It’s early. It’s dark. In the south-east, there is a place where the sun will come up, should it choose. Indications are good. So I wait for the first signs of brightening behind the cityscape.

I wait. Winter waits. The soil of summer-fallow waits. Bulbs wait; bamboo is excellent at waiting; geese wait until the time is right. Beavers don’t abide waiting, but orb weavers don’t seem to mind. They spin and wait as long as it takes. The earth spins too, awaiting its equinox.

But light bulbs, street lights, clocks, little chips in computers, never wait, will never care to wait; AI is the antithesis of waiting, while selling our ever-reductive, repackaged creativity back to ourselves, and training the waiting out of our lives.

The world of commerce is bent on bringing patience to an end. Industry keeps company with the future. Corporations race each other to see how far they can project themselves into next month, or how much of it they can drag into the present, which debases both.

We’ve surrendered the sanctity of now, and so betrayed this life, our second womb, which is about waiting. Waiting, not like Estragon and Vladimir; instead, like the chefs in Love Sarah, carefully harmonizing ingredients, preparing the pastries and letting them rest.

Advent is the season of expectation. It’s a storied rendezvous with a knowing midwife. A time for rekindled waiting — the flowering of patience. For in Advent, we wait in a commemorative way, for the birth of one already here, and always present.

We are people of the paschal mystery, actively tending the earth, caring and delighting in others, while always anticipating some kind of birth, some kind of resurrection. So we watch, as one waits for morning.

I can’t see it yet, but soon enough, the east will grow orange. Beyond the berm of buildings, high on the banks of the Bow River, the trees will turn skeletal as the light of dawn strengthens behind them.

 

 

 

 

Today is the memorial of Len Switzer.

Often, I find myself thinking of Len, his sweet spirit, his buoyant soul, his soft and kind presence; then, immediately, I think of Rianne, his partner, her sorrow, a hole of inconsolable depth, then later I wonder, perhaps some memory is flooding her, recalling for her the gift of intimate friendship, companionship, partnership with Len, only she had. The other morning, I read this line in a poem: “All things are eternally present in time and nature,” and remembered how soon — in a dream or otherwise — Len came to comfort Rianne, and is “eternally present” with her. In her ocean of grief, her sea of memories, images, scenes, “all things,” enveloped by the deep love they both shared, still share.

The following is a poem from several years ago that Len liked: He wrote to tell me, “Love this quiet reflection…carried me back to similar memories of a childhood long forgotten.” 

Recorded in a Haze of Aspen Saplings

Above the cliffs along the Jaun de Fuca strait are patches of prairie,
and when you walk beside the Meadow barley, Nodding onion,
and Nootka rose, you nod to the spirits within, in recognition
of a bone-deep bond with the grasses, forbs and shrubs,
that still green your prairie blood, where as a boy, you ran,
arms outstretched, through shoulder-high wild rye.

You were called into the silver tunnels of willow and buffaloberry,
knelt, as one knighted at the Indigo Milk Caps, sailed a scrap-lumber
frigate, held fast by spike and rope, through battalions of bullrush,
their velvet heads bursting up small clouds of down.
Coyotes held your head above sleep in windless nights,
and tri-toned trains poured songs into sedge-lined skylines.

Your birth is recorded in a haze of aspen saplings, near a bend
on the Battle River, where swallows of mercy inhabit a mud-chinked
log house that stands as a cenotaph to the mothers and fathers,
their hard long hours, where windrows of scrub brush burned
far into winter, where moldboard and share, cut sod, bled
summerfallow, and bouts of drought and blankets of hail
gave way to a red barn, white chickens, and bins of barley,
where a pine-trimmed home saw the coming and parting of children,
all dreaming of voyages beyond the bush-belted yard, where now,
through some trick of time, you walk among the bright spirits
of goldenrod, blue stem and sagebrush, listening
to the drumming angels of the great plains,
radiant with a joy you can’t name,
and a peace in full bloom.

 

---

 

 

In a late fall morning, in my upper room,
settling into my armchair, which once belonged to Deb’s dad,
I take sips of coffee while slowly inhaling a Psalm
          (a habit I can’t break),
               and just like that, time slips a cog
and I fall into a permanent notch of astronomical twilight;
you know, that phase where the sky is bleeding out its black
and the stars are brushing their teeth, preparing for bed.

It’s been happening more lately, the slipping I mean,
          not without me tilting at omens,
or shuddering at the gothic crow near my window,
          but then, after the inner shivers, I see,
it’s not a dark alley so much as a gluey predawn warmth,
like being blanketed in the back of a horse-drawn carriage,
clopping along through a viscous mist,
          enveloped, like lying in some angelic float tank,
          enwrapped, like being held in the arms
of that anonymous monk who wrote the Cloud of Unknowing.
     And I, a happy water strider,
          a rollicking otter,
               a halcyon loon,
take to the thick silence like a March crocus—
no warning of my heart’s thaw,
no accounting for the blaze of predawn that pierces
my inflated aspirations,
     amputates my sad little deceptions,
          a quick scalpel to my sly envy,
               a major excision on my delicate ego.

          O, this surgical mercy,
          this brooding Love,
so quiet it rings a thousand bells,
so electric it stuns my donkey soul,
and readies us for a wilderness sojourn
          far into enemy territory,
just me, my donkey, and this big
          bindle-bag full of love.

 

 

At Base Camp he pitched his pillow tent,
drew flags with crayon and hung them on his tricycle.
He loved the stars stuck to his ceiling, and loved the clever,
silver light that came through the window and turned
his room into a starship. He felt sad and misunderstood
when told to pick up his toys; he made up his mind never
to become a grown-up, then one morning he made his bed
and left. Some bruising but full of good training and wearing
white sneakers and a denim jacket, he good as loped
to Camp Two, where he gathered up his spent passions,
his lessons-learned, rehearsed his self-talk and set out
with his trail map of remedial wisdom to reach Camp Three.
Mounting responsibilities, constant equipment checks,
increasing edema and demands for dwindling supplies,
still, he stowed his happy memories, laced up his sorrows,
cares, steadied himself and laboured on. Camp Four.
The summit, now in sight. Breathing comes harder.
No return to Base (amusing that he ever thought there was).
With what strength remains, he climbs higher.
The stars float in the pressing ether, the white peak looms larger,
he drops more and more gear, feels less weight,
there’s more and more light!

 

---