The Shades of Autumns Past

Down where Wilfred’s store stood
you can almost hear political arguments
in voices, distinct and beloved,
while pipe and tobacco smoke swirled
above a wood stove surrounded by nail kegs,
and a few sparse chairs.
Further down the lane,
where Gammon’s once stood,
the sharp smell of handline,
and essence of John Leckie boots
hangs in the salty air.

The dim shadows of fishermen’s stores
populate a cove, where even the stones
that supported their handmade wharves 
have disappeared into the relentless, 
and unforgiving, maw of time.
The memory of the lobster plant,
and the bustling fish plant,
offer olfactory hallucinations,
with the sharp smell of hot creosote
steeping nets, enhancing spectral vision.
You can almost see a cove full of small boats,
a palette of bright colour, with swaying spars,
and names like “Miss Glace Bay”, “Valma C”,
and “On Time 3".

Out between the islands, the Groaner calls,
and the shimmer of returning sails
causes a flurry of activity in kitchens
ruled by strong women, to whom hardship
was simply a way of life.
Remembered clotheslines flutter with colour,
each matron having her own distinct hanging pattern.
A small boy rows across a cove that has hosted
his past kindred for almost two hundred years.
A little girl in a cotton dress talks to the postmistress,
then runs with her granny’s mail
to receive her promised molasses cookie.

The man doesn’t see the ruins of old houses,
nor the place where the schoolhouse stood,
he is remembering Roll’s Garage, and Warnie’s,
the What-Not Shop, and Beulah’s Ice Cream shed.
He recalls distinct intonations of voices:
Wal, John Angus, Morris, Jim, Victor,
grandfathers George and Winfield,
grandmothers Lottie and Lily,
Marion and Lilian, Nora, and Aunt Maude,
and so many others fill his head with a cacophony
of love, and of kinship, and of hard times shared.
He smiles a bit, remembering the calloused hand
of his father, as it enveloped his smaller boy-hand,
as together they walked homeward past the Hall,
towards a very different future.