This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0
| Preface |
| Poems |
| Everyday's a Good Day |
| On Charity |
| Postcard with the Black Bears |
| Yellow Coat |
| Where Blueberries Grow |
| Summer Song |
| Afterword |
These poems were composed while I was planting trees in Ontario and Quebec during the summer of 2024 - apart for Yellow Coat which was written months prior. We would drive four to five hours most days to the land we would be working and during these drives, when I wasn't reading or nodding off, I would plug away at these poems on my phone.
I had no intention of writing poetry this summer but, on account of the heat and the bugs, poetry was all I had the mental capacity for - not that that should undermine the art of writing poetry! I had brought with me Grooks I by Piet Hein, a book of poetry, which I bought for two quarters at the Great Glebe Garage Sale days before the start of the season. Needless to say, I was moved and my attempt to write in his style is evident in the poems Everyday's a Good Day and On Charity.
Poems seems to resonate most when read aloud or uttered to one's self - so I encourage you to do the same. If a poem does nothing for you, that's OK - just move on. Don't try to find meaning in any of them. But if one does speak to you, please reread it and let it simmer. Repetition, I find, is where poetry comes alive.
Enjoy.
Braeden Kloke
This is what the happy say
to the disbelievin' sappy lot:
Everyday's a good day -
even when it's not.
We pay a tax
on our humanity
for all missed acts
of opportune charity.
I hope, like these black bears,
you have found fresh berries
to forage in my absence
until summer's end.
A yellow coat
to keep the rain out
but still
my heart
is drenched.
Blueberries grow within my grasp
while a lake lies in wait
at the end of my land.
Wildflowers long to be on my breast
but I ache and hesitate
to hold them by the hand.
And it's clear -
wherever I go -
I will never get a moment's peace.
Even out here,
where blueberries grow
without a soul but me,
I'm troubled ...
by the lonely heart I've sown,
and what I perceive others believe.
So stake your shovel by the shore
and fill your Nalgene,
full of berries, to the brim.
The sun burns hot until life is over -
or until you strip naked
and jump in.
Summer sang its song to me
and teased me
with the gentle kisses
of sunshine and horse flies.
Everything is temporary,
sang its trees and its bees
while our seasonal affair
was shared under purple skies.
And it's clear nothing lasts -
when you're sweltering with swollen eyes
and festering your feet in steel toes ...
or when you feel Summer slipping
through a shovel hand that won't close.
So don't be the fool
who hopes for the fermata
with no conductor
to let it go.
Everything is temporary,
sang the Summer of Hakuba,
and all things must learn
to grow on their own.
My Last Day
"B - I can't do the talent show," said Georgie as he sat next to me, it was the end of our shift and we had just loaded into the van.
The talent he was planning to perform was something called a strike out, which, I'll admit, I'm still having trouble comprehending - I'm reminded it's true when my boss says I don't do anything cool. Georgie's hair was braided and he wore round frame spectacles which were slightly undersized, adding an air of sophistication to his otherwise disheveled appearance. He was tall, but not as tall as me, and I saw him a model planter. I learned a great deal from him.
"Me and Em are driving back to Ottawa tomorrow morning," he said.
I asked if they had an extra seat.
I wasn't supposed to be on that land today. As I walked up the service road that morning to my cache, I passed my friend's gear - a cut shovel, pink hard hat and bells with a tiny waist. They needed the day off and I needed land, so my crew boss put me in their piece. It was cloudy as if on the brink of raining and the blue flags from their buttline were blowing in the wind.
It was a bad day smashing rocks making less than a day's work at minimum wage. I stopped a half hour early and laid down at my cache with the trees I couldn't plant. Where were all the blueberries? They were remarkably abundant this year but I hadn't seen any today. Purple wildflowers wilted in my breast pocket and my land was flagged and squared off as I always do - ready for me to try again tomorrow.
The van was late as usual. I got in the back corner where I never fit and pulled whatever food I had out of my dry bag for the long drive back. I opened my phone to continue working on Where Blueberries Grow. I had been working on it for the past two weeks and knew it was going to be the last poem I wrote this summer. I didn't have much music playing in the land today, I just kept repeating the lines blueberries grow within my grasp, trying to accept my circumstances, thinking of an old friend.
I was thinking of how I was in Valencia last year and how I thought I would be there a few more weeks for La Noche de San Juan and its bonfires on the beaches. But I left early. I remember waking up in the night knowing I had to come home and then leaving on a flight the next morning. I felt the same way in my land today, but I was thinking I may leave in a week or two. I had a friend driving back to Quebec City and she could drop me off in Montreal. I could last another week. Things end, but not quite yet.
The van slowed to a stop, Georgie was last to pick up. He squeezed into the seat on my right, his tattoo of the Ouroboros taunting me.