footsteps in the garden
New and selected poetry by
Bob MacKenzie
Welcome, one and all, to Mr Mackenzie’s garden.
Take a footstep (or four) into its domain. What do you see? Gardens neatly attended, sparkling in the sun? Plots hidden, overgrown, demanding attention? After the experience of decades of writing and performing poetry, Mr MacKenzie’s garden is all that. “The shadows walk among us”, he warns us, “stories dark and unrelenting” he adds. Footsteps in the garden? The first steps into a journey into Mr MacKenzie’s mind (call me, Bob; it’s easier). Is there a cause for this dis-ease? Maybe in his poem entitled “Footsteps in the garden”, we might find a clue?
“when birds go silent,
chipmunks and squirrels
rush to the underbrush,
the wind whispers soft
then goes dead quiet
leaving only a vacuum
I can feel them come,
the silent footsteps
along the forest path
echoing my own steps
until I stop and turn
and there is nobody
on the path behind me
there is nobody at all”
Until
“at home I lock the gate,
cross the garden quickly,
go in and lock the door,
breathe a sigh of relief–
but in the silence I hear
footsteps in the garden”
What think you?
Bob, I said, you could be a painter. Such delicate themes you incorporate. In your poem, “Rain”, explores the limits of platonic love in devastating clarity.
“Walking out in the rain one day,
I met a friend of mine
And we walked our road together a way
And said we both felt fine.
Well the time came that we must part,
My dear dear friend and I–
As gifts, I gave friendship and she her heart
Baked in an old style pie.”
So much hidden, unspoken.
“The problem is my thoughts are all locked up inside
Peering from a private little cage where they hide...
(sanity is a strange thing.
you lose it so easily
when you’re tired
when you’re drunk
when you’re angry
when you’ve lost
a friend
an enemy
a lover
hope.)
A mind is a large empty room
In which two persons meet.”
Always submerged, luring, a primal scream...
“(It screams with all the latent fury
of the hatred that lies
in love.)”
A journey takes us through poems that by turn, can be tense and terse (“Shadow show), to the lyrical (“Love come soft”), to the prophetic (“Edge”, “The Dark Shimmering Deep for all the prophets in rags”)
“I walk a wilderness of concrete streets,
I speak to the wind, I cry out to the sky,
and if heard at all I am never heeded.
I have seen how thin is the line and how frail
the membrane between us, between the light and
the dark shimmering entity ripping the membrane.
I have gone too far and have seen too much,
have stepped into that too near night and
seen the dark shimmering deep at its heart.
I have been to the heart of that place,
have been taken into its enchanted arms
and am not yet free nor ever will be.”
(The Dark Shimmering Deep for all the prophets in rags”)
Yes, Bob, the shadows do walk among us; they are not alone; after the shadows comes the light, which you explore themes of love, loss (“Because you were”), separation, intimacy (“Hands) and risk (Flight Risk), solitude (“The Uncaged Bird).
I walked in the garden, I thank you Bob for the opportunity, the experience. The pleasure. I cannot finish without mentioning two more things; in the midst of things, you describe a desolate pandemic landscape and ask
“where are the poets
the truthspeakers
the folk singers
authors and artists
the new prophets
recording our era
where is the poetry
where the legends
where the heroes
where the ballads
where the memory
the future needs”
A poignant plea?
The second? The music, the jazz,
stop for a moment and breathe
take a long slow breath
wait
don’t breathe
it’s in the air
can you feel it
can you hear it
it’s all around you
breathe it in
breathe in deeply
breathe in the scent
taste it on your tongue
feel it fill your lungs
wait
breathe out and in again
can you feel it
it’s all around you
it’s in you
the heart of the sharecrop
the soul of street and tenement
the anthem of America
a whisper from chained masses
a lament for humanity
it’s in you
can you feel the sorrow
can you taste the joy
a whisper become a cry
heard around the world
Thank you for the tour, Bob. I really enjoyed making “footsteps in [your] garden”.
Leslie Bush
© 10 October 2021