The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
We walk to Tim Hortons (the three of us) and my grandfather buys two coffees, one muffin and one tea biscuit. For $4.56. Did you know you could get two coffees, one muffin and one tea biscuit for $4.56? Okay, maybe you did.
Simon and I need to talk about our dirty espresso habit.
You come to think certain things are necessities.
Like our Bugaboo stroller. Which by the way pushes like a dream, with one hand even. You don’t know how important that is…I mean, how would I drink my Americano if I had to use both—actually I feel like a fraud pushing the damn thing. All the yuppies in Bloor West Village have Bugaboos. But they have jobs and you know, income to back up their Bugaboos. We just have the cadillac. No income, but one hell of a stroller.
But I digress.
“If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands,” I sing to a fussy Elsie, trying to lull her discomfort with poetry (her kind). My grandfather puts his hand on my shoulder, “Now I have a poem for you. My kind.”
Upon the straits – on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand
He recites without hesitation.
“That came from my memory store,” he says. “Dover Beach.”
I scribble the poem on a Blockbuster receipt in black felt marker. He is pleased that I want a record. He pats me on the shoulder, that’s how I know he’s pleased.
It’s time to walk back. My grandfather keeps a close eye on the clock. We have to pick up my grandmother who is having her nails done. Pink.
We take our coffees to go and cross at the light. The three of us. The Bugaboo is also present. I will get him to recite Dover Beach once more as we stroll.
I think he understands.
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits – on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
5 Comments
got pretty teary with that one. the one with your grandfather reciting poetry.
Had to look that one up and the rest is really cool.
Wish I had memory of an actor or an orator, to remember lines of memory and aplomb.
Just too much running around in this rat’s nest of a head. Damn ADD but on the plus side it allows to read five books at a time. : )
I’m right there with Heather! Speaking technically for a second though, the outline/structure was perfect (for me). If only all of poetry was written a few lines at a time, slowly enticing the reader.
Lovely … Lovely … juxtaposition of the struggle with Western materialism and gentle companionship of relationships.
Your melancholy Irish grandfather would also know the ending lines of Dover Beach which do not fit the lovely mother and child with the Bugaboo stroller nor the grandfather either, except from a distance to us all:
Ah, love, let us be true
to one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
so various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
But I couldn’t recite the lines! I had to fudge with my Norton Anthology!
Mom
I love our family!
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