I came up through the valley where the homesteaders
had tried to make a go of it for a few years, past the tin
cans and other evidence of their short stay trying to rust
itself back into the ground. Up over the crest of the hill
where the Indians had lived for centuries with no more
evidence than the weathered rocks of tepee rings
It was spring and I stumbled upon what they may have
seen for years, the ageless mating ceremony of about
twenty five or thirty grouse. They didn’t see or hear me
and I stopped about ten yards away and watched,
although my mother might not have thought it proper
The hens ran around, heads down and tails up in
unbashful invitation; while the cocks puffed up the
air bags in their chests and drummed their challenge
And they looked handsome and brave in their posturing
and beckoning and their readiness for reckoning. And
the fights were on, straight on and straight up, with spurs
and feathers flying
It was vicious but pure. Not a cock fight for the
amusement of the bloody minded, but a way to see that
only the strongest would sire the little broods that would
have to survive the hawks and the snakes and the
weather, and all the dangers of a land where it takes a
great deal of courage – just to be a chicken
When we moved to Mossbank I was twelve. Mother
would sometimes stop us all from playing and send us
over to see her mother, who lived in a little house on
the South side of town
We never really knew what to say to her, or she to us,
and I never really until now thought about whose
shyness set that pace.
She was a nice enough lady and gave us cookies, and
she had diabetes and a leg that wasn’t there anymore.
She may have had grand stories to tell us, about her
family and childhood in England and Ontario and her
brother lost at sea, and the tough times and the good
times in the West, and our grandfather whom we’d
never met.
What was he like
Were we like him
Would we want to be?
These things would have been a leap into total honesty:
it was a leap we never took. We spent the afternoons in
leaps more comfortable to us all;
small colored marbles over
small colored marbles
in the inscrutability
of Chinese Checkers
When we moved to Grandfather’s old farm
no one had been living there for a while
and all the cats had gone wild
We found a litter of kittens
hidden deep in a corner of the loft
and among them
the most beautiful black and white kitten
Spitting and crouching under the eaves
she scratched us all to the bone
If I’d been a tree there would
have been six rings
Much persistence and we got her out
much time and love and we tamed her
if one ever really tames a cat
Best cat ever
adopted by our cousins when we moved
and one of the things we most looked forward
to on our visits was Black Beauty and her newest
of who knew how many litters
The tomcats in that town were also
excellent judges of beauty
