Saturday, August 26, 2023

Remnants from Decline

Forgot abundance
            of this abalone shore

Crumbed with kelp
           receding sun-lipped flourish

Horizon's pallid vagaries
           shrouding emerald headlands

Pipers twine the purring froth
           ebbing into smooth

Stippled raft of gulls
          chitters now gone silent

 

We try recall, but
           each lap washes out
echoes of the living feast
           lapsing into sand.

 

Sand Cut Beach

The Science

"My grandparents used to tell stories about how you could walk across the backs of the salmon—
they were so plentiful that you could walk across the river on their backs." — Ernest Alfred

I wrote this poem while reflecting about the natural abundance of past times, which is so greatly reduced today that we have lost lost our cultural memory of it. We have grown used to diminishment and decline. This decline was largely precipitated through short-sighted management practices. For millennia, coastal First Nations in the Northeast Pacific managed for abundance through maintaining a careful balance between sea otters, abalone, sea urchins and kelp. Such abundance has been lost. 

The paper Drawing on indigenous governance and stewardship to build resilient coastal fisheries: People and abalone along Canada’s northwest coast (Lee et al., 2019) describes how colonizers extirpated the sea otter population through the global fur trade. The resulting "lack of sea otter predation allowed populations of their macroinvertebrate prey, including abalone and sea urchins, to increase greatly in abundance." This was followed by introduction of a Federally managed commercial abalone fishery, which aided by technologies like SCUBA, dramatically increased in the 1970s, resulting in the collapse of abalone populations by the 1990s. “They [commercial abalone fishery] just annihilated the biomass ... after that my people were told that they couldn’t eat that stuff [abalone] anymore.” (William Gladstone Sr., Heiltsuk Nation, Jan. 2012).

Lee, L. C., Reid, M., Jones, R., Winbourne, J., Rutherford, M., & Salomon, A. K. (2019). Drawing on indigenous governance and stewardship to build resilient coastal fisheries: People and abalone along Canada’s northwest coast. Marine Policy, 109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2019.103701

Saturday, December 31, 2022

so, do we appreciate your business

these Rackety Rows upon rackety rows
isled in Navy.
squishity melons, cheekity flat
gravity's robbery, parkity packed
go hauling, be perching
'pon luggage so large:
                     ponderous bird, so henfully
                                                    incfully brooding

Advention, extortion
they hawking salt potion
(eastwest be drilling to tap into gusher) which
yank up our tension, at-
traction, want More
more mouth, more sels (more smackerels)
be dollop a-yonder, recline on a lounge
                                      (now Donder, now Blitzen
                                        so leapfully bound)

Ka-charging, ra-ra
ra-wracking advance (pom-poms all a-flailing)
we skeeter bescatter
      jiving crab walking
      pumping up jam
      sponging de onions:
     [tag ragging]
     [box juking]
     [hop hipping]
     [bug jitting]
     [toe tipping]
     we spin on de dime.

the rackety cargo, rows upon
scuttle 'pon Zenith
bending o'clock
     to filligree fully flown folly
     to trumpet Styx Rivers
     to language our shivers
     to tickle da timbres
     to rollick on high.

apply now, gain fly now
     stack up some miles
now day to the morrow
     with compliment smiles
begin at the ending with style

shortlong, this
wa- wendering westerly southery dusk
pass upon passing, pasturely passing
     the coke and the bust
     the yolk and the dust
                   as watery well
     jauntily sequined
     heavily dredged
     prickly sedged
     dutifully clenched
     manfully twerked
     bernestly zerked
     crustily jawed:

the boozle, the bamble,    the
robin-topped stable
raking out great honking
rackity clackity
chimney-topped
festoons of brass.


December 2022 | Arizona
(inspired by edward estlin)

Friday, December 16, 2022

Week's End

Exhale, my friend, breathe deep
Your scurrying has ceased
Your troubles come undone
Hustle's need now gone.

Rest upon this evening
Let your cares unfold
Disconnect the WiFi
Set aside your aims.

Recline across the heavens
Let the cities slide
Like leaves upon wide river
Plucked by Autumn's tide.

Your chase was long and fruitful
But chasing's never done
Your inbox piling higher
Logs stacked upon the fire.

But, now's your time to let things go
Allow the streets to fill with snow
Breathe deeply of this night's crisp air
Release the ropes you've bound to care.


ORD to YVR

Saturday, December 10, 2022

Winter Daydream

 Eyes shut white, waiting for the words...


Coasting up from white
               to silver-gold
               pinpricks jostle
               tumbling scarves of silk
               inviting tossed carnations
               turbulence of apple blossoms               
               drifting of December frost
               soft upon broad mesas.

               meanderings of thought
               upon such white.

Silver-blue: the shadows of white clouds
               soft stains of ink
               upon the stainless snow
               the graphite squares of men,
               traced thin
               with graceful curv-ed corners
               negotiating ice.

Folding flat: origami of blue lake
               smoothing out my thoughts
               like buttery draught
               of apple juice
               sliding long my tongue.
               Like florets of terrain
               that etch dendritic shadows
               on whiteness of the land,
               as ice enshrouds
               the turbulence
               of currents deep & blue.

YVR to ORD

Sunday, October 9, 2022

October Afternoon

Here,
Midst all circling arcs,
Surrounded by such upright stand of fir,
Upon this round of rock,
Softened by parched carpet:
                                  green-gold mosses,
                                  straw-gold grasses,
                                  abiding 'til the rains revive them,
Below clear bluewhite heaven,
as solar orb, swung low to right,
                                  casts splintered rays
and fallen from past winter's tempest,
                                  roots exposed,
peeling trunk of old arbutus
                                  sprouts green shoots,
                                  reaching up,
                                  climbing for the blue.

This place reclines on afternoon,
punctuated by the raven's honk,
                                 and distant treefrog's croak
Sunlight paints in ochre hues
                                 the fir-top cones
                                 now nodding on slight breeze.

I, too, abide,
                                 thought dispersed,
just breathing this
Exquisite autumn air.


Thetis Park

Thursday, August 25, 2022

Mirror of the Morning

 Storing up,
              this paper keeps   unwriting
              this fabric now unthreads
              this moistening of dry salt air
              the softness of long ripples licking stone
              the sparking shimmer,
                                   forever drifting galaxies
              these hazy hills that vanish into sea:
                       all so insubstantial,
                       like stains within a mirror.

Mirror of this morning
              embellished by long silken floss of spider
              fastens threads of sunlight
                                  onto tassels of the ripened grass
                                  dense floral crowns of Queens Anne's lace

                                  our human rustlings
                                         vanished into sea
                                  meanderings of wasps
                                         like tracings of our
                                         fingers upon water.

Long long long ago the stories ceased
                      their words evaporated
            the meaning came undone
            the moral long forgotten
            abiding in this vacancy of legend,
            we paint our stories, lacking ink
            brushed across this hazy sky
            we slip, like sunlight,
                     vanished into sea.

 

Ruckle Park, Salt Spring Island

           


Sunday, August 21, 2022

Peroni Nil

Summer's deck
                                                                  Awning tan
Bobbing on the breeze
                                                                 Silk Sonic
Bobbing on a song
                                                                 Fingers of the fir
Tapping along
                                                                 Paper sky
Brushed in stripes of blue
                                                                 Raven hoots
Hummingbird chitters on
                                                                Toes tap time
Smiling eyes shut
                                                                 Nodding on forever
Cheshire Afternoon.

 

Illuminating every hue
Voicing each harmonic
Spreading clear warm air
                                like butter
                                like stroking flag-bright wings
                                of wandering tiger swallowtail
Nodding petals of the poppy
Silvered shadows of the fir
                                Resting nice and easy
                                on this forever
Watercolour afternoon.


Gourman Place