Deer Crossing: Poems

By Gannon Hamilton

Deer Crossing is a book of short and serial poetry mainly concerned with bucolic or pastoral themes. This new pastoralism is more than a bit ironic, as it examines the interface among the urban ethos, the almost-lost art of meditating on nature, and the virtues of working outdoors. The poems are autobiographical and they were written between 1978 and 2013. Today, when such a diagnosis of Nature Deprivation Syndrome (NDS) is possible, this book is apt reading.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9780991767205

Book preview

Deer Crossing

Poems

Gannon Hamilton

Copyright @ 2013 by Gannon Hamilton.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-0-9917672-0-5

Ebook created by Terri Rothman

TLAC Studios, Toronto, www.tlac.ca

Title

Introduction

Deer Crossing

The Days

Aeolian Psalm

Let’s Dine

Corned Beef

Wraps

White Bread

Festive Hermitage

Euridice: A Dance Suite in Five Movements (I - V)

(I)  Euridice: Duet for Orpheus and Eros (12/8 time)

(II)  Faith: a Song for Euridice and the Fates (6/8 time)

(III)  Descent: a Duet for Psyche and Echo (3/4 time)

(IV)  Apology: Solo by Hades (5/8 time)

(V)  Resignation: astrologer and mortal chorus (7/8 time)

Ars Defunte

Assiniboia

(I)  Wing Feather

(II)  Peripheral Visions

(III)  Flash Flood

(IV)  Great Horned Owl

Aviary

I)  Misnomer

II)  Stork

III)  Chickens

Songbird

Dwarf Pine

Chapel Creek

Angling

Catch and Release

Six Catfish

Deer Crossing

Bernie and Me

Ignominy

Lent

Non-consultant

Five Twenty Five

Whistler

Joyce to Patterson

Vesper Campana

Shame

Simple Machines

Four Fruits in Serial:

Apple Logue

Purple Testament

Mango Song

Contours

Nickel Iron

Necropolitan Life

Flood

(1881)

(1926)

(1943)

(1952)

Ghost Reader

Keloid

Trio for Lyre, Flute and Voice

~ Pastorale in Three Movements ~

(I)  Oak Ridge Road

(II)  Wordsworth

(III)  David

Genetic Memory

Honing an Old Saw

About the Author

Introduction

I wrote my first verse in Seattle, at age nine. It consisted of a half dozen rhyming quatrains and featured the adventures of a sailor named Jack. My teacher, Mrs. Meany, whom I adored, had me read it aloud in class. Her pregnancy had not consciously registered with me; she was possessed of an inexplicable tenderness. My affection for her was primal or maybe could be attributed to pheromones. Waves of goose pimples engulfed me whenever she stood near my desk. She had a singing voice, mellow and sweet. She was the first teacher of mine who didn’t yell at her class.

When she did not return after Winter break, I was as glum as I had been before the day she introduced herself as our fourth grade teacher, congratulating us on having made it to senior elementary. In Edmonton, Mrs. Hubbard, my grade seven English teacher, who was herself, English, falsely accused me of plagiarism. Her threats hung in the air for all of about ten minutes before the glow of accomplishment enveloped me.

It is hard not to believe in some kind of muse. That pang and quickening to pure verb as the great Seamus Heaney put it, is distinct from, but not necessarily better than inspiration or encouragement, and none of these is a substitute for the others. In Windsor, when I was seventeen, I had another teacher like Mrs. Meany, in that he was so unlike his name. Eugene Raper handed me back my double dactyl assignment with his A on the top left corner. Keep up the good work, Tommy, Canada needs good poets, he said in that newsreel announcer way of his. I obeyed him: the only person to ever call me Tommy.

Every decade or so, I do something poet-like. In 1982, I was conducting graduate research on Dub Poetry while attending the Calgary Featured and Open Readers Series at the NFB auditorium. Reciting felt good, but it also taught me how much the inner and spoken voices can differ from one another. Sam Spencer Owl Child was the first poem I wrote that harmonized those two voices enough to pass editorial muster; it was published in Blue Buffalo, a spin-off of the Dandelion lit review. I was compelled to work on my voices.

Another decade elapsed before I again submitted poems to journals. Out of twenty-five packages sent in a blitz, five won favor: Blood and Aphorisms, Hart House Review, trans/forms, Whetstone and The Dalhousie Review all published a poem or two. The chosen works, in one or another respect, shared the element of humor, accounting for about one in five of my poems; most of my personal favorites reside in the other eighty percent. I can’t complain but this discrepancy bothers me a bit.

You can judge for yourself, how well my serious poems measure up. The past twenty years seem to have been more conducive to somber tones; anyway, I suspect that my unfunny poetry has improved. Those of us disinclined towards self-effacement need experiences of enthralment and epiphany, encounters of the splendid and sublime, in order to be humbled. Occasionally, something raises its foot, the sole of which we cannot compass, and as it descends upon us, crushing us, the poem comes out.

Deer Crossing

The Days

       Time’s paintings are framed by them;

by them we mark and enumerate each well-charted voyage, every ill-fated

       rendezvous;

having no luck at saving light, we reset and synchronize the dial, whenever

we enter a new zone or season, impose the grid on square map