From Now–On?

Margaret Avison
From:   Not yet but Still. Hantsport: Lancelot Press, 1997. pp.15-16

The family car has come
for the son who believed
he had left home.
His college luggage heaved
into the back too leaves,
with two of them, still room
in the front seat for him.

Is it his last year?
Where are his companions
to gather and conspire
falsely about reunions?
It's good there's no-one there
to witness these old tensions,
old bonds, new fear.

The future closes down
with the slammed trunk.
Dazed by distractions
and like a drunk
awash suddenly with affection
and close to tears, he thinks
of the long-lost home town.

For him, is this disruption?
"An end and no beginning"
now his life's caption?
Ice on bright puddles, birds all singing
to mock the nothingness suction,
the spiritless direction,
his flattened pinions?

In the vague inattention of a too
long life, out walking by
that college: how
many spring term-ends have I
seen the cars load, the shy
parents reclaiming their boy.
And this "how many" is also,
for me, disruption.

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6 | Poem 7

Margaret Avison's works copyright © to the author.