Recalling my father, who tried to stop the Industrial Revolution
\nby sticking his hand into a balky combine, thereby shedding
\nflesh and blood, lopping fingers into gnarled stubs.
\nOr, in his sixties, kneeling and hammering sheets of aluminum
\ninto the barn roof while my mother, far below,
\npaced the kitchen floor, hysterically anxious.
\nSo little alike in temperament, they reacted to circumstances
\nin different ways. Who could say one way was better?
\nBut the older I get the more I value my father\u2019s Great Stone Face,
\noffering to the world a resolute stoical silence.
\nWhat lesson does my father\u2019s conduct impart to me
\non days when I\u2019m pecked to death by ducks?
\nI try to answer that question every day
\nand only wonder how he could deal with
\nthe many troubles and labours of his life
\nand how he found an answer worthy of emulation:
\nTo not grin but bear it.<\/p>\n
Old friends are part of you.
\nThey mark the time you spent.
\nThey justify it for you.
\nYou rejoice in them.
\nEventually as old friends drop away,
\nand you anticipate
\nyou’ll be an old friend who drops away,
\nyou widen the net,
\ntrawling old acquaintances
\npromoted to be friends.
\nYou look around for more
\nwith whom you shared the past,
\nat last resort to old enemies.
\nThey, too, are part of you.<\/p>\n
Yesterday an oppressive storm hung over the sky and I hurried to the <\/em> top of a nearby hill….At the summit I found a hut, where a man was <\/em> killing a kid, while his son watched him<\/em> – Friedrich Nietzsche<\/p>\n How often repeated, The boy’s attentive eyes Like a future parricide, he INDIAN LAKE REVISITED<\/p>\n Held round in the mind’s eye, The moulting year has epithets Rock, dock. Washed pebbles Leaves disembark, in its oiled cloud tokens of the risen, fallen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Father Recalling my father, who tried to stop the Industrial Revolution by sticking his hand into a balky combine, thereby shedding flesh and blood, lopping fingers into gnarled stubs. Or, in his sixties, kneeling and hammering sheets of aluminum into the barn roof while my mother, far below, paced the kitchen floor, hysterically anxious. So little alike in temperament, they…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3693"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3695,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3693\/revisions\/3695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nto the boy it’s still a wonder,
\nthe hilltop sacrifice,
\nhis father’s knife stroking the throat
\nof the bleating, struggling animal.<\/p>\n
\nsee a living creature
\ndie in front of him,
\nits eyes wild then fixed.
\nStorms are nothing to this.<\/p>\n
\nobserves how it’s done.
\nThe ritual,
\nblood on an altar,
\nprofoundly satisfies.<\/p>\n
\na paddle pulling into green dappled gold,
\na sun’s span in a wrist’s turn.<\/p>\n
\nstrewn on the water,
\nleafy epaulettes on the taupe dock.<\/p>\n
\nclink and chatter. Water deeper than sky
\nskins the turbulence.<\/p>\n
\nwaves shed engagement rings,
\nthe lake cradles lean canoes<\/p>\n
\nbent for the shored up shadow
\nwhere last one saw the amber<\/p>\n