Yard Sale

And so my former neighbours on the lake are moving to Duncan
and I am here to see what kind of stuff they have for sale,
and as I walk down the paved access road by their place
I recognize the cracks in the pavement spread wide with the sun
and the ditch that runs beside it
down to the cattails
where my boys played
barefoot in summer
and ski-booted in the snow.

And so I walk beside the same trees
that I walked with
twenty years ago,
the same leaves,
the same ants and worms in the soil,
the same blue-green algae
among the rotting cattails,
the same white ladyslippers
at the foot of the dark fir tree on the corner
and the same tree-house
hidden high among the birches.

And so I shake my former neighbours' hand
now weak and veined like the rubbarb leaves among the bushes,
and weeping from one eye as if something got in it
he says," Seen anything You like?"
And as I look across the fence
the wind from the lake
moves rain against my face.

Outlook

Two stolid drunks
on a bench...
and at their feet,
a Moth,
trapped in the cellophane
of a cigarette package...
it's beating velvet wings
like the sound
of their laboured breathing…
At the Dairy Queen
my two sons laughing
as a wasp rises and falls
against the window…

Artistic Licence

I listened as he talked
about the killing of coyotes
on his friends farm...
about the setting of snares
the six hours before noon
on the coldest day in February…
and of how he had shot the ones
the next day
who hadn't died that night in the snow,
their eyes the look of wonder,
their legs gnawed down to bone.

I listened as he talked

of the pride he felt
for his daughter
who went with him
to slice the throats of each one
with a moon-shaped knife,
and of the gutting of it,
and the skinning of it
and of the mounting of it
on a stretcher board
to dry in the warmth of their cabin,
and of the heads
that were placed on poles
to serve as a warning to all
who might trespass there.

I listened as he talked
of the commissioned work
he was doing for those rich bastards
in Vancouver,
who were buying up
all of his paintings of hunters
to hang on their office walls,
and of how,
if he could swing it,
he'd quit teaching art
and just hunt for those beasts
he hadn't yet captured
with bullet or brush,
and be one

J.W. Caughlan reads and writes poems almost everyday. He has recently retired from teaching after thrity-three years. He draws and paints and has had three shows of his art work locally in Quesnel, B.C. He has had poems published in Shawnee Silhouette and Green's Magazine. In the past he drew and wrote a monthly column for Wells News.

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