Home before you know it
It has always been home, this place,
where the tea is forever steeping on the back burner
and the smell of lobster is on my hands
after I picked one up for supper
from the local poissonnerie
It has always called out to me, this place,
where I watch the moon rise over the strait,
its cragged peaks and canyons seemingly just a short dory ride away
and its light reflecting off the water,
as if to illuminate the path
It has always fascinated, this place,
where the waves break endlessly on the ever-changing shoreline,
sometimes as a gentle invitation,
other times as an angry, vengeful god
bent on keeping the local harvesters at bay
It has always been welcoming, this place,
where two languages meet,
sometimes even in the same sentence,
and people call you “Honey”, “Dear”, and “Darling” as if they mean it –
because they do
It has always beckoned, this place,
not as a temptress with ill intent
but as a mother hen gathering her brood beneath her, cooing her love.
It has always been home, this place,
before I ever even knew it
Although unpublished, it is the first poem I ever wrote and has been shared and read in many different places. It reflects the deep love and appreciation for my adopted home, a love I seem to have carried with me long before the first time I ever came here to visit in late 2000.
The here and now
Twitching whiskers, a panoramic adventure:
a scruffy fieldmouse, regretting its curiosity
or a songbird, unaware its final stanza is at hand.
Pounce!
Watching, how do we know if the dream-hunt was a success?
Days among the brambles are long past,
with the indoor chase far less precarious (for all concerned).
Catnip-infused prey
and little plastic stairs to the soft, sunny places are now de rigeur,
the thought of today’s agenda supplanting
the striving for just one more prize.
A long lifetime, with sunset in view
and chin whiskers showing grey.
Wizened.
With failed hunts and inevitability never coming to mind,
he sleeps, contented.
Published by The League of Canadian poets in March, 2022 (no link)
The junkyard
I want to go to a junkyard
strewn with hollowed husks
of Sunday drives to church
first dates and shyness
maybe second and third dates, too – less shyness
and secrets kept from prying parents
I want to go to a junkyard again
with the old shiplap garage
that has a potbellied stove in the corner
mismatched chairs all around, pin-up calendars
and twin tanks for the acetylene torches
that effortlessly slice through the stubborn angle iron
I want to go to the junkyard again
next to my parents’ house
where George would pay for whatever scrap copper we collected
at thirteen cents a pound
so we could buy the newest Mad Magazine
and the kind of ice cream that had a gumball at the bottom
I want to go to that junkyard again
where George would give my mother half his yard every year
to grow a garden where the earthy aroma of dill and tomato
permeated the oppressively humid Winnipeg summer air
and the spray from the oscillating sprinkler
refracted the sunlight into ineffable rainbow hues
I want to go back to that junkyard just one more time
but not for too long
as the garden has reverted to lawn anyway
and the burn barrels have all been taken to another junkyard somewhere
Scrap copper is well over five dollars a pound now —
we may have been wise to hold on to some over the years
Published by the University of Alberta in a chapbook drawn from Happiness Reflected: A Community Poetry Project. There is also a podcast, in which is poem is read aloud (begins at 7:35).
