poetry from alberta

      Sounding the Name

In this poem my mother is not dead.
The phone does not ring that October
morning of my fourteenth year.


The anonymous voice on the phone
does not say, Call Arthur to the phone.


Our hired man, a neighbour’s son, quiet,
unpretentious, a man from the river hills
near our farm, does not turn from the phone,
he does not say, seeming to stress the time,
Your mother died at ten o’clock. My sister and I
do not look at each other, do not smile,
assuring each other (forever) that words are
pretenders.


In this poem my mother is not dead,
she is in the kitchen, finishing the October
canning. I am helping in the kitchen
I wash the cucumbers.


My mother asks me
to go pick some dill. The ducks are migrating.
I forget to close the garden gate.








                       Robert Kroetsch