This poem came about by the confluence of two completely different factors. 

`           One, obviously, was finding dying sparrow on the concrete at the entry to my garage.

            The second was an article in The Conversation Canada, about journaling. If you’re not sure what to write, the article suggested (I’m paraphrasing) list what you can note from your senses. Five things you see; four things you hear; three things you touch; two things you smell; one thing you taste. 

            I tried that exercise while thinking about the bird whose body I had just moved into my garbage can, and suddenly they started forming a poem. So here it is – in part...

...

I pick it up, a mortal morsel cupped in my hands.

It makes no effort to flap, to fly.

It rests on my skin, light as a snowflake,

soft as a lover’s touch. 

I move it to a shady spot, where the day’s heat 

bears down on it less heavily. 

The bright beads of its eyes flick towards me.

Then close. 

Driving to town the other day, I ran into a patch of valley fog.

            Suddenly, clear air and bright sky vanished. I was swaddled in translucent cheesecloth. The centreline’s yellow tape scrolled out ahead of me, measuring time and distance to nowhere. The paved road, grey and gritty close up, merged into mist, dissolving into invisibility.

            I felt as if I was driving down a metaphor.

            Because, only moments before, I had been pondering the process of aging. Another colleague from former years had died. 

            The road ahead felt uncertain, unsure.

I'll use this space for an event I don't want to, and can't, ignore.

My wife Joan died Friday evening, March 13. She had wanted to die at home, but on Thursday morning she realized that her illness was getting beyond my ability to look after her. Hiring staff to come in was a possibility, but Joan herself felt that she needed to change her mind and check into a hospice. 

We moved her into Hospice House in Kelowna Thursday afternoon. Although she was very tired and very weak, she was able to take part in conversations with her visitors that afternoon. 

The next morning she was unconscious, having great difficulty breathing, with no indication that she could respond at all to us or to other visitors. Just before 11:00 she took her last breath and was at peace. If you go now to the full page, you can read her obituary, and the eulogy that Sharon would have given at Joan's memorial service -- which of course cannot happen during this corona virus shutdown of all services. 

’m not sure what I believe about life after death. I’m quite sure that I don’t believe in life before life.

            When I was about ten, my mother told me that my father had proposed to another woman, before he met my mother.

            He had finished his Master’s degree. He had signed up to go to India as a missionary with  the United Church of Canada. He invited this other woman to go with him.

            She said no.

            By a fortunate coincidence for me, my mother went to India about the same time, as a Presbyterian missionary from Northern Ireland. My parents met at language school. Six years later they had me.

            Even at the age of ten, it occurred to me that if that other woman had said “Yes,” I wouldn’t  be who I was. I would be someone else. Maybe even –horrors – a girl!

I woke during the night, a while ago, with my mind racing. It was very dark. Heavy clouds hid the moon and stars. Our rural area has no street lights. And at 3:00 a.m., no neighbouring houses had any lights on.

                   Rather than tossing and turning, and probably waking Joan, I got out of bed, and went to our living room where I could look out the front windows.

                   I could see a few lights across the lake. I could make out the vague reflective sheen of the lake, the darker bulk of the hills on the far side, some humps that might be bushes in our garden.

                   Nothing moved. It was very peaceful. Almost holy.

`                  After a while, calmed and quieted, I decided I could go back to bed.