Shore

The events of childhood do not pass but repeat themselves like seasons of the year.

— Eleanor Farjeon

When she told me an infestation had ruined the yard
and it had taken a year to clear it away
and get the lawn going again,
I thought I heard her refer to Silver Beatles. 

We had wandered far on bicycles,
my small son and daughter and I —
to the rise of a block with a swerving view
of forested mountains on one side,
yellow and black mountains of sulfur and coal
down near the water on the other,
grain elevators, hundred-car-long freight trains,
and farther out, a bridge vaulting an inlet,
and in the sky a sun like an immense guitar.  

When we came to where she stood
tending shrubbery and early summer flowers,
I thought for a moment I knew her —
she was the lady with short, rough, corn-coloured hair
who worked at the store around the corner
and who made up perfect bags of 10 cents
worth of candy for kids, and seemed lonely. 

But no, that lady had been old even then —
and when I told the woman I spoke with now
that I had lived on this block as a child,
she told me she had resided here in this house
for a great many years, but that I may have known
the previous owners, whose name had been Shore. 

Yes, their name had been Shore — I remembered —
and the sound of the name was a plucked note
that reverberated through me and I ran again
from my old house in the middle of the night
out along the block as up the hill of a dark wave
to a covered porch where a woman opened a door
and brought me to the safe shore of her home. 

And when I showed my two children the house
where I had lived when I was around their ages,
or rather the house that had been built in its place,
I heard myself read out loud the three numbers
on the front door — I remembered the numbers —
as if I was counting out for myself and my children
an odd time signature the same way
I had tried to teach myself and my three brothers
vocal harmonies in the pretend cover versions
of the British Invasion hits we performed
in sets of pajamas on our stage of cement basement floor.

And while we rode away along the sidewalk,
the green within the green of the grass
all down the block still held a silver it would keep
as it swept into the blades, the cared for trees
still held leaves that were fresh notes
they would lift together as they accomplished their melodies,
and whatever I remembered or did not remember,
I let my children take from me without their knowing
as they pedaled ahead of me, the two of them
returning me to the quick drum intro and rhythm strum,
the melodic bass-line, the pithy licks and solo
of a song I used to sing again and again. 

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Facing the Wind

 

Let them go into the wind, some part of me says,
and I do, I let them, the wind will take them
whatever I say or do, so I give them to the wind
to be refined to what they are and will be,
whatever I say or do. Then they run down the sand,
they turn and wave, I see they are waving goodbye,
their hair blowing horizontal across their faces,
the blue-green inlet waters rolling close
and almost breathing, they turn away again
to look out to fast-flying white-winged waves,
they stay still, they wait for the tide to touch their shoes.
Then I am taken up where I stand, then I could step
over some brink in myself, except the wind
takes up every particle of cold grey sand
and every wave-crushed, wave-turned piece of shell
and every wave-smoothed piece of lost tree bark
while it takes me up, and takes up my small children
as the two of them truly are, have been, will be.
Let them go into the wind, some part of me says,
into the wind that plays like children who play
along a shore of seagulls, crows, scurrying crabs,
large rocks at rest for millennia, jellyfish, visiting seals —
plays in children’s shouts, in their hands, their feet.
The wind utters wind, the waves recite waves —
the wind takes up the shore and us and gives no hint
it is aware it does this, and makes me want all the more
to plead and petition though I can expect no answer.



Russell Thornton’s latest collection is The Broken Face (Harbour Publishing, 2018). His collection The Hundred Lives (2014) was a finalist for the 2015 Griffin Poetry Prize, and his collection Birds, Metals, Stones and Rain (2013) was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for English-language poetry, the Raymond Souster Award, and the Dorothy Livesay BC Book Prize. He lives in North Vancouver.

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Stephanie Patsula is an interdisciplinary artist. In her ongoing art practice she works to produce soundscapes, installation, sculpture, durational performance, and photography. Across these media Patsula investigates a phenomenological analysis of object/subject relationship within her environment, drawing on aspects of philosophical and contemplative traditions. Patsula is a MFA candidate at the University of Alberta and lives and works in Edmonton, Alberta. Follow her on Instagram at @s_patsula.