Robertson, dear Robertson

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#CanadianPoet, Christmas poem, Elaine Stirling, Robertson Davies, seasonal poetry, terza rima

Photo taken by Dick Loek/Toronto Star in December 1990.

—being a visit of the spirited kind with the great Canadian man of letters, in the Dantean poetic form of terza rima

I

O Robertson, dear Robertson, I dast
not trouble thee in Paradise, Nirvana,
nor in Asgard’s halls if that’s where you now cast

your mighty nets of word and mirth. I wanna
seem as erudite and clever, Heaven knows,
as you, and not some whinging prima donna,

but as mercury subsides, the windy blows
of those who’d tarnish what is silver and sublime
of this great time are getting up my nose,

attempting to convince me it’s a crime
or mark of low intelligence to cheer
what’s goodly and expanding to a prime

of human understanding. With your clear
and unobstructed view of where we’re headed
and my obstinate refusal to adhere

to doom’s dark drivel, I am wedded
to the notion that together we might salvage
something priceless from the leaded

and corrupt events reported by the savage
and vindictive, by the weary and obstructive,
by the arguers whose logic seeks to ravage

all that’s mystical and unexplained. It’s relative,
I know, that yay and nay together must reside
in every possibility, but their order is subjective.

Am I right, or do I labour with false pride?

II

O mortal, winsome mortal, such delight
I take in finding you again with Thor’s great hammer
pitted ‘gainst depressives’ native right

to cringe beneath your cheerful yammer,
seeking common ground and seldom finding,
both of you reduced to wincing stammer.

Where is the proof? demands the grinding
intellect. I do not care, retorts the sprite
whose visage to the cynic is full blinding.

The passing fact, experienced, is right
but only in the moment to the blood and brains
of that to whom the truth gave light.

The gap between the witness who explains
her wonder with insistence to the rest
learns swiftly what it means to “take great pains”.

There is scant gain in it. You’re blessed,
make no mistake, but cursive souls
like yours who flow too easily ingest

the poisons of heredity. The holes
of graves preceding you contain no tales
worth digging up again. Their bells have tolled.

All life is made to vivify. What this day fails,
ignored, tomorrow proudly shows her worth.
Who keeps their wit and chin up, paradise regales.

In this tendering season of light’s rebirth,
rest easy. Good abounds on Heaven and Earth!

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2017

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Hasta Luego, Cofokabe!

Tags

Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, poetry, sonnet, terza rima

I’m letting the Cofokabe River
run dry, pulling up stakes from one-horse
villages with nothing to deliver.

The waterways, they flourished once, their course
ran sweet as apricots and salsa hot.
We gathered, felt uplifted, never forced.

Your songs reshaped my politics, your thought
on Russian Lit unearthed simplicity
I feared I’d lost. We gave, we learned, we got.

But rivers bend and yearn to reach the sea.
Lid bangers, chronic grievers, sere the banks;
entangled, hopeless, you don’t interest me.

And so, dear Cofokabe, evaporate!
When springtime reigns, we may yet celebrate.

~~~

This sonnet was written in terza rima with an anagram thrown in, so as not to be too obvious.

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

Tree on the Beach

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Canadian poet, contemporary form poetry, Elaine Stirling, terza rima, terzanelle, villanelle

Writing the terzanelle a few days ago was so much fun, I thought I’d do it again. The climbing rhyme of the terza and the looping repetition of the villanelle function like a tiny drill bit in a tight space, a sort of poetic trepanning.

~~~

Standing as tall as a tree on the beach
in the cold with no hope of surviving
is mostly a matter of ease and reach.

A dash of aplomb with eyes toward thriving
beats being bummed by low expectation
in the cold with no hope of surviving.

Assigning the world your navigation
of feelings and hopes, it’s a mad trap that
beats being bummed by low expectation

until you’re so mired in all that is bad
your vigour is breached. The mutineering
of feelings and hopes—it’s a mad trap, that!

Giving less weight to mud, more to cheering
might be worth trying on days you’re down and
your vigour is breached. The mutineering

of grimness for joy is at our command,
a landlubber’s choice of loam, clay or sand.
Standing as tall as a tree on the beach
is mostly a matter of ease and reach.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

The Deviation of Azimuth: Final Canto

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brave new business leader, Elaine Stirling, reconciliation, rhyme scheme of Dante, sacred geometry, serial poetry, terza rima, The Corporate Storyteller

To find myself in the Cincinnati
airport with a ticket bearing my name
to a destination near the Red Sea

was nearly as strange as the last refrain
from the King of Azimuth, soothing realm
of the spheric arc. You have been trained,

and now you must return to take the helm
of your own destiny; the path is cleared,
while much has changed, you won’t be overwhelmed.

Landing in the city state there appeared
a limo driver holding up my name.
He drove with avid concentration, steered

us to the seaport where a crowd the same
as the old market with the eyeballs milled,
but now they waited quiet. Why they came

was obvious. The Red Sea waves had stilled,
were parting right and left, excessive male
to one side while ditzy femme upheld

the other; yang and yin had carved a trail
magnetically repelling to invite
a middle way for mankind to avail.

But no one in the waiting crowd knew quite
what they should do. The blue-eyed driver smiled
and walked me to the shore. The time is right.

We strode with ease, the sea floor Heaven-tiled.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image: Parting of the Red Sea by Gustave Dore

The Deviation of Azimuth: Canto IV

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brave new business leader, Elaine Stirling, relationships, rhyme scheme of Dante, sacred geometry, serial poetry, terza rima, The Corporate Storyteller, unbalanced polarities

The hour grew late and seven moons rose in
staggered phases cross an emerald skybowl
bright with stars but no Dipper to begin

my constellating search for the great Pole
Star. The night was cold, I didn’t care, mere
trifle, inconsequential to the whole.

Your greatest flaw on Earth is to adhere
to states of pain and to confuse friendship
with mutual self-absorption. Look here.

He brought me to a dark blue pond equipped
with access to shapes of light distorted
like dumbbells, one end huge, the other chipped

away to nothing, the small contorted
ends held all the weight, the inflated bobbed
with others of its like and disported

in a way that made my spirit feel robbed.
Bubble heads cavorted with arrogance,
while gravity of those neglected throbbed.

Voila, behold the sad and human dance
you call relationship, dependencies
where love has fled, they still retain the stance;

afraid of solitude, the tendencies
to push another down and hold her there,
or him, these form the weak polarities

that stimulate a market void of care.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image from CanItBeSaturdayNow.com

The Deviation of Azimuth: Canto III

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brave new business leader, Elaine Stirling, perceiving past duality, rhyme scheme of Dante, sacred geometry, serial poetry, spherical thought, terza rima, The Corporate Storyteller

Nebuchadnezzar’s blue-eyed twin fed me
dates and warm sloe gin, while our hammock
for two swung above his concubinery.

So, all these women, do they run amok
when deprived of your Lordship’s mighty…um,
these are not rhyming couplets, just my luck.

Still, he caught my drift and gave a stern hum.
I had been warned, your curiosity
at times like these can verge upon the dumb.

We did not fly you here to speak of me,
but to coach you well in the spheric ways
now that you’ve been freed of polarity.

But, I—He cut me off and said, today
the world groans with heroes who have lost
their spunk and heroines in disarray.

Multiplicities of causes criss-crossed,
they tangle plaques and fibers in the brain
to make of joy pathology. Such cost!

Some jerkwad shoots you down and causes pain,
but do you learn? God, no! You hang your head
inviting him to strike again. That’s lame!

The azimuth soft glides you past the dread
of Noah’s arkish thinking, two by two,
to open new horizons like a bed

of honeysuckle kissed by morning dew.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image: “The Sultan’s Favourites”, painting by
Georges Jules Victor Clairin

The Deviation of Azimuth: Canto II

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brave new business leader, canto, Elaine Stirling, rhyme scheme of Dante, sacred geometry, serial poetry, terza rima, The Corporate Storyteller, the nature of personality

My bed had never felt so sweet, goosedown
duvet keeping my feet and shoulders warm,
so anyone who yanked it off was bound

to face my wrath, except the task was borne
by a small child who gripped my blanket while
she pointed to a stile, a field of corn

or was it oats? He waits, she said, a mile
down the road. Who waits? She would not say, and
though I love suspense, always been my style

a field of corny dreams I had not planned;
and then she handed me a note that said,
the fixed point of dilapidating land

you can no longer be. It’s time instead
to choose the azimuth, the gliding part,
unburdened by an overthinking head.

Oh, what the heck? Adventure is an art
I crave, and so in goosedown wrapped, I set
upon what seemed a solitary start.

If no one came along, I wouldn’t get
upset. The world is chasing cartoon boobs,
not poetry, and pictures of their pets.

From planes we rose to lines of altitude;
some bits were shaking loose, I didn’t mind
until I turned and saw my attitudes:

a million pieces of me left behind.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

The Deviation of Azimuth

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brave new business leader, canto, Elaine Stirling, narrative poetry, rhyme scheme of Dante, serial poetry, terza rima, The Corporate Storyteller

Canto I

My beads, the colour of leopard spots, gold
in the center, were not costly but loud
when the string broke & thus I was foretold.

I stumbled homeward through a motley crowd
slipping on, not beads, but eyeballs fallen
from silicone sockets. I yelped aloud.

Too much synthetic like ragweed pollen
was making me sneeze, my eyes ringed crimson;
upon me, some dark fate was befalling.

Men were lined up at kiosks where women
with waxed legs and collagen kissy lips
handed out small silver tubes while freezing

in bikinis made from goat jerky strips.
“Logos! Logos!,” some barker was yelling,
“get your brands here!” I could not catch a grip

nor push away the noises compelling
me to buy and to try for your chance to
win a perfume that will have you smelling

like every man’s dream. We make it for you
in a cream or a pill, for ten ninety
nine! And there were the women in a queue

fast becoming a stampede for the free
samples that would lure them a Mr. Right.
Though I’d not believed in conspiracy,

I couldn’t see what awaited that night.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013