October things

The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.
-Dylan Thomas, Poem in October

I suppose the poet Thomas and I have something in common: we're born in the rainy autumn and walked abroad in a shower of all our days. I did my morning walk by the Steveston dock where conversations with sea gulls and sandpipers are unavoidable. Today was particular gloomy, I suppose reminding me that summer and sunshine are over. Like that condemned reading gaol prisoner, I too look wistfully at the sky.

A few more days, my big Six-O and the glee of being able to apply for early CPP benefits. In some places, I might even be entitled to a senior's discount, if not some respect from girl scouts willing to escort me across the terrifying road. I prayed though as I walked, always hopeful that the inward walk was as fruitful as the outward one. This morning, I remembered my father who passed away in 1994. He too dreaded the October wind and the greyness of the Vancouver sky. I recalled the poem I wrote and a tinge of sadness came over me:

This same power that grants me sighs at dawn
Makes me remember his absence
One year aftter he was planted in the greener lawn.
I watch the green blooms in his grave plot
mark busy growth that struggles for the shot.
Under Oceanview are his bones submerged
In a site they named Calvary
Much like the mount of skulls
When Death saw its own abdication
And the Word that sets men free
Dying for him too was my absolution...
The mourning son is brave in his narrow love,
He begs to return to past conversations
In the ancient minutes when his limbs were fresh,
When like sugared, red robbed birds,
His words sprouted wings, although without direction.
The talks were nothing but were seeds of everything -
And mourning seeks the buzzing,
the sound of breathing
Of the familuar mourned.
"But a man is not made for defeat -
A man can be destroyed but not defeated,"
echoed his Hemingway borrowing.
I suppose he is as gentle in his leaving
As he was in his entrance.
The elegy for a father does not lie unsaid.
And the prodigal soon forgets the welcome feast
But retains forever
The gentle echo of his father's voice.