Cumulonimbus

            The heat was on again when I got up on Wednesday, though I don’t think it was any colder outside than it had been the morning before. I think the building had only just cooled down enough over the last few days for the furnace to kick in and then once it’s on it refuses to go back to sleep for a while.              I finished creating a Word document of Lord Byron’s Manfred. I had to type out a portion of it because when I’d copied it from the pdf some of it came out with one space between each letter.
            I started eating vegetable protein again and had coffee with coconut cream for the first time in a month. I was buzzing all morning.
            I put the poetry of Felicia Dorothea Hemans into a Word document.
            I gathered from my journal all my Romantic Literature lecture notes from January to April and put them together in one document.
            I flushed the wax out of my ears. I started listening to Jethro Tull’s second album, "Stand Up". It's like they suddenly became a good band in a year. This was the first of their albums entirely controlled by Ian Anderson. It also features what became a Jethro Tull signature piece: Bach’s “Bourée in E minor”.

                               

            Years later Anderson played a flute duet of the song with astronaut Cady Coleman while he was in Russia and she was in space.
            I read some of my lecture notes.
            I worked on a poem about a bike ride under thunderclouds:

I’ve started my bike ride in a good mood
having taken Lawrence Breavman's advice
to try to look for the poem everywhere
such as the medicine smell of late summer foliage
the cloud of which I ride through past High Park
and the algae soup of Grenadier Pond
to stop at the traffic light at Windermere
and watch cross a perky black and white dog
to the lake side, its tail a question mark
sculpted by breeding. And the southern clouds
are exploded brains of satin mannequins
as seen from underwater

On Six Point Road
I pedal by Kabul Farms Halal Meats
and past Wastecorp Pumps (good name for a band)
These industrial streets have more character
than the houses of the same neighbourhood
because the names of businesses are poems
written by their owners to tag their dreams
although each may be the one poem they’ll write
and the neglect that goes in the design
and in the maintenance of the buildings
and some having lawn chairs out in the front
for slow business days or lunch adds to their charm
In front of Kreater Custom Motorcycle shop
is a 1950 Chevy sedan
black and decorated with spider webs
with its back-end extremely low to the ground
and the words "Praise the Lowered" painted behind
 and I cruise past Modern Apothecary
with "A journey in every bottle"
but near Royal York is a private school
which I’m sure does good work but its title
is the creepy sounding “Behaviour Institute”

Beside the fence of an auto body shop
I notice a tree full of green apples
in front of the "Beware of Dog" warning
I stop there to pick about twenty of them
so I’ll have more to eat than rice
and I’ve harvested it in such an odd place
But suddenly I hear a voice shouting
From somewhere “Don'ta picka the apples!"
 He calls to me "Takea onea, maybe two,
 buta leavea apples eata someabody else!"
I call back "Okay!" and ride away with what I've picked

On most of these streets every other business
is a meat company or body shop
and yet somehow it seems appropriate
but when the road turns into an avenue
it becomes residential and boring

In the east the gigantic cerebellum
of a thunderhead projecting dark thoughts
flanked by islands of black angular clouds
scrawling an angry reverse signature
The sun behind me is shining brightly
but the thunderclouds are untouched by its beams
which are like plankton for that blackhole orka
and yet further east long sheets of pink clouds
are still basking in the blushing sunlight
as is a rusted railroad overpass
with graffiti almost as old as the bridge
no longer looking like a defacement
but rather an odd marriage that worked
now like an old couple holding hands

I arrive back in colourful Parkdale
and wave to my Sicilian bike mechanic
Angry at the job he loves but loves to hate
he returns my greeting but from a mood
dark as the cumulonimbus above us
         
            I sautéed lima beans with onion and garlic, added paprika and teriyaki sauce and had that for dinner while watching the Rifleman.
            In this story Mark finds a live hawk caught in one of his rabbit snares. He puts it in a bag and while he's checking his other traps, suddenly a man shouts for him not to move. The man runs toward Mark with a club and then kills a rattlesnake at Mark’s feet. The man is a drifter named Walt and the grateful Mark invites him home. Mark ties the hawk by a long string to a stake and decides to keep it but Walt disapproves because he loves freedom. Walt stays on to work for a while in exchange for a horse and supplies. Later in town Lucas sees a notoriously ruthless bounty hunter named Eli Flack putting up a wanted poster for a man that meets Walt’s description. Lucas tells Marshal Torrance about Walt and says he’ll talk him into turning himself in. That night before Mark goes to bed, Walt makes him the gift of a hatband that he’d made from the rattlesnake he killed. After Mark is in bed Lucas confronts Walt about the poster. Walt admits that he is the wanted man that escaped from prison but he says that he was falsely convicted and just couldn’t stand being confined and so he escaped. The next day, on Mark’s way to school, Eli happens to see his hatband and knows that it’s a craft that Walt learned in prison. Eli heads for the McCain ranch but Mark takes the shortcut and warns Walt just before Eli arrives. Eli takes his men dead rather Than alive and he is ready to shoot when Mark tries to stop him. The distraction allows Walt to disarm Eli. They fight until Walt breaks Eli’s arm and begins to choke him. Only Mark pleas stop Walt from finishing the job. When Micah arrives he declares that Eli finally got what he deserved. Walt willingly gives up. Mark sets the hawk free.