Roger Bell
Roger Bell grew up in Port Elgin, on the shores of Lake Huron, and now lives near Georgian Bay. After graduating from Western, he taught secondary school English for twenty-nine years. He has read his poetry in places such as Shakespeare & Co., Paris; Bardstown, Kentucky; Santa Cruz; Humboldt, Saskatchewan; Toronto, Windsor, and Ottawa. His work has been read on the CBC and on National Public Radio in the U.S. His sixth poetry collection, You Tell Me, appeared in 2009, and he has edited two anthologies and been published in many. Bell drives a 2000 Honda Shadow ACE motorcycle, which he used in 2007, 2008, and 2009 to commit Random Acts of Poetry.
I have chosen
in memory of John Norton
I have chosen today to put away
the bike for winter.
I have chosen a day of unutterable beauty,
a day I could have ridden,
perhaps the last such one.
I have chosen this day because what is pleasure
without abnegation,
without what if,
without that ache in the chest that
would squeeze out tears if you allowed it?
The chrome gleams with fresh wax.
The rims that I slid the cloth-wrapped finger tip along,
erasing a film of unravelled miles and sun-splay
of chain grease and fatigue,
seem satisfied. The saddle is at ease.
The mirrors, sharp-eyed with vinegar,
look back and back and back at summers past.
You told me once this was the prettiest bike you'd ever seen.
I wonder what comeliness you saw
on that last day along that last Nebraska river, reaching into the west,
the possibility of adjournment not the corn-fed horizon
but a small town just beyond it crowned by stars.
You did not decide to stop
the way I have—
it was chosen for you,
a sudden season you found yourself in,
past movement and sense.
I've chosen well, John,
for late tonight the heavens will thicken myopically
and by morning a banshee wind come
keening in off the grey bay and the roads slicken
with denial. Then, no one rides.
But though left behind dismounted by the cold I can still
take comfort in what rests ready,
in the polished promise
of postponement.
Invitation
18 November 2001, 5 am
Blythe, wake up, the sky's on fire
the stars streak towards the dawn
come, my grown child, see the Leonids
the next time they blaze like this
I likely won't be here to share
but before you leave the safety of the house
before you
step outside into that deep well of space
here
put on these thick socks of wool from off my feet
and this winter coat (it was my own dad's, remember?)
from off my back, I've warmed them with my body
they'll keep you from the frost
there's little else in life a father can do for adult daughters
but wrap them in his love, and turn their eyes to heaven.
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