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Stephen Rowe

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Pre-emptive Dirge of Sorts for my Grandfather

Bakeapple jam—or rather cloudberry—
that mystery you lifted from the jar
swift stroke into air,
                                light swipe onto bread
Nan made in the morning. Hot tea
fogged the wrinkles of your face.

Afternoons I played at the mill—saw each log,
dry-barked, cracked limbs of forest,
taken from the dark corner
                                          (your arms thick as cabers)
lined up before the blade, tense in waiting.
I’d try to count the age rings until they vanished
in a swirl of blurred wood chips.

Later I would hear how you’d slipped,
sawed through your right hand, stood back
to see the shaking wrist broken,
                                                  hung by a split of flesh.

After the surgery my mother said she couldn’t
understand you, cursed each time
she saw the mill door unhasped and you
laying logs on the plane.
                                      ‘An utter mystery! Why...?’
her voice cut-off by the saw’s steady hiss.

I wanted never to know.

Stephen Rowe is a teacher and poet whose poetry has appeared in publications across Canada, as well as in the United States and The United Kingdom. His first book of poems will be released by Nightwood Editions in 2009.

Page(s) 44

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