back,
Turn at the stone bear, give his nose a pat.

Gull on one foot on the railroad track;
My naked feet relish fresh-cut lawn,
Bare toes ecstatic
avoid the cinder block promenade.

A couple walking, bird on his shoulder;
they are backlit by sun: Is it a crow?
I turn back after passing; I really must know.
A grey parrot cocks its head, says “Hello!”

The west point of land reaches into the sea:
like a horizontal ladder:
the pier underlines it perfectly,
every post visible against the evening-bleached sea.

Distant whistle: coming train shakes the track
Silvery monster rounds the bend and bears down,
looms and chuffs past,

Then the wailing whistle dwindles
Two red lights recede,
like buttons on the neat vest
of the rearmost car.

Never before, never again

Spring evening by the sea
the same as other days
yet not the same:

This bird,
this cloud,
this tree
never before never again.

Waves continuously lap the shore
soporific, rhythmic, eternal,
yet never precisely the same as before.

The sky, the clouds, the light
each moment of this unique dusk
approaching night.

Dear busy mind,
filled up with thoughts of times ahead,
of times behind.
Stand still now, in this perfect moment;
Be tranquil, make this moment mine.

Ode to the youth of Enver Creek School

Awaking, I considered what to write
To share with students of our nearby school.
Should I tell tales of poetry of yore
Or will they think this bard a doting fool?

What would they make of ancient verse and forms,
With lines that march like military men?
Each with its syllables so well-arranged
One weak, one strong, all adding up to ten.

What would I tell these youths about the Muse
Who sits and whispers in the ears of bards?
To ancient Greek this always was a man
And thus each woman from poetics barred.

How to describe each iamb as a foot?
Not foot that runs or kicks a basketball,
But mark of meter, sonorous, weak then strong
That carries listener with verse along.

What should I say of rhythm and of rhyme
These ancient pulses of the human heart
Predating even alphabets themselves
As round the campfire listeners took part?

The ancient poets used theatric form
To tell of ancient exploits of their men.
The military battles that they won
The animals they felled to feed the clan.

In memory ancients carried poetry
No written words could help them to recall
And yet they must tell tales that entertained
Must paint what others never saw at all.

Young poets of today have laxer rules
For working out the lines of poetry
Yet still old rhythms hold a sway of power
Still ancient rhymes march on their sonorous way.

And so I say to noble Enver youth
List to the Muse, pick up that errant pen.
The poets of the past stand not apart:
Go forth and carry on their ancient art.

Blue heron standing

Photo: Tigerhomes.org

Blue heron
stands alert,
white-headed,
black-cheeked

Blue heron
stands beside
dull gray-blue water

Blue heron, unmoving
framed by winter grass
bleached of all green
by cold and wet
grass turned the colour of ripened wheat.

Blue heron, hunched
stands on the dike
of the Serpentine Fen
in the fine grey mist of a wintry day.

Called to the bar

Image from criminal lawyers

"Hey, come and have a drink!"

When first I heard it, that was the image evoked by the strange phrase "called to the bar." I figured lawyers could afford a few drinks. But while working?

Later I thought it had to do with Temple Bar, an old gate into the City of London. Turns out it is marginally related, in the sense that the gate (the original was most likely a simple chain or bar, and thus the name) was next to and named for the Temple Law Courts.

Actually, the expression refers to a real bar that separates a special area of the courtroom reserved for members of the law. In the UK and Ireland, there are two types of lawyers.

Solicitors prepare cases and can only appear in lower courts, while Barristers, who serve in higher courts, wear wigs and generally look impressive behind the bar.

In English-speaking North America, Australia and New Zealand, where the judicial systems are derived from English Common Law, being called to the bar means completing the qualifications necessary to represent a client in court.

The Canadian, American, Australian and New Zealand Bar Associations represent the profession collectively, also known as the Bar. The parallel UK organization is the Bar Council.

Just to clarify: if the cellphone rings and your buddy invites you to the neighbourhood pub for a drink, you have NOT been called to the bar.

Emerge launch coming up at SFU Woodward

Photo: Bird photo by Sean Doe, cover design by Claudia Vergara Silva

We're about to emerge. Since January, I have been privileged to take part in the wonderful Writer's Studio program at Simon Fraser University. Now our time together with fellow writers and workshop compadres is drawing to a close.

To celebrate what we've learned about our craft and showcase our new work, we are celebrating the launch of the annual TWS anthology. Writers and readers of the region, we invite you to celebrate with us. Hope to see you there:

emerge 2011 Launch and Reading
October 22nd -- 8pm
Room 2555, World Art Centre
SFU WOODWARDS
149 West Hastings (entrance on Cordova St.)

Please RSVP by completing this online form For more information, check The Writer's Studio site at SFU.

"There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail"

Image from appstate.edu

The words are from Tennyson's poem "Ulysses." When I wrote them out in watercolour paint and pinned them on my bedroom wall at seventeen, I understood them as metaphor for life beckoning. I had no clear idea who Ulysses was, and thought of Troy as a mythical location, lying somewhere in that hazy country, the past.

I little dreamed that one day I would walk over the vast ruins of that layered city with my husband, in his own country. Nor did I imagine that one day our daughter, then the same age I was when I read the poem in school, would take part in a theatre production of The Trojan Women at her high school, the Langley Fine Arts.

I'd never have imagined how that production would me, that watching two young casts perform the ancient play by Euripides, my face was soaked with tears both times. How could I have foreseen my daughter at seventeen as a convincing Cassandra, or how well her young friends would portray roles so far beyond their innocent ken. It was a revelation to see a seventeen-year-old play the widowed queen Hecuba and to be so deeply engaged by a sixteen-year-old Andromache, the bereaved wife and mother who must face such appalling horror as this tragedy shows.

My initial departure from that port referred to by the wanderer Ulysses portrayed in Tennyson's poem has taken me far, and part of the distance I've covered has returned me to a deeper understanding of Ulysses and Troy, and all those words imply.

A mere hundred years ago, the Irish bard James Joyce created a mythical Ilium in Dublin, his adventurer Bloom the modern Ulysses. And still the horizon beckons; the wind still puffs the sails.