Nicomekl Nightlife (NPM ’16-Day 26)

My poetry buddy, Laurel, and I walk different sections of the same path—a gravel and asphalt trail that follows Nicomekl Creek. Her yesterday’s poem, “Nicomekl’s Regulars,” about the people that walk the path,  was pitch-perfect.

But the path—at least the section of it that my husband and I walk—has another  cast of characters with another life, a night life. Though we’ve never walked it at night, we’re left with lots of clues of nighttime activity.

The jettisoned mattress – Photo © 2016 by V. Nesdoly

Nicomekl Nightlife

After dark the trail’s dog-walkers
spandex-joggers, stroller-mothers and duck-feeders
give way to Nicomekl nightlife.

Hoodie-clad gangs with aerosol cans,
attracted by fresh paint and the already-graffiti’d
bridge underbelly, leave their mark.

Lean, weathered man rattles cart
over gravel to sheltered spot, jettisons mattress,
unrolls sleeping bag, curls up for the night.

Metal-hungry scrounger drags TV prey
under the bridge to eviscerate.
Leaves skeleton and innards for dead.

Roving tribe of tent-dwellers appear—one night
on the stream-bank, the next almost hidden
in new-leafed shrubs, the next under spreading oak.

Night ladies leave a trail of boots, pink bags, frilly tops,
night men—jeans, ball caps, jackets, undershirts.
Somehow a shopping cart lands in the stream.

A plank on the wooden bridge greets morning
black-charred. Across the creek
a blanket-nest lies abandoned.

Restless night segues too soon
to birdsong-raucous day.
Path, exhausted, dozes under returning

and happily predictable dog-walkers,
spandex-joggers, stroller-mothers, and a greying pair
that stride along every morning between 8 and 9.

© 2016 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)

 

National Poetry Month #eatingpoetry

Welcome to April and National Poetry month! What are you planning to do to celebrate poetry this month?

• Read more poetry?
  You could start by subscribing to The Writer’s Almanac and/or Your Daily Poem to get a new poem emailed to you each morning.

• Write more poems?
  Several websites deliver a new poetry prompt each day of April:
  Poetic Asides
  NaPoWriMo

• Attend a poetry reading?
  If you’re in the Vancouver area / Lower Mainland, you’re invited to ours. The Fraser Valley Poets Society‘s April event is a Blue Moon Reading, April 13th (6:30-8:30 p.m. Clearbrook Library, 32320 George Ferguson Way, Abbotsford, B.C.).

Yours truly is the featured reader that evening. I’ll be reading from Borrowed Gardens, the anthology that three friends and I published in December 2014. (There’s a small sampling of the poems in the book here.)

There will also be an open mic following the Blue Moon feature, so bring a several of your own poems to read.

Fragment of the League of Canadian Poets Poetry Month Poster – 2015 (click on image to enlarge)

The League of Canadian Poets has suggested the wonderful theme of FOOD for this month’s poetry. To go with that theme, here is a poem about one of my favourite childhood treats:

 

Puffed Wheat

Puffed Wheat—my generation’s Cheerios
for baby’s highchair tray.
Wheat grains magically blown up
beige-speckled, quarter inch
elongated puffs, tiny bums.

I didn’t like them as cereal
that I had to eat in a rush
before they shrunk small, slimy
and sticking to teeth when I sipped
the sweet speckled milk dregs
from the bottom of the bowl.

But a concoction of butter, cocoa
sugar and syrup cooked
hot enough to brand skin
poured over 8 cups in Mom’s enamel roaster
mixed frantically with a wooden spoon
before the sticky mass congealed to stiffness
then warm-pressed into a buttered pan
made the best birthday cake
in the world!

© 2015 by Violet Nesdoly (all rights reserved)

Share your food poems with other Canadian poets using the hashtags #eatingpoetry and #NPM15

 

August

Purple starfish on a Salt Spring Island beach, August 2012 – Photo © 2014 by V. Nesdoly

Here already
—with your brown lawns and leggy baskets
blushing tomatoes and blackening berries,
hairy, husky ears of corn?

Your arrival means it’s time
for our last summer fling
on ferry boats to azure islands
where we’ll walk beaches
with nervous crickets and hungry wasps
hunt shells, snap starfish
read in the dappled shade

Back home I’ll shop with you
braving the hordes of moms and kids
with their lists of ruled and unruled,
Crayola and calculator,
for you are the time
to stock up on marked-down
Five Stars and boxes of Bic
gel technology and fluorescent sticky notes.

Before you slip away
we have a date to stand in line
for Super Dogs and the Musical Ride
the Logger Show and flying bikes.
Later with hands mini-donut cinnamon-scented
we’ll muscle our way through crowds
lined up for massages
from the back rub machine,
clotted in front of barkers
hawking magic cloths and unblackable pots
to the table of framable prints.

So hello, dear August.
though your coming caught me by surprise
please don’t be in a hurry to go
for you could never overstay
your welcome.

© 2014 by Violet Nesdoly (all rights reserved)