Poems by Carol Anne de Balinhard
Barb
Middle child.
Mom and Dad loved to dance.
Cousins connecting.
Holidays in the Okanagan.
“One of you has to live in the Okanagan when you grow up.”
Naramata.
I fell in love.
Some guy to lead a coffee house.
I fell in love.
Books.
I fell in love.
One more safe place for people to tell their story,
Or not tell their story.
Like a bartender.
“I’m looking for a book……”
CREEKSIDE CAMPING
Pick a good air mattress,
One that doesn’t go flat in the night
And a tent with a loop on the ceiling
For hanging your clothes,
And pick a campsite with a tree for shade
Close to the bathroom
Where you can greet the bugs and fellow campers
Before you pee in the morning
Before you go home to your big bedroom
With ensuite plumbing
And the sound of traffic.
If I Had a Name Like Mom
If I had a name like Mom,
I would feel the sweet weight of baby in my arms,
I would wipe wet kisses off my eyelids,
I would learn to cook spaghetti,
Drive a minivan,
And cheer at baseball games.
If I had a name like Mom,
I would become other than me,
And Oh
So
Much
More.
Ethel Evangeline
Elvis Presley died that summer.
I was thirty.
She came to live with me
In our big house in West Van
That looked over the harbour.
The view ignored.
July....August.....terminal, palliative, dead.
Few words.
She said she was grateful to have a daughter like me.
“Take me back to Capitol Hill.” she said one day.
“Your father should be here.”
“He’s unavailable.” I said.
She wanted to die in the big, back bedroom where Jocelyn and I used to sleep.
Only a few days.
By the time Jocelyn arrived she could lift her head.
Richard was there too.
August 25th. I had a dental appointment that morning.
In the back bedroom,
Her spirit fled.
They told me that night he had paced outside her bedroom,
Afraid to go in to her.
She called to him.
It’s Fun to Wake Up In a Tent
It’s fun to wake up in a tent.
To roll off my air mattress
And greet the morning on my knees.
It’s fun to crawl out of a tent
And test the earth and sky
On my knees,
Before moving upright,
Shod,
Through my day.
Wilf Day
My father named me Carol Anne,
After a grocery store in Kits.
A privilege denied my siblings.
Those first four years….
Just the three of us,
Before he bought the drug store in Burnaby.
Capitol Hill Pharmacy.
He closed on Christmas Day,
And Uncle Art ran the store for a week in July.
Every other day, Wilf was there.
A drug store for telling stories.
A notebook under the counter,
For people running a tab.
A drug store cabaret.
Wilfred, the thespian pharmacist.
Who forgot reminders to pick up milk on his way home.
Who forgot the poverty of his childhood.
Who forgot the abandonment of his father.
Who forgot inconvenient details.
Who kept his pain hidden
And thought he had laughed it away.