Newfoundland and Ontario

Newfoundland and Ontario

for Shirley 1993

jp

Sunlight dancing on pond waters

Trilliums splashing white and purple on a forest floor

Sparrow singing on the fence post all day long

While I dig in garden soil.

Then I stand, surveying, hold tightly to a gift of patience...

angry…

my thoughts distracting me.

Hard work, hopes, dreams, blunted fingernails, swollen bellies

fish, sea, deep snow, moose, tractors, cattle, potatoes, lumber mills, pulp

the mines the seals the fox the sweat the rock

wealthy vs labourers

them vs them

and we the damned middle

the self righteous class...

Tradition raped by progress:

our cod liver pills, our Hibernia oil, our computer paper

our potato seed virus free, our animal protection rights.

And now we advocate tourism for economic development:

‘Why, those folk have such friendly ways out there on the rock...’

When I understand

my heart bleeds...

though I survive

still my heart bleeds...

if community, my people, are anything

is it not all that I can do to give myself…

and still my heart bleeds...

For now, through frustration

casting to the fire community

call it my belligerence…

I know

as I stand here hand on shovel

my hands dug deep into this garden's soil

evening twilight on the Trillium flower

selfishness overwhelms me

and community is my vanity

I know my anger is unwillingness to give up to Creation.

Despite the rhetoric that reparations can be made to the robbery of a people's soul,

despite the boasting of rebuilding the decimation of the sea,

despite the audacity of statements saying that God's grace rests upon my people's nationhood

I am assured

because I know

as the evening's sun settles low on the horizon

casting shadows across my day's work

of thinning, tilling, and weeding in this garden's soil,

that after the frantic confidences pronounced on the radio

and after the bold certainties stamped across the newspapers

I cry four tears:

Mary, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

 

Maybe just for the Salvationists

Who've rocked the Rock through to today.

Maybe for Shirley who cried in my arms,

Some memory from her Corner Brook.

 

Maybe for Creation

That settles all things anyway.