Dad gave us pliers and their holsters --
Said, "Wear them when you come outside."

At nine and ten, we carried them,
Entering the world of working men.

I wore out pliers and holsters,
Bought new ones and wore out them.

Now several sets reside in treasured spaces,
In boxes and vehicles and other places.

These days seldom used, my pliers remind me
Of my growing up, of everything behind me.

Dad,
Can it be that you are gone now,
Five years' comings and goings,
Five solar journeys now, around the sun?

I can still see your shape,
Thin and worn,
Overalls, too big,
Cap pulled down,
Pliers hanging at your side,
Lace-up boots, worn,
And your face, lined,
Eyes still twinkling, though
Weary after a day's work,
Fixing,
Farming,
Fencing,
Feeding.

In my mind, you're
Going off to the barn,
To hay the cows,
Like an old imam
Heading mechanically
To daily prayers,
Moved by routines
Impossible to ignore.

The man and the work,
So embedded in the other...
No more thought of leaving -
Though as a younger man,
You spoke of some day retiring -
There was no way, and no desire,
Farming was your one remaining fire.

So, five years are gone,
And yet, everything still
Standing on the farm
Bears resemblances of you.

The peeling buildings, sagging still,
The gravel paths you tended,
The panels your hands welded,
The barns and sheds you built
Still stand, and bear the evidence
Of Arthur Bouchard's hands.

July 4, 2015
Grandson Tony and Grandpa went to Mickey D's for breakfast. Grandpa was ready to vacate the premises when Tony barred the door. "Just a little while longer Grandpa." So Grandpa sat back down.

Soon a cake and five of the Mickey D people appeared and sang happy birthday. Tony was apparently being a little secretive and alerted the establishment when we clocked in. Grandpa cut four pieces of cake. Two to take  home for Lucy and Grandma. Two for Tony and Grandpa.

Tony then ask if he could give his piece of cake to someone. "Sure you can." grandpa replied. There were two tables with grandparent types and parents sitting 10 feet away. Tony picked up his piece a cake and a fork and squeezed in between the two tables and  placed the cake in front of the young fella who eagerly began eating it. Grandpa then noted the boy had Downs  Syndrome. The people at the table were pleasantly surprised at what had just happened. A grandmother came over where Grandpa was sitting and express that  it was a very thoughtful thing Tony did. The whole thing rather blew Grandpa away. But that's the way Tony is.  Full of surprises.

Passing the sheets over his eyes,
"Boo!" Met with laughter beyond reprise.
Passing the sheets over his eyes,
"Boo!" Gazing through the stars that shine at night.
Passing the sheets over his eyes,
"Boo!" Soaking up little moments That are gifted, with the boy.
Passing the sheets over his eyes,
"Boo!" Wondering how long I can keep this up,

you know?...
Passing the sheets over his eyes,

"Boo!"

Afraid to blink, afraid to miss time.

I sat by his bedside the day my father died.
The cancer that had riddled his body and soul now had complete control.

He fought kicking and screaming
the night the men in white came to take him on his final journey
like a great wildebeest struggling to get up on its front legs after being taken down by young lions. The way so many had said he
probably would since he fought his way tooth & nail throughout his life from the very beginning.

That night I sat on a chair at the foot of his bed staring out the huge ceiling to floor window of the medical centre at the many worlds hidden beneath thousands of rows of stationary lights and fluid winding rows of transient lights in-between and thought how the light of this window is just one of many thousands.

At that moment it seemed more like just one tiny speck in the vast star fields worlds above this city of light.

My father had spent most of his life just a short six-mile drive from here under the scattered lights of his hometown.

He turned to me and asked,
“That’s a big city. Where are we?"

Dementia had claimed his mind ten or more years earlier. It
slowly wound its way around his brain like a cocky snake
handler being choked by a boa constrictor unawares.

It seemed like it all caught up to his body. But it was good to see much of the bitterness and bad blood between us dissipated over the past decade.

On that night compassion ruled the day.

I could not say it then but it has been many years, where it seems compassion has forged with objectivity.

In a lucid moment he looked around the hospital room
bewildered as if he were a little boy who just woke up from a bad dream and asked,
“How did this ever happen?"
If only I could have told him.

Sometimes the truth cannot be spoken or heard. All I could do then was sit by his bed and lean in close to his ear and sing softly his favourite hymns. 

By morning his lifeless
dilapidated body lay in the fetal position. His once ravenous mouth now forever frozen looked like a knothole in a twisted cedar tree.

All I can do now is hang my head and think of how weak and frail we humans truly are.

Like compassion forged with objectivity, weakness and frailty forges with fleeting moments of strength. We forge heroes out of these moments to tower above
the pedestals the former is made of to somehow minimize the pain of this often denied truth.

He was five or six when he first challenged her
To play a game of checkers.
Fresh-faced and eager from battles with friends,
Young master of jumping and double-jumping,
Connoisseur of cornering and kinging.
Ready to wreak havoc on his grandmother,
A simple farm wife, unskilled in the battle of the board.

He didn't contemplate that the checker set
In the old farm house was hers....

Their battles raged,
Sometimes every day,
With, "Want to play again?"
His constant question.

I would watch her lose,
Seeing what my little boy,
The often conqueror,
Could not see in victorious glee.

Twenty-five years later,
We sit again at the old farm table,
And the two are pitted in their checkers game;
The same, but wearied box waiting
While the battle rages on the old scarred board.

Her hand, uncertain, moves the pieces slowly
As though she is off somewhere thinking,
And he, now patient, waits in a treasured time,
For her to contemplate and make her moves.

He is twenty-nine, and she is eighty-nine,
And though the opportunities rise,
Through my misty eyes,
I see my son, pulling punches.

(Alone, I wanted love, both to be and to do...
Creation is a dangerous fling when love is on the line.)

Wood carvers' magic lies
In the carving of their knives;
Sticks of wood and cotton strings
Give hardwood imitative lives.

Always, tough, a thing is needed,
Or the living and the dead move only
In surreal dance, a lifeless reflection;
The dead must imitate the living.

Somehow string life is never quite enough;
True love must choose to stay...
To dance a half step slow or quarter fast,
To jive against a jink and twirl an unexpected twirl.

And so I cried each night and prayed
For genuine, not wooden love,
And life arose in wooden hands;
Pinnochio was born, and stood

Wobbling on wooden feet, but living.
Full joy I felt, to see my son,
My own creation, moving on his own.
Then he, like any living boy, began to run.

Some say a loss is better if love comes first;
Some say it's better yet, to be alone.
Seeing both, I can't determine which is best...
Pinnochio, Pinnochio, my wandering son,
Remember me, your father, and come home.

When I heard the words that I had never hoped to hear,
"I'm on a path that you did not imagine,"
I trembled in the darkness growing near;
A green and deathly sickness grew within.

I can sense the Sirens' call to prayers unholy:
"Come dance the daring dances;
Sing the songs the sinners sing,
Defy the order of the stars to fling your flings,
And shake your ***** fists in pent-up rages,
Deny the structures of eternal ages;
Pervert the holy orders present at the birthing of the universe."

Does saying what is real is not or what is not is real
Change anything beyond the choice of action?
(Some would argue that the proof is in the consequence.)
Can mass opinion or the way a person feels
Change laws immutable: gravity's pull or magnetic attraction?
(Even theologians teeter now upon a wobbly fence).

If mass opinion moral laws can change
(Some critical percent of all believers
Taken in a poll believe the cannibals were right;
Please pass John's head there on that platter),
Then nothing stable really can exist.

When data-driven compasses redefine the laws,
When best practice comes from mass opinions,
We lose abilities to know ourselves as climbing up
Or scuttling down the ladders of Existence,
Confuse the benefits or dooms of consequential Ends.

How does the rancher learn to dance
The annual rhythms of the land?

When do we bring the cows, bawling,
From open summer to sheltered winter pastures?
When is it time to bring the stubborn bulls
To the empty, urgent cows,
Or to remove them from contented cows,
Grown placid in the heaviness of calves?

How do we know the time
To round up the sweltering herds,
Bringing the bellering calves to brand?
Or when do we cull the frightened heifers,
Lucky in their selection, but uncertain?
When should we pare the weanlings,
And when call we the buyers?

And, when is the time for hiking forty miles
Of rusting fence,
Replacing posts,
Mending broken wire
Before the changing of pastures?

And when is the time to come to ease,
To sense the satisfaction
In seeing grazing cattle,
Tails swishing away the black flies of June,
Moving through gray-green prairie grass
On their way to cool creek water?

To see this old man shaking here
In rage at boys whose apple-throwing jeers
Reduce him to impotent rage and tears
Is to know Odysseus, home from Troy,
Battle spent, no Cyclops left to blind,
And no more Stygian puzzles to unwind.

The threats he hurls are hollow stones
Coming now from a man whose bones
Once cracked beneath a decking plank
As Scylla searched with serpent heads
For men to crush and swallow, dead,
But ***'dy now remains to save the day.

The hapless tree whose apples green are peltering his home
Is now an oar, pole-planted tall a thousand miles ashore
As penance for the years of taunting gods of wave and foam,
And boys be savages unaware of what an apple's for.

Near frost early morning,
Packed bags squeeze
Into the old Oldsmobile,
Ready to leave for college.

I kiss my mother,
Say good-bye,
Hold her tight.

My father passes us,
Moving over stones,
Carrying two buckets
On his way to cows
And milking.

I can't see his face...
Have no idea.

"Art, are you going to say good-bye?"
I hear my mother say.

The words arrest him.
All movement stops.
Shoulders hunched,
He slowly sets the buckets down.

Turning is an agony,
I see,
As though his efforts
Somehow jar the world,
Disrupt natural order, and
Acknowledge chaos come at last.

I see my father's face
Coursing silent tears,
And watch his shoulders shake.
Then we embrace,
We two,
And both are torn
With leaving.

I know with certainty
My father's love
This morning,
Leaving home.

(1978, leaving for college)

He refused to sing on Sunday mornings , said it was 'not his occupation . '
When all hell was breaking loose on the news one day the only thing that passed his lips was "Please pass the biscuits .."
When the towers fell that ghastly morning he looked up from the newspaper later that evening and softly said "There's gonna be some trouble ." And on the day he passed five years later my gift for gab left for good as well ...

(My first posting on HP, August 28, 2013)

I wish to share a story
of when I nearly met my fate-
A tale of an adventure,
and a quest I had to make

A story of an abandoned mine-
A search for silver and gold-
Of prospectors, and the miners-
And the secrets they must hold

My father used to search for gold
in the mountains and their streams-
And found enough of the elusive stuff
to make my mother's wedding rings.

I thought that I would try my hand-
to see what I could find-
So I set out to seek the entrance
to an old, abandoned mine

I left for Arizona,
to Prescott, I wished to go -
Crossed the Rio Grande,
on thru New Mexico.

Finally got to Phoenix -
800 miles and count'n,
then north, up to Prescott,
Thumb Butte, and Granite Mountain.

I pitched my tent on Granite Creek,
with great anticipation-
Checked the notes from my father's quotes,
and began the exploration

With my father's tin pan packed in a bag-
and his pic-ax at my side-
I felt like a real "old timer",
with heaven as my guide.

I found the one I was looking for-
with a darkened cave as the entrance door-
And a handmade sign on a rotting board, said
"Welcome Friend, 1894."

Well, I picked and I chipped! and I chipped and I picked!
til the sores on my hands ran red-
When I felt some dirt drifting down on my shirt-
when some pebbles hit my head.

It only took a second-
for the ground to start to quake-
The dirt was falling faster,
and the walls began to shake.

I ran as fast as I knew how,
toward that entrance door-
When the last crosstimber broke in half,
and came crashing to the floor!

Now, I don't know how much time had passed-
since all of that began-
But felt as if I had been in a trance-
when someone took my hand.

I grabbed my shirt-tail, wiped my eyes-
tilt my head to see-
And saw a sun-dried, weathered face,
looking down on me!

He wore a wrinkled old hat,
an old flannel shirt-
Raggedy old pants, and a mile's
worth of dirt-

He had a beard of silver threads,
with a tinge of ginger root-
His hands were thick and calloused,
and their color matched his boots.

He gave me a jug of water
that came from the nearby creek
As I began to take a drink-
he began to speak.

"Strange thing about abandoned mines-
they wish to be left alone,
To keep the souls of all of those-
who often called them home."

His voice began to tremble-
as he spoke those woeful words,
He seemed to be recalling
many things he'd seen and heard.

"It isn't greed that brought you here,
I can see that, in your eyes,
it's not just ore you're looking for-
But another kind of prize."

"You must go back to your domain,
and you'll find that treasure chest-
For it lies deep within your heart-
and in those folks you favor best."

I shut my eyes, said a prayer-
and asked if what I did was wrong?
When I finished, and said "amen",
that old man was gone.

I never asked him for his name-
or the place from whence he came-
Some things are better left in silence
and not to be explained.

I went back to take another look
and gather up my gear-
Tried to find that “Welcome” sign,
but, it too, had disappeared.

I stood in "awe and wonder,"
of the place that I had found-
And with my eyes, I realized,
I had trod on hallowed ground.

Going home I pondered
o'er the words that old man said-
But did all that really happen,
or was it the "bumps" upon my head?

I got back home and with a smile-
strode up to the door-
And there, hung a handmade sign
on a rotting board, said-


"Welcome Home, 1894”

r.riddle August 2011
revised July 28, 2013

I know, for a fact, that the third stanza is true. Everything else was created from "yarns" coming, not just from my father, but uncles as well. And I also threw in my two cents. This work is dedicated to them.