Smoke
Accelerating past a snowbound fence
with dark lumps of cattle in the field beyond
munching hay strewn for them,
I flash by a ploughed driveway, evergreen forest
behind the house, where from the chimney lifts
a plume of smoke
as the candied scent
of burning stove wood fills the truck’s cab
for a second or two
like a pang of how much
I want to be four hours away,
opening the draft, scrunching paper and kindling
into the firebox, lighting the match
so anyone
who drives down the back road will see
somebody in that place is at home.
~ Tom Wayman
Since 1973, more than 15 collections of Tom Wayman’s poems have been published in Canada and the U.S. His 2002 title, My Father’s Cup, was short listed for both the Governor-General’s Literary Award and the B.C. Book Prize for poetry. His latest book of poems is High Speed Through Shoaling Water (2007). Wayman has edited several anthologies of poems, most recently The Dominion of Love: An Anthology of Canadian Love Poems (2001). His latest critical book is Songs Without Price: The Music of Poetry in a Discordant World (2008), based on a lecture he gave as the 2007 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Chair at the University of Vancouver Island. Since 2002 Wayman has taught English and writing at the University of Calgary. When not away working, he lives in the Selkirk Mountains of south-eastern B.C.
“Perhaps the mystery of why some places reach out to us and others don’t is related to how we quickly become close friends with some people we’ve just met, whereas other people we may have known all our lives we never warm up to. One school of behaviourists believe we’re most strongly attracted to people with the same emotional issues as ourselves. If we like a lot of distance in relationships, for instance, then we may find ourselves drawn to people that overtly or covertly signal that they, too, are uncomfortable with too much closeness. Can a landscape, a neighbourhood, reflect back to us some aspect of our personality we struggle with, and thereby appear to us to be extra welcoming, familiar, nurturing – all the qualities we expect of home?”
Read more of Tom Wayman’s poetry:
– Crow in Grass
– Flute Song
– Not Every Highway has a Number
Editor’s note: This poem is from Home and Away – a sequel to the bestselling Writing the Land (2007). Look for one poet to be featured each day as Alberta poets ponder the question “what is home?†and explore our complex relationship with working on, living with, exploiting and protecting our land and our home. For more information about the project, click here.
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