-Robert Gibbs
Do you know that coast of Fred's the one he wears
to keep the winterout? yes I know
his hands are what you'd notice first workmade
farmboy hands and his southpaw long and strong
for putting a softball over (You've seen it
twise backwards round a pen when he adds
or takes away from a poem he's still writing
while he's showing it to you) I know
his hand but what about the greatcoat?
No not military issue though he did serve
in the war but never so far as I know gave
any orders except maybe Stand at Ease No
I'm talking about a coat large and commodious
a real one he wears to keep out the cold
Dorothy Livesay flown into Fredericton her eyes
still squinting from too much prairie
daylight put her feet out of her tub
on the 6th floor of the Lord Beaverbrook Hotel
into whoops and poundings and shouts of Fire!
Evicted into the March midnight with no
clothes save the wrap she'd grabbed and no
poems save the ones alive in her head
and no glasses to read them through--
where would she take refuge but up the hill
at Fred and Pat's? And how would she be issued
out the next morning but in Fred's overcoat?
The cut my be clerical at that
Once lepidopteristically inclined Fred's
no more a keeper of mealy winged
things in books no curator but a curate
a career for souls and bodies and keeping them
together out of the cold as many as he can
Here's to a gallant doffer greatcoated
lover of poets more than of their poems