Reflection by Normand Carrey
This is a very special poem- you kinda know that when you write it, as it came out nearly all formed. I was shovelling snow after a storm here – it shows that this material is right there “under the skin”.
Shovelling Memere’s Walkway For Two Dollars
By Normand Carrey
Aunt Pauline gave me their wedding photo.
You could already read the defiance on her face.
Some lessons never, never leave you.
Where does she live?
I said pardon me?
Where does she inhabit you?
Up there, in the barren lands of the Arctic tundra
Permafrosted into the meninge of the thinking
And perceiving organ. You damn well remember.
You live and re-live that square-tiled walkway,
The wet snow stuck to the back of the aluminum shovel,
The crisp two dollar bill she handed you once satisfied
The job was well done followed by the milk and oatmeal cookies.
Ah those warm oatmeal cookies! Afterwards in the drawing room
Sitting across from each other, in the dress she had stitched
Years earlier, in the silence that danced between the two of us.
Normand Carrey is a just retired infant-child-adolescent psychiatrist, Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Dalhouise University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada and Consultant to the Nurse Family Partnership. He is working on his second book of poetry entitled « In Apollinaire’s Steps ».