1.
At
first it was his stretch of fields, a lease for a neighbour’s expanding yield
after
health forced him to pause. The spring my father couldn’t plant, Ontario sky
of
variable spelling, monochrome, exaggeration
of
slow cloud. His sleep apnea, diabetes plus
,
that set retirement to root. Downstream, we watched three tractors pull
their
crop of soybean
acres-clean
across a morning.
A
few years later it the land: shorn off and sold. From the basecamp
of
retained, remaining homestead: farmhouse, sheds, the barn. His cancer surgery
surpassing
marks, a marked and marker. Held
his
ground. A land condensed.
He drove
his
gator to survey the boundaries. Where
he
could not walk.
As
ALS crept further, strolled electric wheelchair up the laneway,
hand
curled up, around
the
dog’s leash, bounding forth.
2.
A
farmer with no sons but one, who chose
a
separate path. Embroidery of a curve
away.
A daughter: thus, invisible. These
tiny
changes made to earth.
3.
The
nagging suspicion of
a counter of exchange,
an
erased fenceline he could trace
ungrammatical.
A birdsong, custom purposed to
a
steady, measured stitch of rain. A phantom
set
of tree limbs, trails. To watch
him grasp
the
cypher, signal, of each leaf, yet occupy
such
bounds of silence. An unending pair
of
ambit, errant children. A moment, as if
to
stumble, still.
4.
My
father, long and overcast.
Upon
his death, pandemic: house is slowly emptied, harvest; strata
of
a life well-lived. Disassembled, scattered; donations
and
inheritance alike. Is newly occupied
through
rental agreements, the shake
of
one good hand. Eight decades of tenure, my father’s cremated remains;
boy, am I
as
hand-drawn figures in the landscape. Offered up as ghosts,
before
the sun-bleach of the spring. These
blueprint
pencils fade.
