the same day - in a different light

reflection

della was at the window

it was just a kiss

without a promise

two people open in a moment

of exposed vulnerability

just a simple prolonged kiss beautiful

 filling a vast emptiness

  

just one kiss

that stirred something

in them both

a desire to breathe

that was thought to have died

we are beautiful

so beautiful and fleeting

in just a kiss

love and truth together

for just a moment

MacKinnons Brook - into the bowels

I stopped at the bridge and walked the dirt road until it became a path. The path opened then closed. It did this several times, this opening and closing the light coming and going I witnessed as last breaths. I was aware of roots and fallen trees, exposed carcasses of time, of dying love.

evening falls

of love and myth

illusion and reflection

gently severed the fragile walls of love

with the subtle threads of an evening's light

they said good-bye

he didn't think of her either

but after he did

and wondered if that was a time

she had sobering thoughts

after

that first kiss

that touch

after





blame it on the rain

for a and l.

i love you guys.

His Stuff

His address before he left was thirteen Bradmore Chambers, Hammersmith, England. He was twenty-five years old when he landed in Canada. That was in 1947. He made his way from Pier 21 in Halifax to Toronto. That’s where the work was. He already had experience as a tradesman working in a gold refinery in London where he made a gold ring that they had to pry from his finger when he passed. He got his trade as a Tool and Die Maker when he was fourteen. Before that, he helped his mother and father in their theatre clothing company.

My earliest recollection of him was at the morning kitchen table where I sat with him as he ate his breakfast, as mother would prepare his lunch, one sandwich some homemade cookies and a hot thermos of tea. We would wave him out the door and mother would tell me how wonderful he was. Everyone said he was wonderful. His work ethic was top drawer. He wore a shirt and tie when he was on the bench at Avro Engines making parts for the Arrow. When he came home at night, he was tired and would sit in his chair and read the paper or dive right back into a book he was reading. Peter smoked Sportsman Cigarettes.  A man casting a fly rod into a stream on a pale yellow background donned the outside of the package. I still remember that. There was a tab on the lip of the package, coupons that he and I would collect. I don't remember what you got when you turned them in. We went fishing for trout in streams not far from home as I recall, leaving early in the morning and home for supper. Mother used to say, “I will always clean a fish but will never eat one.” We used to laugh. I just remembered this! On Sunday mornings we would get up early, he and I. I would put the kettle on for tea and he would put a pot of water on the stove to boil. He peeled open the cellophane wrapper and you could smell this aroma I have never forgotten. Pungent and salty the “Fin and Haddy” went straight into the pot while I buttered bread. We would time the boil at thirteen minutes. I have had this hunger for fish that is never really been satisfied since. Those are just a few of my very best early days. I loved him.

I will cut this story short, as there are some forty odd years to recount. Why I started this story was inspired by simple house cleaning, encountering stuff I had brought back when he passed away. I just came across this cardboard box in my brother’s basement. I sat on the floor and went through it. There was a passport, different identification cards, a birth certificate, even a small machine stitched union book where each month when your dues were paid you could put a pale pink stamp in its proper place. The book was filled from 1952 until 1960. There were two business cards I designed and typeset for him, two of his many sideline projects. I looked through an old phone book, people from Rexdale and from places on Vancouver Island where they settled in 1979, all in his handwriting. People I remember, some I do not know at all.

There was the Christmas card he sent to me in December of 1997. It read, “Hi son. Hope you have a nice Xmas. Have a couple of drinks on me. All my love, Dad.” He wrote in neat upper case letters. He died January second that same year. The card was in my mailbox when I arrived back in Toronto after his funeral.

I also found a photograph he had taken of our mother. On the back he wrote, “Port of Sidney. Sure wish I could go down and find her there,” in the same upper case printing. He was so sad when she died. My brother was at their house the night of her passing. She was in the hospital. My brother, Mark, took the call around ten pm. Dad was in bed when Mark told him our mother was gone. Mark told me that as he was talking Dad went into a foetal position crying and rocking back and forth. My brother sat beside him with his hand on his shoulder. Dad never really ever recovered from his loss.

This is why I have kept this stuff, his stuff. It has taken me back this Sunday afternoon to times that I have told you of today and times that I am just now remembering.

It is love, isn’t it?

That is what it is all about.

a glimpse at light