more compelling

dear grampy

There you are, Grampy.

It’s been a while since I have seen you

but I have no doubt that you recognize me

by my mother’s eyes.

Today, instead of doing

what I always did 

  (I thought, for you)

I lit a candle, sat quietly

surrounded it with 

  those sea-stones that once I’m sure our feet touched,

  walking along a cobbled beach,

  faces to the gale

  a pink raincoat and my tiny hand in yours.

I did not go to hear the trumpets, the bugle call

muted by the rain,

  for it seems too late now for pride; too much

  has happened since your soul lifted upward 

    for me to raise my hand to brow, and say

  ”Canada.”

I’m sure my insatiable curiosity caused you pain - 

for that, I am sorry.

I know now that my small self never could comprehend

the horror of war 

that lodged itself in your throat.

  Maybe that was the reason for the lozenges,

  cherry-flavoured Halls to soothe the rawness,

  the scrapes of swallowing objection,

  silence instead devouring the “what is it for?”

Today though, I cannot participate 

in the brutal conflation of your sacrifice 

with this new sort of “liberation” -

  the unquestioning march forward

  seems destined to blindly serve the voice that commands

  never demanding

  an answer

     is this not what you fought?

when empires spilled their borders, and those in the flood

called for help

slowly

we answered

  it had to be a certain kind - 

  (the trampled must be polite.)

today, which empires heave themselves onto soil

they know nothing of, 

wearing the masks of freedom

O! to liberate (or stretch fingers further round the globe)

  this story I have heard before. 

how strange to see ourselves reflected…to search for what in us remains

  of the white rose

  the white poppy

  the quiet resistance

cultivated in me by strolling through the Public Gardens, stooping to smell the tulips and feeding the ducks the heels from old loaves of bread,

  watching you thrust your hands into the soil

  of the rhubarb patch

    to bring forth, in the time you had,

    something living, something free.