Trees

   We had a couple of pine trees which towered high above us down in the "lower forty", as I like to describe the bottom tier of our 3-tiered backyard. My guess was they were about eighty feet tall and I believe they have been around for close to forty years. More than anything, they provided respite from the early morning sun and also a bit of a barrier between us and our backyard neighbours.

Our two pine trees, in all their
(sort of) glory.

   But they were dead. Or dying.
   We had been aware of this for some time now and knew that at least one, or both, would eventually need to come down. We almost arranged for this last summer but didn't. This summer, we finally decided to pull the plug and arranged for a company to come in and finally do the deed.
   They were supposed to come at the end of July but as luck (or misfortune) would have it a large chunk of the deadest tree fell off after a bad windstorm and landed in the neighbours' yard. The arborist they hired to clean that up offered to do our trees at the same time and so we hired him on.
   Troy was the name of the fellow doing the work and for the most part he was a one-man wrecking crew. This unfortunately necessitated the job taking three or four days but as we were in the middle of holidays and always available this was not a major concern.
   

Keenan (at the top) and Troy,
takin' 'er down!

Along the way, Keenan, my stepson, indicated to Troy that he was quite interested in learning all the ins and outs of taking down large trees. Troy basically told him the different things you needed for the job and Keenan immediately went out and picked them up!

All done!

   Once all the main branches had been removed, Troy then gave Keenan the opportunity to climb up one of the trunks and start chainsawing off smaller sections. As this was going on, Troy was quick to give advice about more efficient, safer ways of doing things and Keenan, being the quick study that he is, picked up on all of those things right away.
   So, eventually (and sadly) the trees came down and we now have this wide expanse of blue sky (and the neighbour's house) to look at! We asked Troy and Keenan to leave us the bottom portions of the tree so that hopefully we can incorporate them into the yard design. On a happier note---no giant mess of pine cones and needles to clean up every Spring!

Some of the aftermath

   

After the clean-up.

Poems

   It occurred to me today, as I was on a step-stool, re-organizing all my books on their shelves, that it was thirty years ago this summer that I published my first poem. I had previously attended a couple of creative writing sessions at Fanshawe College, here in London, as I'd been interested in writing short stories but along the way we also briefly discussed poetry and I found that something had been re-kindled in me. I continued on with all the other creative writing exercises but I also continued to write poetry, on my own.

My poetry collection. Almost totally (and un-abashedly) Canadian.

   Our teacher at the time, a published writer named Pam Tikalsky, had been very supportive of all my writing and had encouraged me to start sending things out. I started mailing batches of poems to literary journals here in Canada and the U.S. and soon started receiving back pretty well the same number of rejection slips. I was told to expect this, however, and so I continued to re-organize my batches of poems and sending them out to different magazines and journals. After awhile the steady stream of rejection notices began to take their toll and I was truly on the verge of calling it a day, poetically-speaking, when what seemed like the improbable happened. A Canadian magazine called Canadian Author and Bookman accepted a poem! 
   As you can imagine, I was beyond thrilled. I was so used to all the rejection language I'd been seeing that I actually had to re-read the notice they sent me to affirm that it was, in fact, an acceptance. Now it just so happened that the poetry editor of C.A.& B. was a lady from London named Sheila Martindale and I think she likely was inclined to favour London authors so I may have had an "in" there, who knows?
   At any rate, I had been published and this somewhat sustained me over the next long drought and all the accompanying rejection slips.
   Then, just about the time I was starting to give up hope again, another acceptance showed up at my door, this time from the University of Windsor Review. They had no such inclination to publish Londoners and this acceptance helped validate my writing. After this, more poems appeared in such well-respected places as The Lyric, The Antigonish Review and Dandelion.

If you look inside, you will find
some of my words...

   I also started entering poetry contests back in those days. There was a new magazine in London back in those days called Tabula Rasa and they ran something called the Forest City Poetry Contest. I entered three poems in the first contest and ended up being one of the honourable mentions. I should have been happy with this but, when I compared my poems to the ones which won, I liked mine better. I more or less decided at that point that the vagaries of having poems judged by total strangers was not for me. The following year, however, the same magazine ran the same contest again and when I looked at who the judge was that year I realized that his writing style was quite similar to my own and, for this reason, I entered the contest again. I was sitting there in the audience as they announced the prize winners and, sure as shooting, I got another honourable mention. I remember thinking to myself, as I went onstage to get my certificate and then headed back to my seat, that I had just fallen for it again and was extremely disappointed. I sat there as they went through the rest of the honourable mentions and the third prize winner. When it came time for the second place winner, my name was announced! I was shocked! All of the sudden, I didn't feel quite so bad about the experience. I was actually walking off the stage to return to my seat when the announcer stopped me because I was also the first prize winner! At this point I was almost dizzy!
   This was a high which lasted quite awhile and, truthfully, it still has the ability to lighten up a day. Around about this time, however, I stopped writing poetry. I have never totally been sure why I did this. I think at some point it felt as though I had run out of things to write about. I had just gone through a two or three year phase when it seemed as though everything I saw was a potential poem---so I wrote about it. I think I then stopped seeing things that seemed to require writing about them. 
   On top of all this, I became interested in composing music. All the time I used to spend writing poems was now being spent down in the "dungeon"---my basement---on my portable keyboard. Then as commonly happens, life got in the way and even this stopped, for the most part.
   Which brings me to the present.
   I feel like writing poetry again. It feels as though I am back in that space where things seem to need writing about and would be worthy subjects. 
   I have even entered contests again. For the last three years, I have entered the CV2 (Contemporary Verse 2) Two-Day Poetry Contest. They give you two days to write a poem but you must incorporate ten words that they give you. Some of the words are pretty innocuous, like "bunk" or "ham". Others are words I actually had to go and look up, such as last year's year's "furuncle" and this year's "absquatulated" (both of which I just now had to add to my laptop's dictionary...). The process is both daunting and fun at the same time and people are actually able to come up with awesome poems. I have liked the three poems I came up with but they were not winners--it is, after all, a very subjective kind of thing and the fact that I don't win is very secondary to the fun I had. And you get a subscription to CV2 for entering so it's kind of win-win!

...and so I did!

   So I will write more poems, just for myself and with my own words. Maybe I'll submit them places, maybe I won't but it will still be the same exercise in self-discovery it always has been and that's why I think most poets do it!

Tattoo

   For the past few years, I have toyed with the idea of getting a tattoo. I'm not sure why, this late in life, I'd started deliberating on changing my body this way. Some of it, I think, is due to both my wife and sons and brother-in-law having had their own tattoos done and me having enjoyed the results of all these. It seemed creative, almost like writing a poem or something. At any rate, it was something I'd thought about a great deal and last week, finally, I took the plunge.

Sawchuk (and his mask), hard at work.

   In trying to think of what to get as a first tattoo, I found myself torn between something with a literary allusion and something sports-related. These have been my two passions over the years and it only seemed to make sense to choose between them. I finally settled on getting a rendition done of the goalie mask Terry Sawchuk wore back in the fifties and sixties. 
   When I was a boy, Terry Sawchuk was one of my sports heroes. He had a brush-cut the same way that I did and he had a real cool mask. This was back in the days when there were still not a lot of goalies with masks and Terry's made him stand out.
   Sawchuk was also kinda dark and a bit of a loner. To top it all off, he died early and somewhat mysteriously and this only served to cement my fascination with him.
   I went online and found a couple of images of his mask and then made my way to True Love Tattoo, here in London. I had been given a gift certificate for there from my son, Bryant, and Doralyn had chipped in for the rest I would need. I took Bry with me and we set up a consultation date with Will Smink, one of True Love's artists. I showed him a couple of the pics of the mask I'd printed off and we talked briefly about size and placement. He told us that we wouldn't likely be able to get in before September or October. Well, as it turned out, there was a cancellation while we were standing there booking an appointment and we were able to get in the following week! This was very fortuitous as Bry already had an appointment booked for that day and so we would both be there together. This also minimized the time I would have to fret about it come to my senses try and contain my

Will, hard at work!

excitement!
   The day finally came and Will had managed to find a more detailed image of the mask than I'd been able to and I liked it so we sat down, I laid my forearm out for him, and we got started. He applied the stencil, got the photo arranged for his own reference and then got his inks all ready. He took one short swipe on my arm, looked up at me, smiled, and said "You've got a tattoo". At this point, no turning back!

Bryant and I, post tats.

   Shortly after Will started tattooing me, Doralyn showed up. She sat and waited while he worked and it was kind of nice having some conversation (and levity) to pass the time. She asked me if it was hurting and I told her it was somewhat like walking through a bramble bush. Then getting caught in the bramble bush. And then not being able to get out of the bramble bush... Actually, fairly minimal amounts of pain were had but I was quite glad Will was just working on my forearm.

   Bry's tattoo was done before mine and he showed up to watch the final moments. Will declared me "done" and I was mightily pleased with the result! I was a tatted man and

And the finished product! Thanks, Will!

having a hard time believing it!