1.
In the town where I came of age within
the landscape I still know as home,
granite, lakes and pines, I look out on
a corner that knows me, though
some of its storefronts are several
times removed from those I passed
in snowstorm, sunshine and heat, in the
cavalcades of colour
as defined by the autumnal brochures of
my youth.
The church hall of my theatrical past,
and of the dances of my loneliness,
is there on the hill out the cafe
window.
The bridge, over which I sometimes
pondered plunging into, in my not
so wonderful life, begat contemplations
of how long I would last
in the cold waters of the river's open
ice, just down the street, just out of sight.
I am decades away from that almost man,
the no longer boy; the broken child
making his inchoate way into a future
of heartache he would not have survived
if the crystal snow had foretold his
future: his fortune, glimpsed in the narrow waters
of the otherwise frozen river, would
have ensured his death then and there.
Blessed are they who cannot see what is
to come.
What is bearable in part, could never
be borne as a whole.
Like fairy tale breadcrumbs left on a
forest floor eaten by birds and rodents;
carried off by insects, and turned
sodden with rain to disintegrate before the return,
the way home, has an innocence, a
naivetè that makes hope possible,
so that, here in this cafe window, more
than forty years on, the miracle of breadcrumbs
keeps marking the trail of my passage
with the remaining innocence of my hope,
gladly carrying me beyond the forest,
beyond the desert, beyond the salt plain and
the mountains, beyond the swamp, the
rivers, the lakes, the pines:
a pilgrim's progress to a faith
stripped of pride, prejudice, and jaundiced I;
a faith that consists of the
distillations of love out of thin air and thick, the ever willing
ability to trust my heart more than my
mind, with just enough vision
of what might be coming, to believe in
every new starting again and every continuance,
every grace and insight, every
collapsing centre of every expanding care
around every bend in this unforeseen
road beyond this corner where I sit,
because outside the door, the last
period that will one day punctuate
the conclusion of my long sentence has
been known
since well before I arrived here
trailing breadcrumbs.
2.
It is no secret to me, that
the boy inside never grew up,
no secret the teenager
within, has an unrealistic idea of romance,
and dreams of ever more
rarefied manifestations of devotion and service.
The young man I was never
stood a chance of maturing in due season,
like this horde of teens and
pre-teens in the diner, lining up to pay their bills:
the long haired girls in
their riding boots and their perfect complexions,
the red-cheeked boys and
their collective posing, too cool as a sum
to allow their insecurities
to individualize: they are young and full
of their own fragile
immortalities, but if seen as themselves, each alone,
they come apart at the seams
into awkward anxieties, desperate to conform,
to fit in, and yet stand
out.
They are the peers of my
youth two generations later, like the ones
who thought me so much
braver, so much more willing to go out on a limb,
as if I was not a damaged
child making up constructive rebellions, not making it
up as I went. Despite what
they thought, it wasn't confidence that made me other,
it was the secrets inside
me, and no doubt, among these adolescents lining up
to pay for their lunches,
there are a few a least partially like me, though the rest
are happily aging into the
roles assigned them, with the provisos in their own minds,
that they will do it better,
and so they should, but mostly won't, for all generations
are born to replace those
that gave rise to them, unless now, in the coming age
of a rapidly changing
climate, they alter the future in ways beyond all generations
that preceded them.
Some of these paying up and
leaving this eatery, will die along the way,
have their names and dates
etched into yearbooks; into the hearts and minds of their peers,
some lost, accidentally
forgotten by best friends some drunken night, a night
of random choice remembered
by the survivors forever, a choice that alters everything.
Others will perish in all
the other sundry ways in which youth fails to become age,
because good fortune fails,
because sickness or random occurrence or suicide
removes them from the stage.
It is humanity's lot to come
and go, individually, and as a species.
There is only care and
consideration, or their absence, to mark our passage,
the broken and the unbroken
alike, we all end in the grave, or the ash urn or spread
on the winds, or lost at
sea, or vanished into who knows where, though we each measure
our lives in love, or in its
absence.
So let the young be naive,
and the old be wise, let those whose innocence is taken
and those who retain some of
the same all of their lives, remember:
we are creators and
destroyers, we manufacture hope and despair, we grow families and
friends
or fail to. So if you find
yourselves, or your sons and your daughters, or those of others,
on the routine cusp of
eternity, patiently - or impatiently - lined up to pay for their time
here,
consider them with kindness,
for we all carry a secret we don't always admit, to ourselves or
others.
3.
In a place I lived only
through high school and slightly beyond,
but where my family still
lives, a place to which I have returned to
over the decades for
holidays and visits, I study faces for evidence
of those I once knew, most
of the names are gone, and familiarity
does not place many faces,
however much some seem like ones
I once knew.
Humanity only has so many
variations of features with which to work,
and so at best I recognize
possible and probable former friends and acquaintances,
without knowing almost
anyone, just those vaguely reminding me
of people I may have known,
mistaken identities and assumptions,
the partial memories of a
jumbled puzzle.
There are too many decades,
there is too much absence, too little prequel to my original arrival
followed by comings and
goings, too many elsewheres, too many possibilities that faces
could be known from some
other place altogether, and that they too are visitors, tourists
in a tourist town with long
or short associations to the place.
My family would know, my
mother, my brother, my sister: they are my continuity,
the custodians of my old
who's who.
I am, of course, sometimes
remembered, since my face and hair and body shape
are all unchanged, and thus,
to those who are from here; who once knew me,
I am a face in context. They
know my name, though more often than not, I don't know theirs,
unless I once knew them
well. Most names for me, are echoes of memories, resonance
without substance:
re-introduction, at best, provides only memories for the next time we
meet,
some have stories with
anecdotal triggers, deep reverberations
that cause an eruption of
recollection, either from personal connections, or from shared
circumstances:
of the we were in it
together variety, either events from my student council
presidency,
or from the two
neighbourhoods in which I lived, or the swimming hole,
or hockey and soccer teams,
because there was a life here, some of which even I
remember better than others.
The landscape, the
streetscape, the landmarks of my first arrival here
alter more slowly than the
people, except when they don't. Buildings are demolished,
new ones built, even the
granite shield is now subject to dynamiting developers,
so that, where once there
were forests on rock outcroppings, ubiquitous malls
rubber stamped by town
planners across the province like bacteria spreading their wastes
on agar agar plates, now
decimate the character of localized places I knew,
eradicating idiosyncrasies
of less formulaic ages.
The landscape, the
streetscape, the landmarks also age like people, they grow old and
die,
albeit more slowly, they
deteriorate, collapse and disappear altogether, while nature stakes
it's own inexorable claims
on every demense.
Humanity is mist on a lake
turning to clouds, and one way or another
we are a species on the
verge of oblivion or evolution, we are a process, not a stasis,
so that, here, in this place
where I came of age among people
I rarely recognize anymore,
the temporal shifts
reveal transformations as
unfoldings, not into flatlines,
but into still other folds
within the folds;
what is hidden for a time,
can be seen in a heartbeat between breaths;
revealed and concealed as
wavelengths of life's momentum.
Jan 8-10 2016 Huntsville/Elora
