folio : Forty-five Ottawa poets
The Formidable BFB
(from Anita’s Own Annals of Anthropomorphic Indulgence)
I resurface in time to
hear
crows debating the
morning
headlines. You’ll find me
below
their flyway to the
alluring
fields of the
experimental farm,
raucous riverside woods,
wherever day-to-day avian
business calls them.
Because
they seem, like us,
cursed
with noisy purpose, too
smart
by half, ruled by Fates,
I like
to grant them humanity-
inflected professions.
You
see it too, right? Crows
directing traffic,
fabricating
tools, calling (with
understated wit)
the game. The formidable
Black Feather Bigrade
(winged
emergency responders).
Town criers,
garbage-pickers,
composters, all-around
waste engineers who pity
us
our stupidity.
Cold-hearted
civil servants.
Supply-chain
wizards. Psychiatrists
(expensive ones
with cocked heads).
Professional mourners.
Mid-traffic nutcrackers.
Could I hire one
to pace out, right here
on the asphalt, between
passing cars, my witching
hours? Send me
your best crow PI, the
one with
mesmerizing, oak-barrel
eyes
that see through lies. I
hear
they’re indispensable for
detecting
dubious overtures to
friendliness
or reconciliation. I’d
offer them
double-time for
inner-perimeter
security at protests.
Birds
like these? They’ve got
eyes
on both sides. They’re
natural-born
judges, influencers,
urban planners.
Correspondents who’ll
rummage
every last rubble heap
for leads.
Connoisseurs of
nightroost blues.
Nonpartisan priests. The
Original
Rabble Rousers &
False-King
Destroyers. Windmakers,
waker-uppers. Spies.
The Nature of Things
—with (further) apologies to CBC traffic reporter Doug Hempstead
The type of snow we’re
dealing with.
The traffic guy, doing
double duty, reaches
for a weather analogy: It’s
fine, really
fine snow, as fine as… Chalk dust?
Crystals in bits? Notions
in the billions
floated halfway toward
magnificence
before rerouting to our
Realm
of Boots and Snow Plows.
I brought
a whole community of
bitter cling-ons
home from my morning
walk, stuck on
the wool of my hat,
beneath which, my mind,
like everyone else’s, was
blowing hard
Minneapolis-way. There
exists,
I’m to understand, a
state of being
known as Minnesota Nice.
If you grew
up there, winter
everywhere else
seems fake. (Consider
Canada, I want to say,
for relatable remains of
The Genuine
Deep-Freeze.) I’m
wondering if the seasonal
requirement to bundle up
and shovel out
morning after morning
breeds a lack of
surprise over repeat
obstacles, a geographic
grasp of the ancient
poet’s science: Life, he writes,
along bright lines that
quick-step his hypothesis,
is pure motion, bound as
much in particles
as in the spaces between
that render
stillness impossible.
What is that space
is the real question. I
try to imagine
the intricacies and the
goings-on
that persist beyond the
powers
of my eye. Even an
ice-encrusted
snowbank thrums with
Lucretius’ rhyming
Dance of Atoms. Falling
flakes may present
as Sugar or Lacework or
Grit. Pretty, maybe, but
we need to put them
somewhere so that
we can get on with our
day. Amazing, right? How
the substance of somewhere gives way.
The good people of that
city
keep layering up and
taking to the streets
to remind the Figures in
Masks and Fatigues
they aren’t made for the
weather there—
their pleas burst like
micro-blizzards
into the deadly
atmosphere: Go home,
warm up, settle the fuck
down. Fairy Dust,
finally, is the idea he
finds, it drifts
from the radio, a lovely
cloud. This stuff,
he’s hit it, packed into
a projectile, will poof
to glitter well shy of
any target. I live for
when the halfway-theres,
equations
that pushed forward
first, the meaner
attempts, back off in
favour of
a more suitable phrasing.
I am working on a little poetry project with a theme, but its parts remain too incomplete to offer. The poems here are home poems, Ottawa poems, survival poems (in a sense) that began to take shape during morning walks. I am unsure of them, they did things I wasn’t expecting, but some of those things are fun (I think!) and sometimes that uncertainty is a sign of something real (repeat: sometimes!). Here they are, shared with hope.
Anita Lahey’s latest poetry collection is While Supplies Last (2023, Véhicule Press). She’s also co-author, with Pauline Conley, of the 2023 graphic novel-in-verse Fire Monster (Palimpsest Press). Anita serves as series editor for the Best Canadian Poetry anthology, and her 2020 memoir, The Last Goldfish: a True Tale of Friendship (Biblioasis), was an Ottawa Book Award finalist.
