Crystal Hurdle teaches English and Creative Writing at Capilano University in North Vancouver, BC, Canada. In October 2007, she was Guest Poet at the International Sylvia Plath Symposium at the University of Oxford, reading from After Ted & Sylvia: Poems (2003). Her work, poetry and prose, has been published in many journals, including Canadian Literature, The Literary Review of Canada, Event, Bogg, Vallum, Ars Medica, The Dalhousie Review, and The Capilano Review, of which she was Fiction Editor in the late eighties, and on whose Board of Directors she sat for many years. Teacher’s Pets, a teen novel in verse, was published by Tightrope Books in 2014, and is part of the 2020 North Shore Authors’ Collection in the public library system. Sick Witch (poems) is forthcoming from Ronsdale Press. Her website is crystalhurdle.ca
Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>
Distance
Picnic tables and remembrance benches cordoned off
wrapped in the yellow tape of crime scenes
gradually petering out
until the last bench sports what seems
like a yellow pendant
blowing in the April breeze
of a cancelled festive parade
New signage at Maplewood Mudflats and Bird Sanctuary
Socially distance six feet
your height
or an eagle’s full wingspan from tip to tip
Too many walkers on the trails
this brilliant blue and gold April day
even without the papier Mache floats and cherry blossom confetti
they don’t heed the signs
to walk in single file when you encounter
people coming in the other direction
the cat tails are also six feet tall
maybe I should wield one like a sabre
but the ducks chitter remonstrance when I reach
and you scold
You and I continue to walk
the imaginary eagle between us
a head like a revolving owl’s
it directs its severe gaze between one of us
and then the other
its cowl as golden as today’s unseasonable sun
its feathers intricate shiny spikes, small bones
an errant heron leaps on long legs
rips the sky like a pterodactyl
a murder of crows suddenly erupts
long black lines in the sky
where planes so recently flew
they caw and caw
social distance of no import as each crow flies
home to roost
startled, our eagle on his manlegs
lurches forward
and runs and runs over and above
the phalanx of oncoming walkers
extends his six-feet wings
glides and flies
against the river
against the tide
precipitously
Icarus or is it Daedalus
into his sun
and we don’t know how to measure
the distance supposed to be between us
we reach the last remembrance bench
with the Wordsworth plaque
“my heart leaps up when I behold
a rainbow in the sky”
gleaming with slanting sunlight
the yellow tape rustles and dances
above the birds sing
below earth-tethered
you clutch the non-sanitized guard rail
admire the faraway view
I read the sign on the bench
wonder what this person died of
the distance
Six feet
under
Ghost Flowers
Shivering snowdrops
poke through the crusty dead leaves
also mystery blooms from a frenzied planting
late last summer
Little tete a tete clutches of yellow
Phalanxes of narcissi, daffodils, and now tulips
how glad I am to have a garden in Vancouver
into which to escape the statistics
the slow walk
the slower talk
of the numbered dead
flowers are not statistics
While the flower farms in La Conner stay closed
its first daffodils rearing their heads
as the first care home victims bowed theirs
the tulip festival and parade cancelled
the tulip farms closed behind tall fences
so only drones or the birds can enjoy the sight
in Bollenstreek, people flock to the flower fields
looking for fresh air, signs of rebirth
tulip gardens such attractive nuisances
one must be cruel to be kind
help people to help themselves
cloaked government gardeners with scythes
lop off tulip heads by the hundreds, the thousands
a decapitation
floral genocide
the earth moans
is silenced
and it is too quiet
If a tree falls alone in the forest
can anyone hear it?
If a tulip erupts into blind brilliance
is it not still beautiful?
If a tulip shaft remains tall and green
can one imagine the shimmer of its parted petal bells
as they bend ghostlike toward the light?
Anaphylactic Shock
The No-Name peanut butter unwillingly substituted in my first on-line grocery order under quarantine is the exact shade of baby shit in an overfull diaper or the Depends on the old folks in so-called care homes one into which I went just before all the lock downs with my friend to visit her aunt who told her to go away but my friend stayed and cajoled and mollycoddled her because she didn’t want to make a waste of her unwanted visit though she had not been asked to come unlike all of the health care workers of whom there were not nearly enough even then even working in multiple nursing homes and I felt bad for the poor defenseless old lady who couldn’t even keep away people she didn’t want to see though maybe her dementia prevented her from remembering anything too untoward like bed sores and loneliness and deprivation and loss and the wrong visitor at the wrong time and how much worse with a virus too small to be detected by those incarcerated as in prisons but what criminal acts did the seniors commit other than growing frail not wishing to die becoming old?
Easter Triduum 2020
Maundy Thursday
The six-pack of pansies reluctant
to release from its
polyamine sheath
roots refuse to let go
the plants leap out as if
from an ice pop mould
out of season
darkest chocolate
so bitter your lips will pucker
on the unconsecrated host
you think is good for only baking
unleavened deepest chocolate
threaded with white
a lacey veil of mint striations or something like
what a find at the Superstore
freshly opened Garden Centre
we wait in line for the cashier
patiently socially distanced
spaced out in all senses
blitzed on the pollens and sunshine
non-medical masks instead of sunscreen
Scott with our massive cart of bagged soils
so many we could build another earth
slowly forward moving
on each interminably allowably distanced X
the marks for a low budget horror flick
no one wants to be a part of
I make the rounds up the aisles of flowers, seeds
smelly herbs in pots
for my garden in plots
I go for the splash of colour
very berry cherry delicious
unlikely to get chocolate eggs this year
for the wilder sounding names
calendula, mimosa, coral bells
not giving a damn about these prohibitions
for sun or for shade
for richer or for poorer
for alpine or for meadow
in sickness and in health
Scott’s fingers on the cart handrail
tap out a Morse code reckoning
of freshly tilled earth
of food security
of growing your own
He abhors Kale but it’s good for you
so I grab seven packs for luck
While I would usually hold out
for perennial or at least self-seeding
wanting my gardening dollar to s-t-r-e-t-c-h
beyond these labyrinthine lines of X to X with the hopscotch squares now too far apart
for this to be a fun game
I spring for one annual after another,
Annual, why not?
not as if we have a lot of time left
Good Friday
In heavily accented English
Quebec’s premier proclaims
the Easter bunny an essential worker
but he cautions the children
wriggly rabbit happy on their carpets at home
before the screen
This year he might not bring chocolate eggs
or effigies of himself
but date-sweetened oatmeal cookies or handwritten notes
the lettering suspiciously like a parent’s
I remember a long-ago Easter
My sister got a new chalkboard and on it
a message from the Bunny
to eat her greens and to listen to her mom and dad
not then socially distanced
That was to come
The separate rooms
The separate lives
Or maybe pancakes of bunny heads
with carefully poured long ears
my sister now a mother herself will create whiskers
with thin lines of syrup
a raisin for each nose and call it done
avoiding the dog poop overwintered
peanut M and M’s on their scorched earth front yard
my nieces will forage shrieking
with their bedraggled last-year baskets
Later, today’s children will measure other Easters
against this one
though they won’t turn up their noses
at chocolate marshmallow suckers
and Cadbury Crème eggs
“Remember when the bunny
brought those great chicken-shaped pancakes?”
“Remember when the bunny
brought GORP in cardboard egg cups
painted the colour of last year’s bathroom walls?”
“Remember when the Bunny
brought Dad’s baseball from when he was a boy?”
Fingers crossed that we will be around to remember
Holy Saturday
the abnormally clean yard
so clean you could eat off it!
gaps and gapes
in need of new plants
The shorn ferns more ragged than my self-trimmed bangs
As if in answer to my silent plea
tender fronds emerge from the earth this Easter Saturday
unfurl into the beckoning light
at the same time tendrils of hair frame my face
Oh so kindly
On this dateless clubless partyless
strangely secular though sacred night
of Netflix and death decluttering
in multiple separate rooms
Easter Sunday
Skunk cabbages both phallic and reverent
on this Easter Sunday morning
They are able to congregate
in groups larger than 50
than 100
than 250
Faith groups Zoom to parishioners
and priests sit in folding chairs at drive-by confessionals
like a drive-by shooting
but who is the accused?
what is risen?
Faster than a speeding bullet
That blood tendril unfurling in the brain
I have sinned
You are healed
Their Crayola yellow flames beam
goodwill
hope
that oft-told tale of resurrection while
(unnoticed)
elsewhere
a bat cave
tomb
slides o p e n
Neighbourhood Watch
I) Will you Be?
Tattle on the neighbours who
Build without permits
Water the grass 24 hours a day
Don’t heed the rules
to self-isolate when they return from away
Shamers social pariahs
Even easier to do from 6 feet away
Love thy neighbour
tell him what he’s doing wrong
isn’t that love?
Everyone at home
Potential crucible for violence
The neighbours leaf blow and power wash
The neighbours fire up their lawnmowers
The neighbours banish the children out of doors
Love thy neighbour until you are sick of him
Neighbour to neighbour
Will you be my neighbour?
Won’t you? Please don’t
II) TGIF
It’s a charming laneway party
the noise, oh, the noise
kids underfoot and then banished
unemployed or working from home
adult children back in the nest
the noise, oh, the noise
It’s a charming laneway party
brief respite from the every single room
now an office or a home
laptops proliferating cords
electrical wires as sullen as snakes
tripping your every move
the noise, oh, the noise
tonight each in a lawn chair
6 or 7 feet apart
each raising a glass to the celebrant
to the end of another new normal ordinary week
It’s a charming laneway party
And Tift raises a glass across the class chasm to Lapt
and Bodger blows kisses to Heldone’s wife
and Madjet talks isolation crafts to someone else’s daughter
and Xirsim and Pulette with Kanda
the noise, oh, the noise
the noise, oh, the no
every single room now a toilet or a boudoir
laptops Instagramming infidelities
electrical wires as taut as nooses
putting down the wine glass
to bang pots and pans at 7 o’clock
in harmony this disharmony
it’s a charming lane way party
until it isn’t
III) Free-range and Long-range
In the preternaturally early spring
Children run free range, far afield
We socially distance in laneway parties
On rooftop condo decks
Shivering in our overcoats as we
X to X
Raise a glass
Our own glass
(So we can use the good stuff not the watered
down no-name brand we usually give the neighbours)
to Stacey’s 40th birthday
to Liam’s promotion
even to T.G.I.F. Friday
in a week devoid of colour
Won’t you be my neighbour?
Noise carries
Isolation breeds
On the other side of the lane
A socially distanced long range rifle barrel clicks into place
Steady
Ready aim fire
X marks the spot
Mask with Blades
The former fashion designer
in the lower right hand corner of the screen
smaller than a postage stamp
you’d stick on mail currently going nowhere
–worse than post 9/11
New York currently besieged
worse than Anthrax formerly in those envelopes—
explains how to make the nonmedical masks
NY state is now clamouring for
after weeks of the mantra
that nobody need wear a mask
that masks are no good
don’t really protect
give a false sense of confidence
you glassy-eyed on the loveseat beside me
Now seamstresses on the front lines
viable options viable substitutes
a double layer of interfacing inside
Another YouTube crafter says like making a quilt but
without the batting
but with what?
What is the mythical middle layer?
I am frantic with the unknowing
air thick with old breath and flattened rage
This special from Good Housekeeping
the 2020 version of
the Second World War effort to
save our scraps—gather your metals–
and mettle
Now you need a twist tie or paper clip
to make the nose grip against the face
your distinguished roman nose
or roman a la clef
this is you or me dying
and a mask can cover up only so much
And the tinier woman on my tiny screen
like the girl in the Black Magic chocolate box ever receding
like the girl in the Borax canister ever Matrushka
Household cleaner so necessary now
alkaline mineral salt
is brandishing scissors and
apologizing
usually she’d use a
different set of scissors
to cut the paper pattern
paper
Rock paper scissors
there’s losing even in the winning
third time lucky?
Yesterday you’d brandished rock
hand balled as a fist
Anthrax not a mineral? Spores, so animal? Or is it a plant?
You knew Borax gets rid of chocolate and rust stains
How you crowed over your filled pie in Trivial Pursuit
We need a new Covid Quarantine edition
and special dispensations for o n l y t w o players
to cut from the fabric
fabric
and I think of my scissors
the pretty pearl-handled ones you gave me
on our thirtieth wedding anniversary
dulled from hacking at my incorrigible hair
and rust-bloodied from having stabbed you a day ago
they’ll have to do double duty
when in Rome
the smaller woman in the woman in the woman
I eat two chocolates, mine and yours
I replay the video
to learn how to
pandemic poem
this many days in quarantine and counting
still
counting…
still…
claustrophobic cross-country family road trip
we’re all in this together
novelty long worn off
plaintive and beseeching
amidst the torn Timmy’s wrappers
and A&W root beer cans
surfeited by salt, sugar
no treats left under Mom’s front seat
Dad’s white knuckles on the sanitized steering wheel
convert to cruise control
we’re all children in the back seat
are we there yet?
are we there yet?
still
Published on May 14, 2020. © Author