Poetry
HAMMER
A hammer is rising. A hammer
thrown up at the end of the day by a carpenter
with blood on the handle where his blisters have been.
A hammer. It lifts as well on the wave of steam
pouring up from the pots of a kitchen - a tiny kitchen
of an apartment, and that of a restaurant
serving a hundred customers at once.
A great cry of tedium
erupting out of papers and fluorescent glass
carries the hammer higher. It goes up end over end
on a tune broadcast to a million people.
And it climbs
on the force of a man's arm alone
flung straight up from the sickness that is his life.
It rises out of the weight of a body falling.
Nothing can stop it. The hammer has risen for centuries
high as the eaves, over the town. In this age
it has climbed to the moon
but it does not cease rising everywhere each hour.
And no one can say what it will drive
if at last it comes down.
STUDENTS
The freshman class-fist printouts
showed birthdates so recent
Wayman was sure the computer was in error.
One young man, however, was curious
about Wayman's mention near the start of term
of his old college newspaper:
"You were an editor when? Wow,
that's before I was born."
The wisdom of the students
hadn't altered, though.
Wayman observed many clung to
The Vaccination Theory of Education
he remembered: once you have had a subject
you are immune
and never have to consider it again.
Other students continued to endorse
The Dipstick Theory of Education:
as with a car engine, where as long as the oil level
is above the add line
there is no need to put in more oil,
so if you receive a pass or higher
why put any more into learning?
At the front of the room, Wayman sweated
to reveal his alternative.
"Adopt The Kung Fu Theory of Education,"
he begged.
"Learning as self-defence. The more you understand
about what's occurring around you
the better prepared you are to deal with difficulties."
The students remained skeptical.
A young woman was a pioneer
of The Easy Listening Theory of Learning:
spending her hours in class
with her tape recorder earphones on,
silently enjoying a pleasanter world.
"Don't worry, I can hear you,"
she reassured Wayman
when after some days he was moved to inquire.
Finally, at term's end
Wayman inscribed after each now-familiar name on the list
the traditional single letter.
And whatever pedagogical approach
he or the students espoused,
Wayman knew this notation would be pored over
with more intensity than
anything else Wayman taught.
The Fed Anthology
Hornby Island
for Billy Little, who shared loved spots
and fond friends
Here on the headland by Downe's Point
we case dreams to rise
synchronous with eagles and gulls,
all make-believe, egocentric,
near to fanatical,
else aim true to roam deep
with Leviathan in the ocean's mind,
free from perplexities and profundities
such as bind the scheduled self
Here is the arbutus grove
whose trunks and branches tighten
like nerves, twisted witnesses,
victims of shapely winds
which blow in always unseen,
sweet from the south
or coming cold from the north,
from every direction
the prevailing force of nature
Wish I could emulate the arbutus
slough off my thin skin as easily
as these natives trees their bark
from abrasion, disdain or design,
unveiling the bare beauty
of strong, hard wood beneath
Over on Fossil Bay
the rot of herring roe
strewn amongst broken clam shells, dead crabs
on dirty grey sand, exposed bedrock,
thickened the morning air,
but gave no cause for bereavement:
these millions of botched birthings!
And none also for the Salish,
no open lamentation for a race
almost obliterated without trace
from their native habitat
save a few totems, some evidences of middens,
a score of petroglyphs of their guardian spirits
carved a thousand years ago
on smooth flat rock by the shore,
of killer whales, Leviathans again,
to guide their hunts,
the destiny of their tribe.
Having retraced them
gently with finger tips,
they now guide mine.
Exile in a Cold Land
In a winter air when bare trees
inlay calligraphics in the sky,
snow flutters perhaps
from a grey distance,
and trailed by his own voice,
a lone man walks,
afraid of being smothered,
immured in a white universe.
Night by night he threatens
to jettison the stars,
evict them in tumbles
as snow from a frozen sky,
else dreams the thin-sheeted ice
cracks beneath his feet,
fragile as a brief handshake.
