Like children fresh from baths
I want to pat their heads
Cup each skull under my palm
Feel the silky-soft spongy give of their new-growth hair.
Their squirming will not deter me from kissing each temple
Breathing in their newness
Then
With my hand still on top
I want to point them to their beds
And release.
Moira Dunphy, 2012
With an extreme cold weather alert outside, and a good stock of leftovers inside, I enjoyed a lazy, bookish Boxing Day. Looking out the window, I realized that, every day of every winter, I keep a running check on the weather, to inform an internal anxiety meter: is today a day that weather may take the life of a fellow citizen on our streets? Continue reading “Anxiety meter”
I’d like to tell you a story. It is about a boy and a dog. Only this boy has Tourettes, and his frequent tics often make him frustrated. And this dog actually belongs to the boy’s grandma. Continue reading “About a dog”
I’m remembering the day a Loved One disclosed to me their assault. The details that stuck with me: the sound of children and birds as we looked out the windows open on a mild day; the sound of the rocking chair; the moments chosen to look over, the moments chosen to look out; the sensation of carefully picking words, as you would carefully shift your weight in the woods, not wanting to startle a deer; the feel and smell of a sweet breeze with an undertone of spring leaf rot. Continue reading “Disclosure”
The pork is being chopped
and the bok choy wokked
You’re bringing home dinner
to feed the mewling mouths at home,
but
for now – right now –
the bustly, rushy go-go-go world –
the world
needs
you
to
wait. Continue reading “Wait”
Show some respect.
Now is not the time, never now;
the time was yesterday.
Before.
So hurry, quick –
tomorrow’s shooter is readying.
Talk gun control today
and show some bloody respect for tomorrow’s victims.
Today I’m remembering a long-ago rush-hour subway ride. Settled into our confined spaces, pretending our butts and bits aren’t pressed up against strangers, politely not acknowledging each other’s presence. I gather little bits of awareness: the needles of a woman tatting lace, the huge size of a labourer’s lunch cooler, the Japanese lettering of a rider’s book.
Of a sudden, a switch turns on and I realize the weary middle-aged woman standing in the doorway “is a man.” Continue reading “Pride Day, 2017”
Brisk march down the subway platform
One pulled-back panel of green tile revealing century-old rusty bits,
And one old wooden shim, woodgrain visible under underground grime
Of a sudden, in that glimpse, I’m thrown into its
Tiny beginnings,
Quiet whispers of time,
Years of baked pine-needle-and-soil smell
slowly passing like one perfect summer afternoon;
The boots
The sawmill scream
The sawdust air
The truck
The worker
The saw
The mallet
The muffled roar of time
The glance of a woman who thinks she knows where she’s going.
Written in the wake of US police shootings in the summer of 2016.
I just had an interesting conversation with my teenage son, saw how much of this week’s anguish and anger had seeped into his brain.
He’s angry at my generation and beyond for blowing it for so long, letting things get this bad. Fair enough.
