"fluffy" and "low gravity"

Yesterday ( December 14) and the day before, I posted a couple of poems as reactions to a substantial snowfall. In /"fluffy", I expressed a grumpy revulsion, and in "low gravity" I took the contrary position.

I think northerners have this love/hate relationship with snow, each of us occupying an ambivalence with considerable scope since snow plays such a definite part in our geographical existence. The only way to avoid it is to stay indoors or to flee to warmer climates; the only way to embrace it is to get out and wallow in it on skis or inside warm clothing.

The only way I can take a convincing stand on contrary positions is to convince myself that I really agree with it. I think of this mental activity as somewhat similar to the actor who is faced with playing an unsympathetic villain--and actors love playing the villain. In virtually every case, the actor has later said that the way to approach it is to believe the character is right.

That is the situation I got into when I took contrary positions on snow. Except that I have to confess I had the advantage of feeling that way on successive days, so that I didn't have to convince myself of anything. When I wrote "fluffy", I was feeling sorry for myself because I could see the snow falling all day, and knew I was going to have to go our and deal with it eventually: it was filling my driveway.

I arose at 5:30 the next morning because we had a TV technician scheduled to arrive sometime between 8 am and 5 pm the next day (Don't you love that? If you miss the appointment, you have to start over.) The shoveling, although pretty exhausting (after all, I am in my seventies) was not insurmountable, and I got it done in forty-five minutes, had a shower, and got about my day. The TV tech arrived, discovered the problem was simple, solved it immediately, then revealed I had taught him some thirty years ago, and we had a wonderful batch reminiscence, followed by the Olympic Torch relay passing in front of my house (which had spurred his early arrival so he could get his truck in and out.) By that time, I was in a pretty good mood, so that when I wrote "low gravity", it was quite natural to come up with a double plus feel-good poem.

daily route

"daily route" comes out of my experience delivering mail in the Christmas break from university, in 1957 (I think, although it might have been 1956). This was in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, my home town, in a very cold corner of Nothern Ontario. The temperature in the week or so that I did the job never rose above -34F, and the wind on that exposed side of town was pretty high most of the time; I suppose the windchill was often -60F. Don't worry; I was dressed for it. I was assigned the "Federal" walk, a friendly but thinly travelled region, where I seldom saw anyone outdoors. I walked down many paths and shortcuts upon which I my boots imprinted their distinctive treadmarks, which were almost never trod over by anyone else. I began to see that I was retracing my own footprints every day, and soon saw it as a metaphor for a life that has no possibilities but repetition. Over the years since then, I have thought of that experience often, until it has become one of my life stories. It's not that I hated or depaired of the job: I only did it for about ten days; but there were moments when I saw the possibilities, and they have grown into understanding.

I chose the sonnet form for several reasons: first, I thought that the theme required a disciplined predictable form to reflect the subject matter; second, I write iambic pentameter rather easily; third, the sonnet fell into a Shakespearian pattern because it is not a poem about metamorphosis, as an octave and sestet pretty well requires, but rather a poem about a situation that obtains, with a conclusion that I made hopeful in the couplet, rather than keeping the atmosphere as a total downer.

Out the train windows

Here is another image of northern Ontario, taken from the lounge car. I like the contrast between the frozen evergreens outside, and the colourful flower arrangement inside.






To the left is a town we passed late in the day. see the light at the horizon.

"The Canadian" — a train ride, a country

The link for the title of this piece takes you to the whole category of poems I posted in my blog (and will continue to post there) . Here is a photo of the staircase in the lounge car:

The cars (manufactured in 1950) used to belong to the Candian Pacific Railway (CPR), which ran a little to the south of the Canadian National Railway (CNR). They are stainless steel and very art deco. In the photo, you can see the dome, which gives a 360 degree view of everything.






Here is a unique view out the rear of the train, through the lounge window:

In future posts, I shall give you other views, some particularly inspirational with regard to particular poems.