Bringing the Farmhouse Down

I remember

being in the old

three-story blond brick

Middlesex county century farm home

breaking the ribs of the house

sledging lath 

the horsehair plaster

with continental maps papered

and falling away

from the walls

of the vacant room

I was a small boy

barely able to lift 

the head of the hammer

pulling strong nails

with a crowbar 

easing them out 

the ghost dust of a gritty trowel

unbuilding inward

from the peen-bruise of the punched studs

and the dry-lime fragrance

of the splintering slats

breathing in white-tongued dust

all day tasting the mined earth

what born-in-bed generations

were billowing to the knee

our hands powder-white

roughened by work

and nicked red through dirt

like the scoring of errors

my palms

bubbled with blebs

that I dare not break

in the long hall

the wicker wheelchair

winced like a toy

while the girls played

broken-legged doll

and the sun measured 

morning with a brilliant melt

like tall butter

until in the long-shadowed

wane of bent darkness

we set 

what leans 

against what remained

and walked to the ankles

in the wrecked world

our shoes going grief grief

in the sorrow shuffle

of a disorganized result

and we washed away

the milk swirl

of our labour

found our faces

under rinsed masks

setting the soap cakes

down smaller for that

in the decorative lave cradle

of the sink

“you were a strange boy”

my aunt 

says of me now

as I’d said to her

at supper

“well, we’ll never have

that day again. . .”

as a world-weary

nine-year-old it seems I knew

even then

there was a glass

I emptied

and one I filled

both from the same deep well

the drained glass always

heavy with a second thirst

winner of Winston Collins/Descant Prize for Best Canadian Poem