February 2012 Looking Back

It's only been a few weeks and I can see
already, I can see
that what was day to day ordinary up north
under a loving sky,
I should have recorded more.

 Like the times between my porch and bootshop
when I met a bear or a wolf,
the time I was laying under the truck
working on the wiring system
and foxes crept up to attack my legs,

The geese in Spring and Fall migrating
in formations, the eagles and grizzlies
and salmon  thick as fireweed
 in the crystal mountain river,
(you could snare them with a cast hook,
with a dip net
the ooligan running up from the coast,)
the raspberries and gallons
of home-made wine.

Always surrounded by snow clad mountains,
solitude always your companion.

Splitting and stacking firewood
at forty below. Shoveling endless snow,
trapped by it.

The river breaking up in the Spring,
ice moving powerful and slow
like battleships
taking out the giant cottonwoods
and poplars.
Flooding with angry mud.

My shop where I made my living
as a bootmaker by hand,
was ten feet by thirty,
floor to ceiling shelves full
of materials and supplies,
tools and projects for survival,
windowless for warmth and security,
heated by a wood pellet stove.

I worked diligently in there for twelve years,
and other tiny shops 30 years before that,
fed my family, traded on the market
using the internet when it came,
and built up my small fund.

But everyday was so ordinary and usual,
the sun set in winter at four p.m.
and rose at eleven a.m.

Or hardly dipped down in the Summer.
The garden exploded from the ground
and could be harvested in eight to ten weeks.

What about today near this southern
Canadian city?  It is ordinary too,
but different,
and needs to be written.

I still make boots and shoes
in a little shop, nicer now.

Here we walk to town,
so ordinary and social
under a loving sky,
for coffee and a little shopping
every day year round.