FOLK: A COLLECTION OF POEMS A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Guelph by JACOB ROSE In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts August, 2008 ©Jacob Rose, 2008 Library and Bibliotheque et 1*1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-42828-3 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-42828-3 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Plntemet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non­ sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. 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Canada 1 Folk Chapter One: The Vector Field Chapter Two: Centre and Perimeter Chapter Three: St. Christopher in Exile 2 Origin Story The first section of this project opens on the September 2nd, 1998 crash of Swissair Flight 111 in the waters off St. Margaret's Bay, Nova Scotia. The poems that follow are derived from my memories of being fourteen and living in that part of the world at the time. These poems are, of course, not meant to be journalism and some liberties (mostly respectful ones) have been taken with the specifics of chronology and place. The poems in the second section are all set in Malton, Ontario, a neighbourhood in the northeast corner of Mississauga, bordered by Toronto and the Humber River to the east and by Brampton to the north. Traditionally a community of working class immigrants, the area has, in the past, been home to relocated populations from Poland, Italy, China, Jamaica, and Ireland. Malton is now predominantly a South-Asian and Middle Eastern neighbourhood, and is home to Lester B. Pearson International Airport (formerly the Malton Airstrip). At present, there is a population of approximately 36,400 people, including at least one relocated poet. That same note about liberties and respect from section one applies. The final section features poems of mixed births and addresses. They share a common patron, namely St. Christopher, the early Catholic martyr whose feast was removed from the church calendar in 1969. St. Christopher, being something of the mascot of this project, is allowed the final say on issues of symbolism and intention. The patronages referenced at the top of each poem come from either official papal lists or from more pagan sources dreamt up after the delisting. 3 The Vector Field There was nothing to associate the individual. -Dr. John Butt, Former Chief Coroner of Nova Scotia, 1999. The Vector Field (First Poem) Here comes the world— driven in needle-sharp, shot under our soil like arsenic, a master plan. Like a theory, a theme, our unseen source of water. The world is coming with cameras to document; to register an audience, to blur away our hard-scrubbed homogeneity, our hardiness, our hardness. Everyone can tell you where they were when the lights arrived. Everybody happened to be out walking their dog, eyes on the ocean, 11 p.m. and raining. Even those who didn't own dogs were out walking their intentions. Everyone has stories about the action of the airplane in the seconds before impact. A roll. A twist. A wing bent across its face like a feign, a faint, a knowing inward sigh. We spent the next three weeks discussing windows. Every cracked window in every eastward facing pane was a victim. It passed through here. Drunk husbands and accidental breaks were recast. Their perspectives were flattened by the neighbours' rushed retellings. Everyone wanted to sit for the portrait. Everyone wanted to figure. Here came the world. And I saw it come. And a lot of people died. And I was very sad. 5 Pan Pan Pan There are two main theories of the impact. One suggests the vessel burrowed in unbroken underwater, minus the wings and other peripherals unsuited to the shift in local gravity. The pressure differential drew a plan for its attack, then kicked out the windows, stippled down the vessel's length along its opened pores. It was then that certain objects could see where they stood, and the sudden cartoon logic forced the interloper open at its seams, then at its seams' seams. Down the gradient, the breaking gained momentum and surprised the unbreakable—the bolt, its head shorn free from the shaft, a crumpled medal found inside a crevice carved from bone. An air bubble burping at the surface. An oil slick. And six or seven seagulls squawking at the din. ** We prefer the other theory, call it Immediate Translation. At a certain speed the salt in ocean water coalesces into concrete. At a certain speed, spun momentum can churn objects into dust, dust that clings to itself as it travels down the sky. This is why they never found a piece of the wreckage too heavy to be hauled from the water by hand. Most of it escaped microscopic, lifted in the wind and carried, a cloud, blind, towards the shore. ** The first island in got famous. No Mounties but still, one morning that winter, a man we all knew shot his two young sons in 6 their sleep, shuffled back to tell the wife, the shotgun's languid afterbirth arranging smoke into the carpet. She lives on the mainland now, hangs out at the hairdresser's, making conversation. She'll catch the young patrons as they try to slink away, hold their scared new heads in her hands. You look good, kid. Look good. She knows about their ghost stories but doesn't take offence. 7 Chain of Evidence Some people went downright crazy. Or rather, some people, with crazy at the ready, moved into the empathetic surfaces offered by the impact, let it peek through their crazy like a theme (a recitation), placed under them for weight. Like the woman whose dog tweezed free a human hand from the beach and half-buried it out back. She dug herself a dozen test holes, certain she was living on some lost Micmac gravesite. She ended up attracting questions, No sir, I can't imagine why I'd want to kill somebody. Or the man who misplaced six months in inventory of first chapters from the Bookmobile's fiction section. He burned plastic in the hearth. Quit his job fixing cars. Was sad. Or those of us who gave up flight. Or those who now impregnate flight with a sense of the miraculous, write poems about steadfast landings, hold their breath and look straight down. Or the mayors of the peripheral communities who got in line for funding made available to all those considering a permanent memorial. Or the kid who saw the sign at the saltwater pool that read No Diving and thought, / should really draw a picture of an airplane, there. 8 Eyeline and Perimetry Every night in the winter a hundred million snowflakes fall on the ocean and so all they know about is water. The province bends to tide, the tide to the appendage's geographic patterns, and the population kneads geography into something that it wants. Even their number, 400, is a kind of a home. A series of split decisions. The plane came down to make good on all our pessimisms, its efficient tally more than half the town's 400 stencilled faint between less invisible lines: longitude and latitude, the local borders huddled in the grey of old pastels. Gravity owes us nothing. The debris slipped lost behind the surface cover. Someone sent in instruments to measure the circle's severity, dug up corporate histories, a list of enemies for everything onboard. They did this, maybe, to scare away the diplomats. The rescue efforts grew from panic to a second panic best expressed through pre-conceived instruction. Men arrived to sink the deputized rescuers' boots into the mud so as to hold them there, in place. All witnesses were organized by centre, and perimeter: their dent of local earth and what they noticed when they stretched themselves as far as they could reach. 9 Songs for the Cool Kids in Towns without Traffic Lights Those who arrived with graduate degrees ready to lie fallow on the land and plotted sub-divisions out of dormant fields.