Poetry Magazine Dan Lukiv

Dan Lukiv

CANADA

AT THE HOME, A Collection

AT THE HOME

A fork scratches a plate--
Chalk screeching
In a moldy
Classroom;

A scolding eye;

A mouthful of
Niblet corn;
A smile;
Some of the corn
Falls out.

"Do you want any salt?"
"What?"
"Salt?"
"What?"
"Do you--"

A fork scratches a plate--
A needle grating
A record on a
Victrola;

A sigh.

The old woman eats
With her mouth open,
While her daughter
Looks at her watch
Again.

AT THE GRAVEYARD

An old man
On a bench coughs
As children play
Like lion cubs.

He chews lunch--
Corned beef in a can--
And speaks to himself
As one boy secretly
Stares.

EILEEN,
MOTHER OF ERIC IVAN BERG--
THE BEST QUESNEL-BORN POET IN HISTORY
(WHO DIED AT 26, IN 1977)

Eric Ivan Berg--
We never met,
But I've read your
Winter-ploughed,
Cariboo-drunk poetry.

And I knew your mother,
Eileen--
Visited with her in
Her log-walled,
Chinked and re-chinked,
Partly stuccoed,
Partly rib-naked,
Ramshackle paradise; I've
Stood on her older-than-the-mayor
Linoleum, and drank her
Crow-black coffee
From a chipped mug.

I've received her gifts of turnips

And cabbages
And armfuls of rhubarb
That grew beside the worm-patch.

"Worms $2.50 doz":
The sign beckoned eyes-glazed-with-glory
Fishermen, and hung in
Lilac bushes so old,
So monolithic,
They'd become lilac trees
With great arches and
Long, dark tunnels
For grandchildren to explore,
Like gold rush-pioneers
Of Barkerville's yesterbash.

At Eileen's funeral
That I did in '94--
"Buried her out on the Old
Prince George Highway,"
As people around here say--
I didn't tell them,
The crowd of rain-wet aficionados

Who well knew how she'd
Raised those kids while
Her Larry had
Died in a bottle--
I didn't tell them about
The clean-shaven-fisherman-to-be
Who'd said, "I've dug up two dozen."
"That'll be six bucks."
"Six? The sign says $2.50 a dozen."
"Oh, that!" She laughed.
"I gotta put up a new sign."

She handed me an armful of
Chrysanthemums, and grinned
While the man with a can of worms
Left shaking his head.

Once she introduced to me one of her
Borders as a man with
"Half a brain.
So if he don't seem quite right,
That's why."

He agreed. Nodded emphatically.
"Doc said I drunk so much

My cholesterol got lumpy and
Clogged off half my brain."

He's still alive--
Mostly pickled and emphatic.

Once she knocked her cat off
A more-than-baked turkey
On the polio-legged table,
And asked me if I wanted a sandwich,
And another time she brought out
A precious batch of rocks.
"You can each have one,"
She told my four girls. "Don't be shy.
Take one of the pretty ones."

Eric Ivan Berg,
"Ya four-eyed pooit,"
As yer old man called you--
We never met,
But "I buried her," your mom, as
People around here say,
"Out on the Old Prince George Highway."

ONE WAY TICKET

A poplar stands
As straight as subtraction,
Until the wind blows,
Making the green head sway
Like an old man
Lost on a corner,
Looking for his brother.

Then he remembers a storm;
It rushes into his mind,
Like water down a drain:
Poplars swayed between the
Barn and porch.
"Heavens!" he said,
Fogging up the kitchen window.
"I hope they don't fall over and
Hit the house!"

But his memory dissolves,
Like rage at the end,

And the storm becomes a
Truck that honks:
He has almost stepped into a
Mine field!
He surveys the flatland--
No, the rutted asphalt.
The truck roars
Through first gear,
Becomes a disappearing
Tailgate,
As he remembers,

He saw his brother
Lose his legs
At Passchendaele.
The old man tries to recall his
Brother's name,
While blasts of wind stir up
His white hair.

He tries to flatten it,
But gives up,

Like the poplars that fell over
In that storm.
He wonders if they
Landed on the house,
But all he recalls
Is a smashed fence.

And that reminds him:
Cedar makes the best fence posts;
At The Phoenix Home, however,
The fence posts are green:
(Pine?--spruce?)
Treated with a preservative
(Not creosote).

And in his room,
In Phoenix,
He has a guitar with
Three strings that hangs
Over an accordion that
Only screeches.

Also in his room is a captain's bed,

With four handy drawers,
But Mary and he had an iron bed--
She made chicken-feather mattresses:
One for them and one for each of the
Kids.

The light at the corner turns green.
He remembers what that means,
Just as he remembers the noon news
On the TV in the Golden Lounge:
Some people in Asia, lately,
Buy their parents or parent
A one-way ride on a train
To anywhere far
Away.

The light turns red;
He has forgotten to cross the street,
But he won't tell anybody,
Especially the people looking at him,
That he's forgotten his brother's
Name,
And that he keeps seeing poplar trees
Falling on his prairie-
House.

THE MATRIARCH

She knits in the haze
From a forty-watt bulb,
Between walls that are
A geometric paradise--
A lifeline of photographs,
Some black and white and faded,
Dating back to her parents,
Farmers with stern faces
In elliptical frames.
But she can't think of them
Right now.
They were too perfect,
Although they weren't
Perfect at all,
Like her husband,
She recalls.

She knits,
Her fingers crooked,

Lumpy with arthritis,
And familiar;
She sighs;
She must complete scarves
For everybody,
Before winter;
She feels frantic.
She'd clean up the old newspapers,
And vacuum,
But she's too tired.

Occasionally her daughter comes to visit,
Scolding her for
Staying up so late.
But she can't sleep properly,
Not anymore.
And besides, "What for?"
She wonders.

She smiles,
And knits;
A matriarch,
She calls herself,
But not like Sarah who had
One child and gave birth

To a Great Nation;
She had three and gave birth
To a little crowd.
Her eyes sparkle
For a moment.

She reaches for a glass of sherry
From a warped table,
But she feels dizzy.
Those pains in her chest have
Returned. She gets
Impatient with them.
She must complete those scarves.
How many?
She can't remember.

It's so dark.
She shouldn't be so silly,
She thinks.
A forty-watt bulb!
On her next visit to Safeway
She'll buy a much brighter one.

She replaces the empty glass of sherry,
And thinks about,

Longs for, her
Grey-haired sons who live
Thousands of miles away.
She imagines them breathing
In their homes.
She doesn't begrudge them
For moving so far off, though;
She's learned to get through
All that.

She tries to draw a deep breath,
To focus her eyes on the
Long-unused fireplace;
She waits for the strength to knit,
But pain slides through her chest,
Like a betrayal.

THE THINKER

A toothless old man
Drinks cold coffee
lone.
He scratches his scalp--
Dandruff floats in his coffee,
Like snow-flecks.

He wonders--

But soon only his coffee
Matters.