two

I have traveled many miles
to reach home;

where does my soul journey
from here? Where does my soul

find the tree of wisdom?
Clouds seemed to follow me,

after staring at them,
as I ran down Oxford Avenue

on my way to school.
Be wary of horses pulling milk wagons

one woman's nose was bitten off
(an apocryphal story perhaps)

but what is true is Blackballs,
a boy whose ominous presence

was a fearful thing: he insisted
on escorting me to school,

unless I could avoid him.
I remember Harry's corner store

and Harry's son shooting at people
with a BB gun

from his second story bedroom window,
hitting a woman below; her angry husband

broke the gun in two, when the police
and a crowd gathered outside

after the boy surrendered.

four

Grandmother and Aunt Mable
stayed with us in our flat

when Father, in a Boston hospital,
was dying. My brother joined Mother

staying at the YWCA hotel.
At home, I prayed each night

that Father live—now I ask
when does grief end? When is one

finally healed of remembering
thoughts of what could have been?

"Don't abandon me," cries the child
in his solitary bed, praying to God:

"Please send Father home.
Please make him well.”

We waited for news of Father
in November, with the cold streets

and autumn's short days, snow falling
early that year. Grandmother

sat in the living room
knowing already the grief

of her children dying—first
Elsie and Stella, now Edgar.

I lay alone in bed at night
the hall light left on

while I said my prayers;
Mother not there to tuck me in,

only prayers that Father come home;
Grandmother and Aunt Mable

sleeping in the room
across the hall.

five

Mother, home from Boston,
announced Father’s death;

these are moments weighing
in the heart as lead,

and the heart sinks
to the bottom of the lake

where it is immune to feeling,
only the dulled sound

of someone's voice or the slow
throb of my heart, beating, beating.

I fell into deep water
surrounded by darkness and cold—

O Father, the child weeps,
why have you deserted me?

As though his death
were my defeat;

as a child I sang
my single treble note:

alone, alone.
In my child's heart

I knew there was no return
to the way things

used to be; no return
to the days that are memory,

weighing heavy in the heart
the face I loved

disappearing into shadows.

six

The teenaged girl Mother hired
to be at the flat

when my brother and I arrived home
from school, invited her friend over

and in mid-afternoon
drank themselves unconscious,

passed out on the living room floor.
When Mother returned from work,

overwhelmed by anger and distress,
she kicked the girl

where she lay on the floor,
then called the girl’s parents.

After that the days grew darker
and winter arrived, no girl

to meet me when I returned home;
my brother in his room,

distant and absent,
except for fights between us:

“Here, eat this candy
from a boot,” he said,

but it was dried dog turd
from the street.

He was Mother's helper
with groceries and accounts,

working as a part-time janitor
washing floors at a nearby apartment;

then cheated of his pay
so Mother's brother, Uncle John

had to intervene, demand
what my brother was owed.

Now I entered the darkness
of the flat alone, the front door key

attached by a foot of string
to a belt loop on my pants.

Watching television after school
I lay on the floor eating white bread

with Miracle Whip,
my feet on the hot radiator

to keep warm until Mother came home.
Late one afternoon my brother and I

ran barefoot into the snow-covered street
and raced back, seeing how long we could

endure the cold, back and forth we raced
knowing cold that turns to pain.

Once I lay in the snow
outside our flat,

stars clearly visible
in the dark winter sky; I wondered

where does the sky end?
Where are the outer limits of outer space,

the final conclusion of stars
distant and unknown to us?

seven

The Keyes next door
adopted two children,

Bobby and Audrey.
Mr. Keyes played some part

in building St. Joseph’s Oratory
which we explored as children,

overwhelmed by the smell of incense
and the heat of ten thousand burning candles;

in the darkness of the church
walls covered with crutches and canes

left by those healed
by Brother André, whose body

lay in a large black granite casket,
with messages and prayers folded into small

squares of paper and squeezed
between the cracks of the casket;

his heart in a red glass urn
illuminated from behind, while outside

penitents kneeled praying on each stair
taking hours to reach the church.

We played in Audrey's room,
always "let's pretend", until

she went to a private girl's school
and one day stood in garters and brown nylons

in her bedroom window. Then I rode
my bicycle with Ica Shamebloom

wildly through the streets
eating French fries

in brown paper bags
from the Chalet Barbecue.

I drifted off inside myself,
a dreamer the teachers ignored.

Sometimes on a Saturday
I went downtown with Aunt Mable

and ate an early supper
at Woolworth's counter,

visited Grandmother with Uncle Alex
on Sunday afternoons.

Meanwhile, I failed grade two
always staring out the window

imagining faces in the clouds,
and wishing I were home.

eight

When I was nine years old
I awoke one morning from this nightmare:

two men came with a cage
to take me to the orphanage—

they waited at the back door,
grey painted stairs leading to the lane.

I knew then that life has no security,
no safety from loss and abandonment.

One evening, Mother said
she was leaving us, she packed her things

and went to the car
in the garage, but I was waiting

in the backseat. Mother's hat,
for Father's funeral,

bought at “Nathalie’s” on Decarie
blew off her head

the winter after he died. I found
the hat in the snow,

and not knowing
whose it was, pulled off

the zircon decoration
and discarded the hat.

Shirley, until she married
my cousin Herb a year later,

lived with us; on a cold Christmas
my brother played his new

Everley Brothers record,
"Wake Up Little Susie" before Shirley left for the day.

One Saturday afternoon
Mother and I went downtown

and bought a new kitchen set,
chairs and table, and this seemed

to end the time of Father’s death,
as Father was never mentioned again.

Everyday Mother drove to work,
I stood behind white curtains

at the living room window
watching until she was gone

from view, then waited
a half hour before walking to school.

Uncle Herb and Aunt Dorothy
lived next door

but when my cousin Linda
graduated from high school

my brother and I stood
on the sidewalk and watched,

not invited to the family party.
Aunt Dorothy’s flat,

which I visited only once,
had all modern furniture,

the living room for adults only.
Once, I delivered something

to her door, which she answered
dressed only in a towel,

and I saw her naked back
as she ran down the hall

holding the towel in front.
Some Friday nights I'd go downtown

to Eaton's Department Store
on Ste. Catherine Street

to see the first RCA colour televisions,
a huge wooden console costing

around $1,900 in 1959—I'd watch
the NBC peacock open its multi-coloured

tail. One night when I was six or seven
I stayed at Grandmother's flat

and lay on the kitchen floor,
trying to see up Great Aunt Essie's dress,

there were holes in her baggy drawers.
One Christmas we returned home

late from Grandmother's
and I opened my presents alone

before bed, a cardboard container
of small interlocking logs

to make little cabins. Meanwhile,
my brother made gunpowder

setting off small bombs
in model airplane bottles

in the lane, one exploded
leaving glass in his back

and the days of bomb building ended.

nine

My bedroom at Hoolahan's flat
was Father's old den; after

he was gone I slept
with the hall light on,

kept my room in order
the bed always made,

fell asleep
at my child's roll top desk,

writing stories at night.
Here I was close to Father,

close to what was left of him:
his papers from the C.P.R.

on the top shelf of the cupboard,
expense accounts, business

letters, and old 78 rpm records
from the 1940s. I would examine

these papers
as a map to lost treasure

or ancient manuscript;
the banality of the papers

did not matter, to hold them
was to be with Father,

and there was always
something interesting

in the papers: blueprints
to our country cottage in St. Eustache,

whole areas of our family's life
foreign to me, from before

my birth. As a child
I decided I would be like Father,

filed away what I wrote,
poems and diaries. I wanted

to remember as much as possible,
keep an accurate record against time.

I became an archivist of memory
an archeologist of the soul.

Returning to Hoolahan's Flats with Audrey Keyes

        Audrey Keyes was my first friend, from age four to thirteen years. She lived next door to us, in a lower flat equivalent to our own, at Hoolahan’s flats. For many years, when we were children, Audrey and I played together everyday. I remember standing at Audrey’s front door and asking Mrs. Keyes, “Can Audrey come out to play?” I remember playing at Audrey’s home, it was always “let’s pretend” and then we entered a world of imagination and make-believe.

        During the years after we moved from Oxford Avenue in 1963, to a few months ago, I had often thought of Audrey Keyes but I never expected to hear from her and I had no idea of how to contact her. Indeed, she had assumed an almost mythical proportion in my memory of Oxford Avenue. Over the years I heard rumours about Audrey—that she had moved to Australia and become an actor—but nothing was certain.

        So it was quite a surprise to receive an e-mail from Audrey last summer; she had read my poem on-line about growing up in the 1950s and living at “Hoolahan’s Flat, Oxford Avenue”. By coincidence, she was in Montreal at the time visiting her mother, and we met a week later at the St. Viateur Restaurant in the Monkland Village, near where we lived as children.

        There was much to catch up on. It was true that she lived in Australia. She had moved there around 1968 and had performed in the Australian production of the musical “Hair”. Audrey now called herself “Veeto”, a Sanskrit name given to her by the famous (or infamous) Indian guru, Rajneesh. She had lived in ashrams in India and Oregon and for many years she had lived in Australia where she had married and had two children and a grandchild. Her life there was “bigger than life”; for instance, she had stories of her adventures riding a horse in the outback with one of her children, of travel and living in different countries.

        I also learned that Veeto has an incredible memory for detail, for the names of our former neighbours, what people said, and things that I had either forgotten or never knew. She is a record-keeper, someone who gave me a glimpse into the past as seen by a friend. She remembered the day of my father’s funeral in 1956. She recounted how she saw me return home and had asked her mother if I could come over to play. Her mother told her that this was not a good time for play. There are other memories that we shared, most were happy but a few were quite disturbing. In fact, I was disturbed for days after hearing that the cruelty of some people she and I knew as children was not youthful acting-up on their part, as I had excused it, but was something that was reveled in by them for months after.

        A week after our first meeting, I visited Veeto and her mother. At age ninety-five, Mrs. Keyes has lived at the Manoir Westmount retirement home for several years. A few days later Audrey’s brother, Bobby Keyes sent Veeto the photographs that are attached below. The photographs are of us, as children, taken in the spring of 1957, in the lane behind our Oxford Avenue flats, perhaps six months after my father’s death. Other photos below are from last summer’s meeting with Veeto. They were taken during our reunion when we returned to Hoolahan’s flats. We sat on the back steps after finding our initials, carved into the wooden stairs so long ago. Then we took photographs at the front of the flats and we recounted some of the first memories of our lives.

          There is a special connection of the soul that exists with one’s childhood friends. These first friends were present in one’s early formative years, they knew one’s parents and siblings and can discuss one’s early life with a knowledge that is limited to very few people. They are like brothers and sisters to us and are a witness to what we experienced when we were children. If I am a poet of witness, then Veeto is my witness to those early years. Meeting Veeto was like meeting someone I had both never met before and someone who knew aspects of my life unknown by anyone else.

        I have made the shift to thinking of Audrey as “Veeto”, which was difficult at first. Those days of our youth are over for both of us, we have made new lives, and now we have met again and completed a part of the life journey that was begun so many years ago. This was a special meeting for both of us. She is a dear friend from my childhood, a reminder of the good people I knew as a child. I don’t know if Veeto and I will meet again, the distance between Canada and Australia suggests it is not likely to happen. Meeting for a few days in the summer of 2005 may be the last time we will see each other, but they were special days and I will remember Veeto with great fondness and affection

Stephen Morrissey
March 2006