Vol.10, No.58, 2007
Without Form
by Mac Wallace (NB)

Ghosting on a country road, past a chapel
perched on a rise by the river, I came to the
place where I was born.
There, two maple trees sifting the air in an open field endure like
monuments, lamenting the flight of a farm rooted
for a century above a road along the north wall
of the Kennebecasis Valley below Apohaqui.

The patience and elegance of their vigil undid the years
of my unbelief and I spoke to them. The farm was
already in decline when you came. The buildings
were unreliable: the barns had lost their
footing and moved downhill, orphaning the silo,
the granary fickle, gave sway to every southwest storm,
yet sullied all inspections - its secret never disclosed,
the door always stuck on the outhouse
and the house itself was home to the wayward:
the winds played with the dust motes
and the hairs on my arms, tide marks roamed the walls
and frost feathered the glass where the outdoors
used to be, and yet, I remember when

the plundering snows of the ‘40’s
silenced the roads and shifted the lanes
like buoys, you marked a safe passage;
drifts mountained and two boys saw tunnels,
dug like prairie dogs until homework fetched
them to the lamplight at the kitchen table.
After the dead seasons
life charged through the earth and
your veins, overflowed in heavy pails
tapped on your sides, steamed on the back
of the nickel-plated wood stove, filled the kitchen
with the sweet smell of maple and formed
candied crystals for my brother and I waiting
on the sugar snow. The stillness held its breath
during the dry seasons, and when chaff stuck
like fish scales on the moist surfaces stacking
hay under the hot layers of shimmering air, you
offered an oasis for the ebullient flesh of the
farm boys fleeing the umber breath of the sun.

And in these times, the days ration the light,
the air hones its teeth
on the rough edge of the wind
and the frost hardens your veins,
as your leaves finish colouring the valley,
like high riggers dressed down for a storm,
you wait - perchance
for the freedom and unbridled anticipation
that shone in those ruins -
a diamond pressed from
the decay of a proud farm.