Fury of the Wind

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excerpt

When she recovered from her grief over Danny, Sarah accepted a
teaching post at Corkum in the northern part of the province. But
her tenure there was short lived. In the spring of 1942, Mrs. Roberts
suffered a stroke. Sarah applied for a leave-of-absence to take care
of her mother during her convalescence. But Mrs. Roberts never
did convalesce satisfactorily, and Sarah was forced to admit that her
mother had won. For five years Sarah found herself tied to the neat
brick house in Tillsonburg – nursing, cooking, cleaning, gardening
and doing everything except that for which she had been trained.
Apart from trips to the store to purchase their meagre supplies,
Sarah went nowhere. She saw no one except Margaret and Elizabeth
and, since the former was preoccupied with wedding plans
and the latter was nursing in a hospital in Toronto, she didn’t even
see much of them. Visitors to the Roberts’ home were few because it
hadn’t taken Mrs. Roberts long after her husband’s death to alienate
almost all of their friends.
There was no hope of meeting a man. The veterans began to
drift back to town when the war ended, some with brides, some to
the sweethearts they had left behind. But even the unattached ones
seemed to have forgotten that Sarah existed, or maybe they still regarded
her as Danny’s girl. Soon, almost all of the young men had
married or had drifted off again to more promising venues.
When her mother died Sarah applied for teaching posts but the
school year had already started and a shortage of teachers was a
thing of the past. She had been out of the profession for more than
five years, as had most of the teachers who were now returning to
it. But ex-servicemen and women were, naturally, given preference
over someone who had been caring for a sick parent.
On a grey, cold day in October, three weeks after her mother’s
death, Sarah sat dumbfounded in the office of Roger Corbett, her
parents’ lawyer. She was trying to understand what he had just said
but she felt too numb to take it in.
“I’m sorry, Sarah,” Mr. Corbett continued, “I wish there was
something I could do. Twice during the past year I went to see her,
as you know. And I went specifically to suggest that she change her
will. But she acted as if she didn’t understand what I was talking
about.”

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073530

George Seferis – Collected Poems

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THURSDAY
I saw her die many times
sometimes crying in my arms
sometimes in a stranger’s arms
sometimes alone, naked;
in this way, she lived with me.
Now I know, at last, that nothing exists further
and I wait.
If I grieve, it is my personal matter
like the feelings for simple things as these
and as they say we have gone beyond them;
and yet I’m still sorry because
I too never became (who I wished I would)
like the grass that I heard sprouting
near a pine tree at night;
because I didn’t follow the sea
another night when the water receded
gently drinking its own bitterness
and I never understood, when I groped the damp seaweed,
how much honour remains in the man’s hands
All these went by, slowly and conclusively
like the barges with their faded names
HELEN OF SPARTA, TYRANNOS, GLORIA MUNDI
they went by under the bridges beyond the chimneys
with two stooping men at the prow and the stern
naked to the waist
they went by, I can’t discern anything, in the morning fog
the sheep curled and ruminating were hardly visible
neither does the moon, over the river
that waits;
just seven spears plunged in the water
stagnant and without blood
and sometimes on the flagstones solemnly lit
under the cross-eyed tower
painted with red and yellow pencil
the Nazarene showing his wound.
‘Don’t throw your hearts to the dogs.
Don’t throw your hearts to the dogs.’
Her voice sinks with the stroke of the clock;
your will, I sought your will.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096TTS37J

The Incidentals

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The Lure of the Sea
The unnerving lure of the sea
abducting the mind of old fisher
on the quay where he mends his nets
passing thread through openings
which fish use to escape his
trap, the inexplicable attraction
of waves, undulating like breasts
of nubile, waves he battled year
after year when young and in his mind
he sings for the salinity rusting his
bones, for his wrinkles the sea has
graced him with and the beauty
of the earth for which he sang. while now,
ready and content he smiles as
he mends his net not that he’ll
go out fishing again, not this
old fisherman doesn’t go fishing anymore
he only wishes to go out there and
to welcome Thanatos alone when
the fisher’s time comes; he too
has traveled along the peninsula,
such short was the rope allotted
to him, such a short distance he was
allowed to traverse to worlds
familiar and not imaginary, he too
dreamt of faraway foreign lands
that Fate didn’t let him visit, and
now, alone under the conflagrating
merciless sun, he mends his net
thinking that Fate granted him
the dream and his capable hands
which mend his net while the attraction
of the sea intoxicated him with sounds
of birds and sounds of watery beasts
and the lone tear he now sheds
for the unjust destiny which left him
to be remembered as number 38
in the long list of the island mortuary

https://draft2digital.com/book/3745812#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763637

Ken Kirkby – Warrior Painter

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excerpt

is this illusion…you and I can go for a walk wherever you choose and
I challenge you to show me where money grows. It is a man-made
convenience, but we have turned it into God and the almighty banks
into the churches.
Money in itself is a nonentity, a paper mirage. But if you understand
how it functions you realise currency can be artificially created—
MasterCard and Visa are good examples. It no longer needs to be
printed by the Mint. I wish people would realise it is only a tool, to be
used like any other implement, and no more mysterious.
As the two men worked, Harris proposed assorted schemes to make money.
These were discussed, dissected and for one reason or another, discarded
at the end of the workday. Perhaps, like crossword puzzles or Sudoku, they
served to keep the workers’ mental juices flowing.
~~
Ken Kirkby is a particularly fine cook and, having been raised in
Francisco’s kitchen, can turn the simplest ingredients into a dish to be
savoured and praised. As his circle of friends expanded, he resurrected his
long-dormant culinary skills.
Portuguese meals would not be complete without a bottle of fullbodied
red or crisp white on the table. When Ken left Portugal, he had been
selective as to what he took with him, but one of his prized possessions
then and now, is the family wine recipe dating back several centuries. He
continually has a batch on the go although he is a moderate drinker himself.
It was likely a day or so after a well-spiced supper of clams, shrimp and
prawns cooked in Kirkby’s special fish stock prepared from flounder, too
small in themselves to eat. While spreading topsoil for the eventual seeding
of the lawn, Harris says, “You know, Kenny, that’s a damn fine wine you
make. You could probably make a pile of money if you set yourself up to
produce and sell it.”
“Probably,” says Kirkby.
Harris does some mental calculations. “How much do you think you
could make?”
“Money, or wine?” Kirkby quips.
“You’ve got a few racks there—how much do you usually make?”

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562902

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CB8W4CG

Small Change

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Excerpt

I started walking, away from the fence. After about fifty yards, I came to an apron of freshly cut grass that bordered a wide road and a neighbourhood of the largest, most beautiful houses I had ever seen. Brick and fieldstone, white clapboard and freshly oiled cedar, some of them three and four storeys high, with ample porches and verandas and sprawling lawns. I limped a bit, but managed to make some progress along the wide, grassy median in the centre of the street I immediately thought of as a thoroughfare. What is this place, I wondered, and who lives here?
They were oddly dressed. The boy wore a striped tee shirt, a white cap which I later learned was a Polo hat, and knickers that were tucked into black stockings just below the knees. Two of the girls wore summer dresses in soft pastels, yellow and sky blue, with puffed shoulders, matching socks, and matching bows in their hair. They had white shoes with ankle straps, not sandals, exactly, but something like, and the third, taller girl wore white court shoes, white shorts with a white leather belt, and a vee necked tee shirt. Her honey blond pony tail hung half way to her waist and was tied with a white band.
I was astonished, but drawn toward them as if by a huge magnet. They seemed like sky children, but were so recognizably earth-bound I wanted to talk with them, to know what their lives were like. Especially her, with the startling eyes.
I stood very still until they became aware that I was watching them. They stared back, then they looked at each other. They seemed puzzled. I crossed back to the sidewalk and started up the lawn that sloped down from their slate grey house. They seemed hypnotized, or stilled by bewilderment, alarmed, but unable to break the spell of my dirty, sweat streaked face, torn jeans and bloody shirt.
Except for her. She looked straight at me, so directly and with such an open stare it stopped me in my tracks. I felt something I’d never felt before. It seeped into my chest and throat from a place I never knew was in me. It was as if I had seen her before, or known her all my life. Her face – the smooth skin, deeply tanned like her arms and legs, the full mouth, high cheekbones, and green, green eyes – burned itself into my memory and what I read there was not fear, but curiosity, because I was strange to her, and concern, because it was clear that I was hurt. There was something else too, and it made my heart accelerate.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763157

Still Waters

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excerpt

Tyne felt her heart sink to the top of her loafers. “So what’s to be
done?”
She heard Millie sigh. “We’ll do the best we can, that’s all. I’ll be
there whenever they need me, you can rest assured of that. And Jeff
Milligan won’t get away with any of his nonsense when I’m around.”
Hearing the old feistiness in her aunt’s voice, Tyne almost laughed.
But she sobered quickly. She knew what had to be done. Why had she
asked? A fleeting vision of the future made her weak in the knees as
she saw herself, a few years down the road, as another Miss Stevenson.
Nevertheless, her voice was clear and firm. “I’m coming home to
stay, Aunt Millie. I’ll be on the bus tomorrow afternoon.”

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763068

Ugga

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three
Three hundred and thirty years before zero
the Great Hellene Conquering General
of Globalization
discovers the concept
and gloriously carries the glorious message
to the Heraclean Steale and beyond.
The conquered wrongly explained
the message of peace
into “Tyrannic Empire”
a small child in the suburb of the Ideal City
thinks of perhaps the march of ideas
may create the wrong precedent
and suddenly against that concept
they start a war: dragons, Jedi, Valkyries, Stymphalian Birds, Craken,
Vampires, chivalrous Knights, Lilliputians, Mermaids, Condors, Orcs
and a blind witch from Bulgaria
and with twelve different bites
they degrade:
the invention of flexible boycott

https://www.amazon.com/dp/192676370X

Marginal

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Susan
The nipple of the southern wind
wedges its pleat between the lips
of the virgin yet to be kissed and the
innocence of the first night
draws a breath of relief as
the cherry blossoms mourn
for the death of Madame Butterfly
while the young samurai scribes
his funereal three-verse poem
black claws holding onto
flesh and torn muscles
as Susan’s lips lock with mine
the torn hearts sigh when
endless black hides behind
the trivial and the momentary

https://draft2digital.com/book/3747032#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1771715987

The Unquiet Land

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excerpt

the good life of the gentry kept her there, an eccentric about whom stories would be told long after her name was forgotten. Her son Finn, her fifth of six children, inherited his mother’s love of the mountains and the sea. The sea, however, is faithless and fickle and given to unpredictable outbursts of savagely bad temper. One Friday in January 1854, a large fishing fleet set sail from Carraghlin harbour in fine, sunny conditions. But some hours later those benign conditions changed dramatically, the tranquil sea turned tempestuous, and the fleet was storm-tossed in gales and driving snow. Thirty-six Carraghlin fishermen perished. Among them were Finn MacLir’s twin brothers. The date was Friday, the thirteenth.
That same year, 1854, Finn himself was a sailor on board the tea clipper, Gypsy Lady. Having crossed the South China Sea from the ancient walled city of Fuzhou with a full load of the first tea of the season, the clipper ship caught fire on the thirtieth of May in the Sunda Strait, off the coast of Indonesia. Aware that his crew were unable to control the raging fire, the captain took the decision to sink the fast, sleek ship. Some of the crew, including Finn MacLir, scuttled her by cutting holes on the waterline, and she sank in seventy-three feet of water.
Finn swashed through a life of Conradian adventures till 1880. Then the Land League, a political organisation founded in County Mayo in 1878 with the aim of helping poor tenant farmers to win back “the land of Ireland for the people of Ireland,” embarked on a campaign of violence across the ravaged countryside. The principal aim of the Land League was to abolish landlordism in Ireland so as to enable tenant farmers to own the land they worked on. So began the so-called Land War. Tenants refused to pay their rents, resisted evictions, attacked land agents. English-owned farms were burned, animals killed or maimed, haystacks set ablaze, the English owners set on like curs. The land-owning MacLir family, close friends of the land-usurping Hamiltons, was targeted. In one bleak October night old Brigadier Richard Hamilton was brutally butchered in his bed, and Finn’s father and older brother were locked in the barn behind their large house, and the hay-filled barn was set on fire. Bullets from the hill above kept any would-be rescuers away until the blazing barn collapsed in on itself and on the two hapless men within.
When his father and brother were murdered during the Land War disturbances, and both his sisters had married and moved to England with their husbands, Finn MacLir returned to Corrymore and took over the farm. He stayed on in the village, out of defiance, according to some;

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562888

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763203

Titos Patrikios – Selected Poems

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Irremovable Vision

After many postponements of our dreams
I’d always think of a smelting, knowledgeable furnace
with thousands of workers cleaning its teeth,
feeding it steel and coal.
A smelting furnace that will smoke as much
as we haven’t smoked the last few years,
that won’t cut its cigarettes in half
that won’t stop its craving half way
that will produce enough rebar
to tie together all the great scaffolds
that will reach up to the sky.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562972

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08L1TJNNF