Dépanneur

On the way back from the (maybe
metaphoric) market, your arms
are monkey-long, your shoulders
pulled to the ground by laden bags

(the endless recycling of matter),
and the street just a little too
long on this winter afternoon,
half-sinking into its shadow.

Maybe you're walking and thinking
of other market days (always
abreast with the morning sun)
when others gladly pulled your weight,

or maybe you are just dodging
the sidewalk traps of slushy snow
(that right boot has been capricious),
under the weak glow of street light.

But then you happen to look up,
and George -- his face a question mark --
in white overalls, through the glass
lifts two thumbs above the apples,

waiting for an answer, and not
maybe but certainly your smile
lets it all go, waves it away,
and buries it under the snow.


George says the rubber band keeps his sleeve from getting too dirty.

Doing Laundry with Beethoven

It's the little motions -

stretching an arm to peg
a long-sleeved shirt on the line,

leaning against the wall
to let someone pass,

lowering the kettle
silently to the stove

(Adagio from "Emperor"
hanging in the air) -

that carry the weight
of the day and prove
that we are here, now.

Words to Send

I pick them like my father picks
vegetables at the market:
he walks, and looks, and touches,
smells, and knocks (for a watermelon),
then purchases the best offer,
hands full of morning goodness.

One of the traditionally
empty-handed, I at least
pick and gather words, carefully,
those abandoned, long-faced words
left for later, then forgotten;
I assemble them and send them

to addresses while we're still here,
and make those who've forgotten
remember.

How You Know You're All Right

A four-step protocol:

1. You wake up, and remember where you are. It helps to look out of the window - the first thing your eyes focus on when they open - and see the tops of fir trees swaying. This, your brain quickly calculates, is the place you came to a long time ago, and spent several cycles of winter and summer (winters always longer than summers), the place where you learned how to live far away, the place you are visiting now, with a bank of fond memories, and an awareness that you have changed (probably because the place has remained so loyally the same). A wave of warm fuzziness comes over you from finding yourself in that positive-nostalgia higher ground.

2. Then you become aware that your body is not alone in trying to generate enough heat on this north-eastern winter morning: there is another body close by, still in deep sleep, radiating peacefulness in a steady rhythm. You think of all the warm bodies you shared a bed with (not necessarily lovers but any bodies which, for various reasons, shared the duvet and that otherworldly night bond with you). You begin to feel cozy all over, snug in the folds of your own life.

3. While swinging out your pyjamad legs from underneath the plentiful covers your hosts piled up on you the night before, your glance falls upon a tiny, chewed-up teddy bear lying on the carpet: one of Mayu's "babies." Mayu has about three of these babies, all very similarly chewed up; she keeps carrying them from one room to another and leaving them in secure places where she plays with them, usually when no humans are around. Distrustful and cautious, Mayu kept at a distance when we arrived, and while intrigued by all the new smells that invaded the guest room, she made sure we knew that she knew that we didn't belong there. Looking at her teddy-bear baby at your feet, you realize (without any second thoughts) the grandness of this gesture: an offering of trust and a welcome by the wary animal.

4. When you stand up and take the first step into the new day, you turn and happen to see the last few seconds of the glimmering sunlight, dancing soundlessly in a bright patch on the wall facing the window. In the next moment the angle of the rays changes, and the show is gone forever but not the mental smile that remains pasted to your inner face for the rest of the day. You will even remember it a few days later, and write about it.

And as you're standing there, looking to where the sunlight has faded away, you simply know you're all right.

Close to North-West Arm, Halifax, Nova Scotia