Florence
(written for the CBC Peter Gzowki PGI fundraiser in Vancouver; Peter Mansbridge told me how to speak into a microphone. A very cool CBC nerd moment for me)
Florence can read the secrets from a face,
like they were printed upper case bold
seventy two point font
black letters on yellow background
blazing on a billboard--
obvious.
You know your “Impenetrable†Poker Stare?
Florence has a pretty good idea of what cards you’re holding,
and what lies you told
so you could be here instead of baby sitting.
But words,
in all the ways you can get words—
whether paper-printed, blinking on a PC,
spoken directly, mega-phoned, repeated or eavesdropped--
Florence has always found that words are strangers
who only care to give her their backs.
Books are tight blank faces.
Government forms are double-cross labyrinths.
Even listening to a couple chat about their vacation,
for Florence,
can be like watching a person’s face come racing to a break down.
Everything that’s inside flicking across so quick and disorganized,
you miss five meanings for every one you can catch.
When Florence tries to understand, it’s like that:
every commonplace a trip step towards the brim of panic,
the mystery of what she’s missing painting it urgent,
always that feeling like it might be important--
so Florence drops her eyes
just in case,
to keep her secret.
She works at a shop that sells picture frames.
This one time, some tourists came in
and asked her how to get downtown.
She could have done it with landmarks,
but they insisted she find it on a map
that had names of streets printed in such a sardine pack jumble,
the downtown core shifted and shifted in front of her,
like pacificbou-boule-vardatrichardshowehomerhowedrakedrakehomerhowedrake.
Florence had to tell a lot of lies to get this job in the first place,
so now she mainly tries to stay at the back.
She refuses to publicly stumble over the frou-frou names
the store gives the frame colors;
doesn’t realize that 9 of 10 people who come in,
don’t feel comfortable pronouncing “aubergene†either,
just like filling out tax forms makes 90% of people feel inferior.
To Florence, everyone else speaks miracles.
Little girls flip gold coins out of their mouths,
and their parents don’t even notice.
Florence wonders, what’s the use of being able to read faces,
if you can’t even say what you notice.
She hates that saying,
“pictures don’t lie,â€
because they do--
it’s just in all the things they decide not to tell you.
Like once, she bought a tin of food
because it had the most delicious looking cut of fish drawn on the side of it—
Now, what exactly are you supposed to say
when you realize you’ve come home with cat chow.
That night, Florence and her husband
revisit the “when†and “what then†conversation,
they’ve been having for years now:
When are you going back to school?
If I die, what then?
Florence feels the hand of a giant
pressing into her chest.
She’s made of wax,
his hand just sinks and sinks.
The next day she’s back at the back of the store.
Today, there’s a man who’s been standing for 20 minutes
in front of the sample wall,
lifting an 8 and half by 11 sheet to eye-line with the frames.
The picture, he claims, is of a rainbow trout,
but Florence has reason to doubt it.
Florence figures if that fish were drawn on the side of a tin,
people would probably expect to get cat food--
it’s that mangled.
But Florence knows faces,
and this man’s face is saying that the picture he’s holding,
is a picture that must be pressed delicate against alabaster backing,
needs to be cradled in the elegant crooked fingers of a gilded frame.
And here is how Florence would fill in
one of those “career and education planning†goal sheets,
if you slid it in front of her at this exact moment:
If Florence went back to school,
she could open up her own gallery.
She’d give the cat food fish a spot in the middle--
yes, she actually is that sentimental.
But what Florence would like more than anything,
would be to sneak into her gallery
sometime in the middle of the night,
and write all of the descriptions,
tell why things were important,
give you the whole story
about anybody who ever stood humble
before the hauteur of teak wood,
the self-assurance of oak molding.
And then in the morning she’d come in,
and watch people’s faces,
and see if they could tell someone like her wrote it.
Someone like Florence,
who’s got a voice and an eye like her namesake:
Florence, the gallery city in Italy,
full of pictures placed on pinnacles.
She notices you, and thinks you’re a miracle.
You have met Florence,
might have guessed that she had secrets:
the one, her trouble with words,
the other,
the fact that she’s worth the city of monuments
she would build for everyone else--
she just needs someone to notice.
Tough and Sunset
Tough and Sunset
If you want to know real fear,
watch your sister, seven months pregnant
step out across black ice.
It’s dark out.
A brimmed up couple of shopping bags
are straining her arms to the street in bow bends.
She’s got a leash looped around her wrist,
and at the end of it,
there is a 200 pound male German Shepherd,
who hates little white dogs,
and the one specific little white dog
who he hates more than anything else in the world,
is coming around the corner.
Kid,
because everyone has the right to know where they’re from,
I’m going to tell you that for the past 9 months
you have been coming to us bound up in that fear.
Thinking of what you could do to my sister’s life
has been like waiting behind sound proof glass
while she dangles innocent fingers
to the jaw of a dreaming pipe bomb.
But on this night,
when everyone,
even our kitchen lamps,
even the April washed cherry branches and the satellites,
all seem to swagger and brag--
and all the dark cars that motor past our home
become cigars given away
by the joy curled tight to the heart of our humble lawn--
on this night, when we expect you,
every doubt that could be stacked against your life
is garbage.
Seriously, disbelievers,
if anyone wants to start a war with me tonight
all they have to say
is they’re afraid my sister won’t be able to handle it.
Please.
This night is faith.
So watch her be a single mom, start up a business
pay for a house on triple mortgage
get so busy her knuckles wear flat
from repeatedly rapping the tops of courier cars
to send them speeding with the announcement
that she will definitely be the first human
to escape the biological stumbling block of sleep--
Ha! Want to see her beat up a shark too?
She will do that for you--whistling.
And even if that may be a few points beyond what’s possible,
this is the tenor of things that we must believe in tonight.
Kid, we take your existence as a rally point
to prove our miraculous nature as family.
Take your grandmother, for instance.
Your grandmother is AMAZING at moving furniture.
I know this doesn’t sound like much of a super power,
but you have to picture a woman in her 50s,
5’6, Librarian School Graduate.
When I was a kid,
you could have picked her out of any line up
by the immaculate collared shirt she always kept
peeking prim beneath her wool sweaters.
But when it comes to furniture,
your grandmother just asks “where would you like this?â€
And then her muscles pop,
the book case levitates, and leaps across the living room,
skids to a stop bare inches from battering the wall through to the neighbors.
And when the plaster and dust finally come to rest
there’s your grandmother, all nonchalant and shrugs
standing next to a small pile of wool
from where her biceps have ripped through her cardigan.
You should learn how to speak soon
so you can ask her to do that.
And you are definitely going to like your grandfather,
even though he’s a bit of a worrier.
During the pregnancy, he tried to control himself:
just a piddling three calls a day, to each of us,
four if something scary happened,
like, it was raining, or someone in Alberta caught pneumonia.
I’ll admit, your mother and I tried to hand it back.
We started calling him three times a day:
“Dad, I’m worried. Are you worried?â€
“No-o-o-o…?â€
“Well, maybe I shouldn’t tell you this…
but I’m walking down the street,
and there’s a slight chance that my shoe-lace could come undone,
and if it comes undone, then it follows that I could trip,
and if I trip, I could easily fall into a bike rack
get my neck wedged in between the wheels and the gear chain of a BMX
and then CHOKE until I DIE!!!â€
This backfired when he started to suspect
that deep down we must be covering
for something having gone horrifically wrong.
So he started calling us five times a day
just to make sure,
just because that’s how his heart works.
As for me,
there isn’t much you need to know,
other than the fact that I am practically responsible for your existence.
One night in Calgary I told my friends,
“I wish my sister would get pregnant already, because I want to be an Aunt.â€
And Lo’
that was the night my father called to say, “I’m worried.
You should call your sister.
I’m not supposed to tell you—
but—
There is a bun.â€
“What?â€
“Just call her.â€
The night I found out I was going to be an Aunt
I moved my head so gingerly,
I made sure not to send out bad thoughts about anything or anyone,
did my best to dream of flopsy eared bunnies
wearing sweater vests made out of cinnamon hearts and marshmallows
just in case I, you know,
had the power.
And tonight
as we wait for you
it seems imperative that we all have this power
to make the world the exact mirror of our excitement.
But look at us, how could you doubt it
you’ve turned us into tail waggers,
throw us a ball, just throw us a ball,
and you are the bright shape bouncing feet ahead of us.
We track you through the bursting fields,
we have our keenest ears pressed against the racing outline
of everything you can become.
None of us can know how to make this look easy,
and yet we are tough and sunset,
we are breath gentle for you
and up to the testing.
You have become so wanted
because you are the embodiment of that human thing
that allows us to bend reality
to the fond whims exacted by our care.
Tonight, when it seems impossible that anyone could hear
anything but what our family has to say to itself,
you become our affirmation of the ultimate decency of this world.
No pressure.
Kid, your name is Julien,
your mother is holding you,
and I have never seen the corners of her eyes
bow to anyone in such droopy prostrations of joy.
I have never seen her so careful.
Her mascara is leaping down to water cheekbones
that are budding wild bouquets for you
in such a bewilderment of first love.
This is where you come from—
some mysterious place where you were invested
with the talent of taking our fear
and trading it for the growing steel
through which our family sings and sings
of how you are so much more than we expected.
