Month: March 2024

We listen in the deep of night as the wind
picks up, and loose asphalt shingles bang 
against each other. Sometimes, in the daytime, 
they clatter under the feet of touching-down-
crows. Twigs drop from the trees; a sifting 
of dry needles gathers in the roof valley. 

We don't know how long this roof stayed 
over the heads of everyone who's ever 
lived in this house, before we came along. 
We don't know if it's ever been changed 
since it was built in the '40s, or how 
many times it might have been repaired.

When finally we call around for an inspection, 
the roofer that comes gives his verdict: it's old,
high time it's replaced. Bracing for the quote
(we know this isn't a warm or witty saying), we 
wonder how we can afford it. The roofer says
he will work with us and try to meet us 

where we are—on his tablet, he shows 
pictures of his handiwork, so many befores 
and afters. I take pride in my work, he says; 
I work with my men on every job. I don't sit 
around in some office. He points out 
the clean lines, the neat joins, 

nothing that overlaps or juts out where
it shouldn't: I am an artist. And I won't
begrudge him that, knowing how function is
more than the tuck and trim of parts, more than
the aggregate of gravel, sand, and bitumen  
shading this space where we might safely dream.

of the mind, or any other kind of life,
requires living in a body. But the body's
problems are manifold; repeating and

repeatable, even as they're unknowable. 
Hannah Arendt wrote The Life of the Mind
to query how thinking connects the active

life and the contemplative mind. She asked, 
"What are we doing when we do nothing 
but think?" As we discover, the world

of appearances from which we draw
evidence of our science and art, reveals
as well as conceals. The moment the mind

lights on a string of inverted clouds, science
comes up with a name for it. But no one has yet
definitively answered what it all means: we are 

trial and error. This is what we call the ineffable—never
 arriving at zero, or upon arrival, finding out the restless
mind is off again to dance with the next illusion.

If I am 
severed then 
so be it.
A cord 
yanked from
its stump.
Limbs shorn
in the brief
interval 
between 
winter and 
spring.
I'll tunnel 
through the rest
of my remembered
self, trade
this taste of mud
and salt. 
I'll bathe 
in the water 
of my own 
postponed
rebirthing.

How do you pretend you're no longer
connected to someone whose blood
is your blood, whose eyes you see

when you look into the mirror, whose
forehead is the same smooth brown
instead of a billboard across which

warnings to stay away have been spray-
painted? I don't think I could, even if I 
tried. I'm not even sure I know how. But

I grow unsteady, moving into these new 
thickets of later life. I weep into the soup, 
brighten at the sound of bells, at the effusions

of spring. Every morning I swing my legs
out of a dream and back into the world.

Newly shorn limbs in afternoon sun, pale
pith enclosed in jackets of bark— Yearly

in spring, the tree suffers this offering. 
Really, it's us who bring the bladed teeth  

of pruning saws to bear on an idea of
proliferation. Stores of energy lie in its roots, 

crown, trunk. The principle is the generation 
of more vigorous increase by reducing 

the number of growing points. All shearing 
results in a wound whose closure and healing 

depend on time and the body's immediate 
properties. In summer, after the buds 

unfurl their whole bodies, ripeness
is a beautiful fruit the color of bruise.

Weekends, we used to take the children
to the park, or what used to be the American
base where there was a mini-golf and skating
rink; a playground with cheerful painted animals
you could mount, spinners, teeter-totters 
and monkey bars. There they could have
their fill of grass to run and tumble in 
under the towering pines while we sat
on benches, until they tired and wanted 
a cold drink or an ice cream. To the west,
we could glimpse some of the road
that led past Teacher's Camp to Mines
View Park, where tourists tossed coins
into the gorge and posed with natives 
wearing g-strings and feathered caps. 
At that time, only members could get into
the Country Club, or dine at their smör-
gåsbord, or swim laps in their pool. Still,
I don't feel my children were deprived
of any joy. On cold mornings, they sat
together in bed, sneezing into tissues
while reading picture books. The world
then was everything we could name 
with certainty, not yet knowing how it 
could divide us from each other.