I had performed earlier versions of this poem at Ike and Iggy's in the old Renford on Whyte accompanied by Solon McDade, John Navarathanam and John Towill in January, 1997 and again with Richard Davies and Glen Kirkland as "Spiritus" at Edmonton's City Arts Centre on March 8th, 2003. Those drafts were "Winter '97" and "Winter '03" respectively.
Here's the latest version:

Here we are
frozen in time in a
northern city
under a great dome of Arctic cold.
Little Pacific storms bounce along the western edge
of this Siberian high
and drain their wet blizzards
onto our westering watershed
but nothing can crack this cold snap
except Spring
and she’s still months away.

There’s a great stability in all of this.

Clusters of us Northerners huddle in snugs
and practice our culty crafts.
We know the long nights
that challenge our Circadian rhythms
and we rise above the darkness
with buoyant exchanges
generated by our shared dreams
of the far and away.
We transport ourselves,
mate our passions
with the metronome of the seasons
and wax philosophical about things artistic,
things political;
things trivial and things deadly;
personal, transcendental and spiritual things --
dreams of rebirth.
Whispers of love and
reminiscences of loves past
coupled with an omnipresent hope
for the perfect partner
for this dark hour.

We gather our young about us
and respond to their X-generated capriciousness,
these immortal ones with their crudities,
their unpolishednesses,
and loose intimacies.
There is an Ecclesiastical awareness
of the folly triggered by human vanity
and an Apocalyptic certainty
of the great silence awaiting us all.

We try to ignore the futility
of politicians and industrialists'
too-little-too-late efforts
to save our little planet
from the vandals and the looters.
In our warm room
the close air is laden
with aromas:
Hot punch.
Exotic gnosh.
Interesting pipe fuels.
We prepare
for our poet’s voice;
a thin whiskey baritone
who inevitably takes the little stage
and reflects our gestalt with words
hammered out of these nordic sensations.
He'll bounce his cadenced imagery
with an idiot’s confidence
off the virtuous muses --
those few musicians
who relax into free form
and create nuances of mood
out of this dense air.

There was nothing.
Then there was something.
Then there was nothing again.

"Nada y pues nada."
Ca Nada!

* "Nada y pues nada" (Nothing and then nothing) from the cynical observations of the middle-aged bartender created by Ernest Hemingway in his 1933 short story "A Clean Well-Lighted Place"

Web Design by Douglas Elves. Water reflection photograph by Linda Jennings.

Dean Morrison McKenzie

McKenzie's a kid from the village; it shows in his themes. His poetry, fiction, music, films and essays are laden with imagery gathered from the world that surrounds small prairie towns. So far he has co-authored two or three chapbooks, read his stuff on public radio and has had his voice used to record commercials and training films. McKenzie's first CD, "Prairie Hejira" was published in 2001 and on November 23rd, 2003, at The Yardbird Suite, he and the band released "The Silver Apples of the Moon". He also wrote the script for "Skipping Stone" -- the AMPIA-award winning film produced by Frame 30, and recently Michael Hamm screened McKenzie's "Night Benz", another short film based on the prose/poem included in this chap book. It was awarded a Silver Medal at the Houston International Festival of Independent Films in the category Jazz/New Age/Spoken Word.

When asked about life as a retired English teacher, he refers to it as a bus man's Holiday. "I've been editing the work of others all my life; now I'm smoothing out my own roughnesses."

Watch for his next chapbook, "The McKenzie Chronicles" and "The Jazz Poet" CD is just around the corner along with a loosely connected series of short stories about the "Urbaniginals". McKenzie is also working with MaxMedia to produce some poetry/art/music videos with the collaboration of Alberta post-modern impressionist Wayne Schneider. Wayne's paintings create moody graphics that reflect some of the darker aspects of McKenzie's themes; the corollary: McKenzie's poems reflect Wayne's angst. Andrew Glover's synthesized keyboards will accompany "His Recurring Night Terrors" in the performance poems.

The submissions in this electronic chapbook include pieces that you may have read, heard or seen elsewhere, but they were nearly all published on this web site or in the Stroll Archives before they made their way into recordings, public performances, hard copies or film scripts.

POEMS

Lysergia: The Day of the Ergot

INDIAN SUMMER HAS GONE

The Wild Cattery

A Dance Danced

John O'Winter

Equinox -- Long Beach

Modestly! Modestly!

Honouring Christian Bok

Shades of Another Time

Another Pedestrian Poem

Etching the Blank