To Be
Gibraltar, James Wilson Morrice, c.1913. Oil and graphite on wood.
It dominates. A massive gold rock
shaped like a wedge, flecked with
silvery blue
and fronted by a blur of beach figures,
one standing apart. A woman in a wide black hat
topped with feathers, a stroke of royal
blue
at her feet. Crowd, loner.
Someone
will always break off. Go alone.
Another’s voice annuls silence, but
what if
silence threatens, absence knifes?
No person or animal to commune
with.
Life as desert, cold at night.
Painted black, far behind the woman,
another
solitary. A man drives a white horse-drawn cart.
The backdrop is rock, the monolith
that gathers worker and hedonist, as if
Morrice knew: nearness to a mountain
ennobles the smallest human act,
done at the hour of doing and doing
nothing, which only appears so.
In this place, with iron bars, a Greek
hero
split a mountain, creating two. Gibraltar
and her African twin: the Pillars of
Hercules.
Running on Ice
Crunch it
down,
pound its
spread
with the bang
of shoes
hammering west
to the
sunset,
body
leaning
into minus nine
(wind chill
minus twenty),
the air
invisible
blackflies
biting my face
–
pain,
sure,
but countered
by colour
splitting the
world,
a thousand
glints
of snow
under a blue
so
impacted,
so massively
stalactite
only a god
could smash
it,
break the
sky
to show us
what grows
behind –
and when the
seen
shatters
we’ll run to
the cold,
in the cold,
the cold
the one thing
we know.
On Being a Leafs Fan
“There is
eternal hope, but not for us.”
–
Kafka
Loving the feel of a book and the
world
it gives you…later, watching puck-
size goslings swim in their parents’
wake,
paralleling the shore – these things
layer
your life, as does cursing the
Leafs,
who are your children and all your
fathers.
In a bowered garden, cradling your device
of choice, you stream the playoff
game. Your hopes
so low, worms snuggle up and ask, in
the gentlest
of worm voices, You okay? Oh, don’t worry,
soon you’ll be with us. We too were fans. We
are still
trod upon. Life, death – they meet at
your
feet.
Other questions: should your guy elbow
the head
and concuss their guy, because
last game
he hurt one of yours? Are you into Old School pay-
back, flexing lex talionis,
injury for injury?
Will you bench your conscience for the
game
or forever?
Game Seven, down 5-1. In the lingo
of Leafs Nation, you text a
friend. Shit!
Shithead! Later, quiet, at breakfast,
you spoon up the soggy bowl of
sorrow.
Why give those guys your time.
Maybe, for us, they’re all our time is
worth.
Harold Hoefle’s
poems have won the Bliss Carman Award, the Great Blue Heron Poetry Award
(2014), and a National Magazine Awards silver medal. His debut collection of
poems, The Night Chorus, was published by McGill-Queen’s University
Press. He has also published a collection of short-fiction called The
Mountain Clinic (Oberon Press). These poems are from Leaning In, a
new chapbook out this month with above/ground press. Harold lives in Ottawa,
teaches in Montreal.
