It is 8 a.m.
Elsie in her Colpton kitchen struggles
to shape a final wordless goodbye
with her 29-year-old grandson
This morning he begins the back journey
Borne on mammoth wings
his body carries the blood
long-broken
Returns it to the ancient mists
of Ireland’s winter shores
Two centuries before – that blood spilling in
her own cursed vessel – our ancestor
Mary Holloday approached new worlds
Ship-splintering waves crash wild granite
She defies her family’s County Antrim cries
(Your mother is yet alive, he wrote. She calls
to you with the strongest voice of maternal
affection to write if so be she might hear from you
ere she be mingled with the clods of the valley)
This morning the final dust of Mary’s bones
sleeps under stone beneath calm maples
in Lunenburg County’s Chelsea churchyard
Tight-lipped we delay the current moment of truth.
Elsie shivers and snips small tales from
her sharp near-nine-decade-long memory.
In the ‘40s, she says, Harris would bring
the diapers in from the line for me
But he would only do it after dark
so no other man would see him
Her time-troubled bones tremble
Heart still steel-strong she talks of a world
where men were giants borne up by women
who carved Big Feeds from a wild harvest
In the cattle pasture long-abandoned
the silver birches flex their frozen fingers
November has cut them with her bitter bite
Bristling hemlock undergrowth chokes
as it catches the wind’s short breath
Last night it scrubbed itself in the light of a full moon
barely aware a bleak cloak rests a single gasp away
On Saturday Adam and Elsie have journeyed
up the long wind-and-frost-wrapped road
stood watch without words on the cemetery’s crest
at the spot where Harris seven hundred
and seven days before began his last rest
She stands by this young giant
who shares his name
remembers the three-year-old
who clutched her urgently
at the side of a Fredericton road
I’d better take your hand
Grammie, he said, or
a big truck might come
and crush you over
His muscled arm lifts her tenderly over
the heavy wet November sod
Decades before in this same kitchen
the mantle clock – long dead – by some strange
fate struck the hour An aging uncle
brought the word to her mother
The old clock struck 3, he said
Elsie’s young limbs cover in a cold shiver
The following day hands pointed to the hour’s stroke
kidneys failing her father Arch that quiet and
gentle man gasped his last breath
For 60 years he has lain at the cemetery’s top
A stone’s throw from Harris’ land
Alone Elsie gives Adam young giant-become-man
one last fierce hug The sharp throat-caught word
that will not pass her lips she begins her first wake
Atonement offered heavenward as incense poured
with wild grace before the face of an all-forgiving God
Anointed by hope, he strides to rebuild the land of myths
even as his eyes strain to grasp her final touch
A handprint raised in blessing against the window
________________________________________________________
NOTE: Later that same morning, an hour along the road, my eye catches sight
of the giant jet high in the shimmering blue sky – one small bright breath of quicksilver –
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