Jogging with the Great Ray Charles

Kenneth Sherman

• Publisher: ECW Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781770909410
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Canadian Poetry
• Index: Literature

A poetic masterclass from a writer at the height of his craft

Kenneth Sherman's work has always displayed a vibrant lyricism, so it's no surprise that his powerful new collection contains a number of poems with musical motifs. In such pieces as "Clarinet, " "Transistor Sister, " and the book's titular poem, Sherman ponders our human transience while searching for "a voice to stand time's test." Sherman also confronts health concerns in a language that is Shaker-plain. The book concludes with the sombre, compassionate, and truly remarkable seven-part "Kingdom, " a meditation on the plight of the dispossessed.

In a Globe and Mail review of The Well: New and Selected Poems, Fraser Sutherland notes, "Sherman always seems to be listening to the voice of Canadian soil and landscape at the same time as he is attentive to the great European metaphysical theme of the soul in conflict with the world and time." So it is with Jogging with the Great Ray Charles. Sherman has also included three brilliant translations of Yiddish poets that appeared in the Malahat Review 's "At Home in Translation" issue.

THREE

NO TRACKS

Snow falling. Children grown and gone.

Rooms have taken on the hush of a museum.

I pass bedrooms where the only lodgers

are wide-eyed dolls and action figures.

There are no tracks outside my window

to guide a traveller through the deepening snow.

I hear the house settle and creak

as if something within still wanted to speak.

CHERRY TOMATOES

The French called them pommes d’amour.

To the English they were dangerous —

sister of henbane, mandrake, nightshade,

thought to unbalance the humours

and lead to grave indiscretions.

Yet year after year you planted rows of them,

staked to old broom handles,

bladeless hockey sticks,

and cared for them like a worried parent

with watering and weeding.

Each May, you put down a row of marigolds,

blond hoplites, your first line of defence

against the rapacious slugs and aphids.

Summer’s war shrivelled their golden heads

but behind them your delectable survivors

fed by sunlight and the damp underground’s

turbulent decay.

Late August, when daylight faded

and shadows perched over the desiccated bed,

I’d watch from the kitchen window

as you crept over the dry stalks

and knelt to pick them,

your fingers dusted with their pollen,

your face so close to their scarlet flesh

it flushed lantern-like against the gloom.

What were you fending off

as you bent like a supplicant?

Sombre autumn? Encroaching winter,

everything silenced?

Try this, you’d say

and press a small globe to my lips

as if it were a remedy,

as if I’d forgotten tart seed heart,

sun storage, aftertaste of earth.

SNAIL

Who would not covet

a house like yours

striped vortex

ridged nugget

zebra helmet

toting a double sex?

Atop tender tentacles

your periscope eyes

swivel and twist

ogling the delectable

petals

and stems.

By secretion

by slick persistence

you inch your one good foot

over the terminal garden

leaving behind

a luminous path.

You must be one of the Elect.

When dark torrents

wash away earwigs aphids —

all frail wings and whisker-legged

specks — I find you sparkling

clinging to a leaf.

FISHING

Have you forgotten how beautiful

they are, the perch, the pike,

the rock and small-mouth bass

corn yellow about the under-fins

deep blue and moss green,

their iridescent scales shining,

their gelid eyes staring out

from bullet-shaped heads

fronting a sleek persistence?

Catch and release them

to know briefly their mystery

to feel their unequivocal pull

and to sense what lives

in the submerged shadows,

weaving between rocks and reeds,

darting along silent avenues

then slowing, inquisitive, nosing

the ribs of a sunken canoe.

Think of how they navigate

our decay and debris, avoiding

the rusted anchors that held too fast,

passing through tenements

of worn-out tires, vacant cans,

invading our dreams

flashing their purple, silver

and gold, perishable rainbows,

our light to follow.

for Bruce Jacobs

CLOUDS

Out of their billowing whiteness

I improvise a sea horse,

an ogre, a mountain so massive

it could stand in the Himalayas,

where clouds, from what I’ve read,

last longer than here. In this warm

and volatile atmosphere

clouds grow majestic or ominous.

By sunset they dissolve...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• ONE
• TWO
• THREE
• FOUR
• Acknowledgements
• Also by Kenneth Sherman
• About the Author
• Copyright