National Poetry Month : Bruce Whiteman,

 

 

The Children

--"love's austere and lonely offices" (Robert Hayden)

My family seems a heckled lot, a bead
feels drawn on them by God or maybe something
only half as hard--dumb fate,
blind bad luck, like a leaf caught on a rock
as water all around it flows away
to somewhere lovelier by far, a shining lake.

Nothing explains it purely. No murderous intent
lost to family story of a rogue moralist;
no theological stir or imprecations flung
aloft at deaf God no longer sought or honoured;
no aunt or uncle's brain undone; no parent
forever focused elsewhere while the bees

stung, or a child disconsolately fell down
a well. All of them tried in their murky ways,
they really did. They carried on, for all
the sometimes cars that crashed or bottles
that got flung in anger at an empty wall.
Unsung love was far less rare, no matter

what we think at times. It's easy to
forget. Love is sometimes just like air that's
simply there to breathe. What after all
does a child know of God's indisposition,
of a family's place on the gamut of luck or
just rewards, what grown-ups merit,

or what kids in turn inherit? Meticulous
men who never miss a chance
to lock their doors, and women
always taking random shots at need,
inviting sharp rebuke from lovers dim
and uncommitted, wind up

unpredictably loving when the need
arises. And kids imbrued with panting grace
race into adulthood with incoherent
longing, like animals astray. They are
buoyed, not even knowing it, by
invisible care, and so get loving by.

 

 

Bruce Whiteman lives in Peterborough, Ontario, where he is a full-time poet and book reviewer. Most recently he is the editor of Best Canadian Essays 2021 (Biblioasis). His selected essays and reviews will be published in 2022 by Biblioasis. Book IX, the conclusion to his long poem, The Invisible World Is in Decline, appears this April (ECW Press). His book reviews appear in such publications as The Hudson Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Canadian Notes & Queries, The Toronto Star, Quill & Quire and elsewhere.