My sources*

On the Black Sea lies Trebizond,
where black market enchanters ply
fair breezes for a fair price, 
so my sources are quick to tell me. 

There, sailors in the doldrums,
and other ancient mariners, 
roam Turkic streets at dawn, 
seek magic Greeks in doorways 
for a small pouch of zephyrs,
or better, a knotted cord, 
the better to loose a great gale 
upon the dormant waves. 

Land-bound limeys, too, 
idling on the Isle of Man, 
my sources are quicker to relate, 
get their supply from witches
who, for a small premium, 
in defiance of local law, 
tap holy wells for a waft waiting,
or an ever tempting tempest. 

What, then, for this old salt 
an ocean and continent away? 
No market here for a draft, 
no pushers peddling mythic gusts 
down the docks and alleys of this 
west coast down town east side.  
At best (and at no charge), 
a tepid Chinook will grace 
my cheek, will goad a glacier 
to thaw, then flow.
Not quite what my sources 
urge me to desire—
their words kinetic 
and blowing through me.

——
*Another one of my sources, The Towers of Trebizond, a novel by Rose Macaulay (1956), which I am currently reading.  

The juice box 

Thank you for coming. You’ve been selected as a representative of your community. Our research aims at developing tools that enhance the public's online experience, especially when using direct messaging and social network platforms. We monitor all the current trends in order to ensure maximum relevance. Your first task is to play a word association game. 

For each of the following, what word first comes to mind? Don’t hesitate, just say it out loud. 

   1. Star of David 

   2. menorah 

   3. beaver 

   4. bagel

   5. Vulcan salute 

   6. juice box  

   7. dollar bill 

   8. maple leaf

   9. nose 

   10. olive branch

   11. kite

   12. cross 

   13. bar of soap 

   14. hockey 

Thank you for participating. Your aggregated responses help us build out our emoji dictionary for greater responsiveness. By giving users as many options as possible, with algorithms that determine which emojis receive priority for each individual, we can continue to meet client needs. 

Here are some preliminary results for linked terms:

Entry: Canada / Canadian

1.    beaver 🦫
2.    maple leaf 🍁 🇨🇦
3.    hockey 🏒

Entry: Christian / Christianity 

1.    cross ✝️ 

Entry: Jew / Jewish   

1.	Star of David ✡️ 🇮🇱 
2.	menorah 🕎
3.	bagel 🥯 
4.	Vulcan salute 🖖 
5.	juice box 🧃
6.	dollar bill 💵 
7.	nose 👃
8.	olive branch 🕊️ 
9.	kite 🪁  
10.	bar of soap 🧼 

Entry: Israel / Israeli  
     same as above, minus the olive branch 

Entry: Zionism / Zionist
     same as above, minus the olive branch 

Acknowledgements: Many thanks to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the government of Qatar for the funding, Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens for their invaluable guidance and the students and professors who stepped forward at Concordia (QC) and Columbia (NY) universities, without whose participation this project would not be possible. 

poppies and marigolds 

by the side of the road 

I’ll be out again tomorrow

marry Mary Gold 

marry gold

marigold gold 

a stash a splash 

a mash a clash 

a rash dash colour bash 

Poetry reading minus Nude on a Leopard Skin 

Poetry reading on Zoom,
free and open to all, 
minus Beryl Cook's 
Nude on a Leopard Skin 
(there being no wall), 
the host, five readers 
and forty odd audience,
ready to begin—
aside from me,
women all . . .
     
it happens then, 
a reader notices, says,
say, where are all the men?
You’re right, another says,
so I raise my virtual hand. 
It's a shame, I say, there's  
no Nude on a Leopard Skin  
on this virtual wall,
but aside from that, I,
I for one, am surely a man . . .
     
oh, there you are,
we missed you on the screen. 
Thank you, she says, alan,
reading my name, 
relieved I’ve been seen, 
   I'm certain,
as if I, minus 
Nude on a Leopard Skin,
am all the men . . .

the distance: I know

that the river is mighty
   mightier still beneath still air 
      that the booms rise
and fall   				
            barely perceptible
that you inhabit the youthful snap 
of your limbs—        
       take the dare down the lengths
from here to the shimmer out there

that the lacquer-slick logs 
      glint like amber in the sun
          a corrugated interlude     
              on their journey 
   from slash to plumb      
                 fell to finish 
      yet undone
                                 		
that with each nimble step 
   you know the give 
      the spring    
the intimate grip 
   of toes to rubber     
rubber to wood     
      in your bid for perpetual     
      balance and motion 
         to dance always 
above the imminent— 
the pull the muddy rip
   tide of life

and what happens next
that you spin and slip 
    down and between 
the instant gap 
    a cedar tomb slamming shut
and after an eternity 
    of no light
       again scrapes open
that the murk never 
rushed your gullet
   never filled your lungs    
the shimmering white light 
                     your eyes 
    for I exist 
       am here    
and you are there     
         in the distance still
my father

the lesson 

the wind out there is wild, son
it gives the sky a churn
the sea too, and our rough shore
 
but those waves
they never stop
 
make of your arms a cradle, son
feel me as I stomp
like the surf each dawn 
when we awake
 
the waves
in time beat on
 
just your thumb, an open G
let's rock to a steady strum
let the strings resound as one
 
while the waves
out there still pound
 
place fingers on the frets, son
first and second, pointer and ring
move from open to C
 
for the waves crash
and never do they hush
 
hush, my son, hear that cadent thrum—
beneath it all, the heart’s tidal turn
a lesson never done
 
so waves, beat on and sing
beat on, son, beat on . . .

spotted a spotted 

towhee today 

hiding not hidden 

mating cranes synchronized 

synchronize mating calls—

female two male one 

female two

   and mention I must

mother mallards

make marvellous models

of maternal management

enter stage right

a lone heron 

onto an unbounded sea

“Equity” 
(for Henry Nowak, 2008-2026)

"A culture that confuses empathy with mercy will always sacrifice the silent to the loud." —Catholic Frequency 

words—
   standing for 
   the P&C mission
   of achieving 
   holistic 
   (holier than) 
      Equity 
   which requires
   always
   obeisance 
   to differential care
   sometimes
   (inevitably)
   bathed in blood
the words—
   spoken by the police 
      authority kneeling
      unto itself
   as the boy lay prone 
   handcuffed 
   unable to pray 
          (it requires breath)
a dagger to the heart

Nevada desert

Marilyn learning her lines

unforgettable

offscreen Marilyn

reads Heinrich Heine

I’d better get busy

eyes smile hands

chase after her words

talking with a lonely girl

Hunters in the Snow 

In the histories of hockey, 
there's scant mention 
of Bruegel's men 
home from the hunt. 
But follow their path, 
the line of trees down 
to the frozen expanse, 
and look closely: 
the townspeople are at play,
three leaning into long sticks
with familiar curves. 
They are too far off
for the gallery to hear 
the thrust and scrape of spears,
yet what else could the men 
be dreaming of? 
They've trudged long,
daylight lingers,
and the fire at the inn can wait.
Time now to glide like a bird—
there’s one, it cuts 
across the icy grey 
of the early evening sky. 

slope of eaves
the moon rolling down
back again tomorrow

lyingontopofabuilding
storeys upon storeys
vertical vehicles 

window as aperture
how to shutter 
blinds bricks 
wisteria 

On learning my first real word of Japanese aside from kimono, tsunami, kamikaze, karaoke, sayonara, sushi, sukiyaki, futon, sake, karate, origami, bonsai, haiku and zen

Before I speak 
hello, thank you, goodbye—
before I make a word, 
a phrase, do its real work, 
bridge the ocean, shift 
the quotidian—
I learn of the alien 
heart lodged in the back 
of my throat: three sharp, 
bursts of frog music:

  ko      ko      ro       

                          ko-ko-ro 
      
                 kokoro

   こころ

	 	                      心 

the word an experiment in the flow 
of foreignness, bodiless and free-
floating, a broken, 
nocturnal migration
across choppy waters: 
how the sounds repel, 
relent, then gather sense;
how my home and native 
heart-land—eroded, reclaimed—
again aspires to quicken, 
re-signify the world; how all 
my constellations, tremors 
of my body, waves 
from a distant shore, continue 
to crash and ebb.

in the old warehouse district

it’s raining parasols

while we sit waiting 

for the sun to shine

iguanas perched on her head 

bicorn like an old admiral’s headdress

her claim to a higher rank

playground of smooth white cement

and tiled walls—a stall

for children and rain 

to easily pass through

The woollen rug

On a woven landscape, the day opens.
Where my eye alights is where I am,
Is what I carry, is what I hold onto.
       
My mother rescues me from the night. 
Bedstead, a woollen rug stretching to the window.
On a woven landscape, the day opens.

Light fills the room; the day brightens.
Shadows of the night, like shifting clouds,
Are what I carry, what I hold onto.

With the light, the wool brings its colour, shapes.
My gaze cannot but stay. 
The day opens on a woven landscape.  

Prospects of a new school, Christmas. 
I see the shapes of both from my window. 
Both I carry, both I hold onto. 

One with dread, the other, rare delight. 
My mother cannot quite see where I am, cannot rescue. 
The long day closes on a woven landscape,
What I carry, what I hold onto.


***

Playing solitaire 
per a scene from The Manchurian Candidate 1962 

Two soldiers, Laurence Harvey
and Frank Sinatra, walk into a bar. 
It's no joke, here at Jilly’s on 52nd St., 
owned by Jilly Rizzo, Frank’s old friend, 
as if the scene is happening in real life. 

So just as in real life, the bartender
is telling stories to small groups of customers, 
and at one point in a story about a guy 
who never wins at poker, he says, 
Why don't you pass the time 
by playing a little solitaire? *
So Sgt. Laurence Harvey promptly asks 
for a deck of cards and starts playing. 
And when he turns over the Queen of Diamonds
   (not Hearts, mind you!),
he thinks of his conniving mother, 
and he hears the bartender saying, 
Why don't you go and take yourself a cab
and go up to Central Park and go jump in the lake?* 
So, with his mind mind-controlled, 
and Maj. Frank Sinatra in mad pursuit, 
Laurence rushes to the street, hails a cab
and takes himself to the lake in Central Park, 
where he runs onto a short pier 
and jumps straight in. 
And there, waist deep, he stands—  
until Frank arrives to pull him out. 

But never mind the war,
the impossible that transpired.
I am re-minded: every day 
in the city—bars, buses, bistros—
people hear people talk, 
talking to other people, 
telling stories, stories upon stories. 
And it’s only a matter of when—
those who play solitaire will turn
over their own cards—King, Queen, 
Joker, Ace—the one 
that will lead them through 
the streets and the park 
and onto the pier, there 
to find release in the cold 
and waiting waters
of the lake. 

----------------------
*dialogue from The Manchurian Candidate, screenplay by George Axelrod

One star
I just assumed when the sun went down, it popped back up as the moon.—comedian, Chelsea Handler, on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon

The sun goes down at end of day, 
and at night, like Batman, becomes the moon.
So she believed well into adult life. 
Until at forty, one sweltering African afternoon,
she saw in the sky both at once.

Aside from what didn’t happen for her at school,
had she ever wondered why a star 
would enter phases only after dark, 
not wane or wax each day, or how far 
away the light must go, or where it is from?

Hard to believe, but I get it, I do. 
I mean, who doesn’t know what the night
can bring: it’ll douse the flame, leave 
an ember; shave a sliver of the bright, 
engulf it whole, but never wholly out. 

For that, I presume, is where she lives:
like most of us, in a cycle of loss and new hope,
where light is both magic and certainty:
orbit of Aristotle, Zou Yan, Aquinas, Pope—
the unmoved mover, 
yin and yang, 
and whatever is, is right*. 

———————————————
*from An Essay on Man, by Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

Sub-urban prayer

The last thing I noticed about the man 
in the little plaza with a fountain 
in front of the local library 
was how, when he sat down on a bench, 
his pant legs rode up to reveal 
not just socks, which looked to be 
of a thick grey wool, but also, 
now protruding, a layer beneath—
that is, the bottoms  
of a second pair of trousers. 

Before that, with the book 
he was clutching, not reading, 
his eyes fixed on the fountain’s 
rhythmic pulse, rising and falling, 
he was just another library patron  
out for some sunshine, 
one small difference being
his ensemble—suit, tie, Oxfords—
all together slightly rumpled, 
but not overly so, making him appear, 
on that sunny suburban Saturday afternoon,
somewhat overdressed, not to say eccentric. 

I did not expect he would be 
crossing my mind that evening—if at all, 
no more than an idle thought, say,
whether the book he was holding 
was one I might read, too,
that we might share an interest, 
or what he might have seen 
in the waters of the fountain, 
nothing much more that, 
certainly not to find myself 
returning in wonder—to wonder 
how far we each must walk 
on our own winding paths, 
and how tenuously touched 
we each might be
by the thing nearest grace. 

hey!

I rip out my lung 
shout again, shout hey!
but none can hear
not the idle on the pier
the swaying yachts
a tanker stopped 
beyond the rocks
horizon hung

hey! I shout hey!
take me away away
from this one more day
this routine dream 
of all that seems
take me to sea to see
what depths beyond can be
no matter how good my life 
   today no strife
a somewhere part of me 
yearns for a would a could 
another good should
alternate history

while all the while 
whispering hey to me
(me on this shore wanting 
wanting more)
hey you, to you 
the ocean deep is empty 
men and vessels stay and go
none are there to bring you out
none to share all you know—
naught but the echo of your shout