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)