Time changed with the clocks and my body clock is no longer in sync with the tick-tock chime that denounces each hour.
Hours that used to wound now threaten to kill. They used to limp along, but now they just rush by and I, who used to run from point to point, now shuffle a step at a time.
Around us, the Covidis thrives and flowers. Wallflowers, violets, we shrink into our homes, board up the windows, refuse to open doors. We communicate by phone, e-mail, messenger, Skype.
Give us enough rope and we’ll survive a little while, fearful, full of anguish, yet also filled with hope.
Where’s Home (2) Part II of an open letter to Jan Hull
I ended yesterday’s letter with the words “There is a brighter side too, and I will get to that another day.” This is the day, and the brighter side is the sacredness of place. The Celtic Nations believe strongly in the sacredness of place. In the old religions we believed that places held spirits who dwelt in the rivers and streams, who lived in the trees and the orchards, who were a large part of the spirit of place and sacred space. You can still read some of this innate pantheism in The Chronicles of Narnia. Irish, Scottish, Welsh, French … we all have Celtic roots and, like the First Nations of Canada, we still believe in the sanctity of the land. This is an old tradition and a worthy one. Not all great ideas were born in Western Culture post the Industrial Revolution. Many pre-date our so called modern culture. Some should replace it.
I believe very strongly in the power of place. Sometimes, turning a corner one day, we know we are home. This is the feeling that comes so strongly through the second chapter of your book, Jan. Yes, the Maritimes (NB, NS, and PEI) are home for many people. It is indeed their One Small Corner. their querencia. What is a querencia, you ask? Well, it is the place that calls you, the place in which you want to live, the place in which you want to die. And yes, in this time of pandemic, death is on all our minds: those twin realities, sickness and death. Neither is easy. These times are not easy. But they become easier for those of us rooted in our time and our place and, like it or not, the human being, male, female, or other, must live in a dialog with their own time and place. This is the chrono- (time) -topos (place) of the Russian Philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin.
Life is so much easier when we are in our own beloved space. When we are out of it, away from home, down the road, that is when we suffer most, Sometimes we are still able to flourish. Oftentimes, we wither and perish, like leaves on the tree. You, in your book, Where’s Home?, have offered us a glimpse of what that one small corner, the province of Nova Scotia, means to your correspondents and the ones with whom you have held dialog. We are all of us richer for that experience. Thank you, Jan, and on all our behalves, mine particularly, please thank your contributors.
And this is the good thing, to find your one small corner and to have your one small candle, then to light it, and leave it burning its sharp bright hole in the night.
Around you, the walls you constructed; inside, the reduced space, the secret garden, the Holy of Holies where roses grow and no cold wind disturbs you.
“Is it over here?” you ask: “Or over here?”
If you do not know, I cannot tell you.
But I will say this: turning a corner one day you will suddenly know that you have found a perfection that you will seek again, in vain, for the rest of your life.
There I was, in dreamland, half-asleep, leaning on my cart, when this phantom drifted towards me. “Help me,” it said. “I’m hungry.”
I woke up from my dream, looked at the ghost, tall, skeletal, thin, cavernous eyes, cheekbones protruding, gaps in the teeth, grey face drawn.
“Sorry!” My reply was automatic. I looked at him again. “I only carry plastic.” The excuse limped heavily across the air between us.
I saw something in his eyes, I knew not what. As I walked away, I added one hundred pound of muscle to his frame. He had played hard.
I remembered him holding up the Maritime Cup. But I couldn’t remember his name. I pushed my cart all over the store searching for him.
At the ATM I withdrew cash I could give him. I would tell him he had dropped it. I could invite him to the snack bar, buy him a meal and more.
I could tell him to buy what he needed and meet me at the check out. I could add his purchases to my bill. I looked everywhere. Nor sight, nor sign.
One opportunity. That’s all we get. Miss it, blow the match. Grasp it, hold it tight, we’re champions.
Comment: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” “Or my sister’s?” Here and now we are living with realities that we have rarely faced before. Not everyone has kept their jobs. Some are indeed living out on the streets, helpless, homeless, panhandling, hoping. Right now they are lucky. Sunny, warm, hot … though sometimes too hot. At least it isn’t 40 below and freezing their butts off. So what do we do? Turn a blind eye? Say we are sorry? Suddenly recognize an old friend, turn quickly away before he recognizes us, and burn ever afterwards with shame?
I cannot answer for you. I can only answer for myself. I am ashamed of my slick answers, my throwaway negatives, my disguised barbs. “Go get a job.” There are no jobs, or very few anyway, Covid-19 has seen to that. “Do something useful, can’t you?” There’s very little they can do, and seemingly there’s very little can be done for them. “Go home!” They have no homes to go to.
So what are the alternatives? Love? Charity? Comprehension? Embracing their situation? Understanding? How can we understand, you and I, who sit before the computer screen, the cell phone, or the I Pad, scanning this in comfort? Think about it: there, out into the street, but for some good luck, and the grace of God, go you and I. Think about it. Now do you understand?
My body’s house has many rooms and you, my love, are present in them all. I glimpse your shadow in the mirror and your breath brushes my cheek
when I open the door. Where have you gone? I walk from room to room, but when I seek, I no longer find and nothing opens when I knock.
Afraid, sometimes, to enter a room, I am sure you are in there. I hear your footsteps on the stair. Sometimes your voice breaks the silence
when you whisper my name in the same old way. How can it be true, my love, that you have gone, that you have left me here alone? I count the hours,
the days, embracing dust motes to find no solace in salacious sunbeams and my occasional dreams.
Comment: Another golden oldie, polished, rewritten, and revised. Today is Clare’s birthday and fifty-five years ago today we got engaged, on her birthday, in Santander, Spain. I wrote this poem a couple of years ago when she was visiting our daughter and grand-daughter in Ottawa and I was left alone to look after the house. I will be including this poem in my new collection, All About Ageing … in an age of pandemic, on which I am currently working.
My vision of absence and of the bereaved wandering, lost, the house the couple once shared, is sharpened in this age of pandemic in which we live. My heart goes out to all those who have suffered short term or long term effects from the pandemic. My premonitions and visions, my memories and dreams, reach out especially to those who have lost loved ones and who live in the daily reality of that loss.
Once a month, they stick a needle in my arm and check my PSA, cholesterol, and testosterone: blood pressure rising, cholesterol high, body clock ticking down.
The doctor keeps telling me it’s a level playing field but every week he changes the rules and twice a year he moves the goal-posts.
A man in a black-and-white zebra shirt holds a whistle to his lips while another throws a flag. It comes out of the tv and falls flapping at my feet.
Yes, I’m living in the Red Zone and the clock’s ticking down.
Yours are the hands that raise me up, that rescue me from dark depression, that haul me from life’s whirlpool, that clench around the jaws that bite, that save me from the claws that snatch.
Yours are the hands that move the pieces on the chess board of my days and nights, that break my breakfast eggs and bread, that bake my birthday cake and count the candles that you place and light.
You are the icing on that cake, and yours is the beauty that strips the scales from my eyes, then blinds me with light.
rogermoorepoet 