The dust of just beginning

Don Kerr

• Publisher: AU Press
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781897425930
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Don Kerr knows prairie culture better than most, he knows it from the inside out. He has made us aware of ourselves through his numerous volumes of poetry, his fiction, his many plays, his histories, and his interest in heritage. In this mature, accomplished collection, we can once again admire his unique prairie voice: minimalist, self-effacing, direct yet subtle and nuanced, immersed in his love of the vernacular language of this place. His line is muscular, his timing impeccable, his broad strokes with so few words... exemplary.

JUST BEGINNING

a height of prairies

a height of prairies over the river
sideways sun in the brown
stubble, twisted speech
of dead trees, the duplicitous
sun, but in decline, eyes
seeing for miles, all
at the same moment, elsewhere
the room with the blinds drawn,
the cancer advancing like traffic

or the smell in the corridor
of cooking, a fire hose for decor,
a life, long at its time, unmet
in words, a day in the
Shirley apartments, the smell
of cooking, long demolished,
home to a bowling alley,
automobile garage, passing
unmarked

a day in Connaught
in Ladbroke Road

Billy

look, Billy dead, the city empties,
the city of London empties,
if we don’t enter we needn’t
remember, nor see others
in his room, his things
scattered, his ghost thin
in my belly what is there to say
without the listening man?

your death Billy,
confounding time, burying
your friends, burying the stories,
plentiful as books in your room,
your Vancouver, long buried,
long demolished, sun the liar
saying this is the last of all days, yet
we bound for the next day, your music
on the tape deck, we travel
two ways now, playing you
one day at a time

Billy at Notting Hill
at Ladbroke Road
at Gennaro’s, at Prost’s,
talking the eyes out of a girl,
dancing near the wide Saskatchewan
in shoes shiny enough to show
the mossy face, Billy leaving
Christmas at Finchley for the
eight-mile walk or crying
in the crowded hospital at Paddington
and saying I don’t usually cry,
the pain swallowing Billy

the lady gardener, Anne Szum

the night edges over the house
into the branches of the tree
the branches of the dark green fir
into the forest of the peony
into the dirt under the peony

in the dead centre of the day
in the mid of the mid day
the sun like a perennial
the bluebells happy in the
sweet breeze the lilies
pointing skyward the raspberries
in spiky bud all wait oh they all wait
for their first love the lady
gardener but she is unavoidably
detained the faces of the pansies
the petunias watch and wait but
she is unavoidably
detained

the voice of Anne

if your words fall into her ear
and you are in the same room
the one with the column of cds
the heater that eats logs
the walls insulated with books of poetry

in that room, your words falling
into that ear, need no other home
until she, the lady gardener,
dwells only in our rooms
cluttered as they are
with all matter of the living
absently watching cars
people and the faintest
of faint snow falling
from a heaven grey as ghosts
or your eccentric angels falling
into the pie-shaped lot
on Connaught saying in their
odd way for heaven’s sake
pick the raspberries
red as thick blood
the sparrow hopping about
looking for the ear to pour
its song into while I, bereft,
fall back into the habit of books

and she sits, makes tea,
tends the garden, reads,
in the voice of Anne,
all days in disarray

sun

if there is no sun
and the sky draws down
you walk through
a veil of mist and are not
at home

sun shone before you knew
sun and whe...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• JUST BEGINNING
• FOR IT’S LOVE
• JOURNEY MAN
• WE ARE THE ECHO
• TO ESCAPE ONTO PAPER
• acknowledgement[s]
• about the author