Along the Grindstone: Some Ontario Poems

In January 1968 I took up my professional occupation as a Physical Limnologist (landlocked oceanographer) at the Canada Centre for Inland Waters, a newly-formed Government of Canada research institute in Burlington, Ontario. Burlington, located north and east of Hamilton, along the north shore of Lake Ontario, was at that time in transition from a small market town serving a surrounding agricultural community, to an outlying satellite of Toronto. By October Penny and I had acquired a station wagon, a daschund puppy, our first child, Lyse, and a small house on a tree-lined street with a half-acre lot of fertile sandy loam adjacent to a large field. This houe would be our home for the next 31 years.

The Niagara Escarpment with its sporadic outcrops of limestone rock lay a mile to the north. There were parcels of good arable land above the escarpment, but where the impermeable limestone lay near the surface, the land was poorly drained. Below the escarpment and close to Lake Ontario the soils were deep and fertile and much of the land around Burlington was given over to family-operated market gardens, selling produce locally as well as supplying markets along the shore of Lake Ontario between Oshawa and St. Catherines. A kilometer north of our home lay the valley of Grindstone Creek. Grindstone Creek drained land to the north above the Escarpment, plunged over the Escarpment itself in a handsome waterfall and discharged into Hamilton Harbour/Lake Ontario. The Village of Waterdown was established above the escarpment where Grindstone Creek ran fast towards the falls, a good site for water-powered mills. Below the falls, the Grindstone flowed through a kilometer of no-mans’s land, narrow, tangled with vines and other well-watered growth emerging to daylight in a small, confined subdivision adjacent to the major east-west railway line and Higway 403 to Hamilton, Brantford and and beyond. South of the highway and railway, the steep sided creek valley was given over to a largely undeveloped public park where neighbourhood childen including ours patrolled unsupervised like chimpanzees in clothes. We came to know this area intimately.

On the west side of the Grindstone Creek valley Lemoville Road followed the valley’s rim north There were several small market-garden farms on the west side of the road, all of which had been owned at one time by members of the Lemon family. The largest farm was at the north end of the road. It was owned by Archie Lemon and his wife Mrytle. The second farm downhill had been owned by Archie’s brother Murray (now deceased) and his spouse Pearl. I do not know the history but I suspect that the other two farms along the road had been owned by brothers or sisters of Archie and Murray. That would be consistent with what I learned about their autocratic father. Pearl became a good friend and we partnered with her in the restoration of her apple trees, the production of strawberries and sweet corn. Archie & Myrtle became persons of interest and the subjects of a series unpublished poems (Up at Archie’s) about a fading local agriculture and the redevelopment of formerly productive land. Some of these poems are posted here.

The late 60’s and early 70’s were the years of the “back to the land” movement and we were drawn to its striving for regional independence even as it was being overwhelmed by the commercial logic of long supply chains and industrial food producton. As an environmental scientist (long retired) I came to believe in the validity ( even necessity ) of a bioregional approach to food production and to human cultures in general. Thus we became students and supporters of the small scale local agriculture in our neighbourhood,an agrculture that once supplied a major city like Toronto, even as those traditions faded away.

Looking back on the Ontario years when we were in our youthful primes I am amazed at the energies we possessed and the projects we took on. One of mine was learning to draw and paint through evening classes at the Dundas Valley School of Art. Needing a space where I could lay out my paints and work free of household distractions, I rented an unused portion of Pearl Lemon’s barn, closed it off and added an oil heater. Scenes from the Grindstone Creek valley became favourite subjects. In the 70’s and 80’s I produced little poetry but many drawings and paintings, some of which are reproduced here.

Along the Grindstone

If you start at the concrete silos
Near the sewage treatment plant,
Step over the bank by the culvert
And drop down through the screen of sumacs,
You’ll hear the creek below you.
The going isn’t easy;
There’s deadfalls, clay sidehills, and tangle,
And always gravity’s sharp pull.
Trees let you walk among them,
Indifferent to all except the earth’s slow turn,
Watching the light, cloud, rain, wind and snow
Come and go
Across the valley’s narrow rim.

Here in the gorge, the creek clings with tiny, silver claws,
Holds back against relentless pull.
Resisting all this time has led to wreckage;
Pulling at escarpment’s rim has brought down huge blocks
Which, despite their weight
have offered only fragile foothold,
Focussing the struggle in a new place but with the same old results.
Sometimes you can see where the creek has plugged the gaps
With whatever came to hand.
Jammed among the slabs and boulders,
Logs and brush, old timbers, tires,
And once the rusting carcass of a car.

Further on it seems the water wearies;
There is no longer the purchase on broken rocks.
Hawthorns and willows take advantage of the lull,
They’re grabby, want all the room,
Clutch at strangers with thorny arms.
Wet clay underfoot and piles of matted twigs
Show where the creek has tried to snatch things back.
On the high ground, aloof from this brawling,
Maple, oak and beech have slowly gathered
On the valley sides, crowding to the skyline.
Among them, if you know where to look,
You can see Archie’s house and barn
Peering over the edge and none too sure of the footing.
Down here in the tangle, always the noise,
muttering at the edge of comprehension,
Water regretful of its turbulent descent,
Clawing earth down to stand higher.

(October 1982; revised October 2005)

October Afternoon

The gold October sun,
Reverberating in the scattered yellows of late leaves,
Has become more personal and less blinding.
Under his wistful gaze,
The compass of our vision narrows,
The land contours firmly on old bones.
Down among the roots,
The earth pulls nearer to its centre.
Now I feel the shapes and folds of gullies,
Whisper the creeks which way to run,
Draw breath and see the cool air
Flow among the trees to meet me.

(October 1978; revised October 2005)

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Putting the Strawberries to Bed

Cool east wind;
year’s last month brings first snow.
Softly, the bare apple twigs
gather new blooms.

On the strawberries
we have laid a cover of fresh yellow straw.
It blazes like a gold road to nowhere.

(December, 1979)

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October Haiku

White birch, morning sun,
Yellow leaves in grass.
Ahead are desk and papers.

(October, 1980)

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Raising Henry Truscott

The crew has paused a while,
lawnmower resting in the dandelions and grass.
Downslope they gather round a toppled headstone,
the kid with tummy and cowboy hat,
Dad there too – same shape but more,
a worried guy who wants to do the right thing,
and two old farmers in faded shirts, suspenders and peaked caps,
holding a shovel and an iron bar.
Henry Truscott, born 1843, died 1921, has fallen down again.
Once more his neighbours work to set him straight.
On this spring Saturday, they gaze up the churchyard slope
where clouds mull over the notion of a sudden shower.
All around the smells of grass and spaded earth.
“Been looking up this hill for sixty years.” says the old guy with the spade.
“Henry too.” says the other,
while Dad measures the morning left, the uncut grass.
“Tom, that mower’s cooled by now.”

(May 1982)

First Visits

On my first visits
I stumbled quickly through,
Sensing this to be a private place,
And possibly abandoned,
Yet potent with inhospitable ghosts.
Later I surprised them
Bending over in a row of weed-choked rhubarb,
Myrtle picking and Archie gathering.
There was anger in their gestures,
Myrtle blaming Archie for letting the weeds grow
And Archie sore at the weeds for growing.
Words I don’t recall.
There may not have been any.
I confess to being captured by the quaint
While sensing the dark undercurrents
I would later see and feel.
I returned many times with camera and drawing paper
Until, with practice,
My pencil plunged beneath the surface of the page
And clicked against the bones.

Archie’s Pasture

To tell you about this place
I have first to map it,
shape the hills and hollows,
prickle the thickets,
scatter the birds,
conjure up the visitors,
all this underneath the hand of my mind.
Later, when the stream has been set in motion,
and the dusk falls smoothly,
I can tell you about the autumn noon,
the sun’s farewell caress on the back of your neck.

(October 1978)

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