dark

it’s dark on the hill

even though city lights peel away secrets

below where I stand lonely

listening to urban din hammered into songs

remembering to look up

scanning for planes diving across memories

picking out constellations as cop cars provide the horns

I remember that insectalien rising out of the floor

planetarium lights dimming

a sonorous sky guide

and highbacked reclining chairs

modern as open the pod bay doors, Hal

open the pod bay doors

remembering to look down

looking for secrets in polished glass

burnished metal and an artillery of light bulbs

now its dark

now there is no up

now the past is the hunter

on the hill in the dark

remembering the loneliness

there is between each of us

 

 

David Trudel           © 2015

 

 

 

Last night, my after-dinner walk brought me through the forest up to the hilltop. At this time of year it’s a transition getting used to the earlier darkness and learning to hear the sounds of the night. But it’s also the time when the hilltop view sparkles with lights as the city opens up, becoming a magical tapestry of distant reflections. Overhead ragged clouds play striptease with the universe and the half moon radiates her silvery charms. I stand there drinking it all in, letting my mind settle and letting go of all my small thoughts and distractions until it’s just me and the universe. I sense a presence and turn around. There, in the dusky shadows is a family of deer, pausing for a moment to look at the same lights. Eventually they melt into the dark and I make my way downhill.

 

 

looking for the aurora

toes curl

gripping rock through shoe and moss

pressing brief bones against a plunge of denseness

my tongue tastes endurance

more feeling than looking

then up, inevitably

up into the great whatever

not into riddles or faded histories of starlight

catching yesterday’s plasma

high flies

against the big black fullness

high flies

rippling daggers slice the empty

 

this point a singularity

 

under it all

holding on to nothing

holding nothing in

until the next point is less than something

nothing is left

but the rock

the sky

and me

 

 

David Trudel       © 2014

 

 

Doe

her eyes catch the final glimmers of daylight

drawing my attention to the doe

ruminating trailside

I hold her gaze and say hello dear

with a smile

we look at each other, her shoulders relax

we share this moment

not quite trusting each other

but less than wary

close enough to hear each other breathing

shadows close in

our eyes, different enough

seeing mysteries

both recognize a moment of peace

worth sharing

 

David Trudel   © 2014

 

 

Tonight, as is my custom, I went for an after-dinner walk in the park behind my house. Those of you who have walked the hill with me will recall the viewpoint closest to my place, just a few minutes into the park. It’s a rocky outcropping facing west, with a few farms in the foreground and a series of hills and mountains in the distance. One of my neighbours calls it “the watchtower” and it’s an apt name, since it’s a far-seeing kind of place. Tonight however, the wind was blowing in my face so I moved to the other side of the watchtower and as I was gazing into the trees, something white caught my attention, across the vale from where I sat. I mentally filed it away to check into later.

 

I went back down to the main trail and started removing one of the notices I’d put up about this morning’s successful broom pull. Of course success can be measured lots of ways and since I have sometimes been all alone on these kind of events, anytime I get more than one other volunteer I’m pleased. Today there were seven of us and we were able to pull out quite a lot of broom, some daphne and of course the blackberries got trimmed back. So by any measure it was a successful effort.

 

One of the regular dog walkers came by and stopped for a chat, talking about her dogs, the great wildflower season we’ve had and of course the nefarious scotch broom. I carried on, enjoying the evening amidst the trees while feathered arpeggios filled in the spaces between the branches. I took down and folded up a couple more notices, then went to the top of the hill. The view from there is stunning, it’s a big sky kind of place where anywhere in the world is just over the horizon. After drinking in my fill, I turned around and started for home, but remembered that I needed to check out the mysterious flashes of white I’d noticed earlier.

 

I clambered over to where I thought it should be and sure enough, as I hopped up a rocky ridge I quickly discovered the cause. A couple of three ring binders and some duo-tangs had been emptied out of a year’s worth of homework and tests, an ignorant display of childish rage against authority. I hummed a few bars of “School’s Out” and surveyed the damage. Pages were everywhere, scattered in the tall grass, stuck in the branches and roots of the gnarly oaks, and resting precariously on fernlaced rocky slopes. It was getting late and I thought about leaving it until tomorrow but quickly realized it would only get worse with each puff of wind. I set to work, corralling page after page of schoolwork and piling them up in a cleft in the rocks.

 

I admit to being more than a little angry – as I worked I cursed the ignorant miscreant who had caused the mess. But I tried to get out from under the anger, trying to imagine the terrible forces that might have driven someone to do this. Using my walking stick I was able to get nearly all of the papers gathered up. It was too much for me to carry, I realized. I also noticed some charred papers on the ground and thought about how easy it would be for some idiot to start a fire with this much paper around. I grumbled under my breath and set off for home to get a garbage bag. I was still carrying a lot of resentment and general pissed-offedness, but as I walked through the forest I realized that instead of being angry I should be happy. After all, I was able to take action to clean it up. If I hadn’t come along, I thought, this could have turned out a lot worse than it’s going to. So I slipped indoors, grabbed a garbage bag and went swiftly back into the park feeling a lot better than I had just a few minutes earlier when I’d been swearing a blue streak as I gathered up papers. By the time I got there the light was fading but it was good enough for my purpose. I filled the bag and then set off back home, reflecting on the motivations that spur us into action. Turning a negative into a positive was a compelling motive for me tonight.

 

 

Shin

Of all the things I’m privileged with, one of my favourites is being able to go on nighttime Shinrin-yoku  walks in the hilltop park behind my house.  Armed only with a flashlight I walk the darkened hallways of swaying trees, listening to arpeggios played upon their upper branches.

I walk by myself but I’m not alone, I’m here with each fir and oak, with the forest understory with its many tiny insect and bird kingdoms, and I’m with the morphing clouds that race across the sky, ambered by the city that spills its way towards this hilltop redoubt. I listen to the song the wind is singing and I look at the scimitar pureness of a new moon.   I give thanks for a moment of standing on a rocky outcrop at the edge of a city watching its lights and the sky overhead, feeling the wind surge around me and feeling at peace.

 

 

 

tree song

needles on each dancing branch

pull keening sounds from the wind

singing regrets that they can’t fly

like empty exiles

doomed to restlessness

each sound a friction

between immovable and unstoppable

wistful and beautiful

as silhouettes of trees against the night

rooted into place

but longing to take flight

 

 

David Trudel  © 2014

 

 

Truck Parade

Here in Victoria, one of the more curious Christmas traditions has got to be the annual truck parade.  The local trucking industry gets together and has a parade of festively decorated trucks crawl along one of the main roads out of town to one of the suburbs where they are part of a charity event.  Along the way, the drivers keep up an incessant honking of horns, mostly of the basso profundo variety, punctuated by the odd siren or two.

Tonight, my after dinner walk started with a close encounter with a raccoon, who quickly shimmied up a tree to stare at me eye to eye. Interspecies communication is perplexing sometimes, as it was tonight, so I rambled on. Soon enough the silence was broken by the distant cacophony of the trucks.  The noise the horns produce can be described as charmingly obnoxious, kind of annoying but at the same time endearing, in a folksy kind of way.

Like most of the northern hemisphere we are experiencing cold weather but tonight the clear skies more than made up for the frosty temperature.  The night sky was absolutely stunning, considering that the hill rests at the edge of a modestly sized provincial capitol. Tonight the stars shone bright against the void, only slightly dimmed by a not quite quarter moon and the carpet of lights that defines the urban environment. Hilltop views at night are awesome wherever you are. Here on the edge of the Pacific Ocean we also have the benefit of having some of the cleanest air on the planet, which adds to the overall experience. I digress.

So I was at one of my favourite vantage points, staring out past the lights of the city, looking over the horizon to people I care about and places I love and places I’ve never seen, looking up at the sky at a swirl of starlight and I pondered the antiquity of each twinkle. All the while the truck drivers pounded their horns, blasting random bursts of sonic energy or leaning on a note like a tightfisted preacher.

It was sort of annoying and distracting but I tried to let it roll through me and over me.  I looked into the archive of creation, the distant stars and galaxies and whatever lies beyond and the honking of the horns prompted me to understand that all those distant lights from long ago must have been accompanied by epic noise.  Those tiny lights all represent enormous explosions of energy and matter and somewhere those sounds still reverberate. At that moment I was able to transcend my annoyance with the intrusion of honking horns by using them as proxies for the symphony that accompanied the creation of those distant lights. For a moment, a brief moment, I heard the music of the spheres.

 

nightview

sometimes at the top of the hill

there are stories that float up

from each of those lights

signaling their revolutions

pulling me into memories of the over there

or imaginary dramas

like elderly couples planning each other’s assisted suicide

or teenagers learning the ways of rooftop exits

into rebellion in empty spaces between lights

down there life is being made

and death continues to shouldertap

 

there are sounds

that are all new but not new

each siren a grim familiar chorus

each distant shout echoing

a thousand others heard before

each thousand thousand sounds a looping track

played back randomly

played back frequently enough for familiarity

so that each sound resonates comfortably

like you’ve heard them before

just not quite like this

 

the light is never the same

tonight low clouds dance the moon

revealing glimpses of white mystery

behind gray scarves fanned like marilyn

luminescent overcast makes cameos of twisted limbs

and mosscaught raindrops glow like mithril in moonlight

as shadows shift into almost

wearing sheer nothings that you can never quite see through

 

 

David Trudel   ©  2013

Photo by the author

 

 

Battles

My hardest battles aren’t with others

But with myself

Waging relentless optimism against an array of sins

I am cloaked in lethargy

I can barely shrug off the self-pity that has me wrapped up

In my own pain

I find it difficult to perceive the urgency of others’ struggles

Empathy is in short supply

So I retreat

I find myself napping

Taking short breaks

Eventually I psyche myself up for a walk

It has warmed up

So that insects and birds play out their aerial battles

With sunglints punctuating each twist and turn

Under the forest canopy I forage for blackberries

It is early enough that at least half are still tart

Their color belying their character

I leave the park and find my way to the commuter trail

I take pictures of the highway below

Wondering how many people have driven past this spot

Oblivious to its beauty

In their obsession with speed and distance

I think of the distance between heartbeats

And how oblivious we can be

To what our hearts murmur in our ears

 

 

 

David Trudel     ©  2013