Nan Keyser
Psychotherapist, Expressive Arts Facilitator, Change Maker
Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Huron-Wendat (Toronto, ON, Canada)
Forgotten Trees
Mistaking them for forgotten trees,
Birds perch on steel cold zigzag pattern fences lining the Railpath.
Glossy black, speckled brown, and noisy red winged birds
Screech, whistle, chirp, and gossip above.
We delight in discovering warm fire Sumac trees,
Blow dandelion whisper wishes “to see our family and friends again,”
Discover the Catalpa trees with beans and flowers that love letters are written to.
We climb a hill and sit on tree root branches,
And pretend we are the birds seeing from above
Spotting the humans below.
Bricks and tires on the woodland hill
Brings joy from the plague
The excitement from being lost inside
Joy from being outside, under and over the tree roots
Branches hug where people stay away
The hardship of having weights on your legs
The freedom of looking from the top like the birds in bare trees.
Artery, Mosaic, Scrawl
I Artery
For the past 34 days,
My son and I have inhabited
Two small worlds,
One called home, and the other–Path.
Once, twice a day we leave the pandemic free nest
To move our restless animal bodies
Up and down an urban artery.
Is this the closest to nature immersion we can get?
A gray concrete snake that connects the West End,
A 2 km ‘human-powered’ trail
Beside silver and green trains
On a ghosted and abandoned rail line.
On a sunny day, the path is spotted with low viral risks,
I duck the sweat and puff of a zealous jogger
We dance the pandemic promenade
The West End Shimmy, the Two Feet Between Us Hoedown
We stride, slide, and shuffle away from each other.
Some glide away with flow, others stiff with freeze and fear.
I am aware that my child’s orifices are laid bare
To a newfound vulnerability
This constant threat of air and oxygen.
So I pull him near in a choreography of dis-dance
Away from strangers, into my feather coat wings,
I call on the great mother of mask and mercy.
There is a bike that flies so close I can feel its wind.
I rekindle a sense of fierce protection I have not felt
Since he was a toddler, tumbling into the wilds of the world.
II Mosaic
Every day my son and I walk together
In silence, hand in hand
Or him walking in front of me,
In the urgent preoccupied way some men do
As though they walk alone.
I can see the man forming in his eleven year old expanding chest
There is the “not enough” adult connection, even for my introverted self
I miss the circles, the chorus, even the candles and communal tears.
On other days we walk and talk,
I listen to his video game banter,
I teach my son what I am learning
About the theory of attachment
How do I support the suffering
Of the anxious, the distant, the lonely?
I ask him if he remembers our rituals of relationship
The interpersonal memories, the hold me tight moments,
“I’ve never known what it is not to know you,”
He responds with absolute certainty.
Even in the world’s uncertain brokenness
I repatterned a mosaic,
Repaired the mirror-mother and child
And created a world of- together.
III Scrawl
Graffiti neon paint peppers the train track fence
Cryptic, foreboding, nonsensical phrases
The words hint of a dystopian teenage life to come.
“Crack Lizard” in neon yellow beside the poison ivy warning
Amidst tangled vines on a metal fence, “Suck my vines”
On the Railpath map, “Mother Earth is gonna get you” in red blood paint drip
My curious son asks questions
Sex, drugs, climate change
How do I explain the mess and meaning of this world?
What choices will he make?
In the morning, the white van arrives
Men in white disappear the squiggles
With spray like magic eraser.
And by the next day, the words come back.
THE RAIL PATH QUEEN
A red tailed black bird
perches on her regal pole
Pronouncing her place
Haughty and royal
She Calls her court
Other days
as a male, a trickster, a rebel
With a bard’s witty or sorry tale to sing.
Today, I long to echo the bird’s call,
absolute and clear.
I am the Queen of the rail path,
she calls,
“I belong here. I am”
and you are the passersby.
I respond to the Railpath song
My humanish mimicry
Of the bird’s banter
My foolish bird chime is muffled
An ambulance erupts beyond the path
My son covers his ears
Opiates, Covid, Panic
These days, the siren roars louder than the train bell
The neighbors used to complain about and petition.
Now, the train without a passenger to hear
Hardly runs or rings.
On quiet days and solo walks,
I depend on the company of birds
Now, I understand the solitary bird feeders
Who sit in parks shaking bread at the sky
Announcing their loneliness
Waiting for the wings to flutter nearby
And eat the crumbs of solace.
Artist Statement:
My name is Nan Keyser and I am a psychotherapist, expressive arts facilitator and parent who lives in the West End of Toronto. This series of poems circle around intertwining themes: the pandemic, parenting, and ecological and human attachment. The Muse that inspired me is the great connector, the mother map that bonds us to each other and to the wider ecology around us. It is an honour to be part of this Open Studio exhibition and an arts community that offers beauty, authenticity, and the inspiration of the Muse.
I am grateful to share a slice of my unseen life during an isolating time, and for the process to write, witness and record my inner musings. I offer deep gratitude to the mothers and parents who are front line workers during the pandemic, from cleaners, grocery store workers to nurses; those who do not have the privilege to shelter with their children or the time to walk daily.
In these poems, I capture the intricacies of my relationship with my son and our connection to the urban ecology of the West Toronto Railpath near our home. During the first year of the pandemic we walked the Railpath daily, and these poems are a time capsule of our walks.
In the well or heart of each of these poems lies the nourishment of connection to our ecology and to each other, even in challenging times. Even in the midst of a pandemic, growth, art, and birth are part of the rhythm of life. In 2021, Scarborough’s Randell Adjei became the First Poet Laureate of Ontario. As he so beautifully articulated, “Poetry connects our worlds and can galvanize and bring us together.”
I acknowledge the land these poems were written on: We offer gratitude to live on sacred land that we acknowledge as the territory of the Huron-Wendat and Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. It is still the home of the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island, and we are grateful to be living and working in the community on this territory. This land is part of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, a treaty between the Iroquois Confederacy and Confederacy of the Ojibwe and allied nations.
I dedicate these poems to my son who co-wrote the second verse of Forgotten Trees with me and the future generation of Railpath walkers and changemakers. I also dedicate these to other parents, especially the solo or primary parents who faced the daunting task of raising a child(ren) and keeping them as physically and emotionally safe as possible during a pandemic. I thank poet and writer Jorge Antonio Vallejos for editing most of the poems. And, big gratitude to Erica Ross for being the mother, visionary, and Muse of this wonderful Exhibit Studio Project.
It is a gift to share my poems with you.
Bio:
Nan Keyser is a psychotherapist, expressive arts facilitator, parent and lover of poetry, nature, social justice and literature who lives in the West End of Toronto.
Contact: nankeyser@gmail.com www.torontopsychotherapyandcounselling.com