Van Gogh

Here are three more poems from The Alma Elegies, all of them written after Vincent Van Gogh paintings. I originally wrote about 30 poems and kept 4--about average for me. Some day I may go back to the others and see if there's anything to salvage.

The reader is encouraged to find the original paintings. Really, there was no one like Van Gogh, and there never will be.


THREE POEMS AFTER VAN GOGH

I Potato Planting

In the early morning, the sky is sombre and grey,
and the earth, newly turned, seems a little startled.

A man, a woman and a bull--
all three are hitched to the plow.

The woman, bent nearly double, balances
on her clogs. There’s no room for joy here.

Her death was planted the moment she was born.
A long shadow follows the lines of the furrows.


II The Weaver

What’s the man doing on this crazy contraption?
Miles of thread are the roads he travels. He wears a conductor’s hat.

If it had wheels, the loom would seem natural
wandering the corn rows, the country lanes.

Then the man would feel the sky,
the tiny speck on the horizon,

the distances
moving between us.


III The Blossoming Almond Branch

You kept things around you that spoke
of your gentleness and your generous heart.

That small sprig of almond blossoms,
and behind it, one red brush stroke

thin as the line between the heart’s desire
and the sight of our own blood.

You knew that birth and death join hands
in every single living thing we love.

(Copyright 2006, Allan Cooper)

Old Voices

Here's another poem from the Alma Elegies. When we moved to Alma in 1991, one of our reasons was to spend more time with the older people here. Murice Martin was the local historian, who had a plethora of information about the past. He was also a custodian of the local United Church cemetery and dug graves well into his 70s. He had bad knees. One afternoon after my house was raised and a new foundation was put in place, Murice arrived with a rake, a hoe, a shovel and a roller and told me we were going to landscape my property. I could hardly keep up with him. When the day was over most of the lawn was back in place.

The other people mentioned in this poem are my maternal grandparents, Reta and Cerdic McKinley; my grandfather's sister, Hattie; my father-in-law, David Armstrong; and my father, John.

OLD VOICES

All the beautiful presences are gone,
all the old men,
Murice with his bad knees, and still he dug graves
and raked topsoil with me all afternoon, and told me stories
that brought the past alive like a ruby
that lit the entire room.

All the old voices
have gone out now, so far that we
can no longer imagine those kinds of distances,
all we can do is hold them, name them--
Reta, Cerdic, Hattie, David, John--
wrap them in this dark cloak of human love that dies.

(Copyright 2006, Allan Cooper)

The Black Coals of Grief

I found this poem on an old computer disk in my study. I had to write the poem out by hand, as the printer died a few years ago. The fall I moved to Alma, after the house was renovated, I discovered wheat growing beside the foundation. The seeds had been dormant for who knows how many years.

On one level this is a poem about the past and how it comes forward inside us. Some might also say we can reconnect with the dead in our poems, build them rooms and vistas, place flowers on their tables, leave them the bread of love and the water of our grief and loss.

The poem isn't finished yet. If anyone has any ideas where this poem might go next I'd love to hear from them.


THE BLACK COALS OF GRIEF

The abundance of the world is contained
in a single sheaf of wheat.

Someone planted it
one hundred years ago,

forgotten beneath the soil
until the soil was turned again.

Old bottles glinted in the light,
a lump of coal, square-

headed nails. In the night
familiar footsteps

climbed from the cellar
though no one was there.

*

And all through the autumn
winds rose and fell,

sunlight came out, yellow leaves
blew suddenly to the ground.

A voice rose with the wind:
"This is the way it happens--

things live and die, and take their place
on earth."

*

I would like to call the dead
home, but I can’t.

They sleep on, wake
and sleep again.

Old memories make a vessel of light.
It’s thirty years ago;

my grandmother
steps outside

to pick
a single rose.

*

My father’s cap
hangs from a nail by the stairs.

Twice he has called me from sleep.
Should I go?

On the morning he died
all the roads inside me turned to sand.

I take flowers, cold water,
the black coals of grief.

(Copyright 2006, Allan Cooper)