melancholy – Tricia McCallum

Funeral Sandwiches

September 22, 2024 4 Comments

It comes down to the ceremony now, the detail.
Pressing your shirt with the cutaway collar, not too much starch,
the way you liked it.
I chose the shoes that were a bit small,
but they were so fine-looking and you would approve.
At the last minute I remembered your favourite photo of all of us
for tucking into your suit jacket pocket.

Now to prepare the food for the mourners,
sandwiches to begin.
Made differently today,
the correct word is painstakingly.
The butter spread
to each and every corner of the bread,
sliced precisely
from freshly-baked loaves.

Heap both sides of the bread lavishly with spreads,
no scrimping.
No celery, you hated it.
Remove the crusts.

Assemble them ever so gently
before making the final cuts
into perfect quarters.
wiping the knife clean
after each cut.

Display them proudly
on the most treasured serving pieces.
Delicate china tea cups and matching saucers,
and cloth napkins alongside.
Only cloth.

All is ready.
Invite them in.
I’ll get this right
for all the times
I didn’t.

~~ Tricia McCallum

September’s Particular Sadness

September 15, 2024 No Comments

I used to love September, but now it just rhymes with remember.

Dominic Ricciletto

A Careless Lover

Summer takes its sweet time,
Slowly strips your defenses,
Has its way with you,
Then abandons you,
Alone,
On the dock,
In the chill of an October dusk.
Ravished. Spent.
Shivering.
Wanting more.

Glory Days

September 8, 2024 2 Comments

Just the slightest droop
in the leaf of the phlox.
Its tender blossom holding up,
but not for long.
A sudden chill reduces the dahlias petal by petal
to ragged pink flags.

And there, see, the delicate African daisies
suddenly resigned, curling sleepily into themselves,
exhausted debutantes after the ball, when yesterday
they held the ballroom captive.

The valiant cosmos, once reaching to the sky,
Their sturdy stems succumbing to the driving wind,
These last holdouts,
These Olympians of the garden
Roundly defeated.

Listen. Lean in.
A clock is ticking
somewhere.
It ticks not for the garden.
But for us.

~~ Tricia McCallum

The Sadness of Her Sewing

September 1, 2024 1 Comment

There she remains,
In the folds of her nightgown
Tucked deeply in her bedside drawer,
Releasing the scent of her Chantilly.

And here, in her treasured clip-on earrings
Of aurora borealis rhinestones,
All the colors of the northern lights,
She explained.

And perhaps most,
Up there on the closet shelf,
Her well-worn sewing basket,
A frayed tapestry on its lid of
A young woman’s gentle face.
There, inside, among the bobbins of thread,
Mother’s tarnished metal thimble,
Its tiny nubs worn smooth from use.

Remembering how whenever she mended,
I would hear her sigh deeply
As the thimble’s cap clicked
Against her flying needle,
Her impatience palpable,
So desperate was she to be done.

Knowing now it reminded her of
Being pulled from school at the age of nine,
Pressed into piecework for a gruff Glasgow furrier,
Stitching together heavy coats in dingy rooms
From piles of animal pelts,
Never to return to school,
Or childhood,
Again.

~~ Tricia McCallum

Not Today.

August 25, 2024 No Comments

No Heart

I don’t have the heart
for the news that demands
daily
a suspension of disbelief,
a numbing disconnection
that I am no longer willing to offer up.

Today, a tsunami rising
suddenly
on some faraway ocean.
Tonight, children herded into unmarked vans.
Tomorrow, the Yulan Dog Massacre.

Just give me robot dogs,
microchipped to respond.
To jump up on your bed via remote command,
even rest their heads on your pillow alongside.
And if one’s tiny titanium paw should trod on a nail,
there will be no pain.

None at all.
Only an error message
flashing in electric pink neon,
reminding us to pay attention.
To listen up here:
Something needs fixed.

~~ Tricia McCallum

You Could Be Anywhere.

August 18, 2024 1 Comment

Someone asked me recently if I ever prayed. It prompted this…

Ways to Pray

There are a million ways to pray.
Not one of has anything to do with an oak pew
Or a frocked man prompting from a pulpit on high.

Nothing special is needed.
No preparation or special equipment.
The quiet is no prerequisite.
Not solemnity
Nor a bowed head.
A seat on a New York subway will do.
A carnival ride at full tilt.
Or the middle of nowhere, so still
Your breath is its accompaniment.

We think more must be required, so we hesitate.
We edit.
We borrow from scripts of parchment.
But like so much
The opposite is true.

A prayer’s success lies in it being
Entirely and unapologetically
Your own,
Unshackled by dogma,
The counting down of rosary beads,
The mouthing of others’ perceptions.

Be anywhere.
Think of what matters.
Start with the words I wish.
Consider I hope.
End with I tried.

~~ Tricia McCallum

Pinnacles

August 11, 2024 No Comments

What is it in me

What is it in me
that needs to tell you this?

Never More.

It will never be more summer than this.
This moment.
Every petal and bough, every bloom at its most beautiful
in hue, texture, depth of colour.
Nature at her most potent.

She shows off.
Tomorrow begins the sad inevitable decline,
Her gradual descent toward less.
But today,
Oh, today,
Drink it in,
Every last sip.
Such glory cannot possibly last.

A little pixel dust… my nickname for my micro poems…

Screen Tests

I’d run home after the movies
To act out each scene,
Word for word,
With accents and flourishes,

Mom watching in her housedress
At the little yellow kitchen table,
Smoking.

In. Coming.

My druthers would be you
Coming through the door
Soaking wet,
In that fabulous old trench
We bought for a steal,
Brimming over with stories
For tea.

Interloper

And just when I think you’re
Listening
I turn and see you
Enraptured
By the girl in the next booth.

Forget

August 2, 2024 No Comments

In my writer’s group we had an assignment to set our timers for 10 minutes and write sentences beginning with the letter F. Only the letter F. (Try a list yourself. Choose your own letter.) They’re known as prompts, and they’re credited as indispensable tools to jump start the writing doldrums.

These were my 10 F’s (!) and were I to write another list right this moment, I know it would be utterly different. Therein lies the power of this exercise, to unshackle the writer, wondrously.

Strung together, I quite like the idea of shaping this list of 10 into a poem, and no doubt will.

Forget the times you spoke before thinking and caused pain.
Forget 12 years of priests and nuns looking over your shoulder, inspecting your cuticles, the collar of your blouse, measuring with a wooden ruler how far your blue serge uniform, stiff from too many hot irons, fell below your knees.
Forget the ad agency owner who said your writing wasn’t up to their standards but would you like to go out for a drink to discuss options.
Forget her face that last morning and how it wasn’t the way you would always end up remembering it.
Forget turning down an impromptu trip to Rio because you had “commitments.”
Forget the silent child in the shopping cart with the unwashed face.
Forget Sister St. Cletus saying she’d excuse me from detention because, after all, your father was not “of the faith.”
Forget the times you took the easy way, and just how many here were.
Forget the icy wind on your face that day on Bloor Street when he said you were lovely. When he said he would never forget you. Ever.
Forget the casual cruelties you inflicted, and those you suffered from.

Tricia's Poetry reading on June 17 at the Whitevale Arts and Culture Centre

Poetry Out Loud

June 8, 2023 No Comments

Poetry Reading and Sharing event with poet Tricia McCallum

When? Saturday, June 17 at 7:30 pm
Where? the WACC, 475 Whitevale Rd

Why is it different?
Tricia McCallum, our resident poet, will not only share some of her poems, but she is inviting you to share a poem that has a special meaning for you.

Before this June rendez-vous, you have the opportunity to think ahead about which poem you will choose … It may be the poem that first springs to mind whenever you hear the word poetry, or a poem that comforts you each and every time you reflect on it.
Tricia plans to share a variety of her poems. And as anyone who reads Tricia’s work knows, she shares with us regularly online, what she writes about is … everything.
If you wish to participate in this poetry sharing event, email her at writer@triciamccallum.com

Why did I not grab every moment
and make it sing,
look into people’s faces and find stories there
to take me into my old age.
We don’t take the time,
Do we?
Blithely we pass unexplored roads,
agonizing instead
about the trappings of our lives,
the matched sets of things.
(For Keeps – excerpt)

Download the event flyer.

Ring Them Bells

May 5, 2023 No Comments

I share here a remembrance of Gordon Lightfoot, written after seeing him perform back in 2012 on a rain-soaked evening in Toronto’s Massey Hall. I never sought to have it published. I somehow knew it should wait until now.

Textbook weather for Gordon’s concert this evening: rain-slicked streets, brisk winds, classic moody November evening in downtown Toronto. His band was minimalist, as is his wont. To wit, lead guitar, bass, drummer, keyboards, and himself. None of them under 60. I’d seen a couple of them on stage with him many times before.

Gord struts out with his characteristic long stride, guitar at his hip– on the stroke of eight bells, of course — to thunderous applause, seeming still a little shy and embarrassed by it all, amazingly. (He even joked about the night before how, because of the city’s subway breakdown he’d had to start eight minutes later. Eight whole minutes. Oh the horror, he said. And we all knew he was only half kidding.

Opened with Did She Mention My Name? Closed with Blackberry Wine. In between, everything from If You Could Read My Mind to A Painter Passing Through.

The crowd was quiet (save for the one requisite (by then) shout of “We love you, Gord!” very attentive (dare I say, Canadian?), reflective, appreciative, almost conspiratorial, you know that feeling Gord (and Gord alone) inspires in hometown crowds? It was so obvious everyone there was delighted to see him back onstage for another go.

Yes, he is frail, ravaged, bone thin, and easily looks his age (71). Actually, he looks like any of a dozen down on their luck guys who used to hang around (seemingly in rotation) outside one of the hotels in the small town where I lived as a child. His voice wavers and falters from time to time and he whispers when he should shout, but no matter. His spirit is fully intact. His delivery is so evocative, so exquisite, he reminds you with each outing that he is the one who wrote the stuff – that no one gets it like he does — and no one, of any age or stage, will ever do it better. Michael Buble, take a seat. And hush.

We did hear at least a few pins drop at Massey Hall that night, especially during Song for a Winter’s Night. (He rarely does that tune and it was utterly bewitching.) His rendition of Step Back (one of my top five of his) was rollicking, everyone up and rocking, what a great tune that is to move to, and then he headed into Early Morning Rain. Wistful, evocative, iconic, all.

Let it go/Let it happen like it happened once before… from the song Shadows. Another captivating rendition. This one in particular brought to mind Dylan’s comment about Lightfoot: “Whenever I hear a Gordon Lightfoot song, I hope it never ends.”

His banter with the crowd was so relaxed, so unscripted, he charmed the boots off all of us. He riffed randomly, about writing songs on airplanes, the perfect place for it, he says, with the juxtaposition of stars above, cities below… getting his “shoulders lowered” as a boy at the town barber shop in Orillia, and his joy at being “home” and playing for us again.

A gentleman, pure and simple. And a poet non pareil. By the end, he even makes you believe his lustrous words: “Everything will be fine by and by.”

A legendary story about Lightfoot resulted from a concert he did long ago in his hometown of Orillia. A young man in the audience was hit by a flying bottle and had all of his front teeth knocked out. Lightfoot heard about it and went to visit the young boy, on his own, no fanfare. Before he left he gave him a check to cover all his medical expense.

The fire is dying now, my lamp is growing dim
The shades of night are liftin’
The morning light steals across my windowpane
Where webs of snow are driftin’
If I could only have you near
To breathe a sigh or two
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love
Upon this winter night with you.

Lightfoot didn’t care for interviews. Apparently, he was rather shy. But no matter. His songs tell us everything we need to know.

Listen to The Affair on Eight Avenue, for me always his most exquisite song. https://youtu.be/KTu_Uu0TgTQ

I will miss you, Gord. We all will.