In our post "Grief stems from love", we asked how you respond to your own grief when a favourite place is destroyed. When Raye told us that she responded by writing poetry, we wanted to read her poems. Thank you, Raye, for agreeing to be a guest at our kitchen table as we widen our circle.
I grew up in Aylsham, a small village in Saskatchewan. By the time I was born my parents had moved into the village from their farm a few miles into the country. I spent many happy hours riding my bike to the farm, playing in the trees and the old shed, and “helping” my father ride the little red tractor. It was where I tried (unsuccessfully) to drive a stick shift, where I spent hours gazing up at the sky through the branches of the weeping birch, where I went with my Mom to deliver steaming hot meals at harvest.
In 2003 I went back to Aylsham, a trip of remembrance. When I knocked on the door of the house I grew up in, I was generously invited in to take a look around. I visited my parents in the cemetery where they are buried beside one another. But the visceral shock came when I went to my family farm to discover that the whole farm yard was razed.
Gone: the spruce that was planted when my brother was born.
Gone: the weeping birch planted when my sister was born.
Gone: the entire windbreak, the old shed.
The only thing left: five red granaries.
A few years ago I returned again. Now even the granaries are gone.
My processing of grief? I wrote poems, and the title of my first book pays homage to those granaries: Five Red Sentries.
Here are two poems that directly refer to this loss.
Lament
Once, I heard secrets
told to me by trees.
The windbreaks on my family farm spoke
of my father planting a blue spruce
at my brother’s birth
a weeping birch at my sister’s. Two siblings
tall and strong.The trees whispered my father’s love
how he planted and tended the crops, stood
in the field listening to the wheat grow.
Ate saskatoons from the bush along the railway track
as he read the sky. Harvested until after midnight.My playground, sheltered by this circle of trees:
a row of granaries, a gas pump, my sibling trees
a tumble-down shed housing all the rusty
nails, scraps of metal, and old golf clubs
my father swore he would use some day.
But the windbreaks no longer speak, razed
with everything for a few acres of crop.
Everything but the granaries, five red sentries.
I stand in their shadow and the wind howls.
What is Left
These granaries: five red sentries
blaze against prairie-blue
burn after-images into canolaplaying on that old harrow and the broken-down plough
both abandoned in the windbreak
red seeps into the earth
stories of my past:
trying to drive the red half-ton, clumsy
feet not getting the clutch right;
hitching a ride in the combine, a few
circuits around the field, just for fun;
picking raspberries, licking sticky fingers;
steering the little red tractor around the yard, wind in my face;
lining up tobacco tins by colour on the shelf
in the tumble-down shed;
counting the old golf clubs in the rafters.The red mingles with sap
from my brother’s fallen spruce
my sister’s toppled birch, and the soil
is pierced.
Raye Hendrickson has loved words her entire life. They have fed her, moved her to laughter and to tears, and stretched her mind. Raye writes poetry to discover who she is and what she thinks, and if her poetry can fill a space in someone’s soul, it is worth every hour of wrestling to find just the right phrase. Raye’s work has appeared in several literary magazines and anthologies, and her first book of poetry, Five Red Sentries, was a finalist for two Saskatchewan Book Awards in 2020.
Hi Bob, thanks for sharing. Wishing you both a wonderful holiday season.
Really enjoyed the few images and the poetry. There is such a great synergism when these two art forms come together. I understand about things disappearing. I put together a little book of some of my prairie work and while flipping though it, notice how many of the buildings I've photographed are no longer in existence.