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Homes
Phil Hall is from Bobcaygeon, Ontario, and has lived in Windsor since 1972. One previous book, Eighteen Poems, was published by Cyanamid in Mexico City, 1973. He edits Flat Singles Press (broadsides), and has taught writing at St. Clair College and the University of Windsor.
This book represents three Homes: where I came from, this adopted city, and a Home for the Aged I worked in for a year. Where I am is always a style bender, so I give credit to these places for these poems, dwelt in and now rented to you.
This book represents three Homes: where I came from, this adopted city, and a Home for the Aged I worked in for a year. Where I am is always a style bender, so I give credit to these places for these poems, dwelt in and now rented to you.
32 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1979
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January 28, 2022
The Choices
The greys and greens:
the blots of growth
between the sidewalk slaps,
the bags of garbage
gone out to slump on their curbs
on their certain days,
the oxidized copper
gone green on the steeples
against the rain clouds,
the bare trees,
the flagpoles,
the old men spending fair day
in the cattle barns,
Beyond the illusion of choice
in the autumn leaves, in the
flags fighting into the wind
like damaged salmon:
the flat joy of things thought dead
that are still alive.
*
The Passengers
The trains coast into Windsor along the lakeshore
beside the dug causeways and the banks of sand,
and the punts cranked into the air,
and the grey pink sheds.
The stands of trees hold the earth underwater
between the horizon's take it or leave it
and the mud's easy going acceptance.
The snowmobiles sit in their covers on gravel,
and the wind shoves grass tips under.
Every other year or so it happens again
and the people move into emergency quarters
to hope with their strength from a distance
and wait for the lake.
The trains rock their passengers into apartments
where they never have to worry about waking
in the river, clutching at their things in the current
sinking into belongings.
*
Stones
Town on the edge
of the shield
Red rock
then lichens
then houses
Ruts full of mud
and boards
and ashes
and stones
and cars
when they can't get out
Dog and children
on the windfall side
of clapboards
Men in the sawmill
leaning into canhooks
chips of wood
in their trouser cuffs
Women going to get the mail
hair under curlers
bandanas in the wind
Up
on the one grass hill
where stones stand up
look down
people hunch
black in the wind
against the green
bury a child
in a shoebox
labelled Greb.
*
To Be In A Place And Wait
Suicides don't get reported
unless the person's important
enough to be missed
by those who don't know him.
Or her. My wife's sister
stood beside a woman who cried
to herself and then dropped
in front of the Yonge Street
subway train. When the train
stopped my wife's sister
got on, and that was all
there was to it.
But that was Yonge Street.
Here in Windsor they jump
from the bridge. They stop
here it says No Stopping.
They tell the taxi driver
they're going to be sick
(which is one way of
putting it, I guess).
The driver looks down river
and turns to see a leg
going over the railing.
The man this week missed
the water and hit the ground.
The people who live
where I work saw them put him
in a bag. It made them glad
to be in a place and wait.
They say he was a big man
at the college, that he had
nine kids. The janitor says
that's probably why he jumped.
I wonder if he saw the irony
of jumping from a bridge
between two countries into
an old age home.
*
Two Windsor Poems
1.
So often here
as the years,
makes, models of winds
exhaust
the word is
spoken slowly
in the idle thought
of its meaning:
Windsor:
Windsor:
Nothing to say
says it
2.
Green tomatoes,
polished on the abdomens
of clothing, sit
distinct, pungent, in rows
on window sills
facing the river,
closing down the colour
of locomotion,
ripening
to a soft
stop.
The greys and greens:
the blots of growth
between the sidewalk slaps,
the bags of garbage
gone out to slump on their curbs
on their certain days,
the oxidized copper
gone green on the steeples
against the rain clouds,
the bare trees,
the flagpoles,
the old men spending fair day
in the cattle barns,
Beyond the illusion of choice
in the autumn leaves, in the
flags fighting into the wind
like damaged salmon:
the flat joy of things thought dead
that are still alive.
*
The Passengers
The trains coast into Windsor along the lakeshore
beside the dug causeways and the banks of sand,
and the punts cranked into the air,
and the grey pink sheds.
The stands of trees hold the earth underwater
between the horizon's take it or leave it
and the mud's easy going acceptance.
The snowmobiles sit in their covers on gravel,
and the wind shoves grass tips under.
Every other year or so it happens again
and the people move into emergency quarters
to hope with their strength from a distance
and wait for the lake.
The trains rock their passengers into apartments
where they never have to worry about waking
in the river, clutching at their things in the current
sinking into belongings.
*
Stones
Town on the edge
of the shield
Red rock
then lichens
then houses
Ruts full of mud
and boards
and ashes
and stones
and cars
when they can't get out
Dog and children
on the windfall side
of clapboards
Men in the sawmill
leaning into canhooks
chips of wood
in their trouser cuffs
Women going to get the mail
hair under curlers
bandanas in the wind
Up
on the one grass hill
where stones stand up
look down
people hunch
black in the wind
against the green
bury a child
in a shoebox
labelled Greb.
*
To Be In A Place And Wait
Suicides don't get reported
unless the person's important
enough to be missed
by those who don't know him.
Or her. My wife's sister
stood beside a woman who cried
to herself and then dropped
in front of the Yonge Street
subway train. When the train
stopped my wife's sister
got on, and that was all
there was to it.
But that was Yonge Street.
Here in Windsor they jump
from the bridge. They stop
here it says No Stopping.
They tell the taxi driver
they're going to be sick
(which is one way of
putting it, I guess).
The driver looks down river
and turns to see a leg
going over the railing.
The man this week missed
the water and hit the ground.
The people who live
where I work saw them put him
in a bag. It made them glad
to be in a place and wait.
They say he was a big man
at the college, that he had
nine kids. The janitor says
that's probably why he jumped.
I wonder if he saw the irony
of jumping from a bridge
between two countries into
an old age home.
*
Two Windsor Poems
1.
So often here
as the years,
makes, models of winds
exhaust
the word is
spoken slowly
in the idle thought
of its meaning:
Windsor:
Windsor:
Nothing to say
says it
2.
Green tomatoes,
polished on the abdomens
of clothing, sit
distinct, pungent, in rows
on window sills
facing the river,
closing down the colour
of locomotion,
ripening
to a soft
stop.
Displaying 1 of 1 review