Awe-filled and Awake

Michael Redhill in Light-crossing offers a suite of poems that reflect upon the reflective figure of the father.

while that roil of stars and darkeness
coalesced to you, who arrived, surprisingly.
Grey, wet, sweating nutrient, quick

to suck. Math-loving atoms, clenched into body,
assumed alikeness, which delights. I now hold
this infinitesimal, that gathered its forces across

vast nothing to be called to life.

This from "What Moves". Note that the coalescence is not "in" but "to" — a destination with a hint of further destinations. Also note the being called to life. Again the stress is on a continuing voyage.

"Offering" is sacramental in tone but offers more.

I was alone with you after everyone was gone
and life was in you like a charge in a wire. Your poor
head in my hand, musketball heavy, your eyes roving
for purchase in the blue and grey room. They had you
in a tiny surplice, not knowing
they didn't have to make you look holy, you were
already ministering to me.

The line breaks tremble. You can almost hear "power" in "poor" because of the "charge in the wire" and the break. It crackles.

The opening of "Star" captures the nuances of a repeating scene: "Is he sleeping? — our midnight / mantra, one of us walking / all stealth into the room."

Lines that bring you in even if you have never experienced being the vigilant parent but have a faint memory of sleeping safely. There is more than just a trick of identification with the deployed pronoun "you" — there is a sense here of inscribing something for those not yet able to make their own memories, a sense of relatedness and human fragility.

And so for day 1999
03.06.2012

Vanished Boundaries Remembered

Shawn Micallef, one of Toronto's psychogeographers, wrote some time ago in an issue of Eye Weekly about a particular sculptural piece:

On Yonge Street, the Hogg's Hollow dip divides the city deeper and wider than the Don Valley and is the scourge of north-south cyclists passing by York Mills Station. At the southern crest [...] is a giant surveyor's compass called "Toronto's Northern Gateway." It's a vestige of old Metro, when this was the border between Toronto and North York. Like all borders that don't exist anymore, we cross it without thinking, only occasionally noticing something that reminds us it was there.

I like how the description of the particular leads to a general observation.

And so for day 577
12.07.2008