Main Street, Milton

Acts of courage and of faith
carved the town from woods and fields.
And the men and women who saw it done
Built this church. Their work stands
firm and solid made by their hands
permanent and incomplete.
Not for you their easy task
of laying bricks and bending backs.
You must build and change and grow
You must carry on.
For strength stands within the church
and those that built it may be seen
in every arch and every line.
Keep the faith.
Keep it well and know above the great white front
that rises to the rolling heavens
there shine eternal, myriad stars.

6-9 August 1989


5 February 1990

It was the storm that killed him.
Black and dangerous ice
formed silently over the roads where he worked,
pushing away layers of benign white snow.
It fell and kept on falling, leaving a blanket of quiet and paralysis.
There was a terror, too, of loss and loss of control,
failure to stop, failure to arrive.
And in the afternoon and evening
the way was made safe
for parents returning home
from shopping, from work-
And in the night
pairs of lovers passed
truckers rounded the corner and did not skid
solitary travellers came and went
with no noise, no incident
And after too little rest
again the roads were cleared
for safe passage of the cars and schoolbusses
that would carry the children and grandchildren
to work, to school.
And in the early morning
they found him, still behind the wheel.
Job unfinished.
Work done.


At the Birthplace of Chester A. Arthur

Coming across a sunny field
still damp from morning rain
I can't identify the flower
whose fragrance blossoms on the air-
it must be just the singular scent
of late afternoon in the last days of May.
Much different from a burial ground
or commemorated battle site
a granite marker testifies
here stood the cottage where was born
the twenty-first president
of the United States of America.
The tiny house that stands here now
smells old
even at a distance of twenty yards.
But in the woods, a space apart
a springhouse guards a precious source-
for this is a place of beginnings.
Unmindful of men or of high office
this place is of a time before
a shot surprised him into fame.

26 May 1988

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