skonen_blades

There's an event called A Day at the Races where poets go to the horse races and they each pick a horse name at random from each of the seven races and then use that name as a prompt for a poem. At the end of the day, we read out the 'winning' poem from each race and then whatever other poems we think turned out pretty good. It's a fun day.

This is poem 03 from race 03 and my horse's name was Tam Tricky. He came in first! My father's name was Tam and he grew up in the violent streets of Glasgow (gang member, bouncer, military policeman) before emigrating to Canada with his first wife and three daughters and the moving to Toronto and meeting my mom. I always found my dad pretty fascinating and his ability to break the cycle of violence with my brother and I is something I'll always admire.

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Tam tricky

Found his way through the maze

Tam clever
Tam strong

The gutter’s hand slipped off his greased spine
His father’s fists only molding his clay
until he could fight back
and become his own potter

Tam long

Bird bones stork long but steel strong

Tam traveler
Tam gardener

Five children
Two wives
Citizenship in two countries

Tam resting
Tam never gone
Tam bus driver
Tam glazer
Tam human church
Tam holy memory

Tam throw me
(light javelin son)

Into the deep
unknowable
future



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I’m living off of past victories like they’re moldy food shoved rudely under my cell door on a tin tray. The mirror’s telling me a harsher and harsher truth every day. It’s becoming more of a challenge to really love life. I understand now what the Rolling Stones were talking about when they said what a drag it was getting old. I also know that I’ll laugh at myself ten years from now for thinking that 34 was old. My friend Rick was talking the other day about how getting up in the morning is a little bit of a shock these days since all of his joints get stiff some mornings and he has to stretch and crack his joints before he can really get the day going. I told him to look forward to what a party that’s going to be when he’s sixty. Get what I’m saying.

What I am is the best I have to offer and it’s not going to get this good again.

I look at the sixteen year old sitting next to me in my driving school class and I swear to god through some trick of time she is a child. Not childish, not immature, but a child. I can’t see her as an adult. She is in NO WAY old enough to get behind the wheel of a car. She’s barely old enough to babysit other kids. I know that this is my age and my experience talking. I know that people in their 70s must look at me the same way.

Perhaps this is the reason for my explosion of ‘doing stuff’ these days. Is this what they call a midlife crisis? With my father gone, I’m going down the checklist and trying to check off everything that will make me a man so that I can take up the slack of his absence. That’s the way I’m looking at it.

I’m overcompensating for this feeling that I have that I’m fading.

I’m trying, though, and I guess that’s all that matters. It’s the giving up that is the killer. When my responses become entirely habitual instead of thought out, when my ambition no longer exists, when my passion becomes an act, when my life becomes something to watch rather than take part in. That’s when it becomes a non life. The very thought of that is so terrifying to me, though, that I’m sure I’ll wake up in a cold sweat and make sure it never happens.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not afraid of commitment or stability. Just sing to me. Keep me crazy. Help me be strong. Let’s all go forward together.

My Dad carrying me on Wreck Beach when I was two.
I guess that'd be 1974. I love this picture.




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