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CBC Literary Awards – Second Prize (Poetry)

IN THE HOUSE OF THE PRESENT

Text: JOHN BARTON

1 | 2 | AUG 03

I rise through the house, your dog at my heels
curious ears pitching forward as we climb
landing window angled open, stairwell hazy
with the intense light of his barking as I enter
time's leaky vacuum, having not come to visit
in years, the hall dividing rooms not everyone
finds his way into, the way through coming
back to me, our parents still downstairs long
after we are meant to have fallen more deeply
asleep, dwindled voices ghosting me as I climb
our fathers staring into their ryes and water
while our mothers, so contrary, settle on how
best to set the table in the English manner few
pay heed to, silver against damask, carving set
poised on crystal knife rests–how they come
to sit next to each other on the Jasper Avenue
bus, what in the 50s makes them start talking
neither of us tries to guess at, our sisters at play
in the aisle, transfers made to points far beyond
the unexpectedness of our bodies, two sons
born two years apart, your mother bathing you
in the sink, skin pink against shining porcelain
until as you crawl up behind me I step back
eyes downcast and lifted, meeting as I glance
over my shoulder, small foot squashing smaller
fingers into the Kashmiri carpet's deep crush
as, pulling at threads, the sun bleeds through
the clouds–what clouds–there always seems
to be clouds as I look skyward, unfurled bolts
of cirrus shading my eyes as slowly they open
to what we wake to hours before anyone else
your father in the eternal early light making us
breakfast, bread trimmed of crusts set to brown
in residues of bacon grease, he says, to fatten
us up–to what other purpose does anyone cut
into such yolks, two runny cows' eyes running
across the countryside breakfast china I find
misidentified pieces of in secondhand shops
your mother's voice turning down the hallway
with me until I open the door, blocks scattering
across the plain of the floor, the blown apart
cities of the imagination no one ever moves
into, cities built on the unlit side of the moon
before you disappear ahead of me out the open
window with your camera, the case discarded
on the grass–there are still more images, still
more destroyed cities in your head to set loose
your mother, as she dies, anxious for me to set
them free with you, but older, imperceptibly
we live in atmospheres too heady for you or I
to detect while in the closet hangs the silver
space suit she one day makes you, the lucent
helmet you wear when I come around clouding
with your breath, though for now this sham orb
glows, clear and hollow on its briefly exposed
shelf, your dog clawing at the loose-woven rug
ragged by your bed, coiling into a sleep none
wakes him from until I am found in the kitchen
where our sisters dry the last of the remaining
day's dishes, clean faces caught in the plates
before they are packed into crates, vestigial
steam distorting the windows, and me wanting
to wipe it away, wanting the two of us framed
by the sill, framed and held by the willow
where you sometimes read with your father
among branches spreading low into twilight
under the sweep of sun-gilt leaves we play
unaware his book is closing, the most ragged
of catkins sifting down onto our heads, neither
of us ready yet to know what this house might
make room for and what it cannot, both of us
giving so little thought to our growing capacity
for inattentiveness or to our called-out names [ ]

1 | 2 | AUG 03