morning - promise and ice

the cold tells me i am alive

colour gives me strength

patterns - first frost

without heaven

without heaven’s consent
this rain that runs from my  face
has travelled a great distance
to meet the sun caressing my skull

converging on this smooth surface
new trees sink roots
further into the highlands

i pay witness

 rainbows that appear at my feet
arc to a sea grey with no horizon
i see god
in the moment’s eternity

untitled eyes

exposed

wind patterns

to you - just a bump in the road toward light

 

my bind to you
does not fall within the trappings of our history
but of the minutes, hours we have left
i have no need to touch you
as i have these memories
i have no real desire to be in your presence
as you are forever here in mine

your voice is what I crave

walk with me
your voice
where the white air
pure of meaning resides
those words we use
aren’t of black and white
vowels and consonants
but speak the colour of fire
deep within our separate hearts
walk beside me
in the late night embers of language
and slow burning time

i believe we haven’t even met yet
but my bind to you
is deep inside me
walk with me
until now

Cape Breton Story

I must put on some old time Gaelic fiddle music to tell this story. Cape Breton fiddle, it is different from any other folk fiddle music. When the Scots came over hundreds of years ago after being banished from the motherland, they had no idea what to expect when the Hector hit land in Pictou Nova Scotia. The land was likened to what they were used to, the rolling hills made them immediately homesick. Nevertheless, their first winters were harsh like they had never experienced and many perished with frostbite and starving from the isolation. But they had their music and that helped as much as a woodstove at times.

They struggled and the ones who carried on worked hard and played even harder. There were dances on Saturday nights at the Parrish Halls all over Cape Breton.  Hard driving fiddle music and at the time pipe organ, now replaced by the piano and guitar, brought people to the floor for traditional dancing. The windows steamed up, the men boasted they danced every set with always a watchful eye out for the woman who caught their eye. At the dances there was always liquor and it was moonshine made deep in the woods far from the any authority or anyone who might want the still. There were fights at these dances and the older men today tell of blood and liquor on the floor as they danced, witnessed when they were just kids sneaking in.

There was community here, people helping people, helping people, with everything from building homesteads to fishing and farming. Electricity in Inverness County never came to be in some parts like North East Mabou until the nineteen seventies so oil lamps from the seal caught in the dangerous waters in January gave them light. Without power news traveled by word of mouth and that is where all the stories came from and is carried on today. There was time for a story in those days. If you dropped by someone’s house it was an event, swapping lies and again the music would eventually come out which turned a visit into a three day stay. There was time.

They raised kids and went to church, God fearing people sticking close to the cloth. But there were abusers here to. With kids and women the men were brutal, with no excuse other then the isolation,. Life was harder in my mind for the women and the children. And even today the stories run fast about so and so down the road beating on his wife or messing with his girls. There is trouble here still and not all the gingham in the world can cover it up. When people ‘from away’ land here it is all beautiful and tranquil, people being so friendly but there is a deep under belly here with scars written on many faces. And this part of life is indicative to a lot of small communities I know but I feel compelled to mention that it is here as well. Trouble too in paradise.

Changing directions, I will tell you about Willey Kennedy. I had heard of dear Willey many years before I landed in Cape Breton. Stories from Mark about a soft little man with big heart always playing the dances or at the Manor for the old folk. A cherub smile no matter what his life is dealing him. I always stop when I see him on his morning walks and have a chat. I love this man. He was the first person to play the pub when I opened back in ninety-eight. The first tune he played was the Red Shoe’s Reel. A tuned composed by Dan R. Mac Donald. And the name of that tune came from Dan R. walking the roads one day with his fiddle. He had thousands of tunes in him and he had just written this one. He came upon a man in Glendale, and believe it was Sandy ‘Fish’ s great uncle who had made a pair of shoes. He was just about finished and he was finishing off the shoes, painting them red, the only thing he had. The paint he used for his boat. That is how the tune was titled.

Back to Willey. The man never married and when his brother in law died he moved to Mabou from Kenloch to live with his sister. He lived with her until she passed about seven years ago. He was a broken man. For years after he had the face of someone who has lost someone. You know that face. There is no other face like it. I went to the funeral that day and he came up to me and hugged me like a little boy, crying openly saying in between sobs that he did not know how he could carry on. I would show up on his doorstep now and again after his loss. Not to make him feel hopeless or that I was checking up, I would time it. I brought him fish for his supper or a couple of beer. He liked that. I liked that. We sat across from each other at the table and he would tell me about growing up in Kenloch . How he started playing the fiddle and who influenced him. The stories he told of the dances, him playing with Morgan Mac Quarrie, who is a good friend of mine. As kids they would play for hours and hours after the hay was in, learning from each other the tunes of generations before.

I have been blessed with these people in my life. They have given me a richness of life that I doubt very much I would get living back in the city. I am forever grateful.

response to the depth of light