Two Poems by Gregg Norman

 

SENTINELS 

 

Prairie grain elevators 

Once one day wagon-trip spaced 

Now lined along steel highways 

Names high in tall font 

Looming over dying villages 

 

Standing in patient service 

To the world’s bread basket 

Amid featureless fields 

With vanishing points 

On roads in all directions 

 

Never lost here 

Sentinels always watching 

Like giant desert cacti 

Whispering on the wind 

Over here over here 

 

Watercoloured everywhere 

To grace the walls 

Of small town diners 

Old farm kitchens 

Summer fair craft tables 

 

Old growth heritage wood 

Douglas Fir drawn and quartered 

Timber posts and beams 

Wood grain carved 

By grains on grains 

 

Built stacked and cribbed  

With corners overlapped 

So strong yet now laid low 

To build dance floors 

And decorative furniture 

 

Landmarks gone in time’s mist 

Villages soon follow 

The vast land empties 

Of symbols of pride  

Perseverance and posterity 

 

Towering timber touchstones 

All but gone away 

Given over to monstrous concrete silos 

Lined in solemn rows 

Like artillery shells

STOCK TANKS & SCOOP SHOVELS 

 

food more Cajun than Creole 

but the music is funky Zydeco and loud 

the joint steamy and messy and jumping 

cooking in the open in the back 

blackened fish in blackened skillets 

deep-fried ‘gator and soft-shelled crab 

fresh from the Gulf 

crawfish boiled in pepper sauce  

in long metal stock tanks 

scoop-shoveled onto big beer trays 

patrons bibbed and greasy-chinned, laughing 

over supper served on hubcaps 

a grinning busboy winks at our table, says 

“Yeah, man, eat them motherfuckin" crawfish.”

Gregg Norman lives and writes in a lakeside cottage in Manitoba, Canada, with his wife and a small dog who runs the joint. His poetry has been placed in journals and literary magazines in Canada, USA, UK, Australia and India. He is also the author of four published novels and a novella.