The Serial: Far From the Rowan Tree Day 36

The poems weren’t always that good but with the power to bring back memories that gave me the confidence to write at a later date

On one of these sunlit days, shortly after the birth of Mahri-Louise, I made a conscious decision to start writing poetry.

This was something I had hardly thought about since my childhood days. At the age of 15 I’d given up the idea completely. Poetry didn’t seem to belong to everyday practical life and anyway, who was I to think I could be a poet?

I can’t remember exactly why, out in this Westland, the decision to start writing again was taken – to alleviate the loneliness caused by the lack of adult companionship; to prevent me from brooding on an unforseeable tomorrow.

But mostly, I think, it was a compulsion to capture in words this sunlit land, entirely new to me – its birds, its butterflies, its animals, its special aura – and also my thoughts and feelings on this rebirth into a different place.

Apart from the Bible and the encyclopaedias, I had no books to go by and I certainly couldn’t afford to buy any even if Sandyhills had boasted a book shop.

Chatter

But I had the music of half-remembered poems in my head – of Byron and Wordsworth, Tennyson and Shelley.

I struggled with metre and rhyme and words while washing or cooking or feeding the baby until I got what I sought in as orderly a fashion as I could.

I kept this up for over a year until life took off again and was filled with the chatter of other adults once more.

Much later, on the day that my seventh child went to school, in order to alleviate the sadness of the absence of childish feet around the house after 17 years of their ceaseless patter, I took to cleaning out some long ignored drawers.

From one of them I pulled out an old exercise book. It was bright orange in colour and in large, bold, black letters, proclaimed HUGE, which it wasn’t.

Underneath, in smaller letters, it said 10c and below that, Scribbler. I looked inside. There were my Prairie poems.

I was in two minds as to whether to run downstairs and thrust the jotter hastily into the kitchen fire without so much as a glance or whether to tentatively read one or two.

I was sure that if I looked at them, they would make me cringe with embarrassment at my inept attempts at poetry.

To my surprise this was not the chief reaction. It was like looking over long forgotten photographs except that they seemed more real and immediate.

They brought back to me vividly the things I had seen and how I had felt at the time.

In these early prairie days, the actual trigger that released the first poem came from the elder of the Jacobs’ two daughters.

One day she burst into the cabin and energetically handed me a bunch of flowers. “They grow wild,” she told me, “I picked them for you.”

They were, by far, the most colourful flowers I had seen since coming to Canada. There weren’t many flowers around, wild or otherwise.

Colourful

“They’re called Brown-Eyed-Susans,” she continued. “Do you like them?” Like them! After a winter without flowers I thought they were beautiful and aptly named, deep brown eyes looking at me from a colourful sun of petals. They brought grace and wildness into the house. Gradually I took all these lovely new names and words – Saskatoon, gopher, garter snake, grackle, chipmunk, coyote, oriole, Mourning Cloak – and tried to string them together coming up with rather extravagant and arcane verses.

They weren’t always that good but with the power to bring back memories that gave me the confidence to write at a later date.

Oriole – Emperor on wing Oft from his leafy throne will sing I love each glorious golden note Emerging from his deep dark throat

I wrote mostly of the things I saw around me that were new and also of the children.

One day I wrote a lullaby for Mahri-Louise who, even although lying in the shade of the trees most of the time, grew as brown as a beechnut.

Cradled in my arms, at bath time or feeding time or when for some reason she was crying, I used to sing it to her:

The birds and the grasses far from the city Sing her a ditty Isn’t she pretty? The sigh of the trees Like the sough of the seas Soothe to sleep my Mahri-Louise.

At a much later date, when I took up the writing of poetry more seriously, I wrote another poem about our home at Sandyhills.

Life did not go altogether smoothly in that first month after my return from hospital.

What with looking after Ronald and the boys in these primitive conditions and breastfeeding the baby, it took all the energy I had.

By night time I was often exhausted and to make matters worse my wretched tooth started aching again.

At the first opportunity I made an appointment with the dentist but as in Red Deer, I was told I would have some time to wait.

Very busy

Ronald was very busy again. I only saw him to speak to when he came in for a hurried meal or at night when all he wanted to do was sleep.

He mentioned from time to time a pain in his chest. He made light of it saying it had all to do with the long hours of work and living at what was for us a high altitude.

“I’ll be all right,” he joked,” when I get used to this high living!”

I was concerned just the same but he wouldn’t hear of going to the doctor.

All I could do in the circumstances was to give him as little worry and work as possible when he did come home.

The huge yard in front of our house was a hive of activity these days. Now, with seeding over, the men were making silage for the winter.

The silage pits were close to the feed lots at the opposite side of the yard. Tom Jacobs, as always, demanded fast work. (More on Monday)