Two Poems: Island

This All Happened?

Most of us think that history is the past. It’s not.

History is the stories we tell about the past.

— Thomas King

relative perception

Back in Toronto, the same place my mother
left Corner Brook for. I’m just a year old,
oblivious to the friction I’d caused by being born.
We’re in the Caribou Club, where Harry Hibbs
packs the house with homesick Newfoundlanders,
where my grandfather plays open-mic nights.
Back when my grandparents still smoked, drank
rum ’n’ Cokes. Long before prayer and small-town
talk steered him to become a Pentecostal pastor.

The bar’s also their living room, every table
set up comfortably with a couch and wingback
chair on repeat. Each setting displaying a large
Bible, its zippered closure undone, splayed offering
of gold-gilt pages, Christ’s words under neon red.
My grandparents, mother, and me somehow sitting
at all the tables at once. Pop’s accordion a remote
for the “multicordion” — in lieu of a jukebox
he’d built a case full of glowing glass-tube amps,
bellows, pneumatic hoses. A hoarded lifetime
of tithings in saved change lining the bottom.
Each note played would brighten the lights,
flush rushes of air through the hoses, bring
his voice over the speakers blowing benediction
as he whipped the accordion around his wrists,
left then right, slinging it behind his back, eyes
shut in ecstasy, my grandmother’s hands thrown
up in rapture while my mother smoked, lit each
one from the last, unimpressed. My grandfather’s
eyes go wide, he speaks in Christ’s voice,
quoting Hank Williams — If you’re gonna sing,
sing ’em somethin’ they can understand.

My grandmother, cross-stitching in scrolls,
her perfect up-do catching sheens of light from
every table, asks my mother — Can my grandson
read music? Slow snakes of smoke from my mother’s
nose as she shakes her head no. Her mother shrugs,
there are other ways to serve. Mom musses my hair,
her eyes’ green glint, keen as a cat, her smile
a drawer of knives — not the worst thing I’ve done.

I’m in the room, can hear their words, the music,
smell tobacco smoke and sour beer, but my hand
passes through her shoulder when I try to say,
Look at us, you did damn well. I see my infant self
in a bassinet look back at me with a shrug. I realize
this isn’t the way it happened, nor is it a fiction.
The accordion hits the floor, its black and white
pearl keys fall out like old teeth, the lights come up.
I’m no longer in the Caribou Club. No more music,
just a gentle lapping of water against stone.

status

I’m waist-deep in Parson’s Pond, my mother’s parents
in the water with me. Instead of baptizing me in Jesus’s
name, my grandfather falls gently backward. A small kick
from his legs, he asks, Sure, I can lead you beside quiet waters,
but let’s just go for a swim? Nan, all grace and sunglasses,
floats by with a crossword, nonchalantly asks, Six-letter word
for social rank, starts and ends with s?

My father’s folks paddle past, the phrase Teach ’em to fish
runs the length of their canoe. They raise their mugs
of tea with a wink as they tow the sun across the sky,
their grins possess a knowing I can’t quite place. I don’t realize
I’m floating on my back until the moon appears above me
and the pond’s gently in my ears, whispering, As above,
so below in the voices of both grandmothers at once.

My father scoops me up, You’re a little lost, but
that’s nothin’ a few hours around the fire won’t fix.
He stands full height, stars caught in his beard, carries
me home in strides, boots brushing tips of black spruce
like grass. From up here, we can see Sandy Point, can see
St. Paul Island as he wades out the bay, Elmastukwek
suddenly on my lips as we head to Cedar Cove.

He takes my wallet, with its government-issued cards,
takes my Christian guilt and self-doubt, drops them
into an old coffee-can kettle. I ask, Why can’t I just burn it all?
He hands me some matches, nods behind me. My mother
steps in from the surf on a wave of rolling capelin — some things
we shed, some we’re steeped in. She adds the rising tide,
a few newspaper obituaries, the open throat of a pitcher plant.

Together, we build a pyre of kindling and driftwood, fill
it with birchbark, but I want to run. She hands me the kettle,
kisses my cheek. We know who you are, but we can’t make
you believe it. Shaking, I strike a match to watch the bark
recoil, gift itself to fire. Not brave, just tired of telling myself
the same story, I spit the phrase not enough into the can, break
into heaves and sobs, let the kettle boil.

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Douglas Walbourne-Gough is a poet and mixed/adopted status member of the Qalipu Mi’kmaq First Nation from Elmastukwek (the Bay of Islands), Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland). His poetry has appeared in numerous publications, including Best Canadian Poetry in English, Grain, and the Fiddlehead, and has won the Riddle Fence Poetry Prize.

Walbourne-Gough’s debut collection, Crow Gulch, won the E.J. Pratt Poetry Award. It was also a finalist for NL Reads, the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, and the Raymond Souster Award, and was longlisted for the First Nations Community READS Award. Island is his second book of poetry.

Photo of Douglas credit Kalia R. Mintz.

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