Things My Father Taught Me

My father, John, died suddenly when I was 26 years old. Over the years I've written several poems about him.

Last Monday, February 13th was the 25th anniversary of his death. I remembered a story my aunt told me about the day my father skipped school. He had an important reason, and the poem tells the rest of the tale.

MY FATHER TAUGHT ME

My father taught me tenderness,
in his words and actions,
and even in his fierceness
there was a caring

we seldom see in the world
anymore. When he was a boy
he stayed home from school
to feed kittens from a dropper

all day. It doesn't matter
that they didn't survive;
a kitten held in a boy's hand
is all we need to see and know.

When he fed the kittens
he was feeding us all. It's good
to know that some things stay
in the world longer than hate.

(Copyright Allan Cooper, 2006)

Buddha Face

I've been working on a series of poems with my friend Leigh Faulkner. I've felt for along time that I might have lived before, but I seem to have a hard time writing poems about it. Here's one I wrote recently:


BUDDHA FACE

There are things that happen
that make me believe
I've lived before. A door
opens, and I remember the room.

A face appears in a dream,
a voice, and I find that face and voice
on the streets
or in a honeycomb of memory.

Who's to say things
don't happen again?
My friend, I remember
your Buddha face.

I saw it
in the birthing room,
the waters of another world
still clinging to my skin.

Copyright Allan Cooper, 2006

The Music of What is Possible

This essay is from The Deer is Thirsty for the Mountain Stream, a book of my translations published by Owl's Head Press 1992. I've changed a few details, but largely the essay remains the same.

THE MUSIC OF WHAT IS POSSIBLE

1

Several times, walking or sitting alone, I've felt something inside me go out toward the natural world, and something from that world return to me, like a greeting or an exchange of consciousness or energy. It's as if an earth-tone went out and was recognized, and another tone--sometimes frisky, sometimes slow and grief-filled--was sent back. This exchange takes place not when I'm busy and preoccupied but when my listening side takes over for a while, the side that feels a connection with earth and rocks, that loves common dirt and bird song, and the fluid, elegant gait of the cougar. Sometimes the tone sent back from the natural world becomes engrained in the chromosomes of language, as in "Sitting on a Porch at Night" by Yuan Mei, and there's a new kind of poem to share:

Some stars are bright, others barely seen.
Light rain falls, a few drops now and then.
The Wu Tung trees feel fall coming on;
new rhythms are passed from leaf to leaf.

Returning from an experience like this, I love people more deeply. Coming back from the heat of good conversation, I love the natural world more deeply. The two feed each other. This is often visualized in Hinduism by Krishna and Radha making love, and the intensity of their lovemaking creates a third presence. This third presence can also be felt in the poems of the Chinese masters, in the poems of Rumi, Mirabai and Kabir, and in the Psalms as well. The Psalm writer says

All living things--
rocks, insects and humans--
are moved by the intensity of this sound.

But how can contemporary poets find a way to bring the third presence inside their poems? They first have to give up any preoccupation they might have about the human world being of a higher order than the natural world. We know that dolphins and whales are highly developed mammals. It's also likely that trees, rocks and soil contain an intelligence which is intricate and vast.

One way for poets to court the natural world is to develop a strong concern for it. If you don't care about the natural world, it probably won't care much about you. Without a reverence for the natural world, it will stay out there in the early spring night, hidden in thick ground fog, and you will stay inside.


2

When we take the time to listen carefully to another person, or observe the natural world acutely, we're inquisitive about something other than ourselves. Our inquisitiveness is part of our animal energy reservoir. Apparently cougars are curious about human beings, and human beings are inquisitive about cougars. When we meet, the inquisitiveness displaces fear and aggression. We come close to one another.

In 1988, my two-year-old daughter was visiting her grandparents. She had been outdoors playing all day, and in the evening she wanted to go out again. Instead of taking her outside, her grandmother opened the door and said "It's dark out, Katie. Listen--what do you hear?" My daughter replied, "Listen to the dark." When we listen to someone or something carefully, we're listening to something other than ourselves; we're listening to the dark.

Perhaps music is a common tie between the human and natural worlds. This music isn't heard in the same way we hear a symphony, or a progression of notes that we immediately identify as "human music." It may be a tone we hear in spring, which is more lively and joyful than the tone we hear in the fall, and more brash and sexual than the tone we hear in summer. It could be that birds migrate north in spring not because a cell triggers the instinct to fly again, but a note or ground tone is heard and responded to by the body. Solitude brings us the music of what is possible. More than once I've heard notes in the landscape which have brought into focus an idea or image as watery and lucent as bird song.

Persons living in big cities can hear this music, but perhaps they have to listen in different ways. There may be other walls that must be torn down, different defences to climb over. A friend of mine living in London, England made pilgrimages to a cemetery to feed a squirrel and talk to him every day. It seems this sort of zanyness breaks down the walls we've built between the human and natural worlds.

The labour of solitude is to become more attached to the world. After going into an ocean of solitude, the Japanese poet Basho said

The bee
leaves the deep flower
reluctantly.

The attached mind goes deeper into the fires of the body, and into the fires of earth and air. Somehow the distinction between what is "in me" and "out there" dissolves.

There's a wonderful story about the Russian composer Shostakovich which is helpful. Shostakovich was living in a small apartment with his family. His writing desk was near his children's bunk bed. He was working on a new composition when one of his children stepped down into the middle of his manuscript page. Shostakovich didn't reprimand the child; he kept on writing. I think this is marvellous.

Copyright Allan Cooper, 1992, 2006

It Doesn't Matter What the World Wants

I've decided to post the occasional new poem that I think might be of interest. "Harbour Seals at Cape Enrage" is from my next book, It Doesn't Matter what the World Wants (forthcoming from Gaspereau Press). I was influenced by the Sufi poet Rumi. I spent a summer a few years ago reading a Rumi poem in Coleman Barks' translation first thing when I got up in the morning. My back door is surrounded by wild red roses, and the scent of the roses seemed to be part of the poems. All I remember is a summer of roses opening and Rumi poems.

Cape Enrage is a wonderful high jut of land on the Bay of Fundy about 10 miles from where I live. One afternoon I looked down over the cliff and saw several harbour seals, hence the title.

HARBOUR SEALS AT CAPE ENRAGE

It doesn't matter what the world wants.
The whales breach with their shining flippers
and seeds float hundreds of miles
across the waves.

The ocean of ecstatic love is inside us.
Waves break there, and all our losses
and dreams. We dream on.
We wake, we love, and every

moment that we've lived rings true.
The ballast of our days lightens.
Something inside us loves the ocean,
the waves, the seal's black nose above the water.

(Copyright Allan Cooper, 2006)

Songs for a Broken World

I'm just getting started with this, but I'm hoping it might be a place where contemporary poetry and songwriting can be discussed. I've been writing for over thirty years, and my 12th book of poems will be published by the Canadian house Gaspereau Press in the next year or so.

I've also been writing songs for years and years. Some were featured on Isaac, Blewett and Cooper's two CDs, Walk On and Mud River. I released a solo project, Songs for a Broken World in 2003.

That's about it for now. More later.