Tunnel Jumping

By Denis Stokes

A compelling native voice from Ontario, Canada, Denis Stokes remembers the province and the city of Toronto in verses. His verses portray an age, a city, a province, and the people inhabiting them.

Though the author's childhood was unlike mine, all the same these poems resonate, drawing me backward into my own. The poems are tightly crafted, but gently, rooted in the area where he grew up, and where I have recently landed as a stranger, not relating to it, not really feeling it at all. And yet, now, perhaps, I do.

I have so many favourite poems, especially Kiss `n' Ride, with its beautiful hypnotic rhyme scheme. Other readers will discover favourites of their own.

These are poems paying homage. they are heavily rooted in nature, honouring childhood experiences, childhood friends. And family, especially a father and grandfather. I love that grandfather! A reader would give anything to have that grandfather. I know I would, despite already having a beloved one of my own.

This is not a book to be scanned quickly. Slow down. Savour it. Enjoy the ride.

-Carol Malyon

'a voice with many compass points…'

Susan Ioannou

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scarlet Leaf Publishing House
• Release date: Nov 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393923138

Book preview

TUNNEL JUMPING

POEMS

DENIS STOKES

Scarlet Leaf Press

2020

SCARLET LEAF PRESS

TORONTO ONTARIO CANADA

COPYRIGHT BY:

DENIS STOKES

COVER DESIGN: SCOTT MURDOCH

AUTHOR PHOTO: MARY STOKES

All rights reserved.

No part of this book can be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

For information address to Scarlet Leaf Publishing House:

[e-mail]

TUNNEL JUMPING

For my mother

The city was my shadow, and no man jumps off his own shadow....  It is dyed into me, part of my way of seeing and feeling forever. Somebody else who lived there, unknown to me at the same time, might well see it differently.

-Sean O’Faolain

This is all I know: we are born out of darkness. One day darkness pulls us back.  In between there is light.

-Ian McCulloch, in memorium

The great instigators of violence have encouraged themselves with the thought of how, blind, mechanical force is sovereign throughout the whole universe.

By looking at the world with keener senses than theirs, we shall find more powerful encouragement in the thought of how these innumerable blind forces are limited, made to balance one against the other, brought to form a united whole by something which we do not understand, but which we call beauty.

If we keep ever present in our minds the idea of a  veritable human order, if we think of it as of something to which a total sacrifice is due should the need arise, we shall be in a similar position to that of a man traveling without a guide, through the night, but continually thinking of the direction he wishes to follow.  Such a traveler’s way is lit by a great hope.

-Simone Weil

Acknowledgements

MUCH THANKS FOR THE support of the following:

WAVES... LEFTOVER Tanka

The Crafted Poem...Pitcher in the Rain

Acta Victoriana... Bus Shelter

Grammateion...Swimming

U.C. Review... Dedication

Canadian Forum... Wayne is on the train/looking

Images (York University)... Warden Station

Descant... Damsels; Closet News

(W)rites of Spring (League of Canadian Poets): Licking Honey from the Thorn... Tunnel Jumping

Arc... Fields

Carrying the Branch (Glass Lyre Press)... Tasting Africa

Leaping Clear... Zen

Iowa Source... Arriving Light

Several of these poems appeared in the anthology, Collected Words (with Bill Dunphy, Cecilia Petierse Kennedy, Des Daley, Paul McGraw)

Several of these poems appeared in the chapbook, Scarborough Poems (Wordwrights Canada).

Several other poems appeared in the chapbook What the Street Knows (Albernum Press).

Several of these poems appeared in the chapbook Peace Comes Dropping Slow (Albernum Press).

Zen and Tasting Africa appear in the collection, A Wolf Rages Down the Little Jocko.

The Blackstock Children appears in the collection by the same name.

The author is most grateful for the support of the Ontario Arts Council, without which many of these poems would not have been written.

Much thanks to the Teachers Union of Malawi for their gracious, inspiring welcome.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

I

Leftover Tanka

Pitcher in the Rain

My Creek

Autumn Moths

Bus Shelter

Altars

Moving

In Elegy

This Bridge Ices

What the Street Knows

Leper’s Song

Warden Station

Kiss ’n’ Ride

Prayer upon Cleaning out the Yonge Street Washroom

Wayne is on the train/looking

Gethsemane

Crossing the Road

II

Dedication

Closet News

The Calling

Damsels

Tunnel Jumping

Fields

Woods

Final Suns

Kennedy Road, Woodyard Homings

Zen (from Deer Park)

Reasons

Swimming

III

In the Dark Hall the Key

Updates

In Summer Heat, Norland

From Lakes Revisited

Simcoe

Death is Romantic

North Oshawa, The Given Road

Chevrons

Sheds

The Blackstock Children

Installing the Light

Otto Preminger Begins

Near the Reservoir

The Enfield Searches

Old Song

Towards Lilongwe, A Walk

Tasting Africa

Girls of Ekwendeni

Ode to Malarone

Flashing*

Massau

Kapuscinski, Shadowing Sun

Foxridge Wonder

Half Penny

Arriving Light

Author’s Biography

I

HE PUSHED OPEN THE door and found himself walking in a labyrinth,

Corridors, elevators.  The livid light was not light but the dark of the earth.

Electronic dogs passed him noiselessly.

He descended many floors, a hundred, three hundred, down.

-Orpheus and Eurydice, Czeslaw Milosz

Leftover Tanka

THE PIGEONS, GRAY AS the evening soon,

descend.  The world chills a bit and

Feet shuffle over loose stones. A man

begs, too tired for a ragged violence.

You throw him a key to the city. He’s

lived long here. He