This morning I am at my desk, almost dizzy with lack of sleep because of worry about an issue in my immediate neighbourhood. I’ve alluded to it in earlier posts, the proposed erection of a 63 meter telecommunications tower across the highway from our property on a tiny far corner of land owned by a local resort, adjacent to a popular environmental field studies and interpretative centre. Imagine that for a moment. You drive up the Coast with your children, maybe you’re bringing visitors from elsewhere too, and you have in mind a few hours in a wetland location, looking at displays about flora and fauna, taking a walk through nature. The interpretive centre itself is a green building (it even has a green roof!) and you might make a note to attend a future workshop about sustainable energy. So this is your plan and you are surprised to find that you have to enter the site by driving under a 63 meter tower. You can hear it buzz as you pass it.

This morning things look a little more hopeful in that the letters several of us have written to our local government and phone calls made to contacts at the telecommunications company responsible for the tower as well as careful study of the paper trail leading to the decision to allow the tower have revealed a number of lapses in both protocol and, well, let’s just say ethics. It’s actually worse than that but right now I’m saying enough. Maybe more than enough.

What I want to do now to move away from the ugly mechanisms that are at play in the world. I don’t mean I will turn my back entirely. I won’t. But right now I want to think about my own work and the solace it provides me when I wake, sleepless, and come down to my little study at the edge of the forest. I’ve been looking at the individual essays in Blue Portugal, due out next spring. Sometimes when I read them, they are instructive in ways I’d forgotten. From where I sit, I can see a tendril of grape vine finding its way around the corner of the house, reaching for somewhere to hold, and that’s me this morning, reading the title essay and coming across this short meditation on the grape known as Modrý Portugal, “modrý” being Czech for blue. (Note: in the book, I use the page as a field of composition, with sections justified to both margins or else centred on the page, because I want them to move, to entwine, to shift the way we read just a little. This section is right-justified.)

The borders always shifting, archduchies and principalities, entire countries absorbed and then eventually released. Slovenia, Austria, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Burgenland, Illyria. And certainly wine would have been served, made from those ancient vines that never saw Portugal, never waited out an Iberian winter for spring and the wild irises at Sagres, the oranges and lemons bright on their branches in February, near Faro, the cool tiled churches. Perhaps a name gives a plant notions, that it could travel in winters to settle by the sea in a canvas lounge chair, sip a little wine itself (a dry vinho verde, a rich port), could stow away in a corner of a vessel heading to South Africa or the New World. To overhear a woman praying with her children in the great loneliness of steerage quarters, rough linen valise under the bunk, diapers drying on an improvised line.

There are things I want to set down, to give them a permanent place in this record of my life.

1. When you have a son who is a mathematican

5. When you remember the old rhyme and ponder its wisdom

One for sorrow,
Two for mirth
Three for a funeral,
Four for birth
Five for heaven
Six for hell
Seven for the devil, his own self

Or its alternate version

One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret never to be told

You can think of the rhyme as the roses cascade over your bedroom window, a secret never to be told, while inside, like Sleeping Beauty, you are safe from the devil, his own self.

Friday was the last day our local pool was open. We’ve had the luxury of swimming 3 times a week since September — last spring they were closed during the first part of pandemic but found a way to open safely, with strict protocols regarding numbers, etc. We’ve been swimming there since 2016, though many years ago we also swam pretty regularly when our children were in school. Summers we swim in the lake, though I spent years not going with John and the kids because I don’t like crowds and there were always quite a few people at the little sandy beach area late afternoons. And who could blame them? A clean lake, good access now that a parking area has been put in and the regional district brings in sand every year? When we first began to swim in this area, 40 years ago (and even earlier for John, who came for years before I knew him), anyway, when we first began to swim here, you parked in a little area off the highway and walked on a rough trail to where you could get into the water between native willows and wild spirea. The lake bottom was a bit mucky but the water was lovely. It still is. When I began to go again regularly, about 5 summers ago, I realized that it was quiet first thing in the morning. We’d arrive around 8:30, mostly to kingfishers and the prints of deer and bears in the sand before the maintenance guy arrived to take away garbage and rake the beach. The sight of the sun coming up over the mountain, behind the cedars, as I swim in deep green water is something I cherish on summer mornings.

Nobody heard him, the dead man,   

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought   

And not waving but drowning.

It’s not quite summer yet. But the pool, as I mentioned, is closed until July for some upkeep work. When you swim regularly, you need it. You need the feeling of your aging body in water, you need the buoyancy, the silkiness as you reach out your arms to propel yourself forward and back. Lake swimming is heaven. I tried to keep it up over the winter but honestly it wasn’t really swimming, the times I went down, wrapped in towels, a toque on my head. It was more a waking. The water was so cold and I’d immerse myself, doing a few circles until I couldn’t feel my feet or hands, and come out. I felt spectacular, so alive, and I loved the sense of knowing the lake in winter. I’ll do it every year. But this morning the water was not that cold. Cool, yes, but once I did a length or two, I felt the way I feel in summer: strong, purposeful, held by water.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

And now he’s dead

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,   

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always   

(Still the dead one lay moaning)   

I was much too far out all my life   

And not waving but drowning.

We were on the upper deck yesterday morning, arranging tomatoes in their final places before John set up strings suspended from hooks in the fascia and from a long pole hung horizontally in front of the sunroom for the tall tomatoes to climb when I looked down to where the greenhouse sat partly in shadow as the sun came fully up over Mount Hallowell to the east. We were on the deck in full sunlight, cups of coffee on the table, the sound of bees in the daylilies and roses, and I was caught on one of those wrinkles in time when I forgot for a moment where I was, and when, and how. Whose was the wheelbarrow filled with soil? The yellow bucket catching water from the tiny eaves-trough? I could see it all from a great distance. It was as though I was above everything, floating in the air as light as dandelion seed. Was it a trick of the light, the way the side of the greenhouse was somehow a mirror, a portal? The trees were alive, deeply alive, and a western tanager shot by me at shoulder level, heading for the maples down the bank where I think a pair is nesting. Sure enough, moments later, their song, short phrases, 3 notes mostly, raspier than a robin’s, breaking the brief spell and bringing me back to the work at hand, which was finding more string for John to loop through the tomato cages and up to the hooks, around the pole.

I am sitting at my desk, wishing for that moment again, as I listen to rain in the wisteria vine just beyond my window. More sun was promised! But instead, a grey sky, a Swainson’s thrush whit, whit, whitting in the woods, and yesterday’s laundry, left on the line, drooping with the rain. The yellow bucket is in place, the beans all planted, and I am still remembering yesterday’s moment when I was dizzy with light, with birdsong, with possibility.

A slight rain comes, bathed in dawn light.
I hear it among treetop leaves before mist
Arrives. Soon it sprinkles the soil and,
Windblown, follows clouds away. Deepened

Colors grace thatch homes for a moment.
Flocks and herds of things wild glisten
Faintly. Then the scent of musk opens across
Half a mountain — and lingers on past noon.

                          –Du Fu, translated by David Hinton

Last night I went from one dream seamlessly into the next, all of them connected somehow, until the last one. I was in the ocean, somewhere like Ross Bay or even Cox Bay, far far out. I’d drifted, floating in the water, thinking about other stuff, until I realized I was half across a wide strait, maybe the Strait of Juan de Fuca, out past the breakwaters and out of sight of anyone. No one knew I’d gone swimming by myself. How would I get back to shore?

And what now, I thought. I am out beyond my depth. Anyone’s depth. I was in the shipping lanes. There were tankers not too far away. What now. No one knew where I was.

I will have to swim hard to ever reach the shore, I told myself. I told myself I don’t even know the crawl (it’s true, I don’t. My slow kilometre, 3 times a week, is achieved, if I might use the word, by side-stroke, back-stroke, and a very inept breast-stroke). I turned back to begin the long journey back to shore and realized how deep the water was, how (suddenly) treacherous and cold.

The shore, far away, was luminous in late afternoon sunlight. I turned, I began to swim, and somehow knew I would never reach it by dark.

I was sitting in that blue chair just now, drinking my coffee, when it occurred to me that the greenhouse we built to solve a few issues—too many plants in winter in the sun-room off our bedroom so that we can’t actually sit in it, which was the whole point when we designed the sun-room more than 30 years ago being perhaps the most important…—has in fact enabled my habit of never discarding seedlings when I transplant them. Choose the strongest plants, we’re told. But what if they all have the potential to be strong, given half a chance? That’s the reason I have at least 50 tomato plants this year and no room on the upper deck for eggplants and peppers which will spend their summer in the greenhouse. I was sitting in the greenhouse, drinking my coffee, when I suddenly felt, well, a little crowded. Some things will be moved out once the good weather is here to stay. Long tubs of basil will join the tomato plants. On the shelves at the end, on the left, are the pumpkins and other squash, just waiting for really warm nights. A few last trays of beans. (Most have been planted but there are still more…)

I don’t know any other way to do this. You plant seeds. You care for the seedlings. And then, what, you have to discard some because they’re not strong enough? Anyway, we’ll have eggplants, poblano peppers, and tomatoes. Beans. Cinderella pumpkins. Is there anything better in summer? Last week I took the last carton of roasted tomato sauce from the freezer, made from last summer’s abundance. (Method is here, if you’re interested.)

Last night I dreamed I was almost awake when I heard a voice, one of my children but I didn’t know which one, leaning over me as I slept, saying, Mum, mum. Mum, I’m here. And in the dream, I thought, Why have you come now, in the night, when it was fall I hoped to see you? It was a strange half-dream and I know it came from the experience of revisiting, for an essay, the memories of John’s surgery and its aftermath in October and November, long difficult weeks, with little sleep, so much anxiety as we kept having to return to hospital for various issues, and how isolated I felt during that period. It wasn’t as though it was a time when anyone else could have helped. Our Provincial COVID numbers weren’t great, people were being asked to stay home, within their pod, and we were told at UBC Hospital that we must consider John medically vulnerable for some weeks. Writing about those days, those weeks, took me there again and the voice in the night, saying, I’m here, Mum, was welcome but also discordant. You can’t be here. The timing is wrong. And when I woke, I was filled with messy complicated feelings.

My greenhouse is therapy these days. I sit with my coffee, breathing in the deep green scent of basil, rosemary, the soil mix I make with alfalfa pellets taking me back to the days when I had a horse and fed him a section of a bale of alfalfa most evenings, and I close my eyes while eggplants settle into their pots and everything grows in the spring light. I didn’t think I’d be writing about a dream when I started this post, didn’t think I’d be back, however briefly, at the UBC Hospital, listening to a nurse explain the process of care and healing.

What have I learned but
the proper use for several tools

The moments
between hard pleasant tasks

–Gary Snyder, “What Have I Learned” (from the gorgeous Axe Handles)

Morning does not seem to be the right word for now, for the now I am living, feeling, as I walk onto the upper deck where the roses are beginning to open,

where the air still feels full of the owl calls I heard in the night, barred owls mostly, but another, farther away, two notes only, and where the tomatoes are growing inches by the day.

The day began with a call from Ottawa where that family was driving back from a hike and the grandsons were full of news. A dragonfly nymph in the pool they’d created in the backyard for tadpoles and other pond life. A dragonfly nymph that breathes through its bum! This, in French and English! After talking to them, I thought about the Edmonton family, camping in Jasper, having left on Thursday in snow…And I felt gratitude, because Angelica and her beau received their first shots of Pfizer yesterday.

Yesterday at this time I was beginning to prepare for our first lunch guests in more than a year. We’d eat outside and the day was only half-sunny. Was it too early to open our lives to actual contact with others? When I pulled a linen cloth from the pine bureau, I saw that a mouse had chewed a bit of it for a nest. That mouse was around last year but it shows how long it’s been since I’ve used a tablecloth. Was it wrong to leave them so long in a dark drawer? The moon plates, the silver, pretty napkins bought in San Francisco. The deck was beautiful (“Like Greece!” our friends exclaimed, as we sat under wisteria and leafing grape-vine, capiz shell chimes tinkling, and the table laid with tomato tart, cheeses, duck pâté with apricots, salad from the upper deck, and Prosecco in the faux Murano glasses). We kept our distance physically but how lovely it was to talk across the table again, to take up a conversation began many years ago and to extend it as naturally as air.

Just after our friends left, I looked out the window to see a young black bear approaching the deck, hoping for leftovers. Realizing it had been spotted, it disappeared into thin air, like the owl calls last night, the sound of capiz shells, the scent of roses as they open in the morning, fresh and almost honeyed, and the sweetness of yellow daylilies before the sun reaches them, opening, opening. Some mornings I feel as though I am hovering between this world and another and I don’t have the words to say who I am.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.

   —Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

These May mornings are gifts, the sun over Mount Hallowell around 8:30, birdsong loud where the woods meet our garden. I walked out this morning and heard myself (as though from a distance) singing a song I’ve written about before, another May, about the meadows and flowers gay and whom should I spy but my own true lover, and I thought how a month can contain so many versions of itself. The Mays we travelled to Ottawa to see our family there, the Mays when we celebrated the arrival of new books or the nomination of others for prizes,

the Mays when we went into Vancouver for prize galas or concerts or just to see friends. This May is different. But still lovely. And it will enter the long archive of memories—the 14th month of a world-altering pandemic, the first month when the seedlings were grown in the greenhouse,

the month when I thought to myself, why just built teepees for the beans, why not make sculptural supports and let the beans find a new way of using their tendrils,

because maybe they’re eager to break out of old patterns. It’s a month of salad greens, most of them growing on a wild-edged cedar bench on the upper deck (because in the garden this time of year, it’s hard to protect them against slugs),

and what a pleasure it is to take a colander up to cut arugula, lettuce, mixed greens (but not the tray of Triomphe de Farcy beans on the end of the bench, ready to try out the new tree of arbutus branches left by the butchers who keep the Hydro road clear where we walk on the mountain (young trees hacked to pieces, the patch of miner’s lettuce gone), a piece of old wisteria, some ocean spray–ironwood in some lexicons). I walked out this bright May morning, coffee in hand, singing an old song (“When misfortune falls sure no man can shun it’), among the seedlings and birdsong, the month a version of itself, like the others but new, new, shadowed momentarily as a cloud passes the sun, birds quiet for a few seconds only, a small snake curled around itself in warm moss beneath a huckleberry bush.