IN THE BITE:

Verses For My Father,
James William (Bill) Auchinachie
By Gerald Muir Auchinachie

With Notes by the Author

I
Death (that pit-lamping sharp-shooter) has come
And caught us with our words half down,
And caught the fastest sprinter of his day,
Young Bill,
Scarce yet a four point buck:
Plugged him out of season.

And you, a grizzled stag, soon lower your horns
Against the hunter with a hundred hounds.

II
Those who could recall
Your prime, Your best bards,
Are gone before you: Blue-eyed
Oliver Pipe balladed you
In the days of your strength--he
Could catch you in words
Though never learn to lean
With the curve
As your Harley tore the ruts
Of the River Bottom Road;
Dick Horsefall,
Logger, scholar, gentleman could
Curse in verse
But the tongs that slipped
Ages
Caught him
In death's long haulback.

III
The tree death thought to plant for you
Had made pegs of your own legs had you
Not foiled it, turning it
Into a cane (You had made too many stumps
To want to walk upon them).
That rotten snag the Compensation Board
(Which pays overtime to the softwood
That whines in the saw)
Could not process your kind of hardwood--
Gave you
With your limp and pride
That princely forty dollars.
Had you been hireling, not hirer, gypsy
Not gypo, they'd have kissed your ass
In triplicate.

IV
Your best bards dead, who shall bear witness?

Your father stayed upon the land, is
Honoured by the road
That passes by his farm
(Though few can get their tongues around
His name);
Your grandson's name in street and park;
Football fans yell it from
The grandstand. His avocations is
His vocation. So was yours.

V
Who will remember

The loggers' sports you
Set up July the First?
The matched, notched trees, the spar
Unnaturally knotless or it had made its climbers
Nutless in their falls to the sawdust
You
Had strewn beneath (though no such care
Was made for you, in
Your
Squirrelly, tree-hopping days).
Now
Dominion Day they
Go to other towns
Who used to come to see your loggers sport;
The best pot the town can offer
Now
Is the filled one of the
Chamber of Commerce.

VI
So how can a son sing
His father's name? Unborn, when you
Got your Seattle silver-buckled
Belt (best bucker, best
Sawyer) now tarnished in the closet.

Who can praise even the chain-saw whine
Of your woodman's curses, pitched
Like a tenor's song?

It must be done
Lest no man be a hero to his valley.
Kids, too near the rifle's mouth, hear
The roar
More than they mark
The bull's-eye.

VII
You see--once
On Sooke River Flats,
(Mother's Mayflower country)
We saw bullet and target
Alike.
When:
You, well over forty,
Past your prime, and gallant,
Agreed to take your turn in peavey sport,
To roll the log up the given
Slope (mock hillside of two peeled poles).
We, children, groaned, knowing
You could not match the times
Of --luckily--younger men.
The sawdust sun-scorched.
The bleachers full of broad-beamed
Victorians, out
To gaze and guzzle
Gutted salmon.
Doing their best to look
British.

VIII
Your name called, you came;
We could scarcely look. The log
Wound slowly up
The slope; age and tobacco had stolen your wind.
We measured millenia before the log lay
Trembling on the flat bunk atop the slant.
You turned your back to catch
Polite applause, which suddenly stopped. The ovoid log
unsettled
From its berth, turned, and thundered
Down at you.
You, standing in the bite,
No chance to run.
We thought to see you pitch
Yourself face-flat. LAY LOW, LOW
DOWN SON OF A BITCH! LET THE LOG PASS OVER HEAD AND ASS ALIKE!
Yet, you turned to face
Two tons of whirling wood,
Harpooner-like, you pitched
The peavey where you stood.
It pierced the log, all motion turned dead whale.
The peavey's handle caught the turf.
The log, still
As an unwound watch, poised half-
Way down its hill,
Your lifetime's skill
Leaving that bite toothless.
Four seconds of
Silence. None foreknowing could quite believe
What they had seen. Then
Bleachers blared a thousand cheers
(Decorous folks, hoping they had relieved
Themselves in naught save loud applause).

IX
Sometimes too stuck-up to like
The back of a pickup
(The logger's limousine), we kids
That night
Rode home as if it were a float
And you yourself Dominion Day.

Copyright © 1998 Gerald Muir Auchinachie

© 2003 Bruce L. Pollock, all rights reserved.
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