youth – Tricia McCallum

In the Pink

October 6, 2024 No Comments

How wrong we can be about the things we think will save us…

I walked behind them on the way home
after the usual Saturday night skating at the small town’s arena.
He was the high school all-star,
she the ice ballerina.

She wore pink angora mittens, and a matching beret
perched at what seemed the perfect angle on her small head,
her white-blond hair cascading down.

She was so small he towered beside her as they walked,
He strode, she with tiny quick mincing steps to keep up,
her little furry hand buried inside his enormous one.

She looked up at him often and longingly.
He looked straight ahead and did most of the talking,
I couldn’t imagine, that bitter February night,
the idea of happiness being anywhere but right there,
in front of me,
she at his side,
with a rightful place,
and a way for her to be in this world.

At 15,
it seemed all I needed was there,
in that matching set of pink woolens
and in a tall young man walking beside me
who could have been anywhere,
anywhere at all that he wanted,
but had chosen here,
with me.

~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

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.

Beyond the Robot

October 19, 2023 No Comments

For the Robot

to write a poem
first
it must survive a kindergarten schoolyard trauma, a sunburn on an overcast day,
bury, in a small paper box that once held a bar of soap,
the thumbnail-sized frog that was once a polliwog it caught at Mrs. Anderson’s
pond whose tail fell off and hind legs emerged like quotation marks & had
been kept in the rinsed Best Foods mayonnaise jar

must worry a tobacco-stained grandfather’s hand
run over a jackrabbit on I-40 in the Arizona desert
get divorced
burn dinner
confess its sins
suffer food poisoning
refuse to eat blue M & M’s
hang, on a sweet-breezy July, laundry in Fishtail, Montana—eye the distant Sawtooth
Mountains & hum “Waltzing Matilda” which it learned from Miss Vineyard
in second grade

must fear thunder
rush to focus its binoculars on the wintering Lazuli Bunting
tell white lies to be kind
shout “Heavens to Betsy!”
be part of a standing ovation
endure recurring nightmares
question the crossing guard about the origin of “fingers crossed”
develop calluses as it learns to play the twelve-string banjo
have its hair smell of campfire smoke
swat, during a humid-summer dusk, at mosquitoes on a dock full of splintered
cypress wood at Half Moon Lake in Eau Claire, Wisconsin

forever dislike Brussels sprouts because it overcooked them and they smelled like
rotten eggs
must watch wind
weep at a funeral
lose anything
imagine infinity
doubt God’s existence
die a little every day
then, perhaps—

~~ Alison Bailey

—from Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge
September 2023, Artist’s Choice

I’m still here…

September 26, 2023 No Comments

I Am – A Poem by Tricia McCallum

It was ELO’s fault.

August 14, 2023 No Comments

Why instead of begging my mom for extra allowance money so I could buy a record album
I should have declared vendetta on the Electric Light Orchestra.

by Matt Mason

I was in love with a girl.
And I can say this with absolute certainty,
as I was in eighth grade,
and eight graders know what love is

in ways that you all grow out of
with your big feet, bad skin, left at the pizza place and walking four miles so
you don’t have to call someone for a ride and explain,
your first kisses, shocking tongue in your mouth, cheeks turned floodplain “experience.”

I didn’t need experience.
I had Saturday afternoon movies on channel 6,
I had heart-in-fist dedications on Casey Kasem,
I had first-run Love Boat still on TV,

so fuck your coward jaded blissful first-hand knees-quaking “love,”
I was in love with a girl
and she wouldn’t call me back.
I had tried everything.
And by “everything,” I mean
every thing: I tried funny,
awkward,
self-deprecating,
I tried uncoordinated, I tried brainy,
I tried stories in class about Santa being hit by an airplane Night Before Christmas style (and
on the nose of the plane arose such a clatter, the pilot knew at once Saint Nick was a splatter)
I tried everything.
I was in love with a girl
and the months were winding that love so tight
it could slip and fly across the classroom and crack
against the blackboard,
I was in love with a girl
and finally at the point,
sitting on the lion-print sheets of my bed,
of admitting love
was not enough,

that love!
was not!
enough!

to bend this universe as it needed to be bent.
I was in love with a girl
and sighed
and turned on my radio
to WOW or Sweet 98 or whatever the hell it was
and they said “Here is a new song by ELO,”

and there’s Jeff Lynne telling me “Hold on tight to your dreams,”
even adding emphasis by rephrasing it in French: “Accroche-toi à ton rêve,”
and, damn, Universe,
you had me going,
I almost gave up on love,
on love!

In the hindsight of adulthood,
of thirty years unlearning what I learned that day,
of good dates, bad dates, eyelashes, bra straps,
yelling “What the fuck do you want from me!” loud enough to be heard four apartments down,
heart-shaped cards, roses and rings, fourteen small teddy bears (one for every month),
poetry that said way too much about the goddamn moon,
the disproportionate surprise of warm breath on the inner ear,
that the Electric Light Orchestra

maybe could have been a little more specific.
That “Accroches-toi à ton rêve,” I never did look that up,
it might only mean: “Don’t eat croutons;”

DJs are not waiting like archangels
to set the cosmos off their turntable wobble; they
tie up the request line talking to their girls,
making promises,
that sound too much
like pop songs,

they’re underpaid dudes
who put needles onto grooves
and let it
all
spin.

Matt Mason: “My favorite poem is one that, at first, makes me wonder if it’s a poem. I love a poem written because that’s what the poet wanted to write and they didn’t worry if it fit the mold or definition or what they were lectured a poem is supposed to be. Not that we shouldn’t study the traditions and forms and histories, but poems like that shine for me: they have surprise, coming in disguises instead of the formal suit or gown we all thought they were supposed to wear back when they were set in front of us in high school. These are the poems that, had they been set in front of me in high school, would have gotten me on fire for poetry years earlier.”

He could not wait to show me…

June 12, 2023 No Comments

Ohio Dove

She lay at our feet with a metal arrow
through her chest, the arrow angled in
the ground not far from the lilac
nest where she’d been sitting.
Because he owned the bow, or that
he went by his last name,
or that his peach fuzz had darkened,
Cunningham said he was taking my turn.

He could not wait to show me
how it’s done, the killing.
If only quick, like turning off a lamp.
The dove lay gasping in the too sudden
present tense. Cunningham pressed
his shoe down hard,

then took the arrow out from her. Because
I’d not had my heart broken this close up
before, I held the bird extra, said good aim
then placed her back in the lilac bush
so no one could see. I heard my mother’s
dinner bell in the distance wringing
the dry air in my throat. I walked home and ate all
her steamed kale, because it was good for me.

—from Rattle #79, Spring 2023

Mark Rubin: “I write because it’s a way of rendering the heartaches that come from being alive. As a certified curmudgeon, I have an edgy, ongoing sense of wonder, if not reverence, for small things in the natural world, and big things that move through me as a result. I am most happy when I can get out of my own way.”

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.