Mark Gordon

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Eight Selected Tanka

​An old man
picks up branches
that the storm
             of all his yesterdays
threw across his path 

                    ❊
                    
                    Silent as the heron
                    beside the pond
                    we too search
                              for our sustenance
                    in dark waters 

                  ❊

Biting off pieces
of bagel
to feed the sparrows
                    she merges
with light rain 

                    ❊
​
                    Brighter and brighter
                    the sun shines
                    naming
                                the cities
                    it has awakened 

                   ❊

The sky this morning
a charcoal sketch
that invites
              me to guess
how far it stretches 

                   ❊

                    Alone today at dawn
                    the mist rising
                    the geese heading
                                            northeast
                    taking me with them 

                   ❊

A port town
somewhere on earth
the sailboats bobbing
                and we in the midst
of our lives 

                   ❊

                    We sat by the lake
                    turning into fog
                    letting go
                                   of our ties
                    to the earth 
​

The Ego's Embrace

It’s hard to avoid the embrace
of the Ego, it’s a charismatic, sexless thing
that steps in when you are praying
or simply taking a walk
offers you heady opportunities
like world power, a trophy wife
or a brand-new Ferrari.  
 
You say “let go of my hair,
don’t pull like that
I am just taking a walk in the woods
reciting Psalm 23
watching the way the veins
of this leaf are opening
taking me to a deeper understanding.”
 
But the Ego, as always,
has a different idea of pleasure
fogging your glasses with excitement
putting you on stilts
that no one else owns
saying you will see over mountains
then leaving you just as suddenly
 
with no more eyes to see
how you and this leaf are one
both breathing the air of the universe
both unfolding
season after season
arriving at a depth of your own.
​

Wild Roses

​Never since has a scent been as strong
wild roses in front of the cottage
the sea’s salt breath
on the petals
my mother’s complexion
her suntan lotion
           & I without knowing it then
           was opening like a rose
           like mother’s mouth
           when she said good morning
           like the sea when it revealed
           the shadow of a fish
awareness revealing
that there was besides my flesh
another world
that asked me to travel it
with gentleness and caring
           to honour it with my eyes
           then much later
           with words.
​

November Trees

I could stand a long time
under a tree with yellow leaves
this time of year.
 
It makes its own light
even as it says goodbye
until the snows have come
 
& then departed. It reminds me
of people who are
their own light
 
before they too depart.
I have stood in the light
of such people
 
have learned
that they grow brighter
with all the light they shed.
​

Night Train

Admit it. Something is chasing you.
You hear it in the laughter of the children,
as if they are embracing trees,
will never let them go.
 
You ask yourself: how long ago
did you speak to trees,
how long ago did you reign
along the seashore, master
of the waves?
 
Let it up. Something is chasing you
like the shadow of a leopard
and you cannot help but admire
the burning green eyes,
the soft pad of the feet
past midnight.
 
Admit it. Sometimes you feel
like a sack of flesh used up,
its days numbered in wrinkles.
 
Your wife says: you seemed
not yourself today, more serious
than usual, preoccupied.
Admit it. You are having an affair
with something far off
that sounds like a train at night,
crossing a scored land, crying
for you to board.

Headband

You have to stop and watch
the portly man throw the Frisbee
to the dog, see that in the flick
of the wrist, in the excited eyes
of the dog, is the glowing path
 
of the milky way that the Lord
wears as a cloth, a headband
or a toga. Sometimes I forget
to look, take a minute to stand
by the river, to watch the low-
 
flying swallows aim themselves
at mud. I am all personal desire,
what I have to do, as if I am
master of the stars, the river,
myself, flowing without reference
 
point. Then I stop, stand
before the stream of stars, flight
of dog and man, know that
someone speaks to me, voice
of the headlong river’s bend.

City Sunset

We took a street heading west
just to see the sunset,
filaments of cloud arranged
as though
in all the billions
of earth years, the sky
had never shown this exact
mix of tint and shape.

For a moment in our car
we were living only
for vermillion and blue.

And we seemed to acknowledge
with the tilt of our head,
that for a moment
nothing, not even twilight
was as free, letting
our tasks and worries
fall past us
to some colorless place below. 

Mark Gordon Profile

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Woman By The Bosphorus
                   ~for Burak Karacan

Ordinary people stroll by, smudges
of grey and blue.
 
The woman in bulging red, rifle
loaded with bb’s advances,
toward the balloons
on the river, red, blue, yellow
birds, bobbing.
 
She has one eye on the camera.
 
The photographer tells me
he collects the images, waits,
waits for something to open.
 
I tell him that I do that too.
The images are stored
in the gallery of my brain,
linked to the heart under lock
and key, waiting to be chosen.

Contemplating Light 14

I remember scents of long ago
the stinkweed in spring.
And I remember light
the way it hung on
during summer nights
never wanting to leave
the sky
as if it knew
we’d have to run home
as soon as it disappeared
our parents fearful
of light’s absence.

We too knew 
that something unknown
could hide in total darkness.
What was it?
This thing without a name,
that lived in the dark
and yet called us
by name. 

It was best not to find out,
but to make our way home
before the blinds
of the sky
were drawn tight
home to the simple light
of the kitchen
to the dial light
on the radio, 
to the comforting voices
of Amos ‘n Andy.

Contemplating Light 6

The light on that pond is broken
by brackish water, weeds,
the shadow of cranes
that peer for fish,
a city pond in the middle
of a golf course, where the light
is complicated
by golf balls going brown
in its embrace, by
the quick flight of minnows
and the stodgy meanderings
of gold fish. Since they are red
I have no idea why they
are called gold. But light
has a way of tricking us, putting
inaccurate words in our mouth.
 
I have sometimes stood there
in the dreamy light of dusk
just to imagine
what it would be like
to be a gold fish in a pond,
or for that matter a crane.
Nobody there but me
leaning on the last question
of the day, before the horn blows,
clearing us dreamers away.

That Slow Gaze

A squirrel slithers across a vine-covered wire,
playing a game with me from above,
as its eyes ignite, pretends
to be afraid, knows
it cannot fall.
 
A tiny sparrow hunts for breadcrumbs
in an alley behind the bagel shop.
And the scent of spring is in the air
that takes me back to Macdonald Street,
that smell, hard to name, like
slate by the ocean, like cabbage weeds
in the backyard, like something
in the black earth, as I watch
the milk truck’s horse clop, clop,
up the pot-holed dirt street,
in some lost year of the forties.
 
They say when you are young
time unwinds slowly, like
string being eaten from a spool
on a day when the kite hardly tugs,
and then when you are old
time slows down again,
as if the street’s come back
with all its smells,
and I look up to see this squirrel
as I would back then.
I grin, just grin at nothing,
the gift of that slow gaze
in my eyes once more.

Lolling Above the Ocean

As we sit in the hodgepodge lunch space
atop Loblaws, with its flowered plastic
tablecloths, its fake wicker chairs,
I look out the giant windows, imagine                 
that we are lolling above the ocean
in some faraway magic land. The boats
 
nod on the waves. Someone reaches
for a bottle of champagne. And the sun
burrows into every shadow eagerly.
I realize that the vision is not a wish,
but a picture of what is really going on,
here in this strange place, where meals
 
are swallowed hurriedly. The ocean
is not miles away, but in the way you turn
your head, in the way I grin at things
you say. The boats are the easy breaths
we take, and the sun is a god above us
who searches for something we possess.

Oracles

​Ever since I was a kid
it was the outcast
I was attracted to, someone
who didn’t quite fit in
                        the girl who leaned to one side
                        as she walked, pensive
                        as a falling leaf, the guy
                        who came from the country
                        claiming to know
all the symphonies the wind played.
                                  Schooling & age
                                  have not changed me
                                  have only confirmed in me
                                  a love of the eccentric
a woman as shy as a hummingbird
a man who lies on his back
contemplating the clouds
telling me how much he loved his mother
back then in that small town.
                   They in turn overlook
                    the way I tilt my head, listening
                    to them as if they are oracles
                    gazing into the never-ending
depths of their eyes.
​

Ducks

Ducks. Ducks everywhere. Quacking ducks
in Kensington Market on a Saturday,
in their cages, smelling of too many ducks
together.
 
She arrives, this woman with her friends,
a business woman from Shanghai,
modestly dressed, a Buddhist.
 
Want forty, the owner asks? Yeah,
I’ve got forty. If you have the money
I’ve got the ducks. Much easier this way
than selling them three at a time
to struggling restaurants.
 
And yes, the modest woman, who
has practiced the smoothness of the Buddha
no ruffles in her feathers, quiet, detached,
hands the owner the money
and her friends gather the ducks
as if they are picking up kids from daycare,
pile them into the backs of vans, cages
and all.
 
Sunset Lake, next stop. They hover
with cameras to record the event,
their first symbolic act in this land,
each one breathing the present
not looking back to China,
nor forward five years in Canada,
but clasping this moment.
 
They slide open the cages one by one,
and the ducks spring up, then soar,
calling to each other,
as they cut through the leaf-scented,
September air.



                ♢

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