I would like to offer a very special Christmas poem to all my readers this year. It was written Christmas, 2005, which was the last I would spend with my father. We spent Christmas in Richmond, Quebec, at my grandparents' home, across the river from Melbourne. An Eastern Townships Christmas is about as idyllic as one can get. Snow is half-a-man deep, and the fir tree boughs are laden with it. Days we'd ski or walk in the woods, nights sit by a roaring fire, and read Robert Frost. This poem is set in this territory, which is where my mother grew up. I've found a most appropriate image, a painting set within a mile or less of where it was written (though a hundred years before) by Frederick Simpson Coburn, the painter and illustrator who was born in Melbourne, Quebec, before moving to study in Berlin and Paris. Curiously enough, he became an illustrator for some of the stories of Edgar Poe, in New York in the early 1900s, which perhaps also ties in with the slightly macabre tone of this work. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.The Last Blizzard
My mother showed me
the house she had lived in
fifty years ago
when she had been a girl
who threw glass
at her enemies
with a pig named Margaret.
My father kept his eyes
on the deteriorating conditions
ahead, saying: soon we won’t see
a thing in front of us.
For now, we could.
The town my mother
no longer lived in
had big wood homes
with long, wide porches.
Fir trees stood nearby.
Christmas lights. At the end
of her street the river was met
by a green bridge.
As we crossed we saw icy water.
My mother pointed out
a view that had once been
on the two-dollar bill, before
counterfeiters forced them
to use a more intricate design.
She showed me her school,
where she had walked and run
and where she moved to later on.
So what if the weather made us slow?
We stopped to watch
a white deer standing
in a white field, not moving.
poem by Todd Swift
Comments
Ben