Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Pigeon

I

Strutting down the sidewalk

and not retreating from me.

Cocky pigeon.

II

Fleeing before the Number 1

bus.  Flap like mad pigeon!

you forgot

your bus pass.

III

Front yard invasion.

What is so interesting?

Pigeons confuse me.

IV

Six pigeons in a circle

on Brunswick Street.

Not a NSCAD student in sight

to film, paint, or sculpt

this confab of wings.

V

Pigeon in the rain.

I’ll share my umbrella.

VI

I miss pigeons when the snow comes.

VII

If they were an Airborne Division

we would cower before

the pigeons’ gray, purple,

and turquoise colour scheme.

VIII

Maybe we should charge them

rent if pigeons are going to be

our sidewalk roommates.

IX

Thanks for inviting yourself

to the barbeque, pigeon.

We’re cooking a distant

cousin of yours.

X

Who talks this much

about pigeons?

XI

Pigeon eyes are like

googly eyes pasted

on Paper-Mache birds.

It unnerves me.

XII

The industrial revolution

brought more than people

in to crowd the cities.

The pigeon nuclear family

is alive and well.

XIII

Thirteen pigeons outside

a coffee shop.

Lucky or unlucky?

Let’s wait

and see if they attack.

Three Limericks for Canadian Summers

The heat eats us up like the gas tank of a Hummer

And global warming seems like such a great big bummer.

We sweat and we toil,

Complain we will boil,

But come winter we’ll beg for the furnace of summer.

The suns fierce rays seem to be frying my brain

And I find my focus is hard to maintain.

Then I think of the Equator

Where the heat is no doubt greater

But a proud Canadian’s gotta complain.

Up in the sky, our Oppressor has shone

As I lie sprawled in the grass on the lawn.

And I know the day will come,

And it’ll make me feel glum,

When that lovely gold Oppressor has gone.

The Letter

I’m one of those kids whose read Harry Potter from start to finish over a dozen times.  And I mean from start to finish of the series.  Not The Philosophers Stone a dozen times or Order of the Phoenix a dozen times.  The whole thing.  Maybe that’s not that impressive to some of the mega-fans out there but I still think it’s a particular accomplishment.  It’s just about the only thing I have for free-time.  My mom takes care of me since my dad…and she can’t afford to get me a Wii or satellite TV or anything like that.  But I have Harry Potter.

                I’ve dressed up as a different character from Harry Potter for the last four Halloweens.  First I was Harry (duh).  The next two years people argue that I dressed up as the same character but clearly they haven’t read the series over a dozen times.  If they had, they would have been able to note the subtle differences that marked me as Fred one year and George the next.  Finally, last year, I dressed up as Snape.  A few people actually thought I was wearing a really bad Lord Voldemort costume.  Come on!

                But you see, this year is special.  This year I turn eleven.  What kid hasn’t read the Harry Potter books and hoped that they’d receive their very own private letter – express delivery via owl – inviting them to attend seven years of schooling in wizardy and witchcraft?  At the very least we’re the majority, I should think.  I know it’s not going to happen.  Harry Potter isn’t real.  I can tell the difference.  But still, it would be pretty great wouldn’t it?

                I don’t want to leave my mom all alone you understand.  That’s not why I want to get the letter.  My mom is fantastic.  Dad…left and she has done everything to make enough money for the two of us.  Most days she comes home and she’s burnt out.  And even though I’m almost eleven now she still finds time to read Harry Potter to me when I request it.  That’s just about the only time we ever get to spend together.  She’s working two jobs after all.

                But sometimes I just wish I could step into the pages of the books and enter the world of magic that Rowling created.  I know there’s death and pain and all of that but there’s almost friends, family, and adventure.  And the bad guys always win.

                What I really want is to step into Hogwarts and learn how to do a better job helping my mom.  She does so much work and I can’t do anything to help her out.  I’m only eleven.  But if I was a wizard I could use magic to do the chores at home before Mom got back from her second job.  If I was a wizard I could use magic to make our lives easier.

                I might even be able to use magic to make Dad…

                No.  I know that won’t happen.  But it doesn’t stop me from sitting with legs crossed on the welcome mat in front of the front door on the morning of my eleventh birthday.  I know the letter won’t really come.  But I can imagine.  My mom left a note for me on the fridge.  Happy Birthday big man!  We’ll do something nice for supper, I promise!  She’s usually gone by the time I get up.  Luckily, I know how to make pop-tarts before I go to school just up the street.  And she always remembers to pack me a lunch before she goes.

                So, sitting there, even knowing that I won’t be getting a Hogwarts letter, I get excited when I hear the post-man’s truck slide to a stop at the end of the driveway.  I feel myself getting excited as he comes up the steps.  A moment later the mail-slot is brushed open and a bundle of letters fall onto the floor.  I reach out and grab at the pile and flip through all the letters.

                I nearly drop all of them on the floor when I see the one addressed to me.  The script is identical to that used by J. K. Rowling in the first book.  Addressed to me.  Sealed with a red wax symbol with four familiar animals.

                I nearly run into the wall on my way to the kitchen I’m so excited.  I pop the wax seal and yank the letter out.  My hands are almost shaking as I unfold the paper and look at the words written there.  Everything’s exactly right.  The heading with the school’s name.  The Headmaster’s name and his titles.  Then the message:

Dear Mr. Fox

We regret to inform you that you have not been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  Do not think that this is due to a lack of magical ability on your part.  In fact, we have been told by a very reliable source that you bring a world of magic and wonder into her life every day.  We feel it is important for you to continue being the magical person that you have always been exactly where you are.

Yours sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall
Deputy Headmistress

I stand there in the kitchen holding the letter for a moment.  I’m too shocked to move.  Then, slowly, I slip the letter back into the envelope.  I make sure to retrieve the wax symbol from where it fell on the floor.  From there I proceed silently up the stairs to my room.  I have a cork board hanging up on my wall across from my bed.  It’s covered in Harry Potter stuff.  Drawing’s I’ve made over the years.  Photos of me in my Halloween costumes, buying the books, and attending the only one of the movies I got to see in theatres: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.  I step up to the board and take a free thumb tack to hold my letter from Hogwarts.  I pin it up next to a photo of my Mom and I on the day I bought the first book.  My dad took the photo.  But it’s just me and my mom in the picture.  Just like it always is.  And we’re still here.

            I guess life is full of magic after all.

Sapped

Bear with me for a moment here and imagine the following scenario.  Imagine a pesky, loud, smelly animal.  Imagine this is the most annoying animal on Earth and that – for the sake of argument – it is synonymous with the very definition of nuisance.  Let’s call this animal ‘human’ so as to avoid any confusion as we proceed.

                Now, imagine that this pesky human just wouldn’t stop.  Not for a second.  It just kept going: building up towering structures, flattening the ground with concrete, zipping around in metal boxes, and the whole while doing it all as loudly as possible.  There is nothing, nothing I tell you, which makes half as much noise in a life-time as a human can make in a day.

                But we’re not done yet.  No, if that had been it I might have been able to handle it.  See, I consider myself to be more patient than most maple trees.  Admittedly, our particular breed isn’t known for our calm and collected nature.  But I like to distinguish myself from the rest of my kind so that you will know that I didn’t come to this through simple annoyance.  This is full-blown, righteously justified, annoyance.  It’s a difference of adjectives.

                So here’s the kicker, the clincher, the defining problem.  Here I am, kept where I am in the midst of a mess of human concrete, machines, and noise as a kind of aesthetic touch, and what happens?  Some pesky human, no bigger to me than a mouse would be to him, comes along and staples something to my trunk.  First off, he had to get it good and secure and so he made sure to put in six or seven staples.  As if one didn’t sting enough.  What’s up with that!?  If you’re a human hearing this, then imagine this as if it were happening to you.  Imagine a mouse swaggered up to you while you were standing outside, and sucking in some lovely March sun, and he placed an advertisement for such-and-such mouse event at such-and-such mouse establishment on your leg.  Then, before you could do anything about it, he viciously jabbed a half dozen thumb-tacks into your leg to hold the advertisement there.  I don’t think I’m being unreasonable in saying that you, like me, would be thoroughly pissed.

                What kind of behaviour is that?  What kind of utter lack of respect and decency.  It’s bad enough that many of my kind have been appropriated for various human uses (the idea of this thing called ‘paper’ makes me feel like ants are crawling beneath my bark) but stapling an advertisement to my truck?  Come on.  That’s just adding insult to injury.

                What am I driving at here, you might be asking.  Is this just some rant about the audacity of humans?  What should I expect, you may be thinking, they’re human after all!  They are synonymous with annoying.  They can’t change their nature any more than I can change mine.

                Well, I reserve the right to be angry about it.  I reserve the right to get mad about it and shout about it and…oh, dang, hold on.  Speak of the devil.  It looks like a few humans are coming over now.  Probably going to jab some new advertisement into my trunk.  Once one appears a dozen more usually follow.  Lambs following the flock.

                Wait.  Hold on.  What?  Um…okay, so, those of you who have kept with me this whole time.  They’re…these humans, a few of the female kind, just removed the notice that was stapled to my trunk.  They’re also using something to pull the staples out too.  I’m, um, not sure what to…Now they’re sitting beneath me.  Making their noise.  But…my trunk does feel a lot better now.  I guess this kind of noise…isn’t so bad.  Um…

                Okay.  So, maybe some of them aren’t moving so fast after all.  Maybe some of them are learning to slow down.  Slow down, and suck in the March sunlight.  Maybe we have more in common than I thought.  But don’t tell anyone I said that.  I hear they’re prone to pride.

The Salamander

The salamander runs on crooked legs through the city

welcome and applauded thanks to minds eager for fireworks.

It does not need to hide in the shadows, forcing its

opponents to seek shelter there instead.

The dim glow of a reading light beneath the covers

illuminates black text inked into nutmeg scented paper

thin as the breath between my teeth as I absorb

more than the sum of the words but the sum of the ‘I’.

The salamander is our hero, the best friend of bliss.  It alone

can promise not to compromise smiles with unfiltered reality.

Its tongue darts faster than the eye can follow and before long

Huck is off his fence and the white paint has spilled over everything.

Somewhere far off a siren wails but it is as if it is in another

land far beyond my reach.  Blinking becomes an infuriating

necessity that delays my overcharged brain’s feast.  I engorge

myself on literature.  Asimov, Orwell, Tolstoy, and Stein.

The salamander hunts without tire.  It compromises the machine,

the printing and the printers, the publishers and the published.

Talons work from the inside, pushing the former gods out

and replacing them with fifty shades of hollow replicas.

Montag flees the Hound, McMurphy suffocates beneath

the pillow.  And the I beneath the sheets sweats and feels visceral

and finds on every page I and I and me and I.  The pages

are soaked in humanity as I am soaked in humanity evermore.

The salamander is my enemy.  The salamander sniffs the air with

its tongue and looks for me.  It fears me knowing my I.  It fears

others knowing theirs.  It wants us to smile and laugh until we

can’t be anything else.  The salamander burns away the I in us.

The fires are already burning.  I seek to douse them in ink.

Inspiration

I lie on my bed with my fingers poised,

Hovering over a keyboard, waiting for that clicking noise.

But words do not spring to my finger-tips today

And I search all around me for something to say.

Tree leaves flutter against light afternoon wind

And a gray layer of clouds refuses to be thinned.

Engines hum as cars drift on by

And birds chirp faintly as they touch the sky

Bed springs knot and ping as I shift my view

To look at shelves of books whose numbers are not few.

DVDs and movies rest on brown wooden shelves,

Testaments to our attempts to entertain ourselves.

Then, a white doorway leading out to the hall

Followed by a closet, a backpack, and a deflated football.

My desk rests in shambles, debris piled up high.

I can never keep it clean, as much as I might try.

Inspiration is tough to come by, sitting on your bed.

I have a laptop, and keys, but nothing in my head.

The dark enemy is writer’s block, holding me back.

But maybe the answer lies in a folded laundry stack.

We search this wide world, for some new stimulation,

Feeling ourselves lost in some unholy stagnation.

But, inspiration can be found in the glint of window glass

In the heart of a loved one, in the smell of newly cut grass.

We call out for something to unhinge our emotions

But sometimes one only needs the simplest of notions.

I can feel the cool breeze drifting over from the ocean,

A call of inspiration for many a Nova Scotian.

So, good-bye to writer’s block holding me down.

I can find my afternoon muse in what is around.

The rustle of curtains, the dust on the shelf,

These are all I need to inspire myself.

Forgetting

Beneath my fingers and thumbs

the flat keys wait, lifeless and still.

Heaney rode backwards through time, riding

on the memories of father and grand-father,

for the past was his concern, not the future.

But I will look forwards to the times of my children

and my children’s children, to how the world will change

and how the words and the writing will change

as technology advances.

Will my children write essays snug in their beds,

with eye strain caused by hours gazing at their iPads,

breeding a need for prescription eye-glasses?

Will they remember paper and pen

or will those be relics of the ancient world of their father?

You may laugh at the thought, but we have iPhones and Kobo ereaders

and even Bluetooth control for our cars.

Will my grandchildren think their words and watch them

spread across the holographic screen, bringing new meaning

to stream of consciousness writing?  Will they even know

what foolscap is?  Or lead pencils?  Or pink erasers?

Or will writing have passed out of style with a new medium

rising to illustrate the need for story and word

to express the interior thoughts and emotions

of this race of humans, flawed but fixed by tech.

How will my children write?  Will my grand-children write?
By the time my great-grand-children are born will they be a part

of a world that has forgotten the pen and the pencil

that allowed us to express ourselves with this written, divine language?

Beneath my fingers and thumbs

the flat keys wait.

What will I choose to remember with them?