POEM: after father

after father

saying,

“i don’t want to tell you

how to live your life.”

and you think

that’s all you really want—

for him to tell you how

and why

and where,

and to say this way is best;

take this path

and follow it to the end.

“you can, I know you can do it.”

and afterwards,

after the rituals and the incense,

after the words and the prayers;

after the pyre’s roaring flames—

after the ashes

and soot-tinged greetings

and incessant offerings

of possibility;

afterwards there comes

the missed voice,

whose vibrations

once filled life,

filled lives.

and later still,

after the echoes

from faded rooms

and crowded streets

that are the lonely lanes

of a beating heart;

after the winds that pass

through the wheat,

parsing,

untended,

the seed from chaff;

after the burning sun

of a noon-time valley,

and after being stretched so thin

(leather-hide thin)

by each day’s passing;

after all this,

only “try harder"
is left to stay.

     Another poem with my father in mind. An older one, closer to the time he died in 1999. Perhaps written a few years after, though I can’t remember for sure. It evokes sorrow and loss in me, and I hope it does the same for you (and if it evokes giggles, then I’ll refer you to some of my cartoons and doodles, where I hope you’d laugh with them than at them—but, hey, everybody’s a critic of something or other.)

     I guess my favourite lines are: “after the echoes/ from faded rooms/

and crowded streets/ that are the lonely lanes/ of a beating heart” which evoke the memories we’ve all had of being lonely and feeling adrift like flotsam amid a sea of crowds. We always feel this sometime or other after the loss of a loved one (one who was never told enough how he was loved) and if you don’t, dear reader, feel this sometime or other during your life, then I refer you to the website sociopath.com*, where I am sure you can find other like-minded and emotionally-deficit people such as yourself to chat with!)

     I wanted a greater sense of ceremony of a funeral than the usual, often plastic and antiseptic services most of us participate in today, hence, “the pyre’s roaring flames”. Death is a big industry in Canada. Mawd Google tells us it has 1.6 billion dollars in revenue as of 2015. Wow! Far out, man! Somehow, standing around a funeral pyre while a loved one’s body is burning into ashes while smoke rises up to the sky strikes me as a more solemn, or at least memorable, occasion than sitting in pews or standing at a grave with the pile of excavated dirts covered  up with what looks like indoor-outdoor carpeting. But I quibble; we make such ceremonies as solemn and memorable as we are willing. I wanted to convey the loneliness and isolation that someone feels after the death of someone you love. Having other people in your life is so helpful (usually) to share the burden of loss. When that’s not the case, you can feel adrift in the world, and have unproductive ways of dealing with your grief (even to the point where you can’t grieve at all) that leave unresolved the emptiness inside. So cry your sorrows away, dear reader, that’s what tears are for.  

The photograph was taken—I think—in the early 1940s or perhaps late 1930s, even. I believe it was taken sometime before WWII, because my father always talked about the job he had either before, during or shortly after university (I can’t recall which) where he spent time up north around Lake Superior, doing survey work for Ontario Hydro (or whatever it was called back then), for the construction of canals that would bring water to the downstream electricity generating stations so that, today, I could sit at this computer and type these words. Thanks, Dad!

     My father is the handsome, toqued young man in the middle who seems to be nautically-challenged somewhat, and is putting on a brave show for the camera. His pose, clinging on to the sides of the canoe, suggests he definitely feels out of his element, and is a little uncomfortable floating around freezing northern waters. The photo was attached to the poem “after father” that I found in the burial mound I was excavating, and I thought I would include it here. Cheers.

* Now, I should have remembered that this is the Age of the Internet. I just made up the website’s name, but out of habit, I checked Mawd Google, and, of course, there is an actual website with that name. It’s just a page announcing that psychologist, Dr. David A. Johnson, is currently writing a book about sociopaths. The page is a bit creepy with its black background, and it has an Amazon.com link to a 2016 book called, The Sociopath Next Door, with its equally creepy, murky brown cover on display. Both give me the willies, like somebody just walked over my grave! So, for all those sociopaths out there reading this—I will never, ever, poke fun at you. So please don’t put me screaming into a bath of hydrochloric acid; I have very sensitive skin.