Our words
are legacy.
Our hopes, fears, and
dreams pirouette on pages
They jeté into hearts and minds
even after we’ve returned
Á terre.
.
.
(In memory of poet Patrick Lane who left us one year ago today. A lesson I learned from him, “Use specificity in your poems. Don’t just dance, tango!”).
The guns fell silent
one hundred years ago, but
it didn’t end all war.
.
Mired in mud and blood
patriotism butchered
a generation.
.
If only those
recruitment posters were true
and their lives bought us peace.
It has been one year
without you.
I could take off mourning now,
remove a black cloak of outward grief,
but I will never remove the sense of loss.
It has been one year
without you,
but I still hear your voice
I hear your laugh,
your bad jokes,
another repetition of your life story.
I could take off a mourning cloak
but I will wear you on my shoulder,
hear you in my ears,
love you with every breath
until we meet again.
.
https://shawnbird.com/2015/07/25/obituary-herbert-mosses-duguay/
Four centuries
before I was born
Will Shakespeare arrived
on the planet.
Four centuries ago today
Will’s body died
but his voice remains,
his words will still enthrall,
for centuries.
I didn’t see your ghosts
feel your spirits in the air
I didn’t understand what
drove folks to leave there;
On Culloden Moor the Scots
were slaughtered and died
Then drove from their lands
in Canada they arrived.
Their hardy characters
explored from sea to sea,
naming off the rivers,
(and my university).
The brutal battle that was fought
upon this day
led to our confederation
and the TransCanada
Highway.
.
.
Most of what I know about the Battle of Culloden I learned from Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series. However, it’s very cool that my husband’s ancestor Dr. John Rattray was Bonnie Prince Charlie’s personal physician in Edinburgh, and was saved from the noose afterwards only by the timely interference of his golf buddy and judge Duncan Forbes. (John Rattray was Captain of St Andrews and one of the signatories of the official rules of golf in 1744. Cronyism in golf plainly goes back to the beginning of the sport).
Two months
Sixty-one days
Sixty-one memories of your smile
Sixty-one wishes for your stories
Two mysterious photographs
Too many days
without you.
.
.
RIPDaddy
Last week a genealogist doing a one name study of Duguay found my dad’s obituary here. After getting a bit of basic information that could connect into his database, he sent me Dad’s family line back to 1620 in Burgundy, France. I then did a little additional research. Dad would have been intrigued, especially to know that at 1672 we share a common ancestor with some famous people: Hillary Clinton (American politician), Tom Mulcair (Canadian politician), Anne Hébert (Canadian author and poet).
Yes.
No.
Maybe so.
I love you, but
I love you,
but,
I love you, so
I will.
Do you?
I do.
.
.
.
.
If this poem had a ‘gag reel’ it would include
I love your
butt
(cough) But it doesn’t. So pretend you didn’t read that.
Happy Anniversary #30 to my long-suffering man. 🙂
Five years ago, when this blog was only a couple of months old, I posted this anniversary thought, complete with sepia toned wedding photo…
I am sure
I told them
We are sure
Yes, we are young
We told them.
Yes, it’s been fast,
But the college is small
and we get to know people
quickly. We’ve seen each other
ten hours a day for months.
We didn’t tell them
about the ice cold walks,
holding mittened hands,
the tears,
the dreams.
We held those to ourselves.
Well, they said,
If you’re sure.
So we said I do
and I do, too
And we leapt off
a precipice
together.
.
.
.
This is the 30th anniversary of the day I met my dear man. By the summer we were married, and still are
falling.
On this day
I remember a ghost anniversary,
the day in 1976
when my sister was married.
My 12 year old figure was
encased in my mother’s girdle
beneath a hideous rust bridesmaid gown.
I sported a new Vidal Sasoon bob,
felt bold and grown up with
my uni-brow plucked.
I remember my father’s scowl
when a groomsman with waist length hair
obeying rattling spoons, bent to kiss me,
and the resulting blush.
The marriage lasted four years.
My daughter wore the hideous dress
when she was twelve.
She called herself a princess;
rust suits her.
Too bad my sister
never saw it.
.
.
.
You know, that whole girdle thing is really weird. I was not a pudgy child by any reckoning. I probably weighed about 95 lbs around the time of this wedding. I recall it was my idea, so I must have been self-conscious of a little paunch, which at 12, was not paunch at all. Very strange how girls are, isn’t it?
.
I looked for the wedding photos in the album, but it looks like I took them out of those photo eating ‘magnetic’ glued albums, and who knows where I put them. Sorry!
G r e e n e y e s,
h o l d m y h e a r t
t i g h t l y a g a i n s t y o u r s ;
l e t t h e i r c o m b i n e d r h y t h m
~ s y n c o p a t e d m e m o r i e s ~
d a n c e i n o u r
e m b r a c e .
.
.
.
Happy Anniversary, handsome. Sam Heughan has nothing on you.
Shawn L. Bird 