Month: September 2008

3 things in life are beautiful


It was 10 years ago in Toronto where I lived and I was out walking my new dog, Diamond, and we met an old neighbour. He was a retired architect and he had a ferociously thick Polish accent. He was a small wiry man and very pleasant. Stan was recovering after a stroke and he walked slowly with the help of a nurse. He saw Diamond and smiled and asked me if I knew what the three most beautiful things in life were. I said no. He said, “Children, horses, and dogs.” I thought about my two cats sitting in the living room window of my home waiting for Diamond and I to return. :What about cats I asked. He said, “Sorry, not cats.”

Poem – An August Report


The cat is licking the dog’s ear
like it’s an ice cream cone
the bay is singing a little louder
than the leaves whimpering in the wind
the humidity cracked like a giant egg
after the thunderstorm blew through

this morning at dawn in the blue grey light
before the sun was really awake
I watched the heron walk slowly
in the shallow water of the shore
to catch his breakfast

Poem – Someone pissed off the rain god


Someone pissed off the rain god
all summer I wake up in the middle of the night
every night
to rain pouring on the roof
to the water gulping  as it wanders the course
of the eavestrough and slaps down
on the wood boards of the side deck
outside my window
I look up and see the dog with his paws on the window sill
looking out into the wet darkness
two cats meditate on the dresser under the lamp
I forgot to turn off

we are all awake at the end of the line
that never concerned me before
now it matters
my beard grey in the mirror
my skin grey in the lamplight
all grey against the white sheets
like a sudden descent of winter
and the snow is not as cold as I feared it would be

memory of a potato-addict


many years ago my family adopted a little tabby kitten, Button, who had survived for a time on the streets eating french fries and pizza crusts. Somehow she figured out that when a particular cooking pot was put into action in the kitchen it often was being used to boil potatoes and would sit in the kitchen and howl until she received her allotment of potato fragments to wolf down. The only real problem was when the pot was used to cook something else. she would still howl and refused to believe us when we told her no potato that night. She lived until the age of 16. A tiny 6 lb. potato addicted tigress.