[lit-ideas] Re: Straker's Wake
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 03 Aug 2004 18:56:00 -0700
A term now restricted
to the Irish custom of watching round a corpse before burial,
wakes used to be marked by tents and booths,
set up in the churchyard before dawn.
They soon degenerated, Britannica says,
into unsound stuff.
Stephen's wasn't hard to spot.
It was marked by the famous awning,
made by the Shady Boy company of Vancouver, Canada,
and pulled--for the first time in all our journeys--
out from his pthalocyanine green VW Eurovan,
the one with, on the one hand, inside,
fridge and cooker,
and on the other, raw pine coffin.
Straker's wake began as a family gathering,
held right where he usually marked papers,
in a strangely beautiful industrial spot
short of the runway at Vancouver's airport,
right where shadows of jumbos skim along,
and smash through the pillars of the Arthur Laing bridge.
Beside channels where tugs ply and crush waters,
with views in the distance and engineering to the fore,
Stephen was blown up, artistically--
it was one of my photos actually--and put in the front seat of the van.
Before him there was a jazz trombone from Ottawa,
a clumsy piper--me--
and Justin, playing traveling blues.
There were speeches and tears,
three of McGonagall's silvery Tay poems,
flowers to throw in the drink,
much in the Japanese manner,
whisky,
and some bottled water.
Stephen would have loved everything but the bottled water.
Darlene, holding felt pens,
and explaining that it was all bought and paid for,
said we should express our feelings on the coffin,
right on the wood,
as one does on plaster casts.
The grandchildren drew pictures of bikes.
Like players in a theater piece, we exited in ones and twos,
and car-pooled on the wings of Marine Drive,
tooling at all the kilometers per we were allowed,
past Fook's fresh vegetable farm,
chugging up the nearly unbeatably steep hill,
swerving rather late into Forest lawns,
careening round a solemn piper in full regalia,
hot in busby and feather,
braking in the parking lot,
beside the smoking, corpse-burning building.
Therein we pierced to the heart of the matter,
sweeping past the man in the suit,
like a party in glasses, commanded to put the band back together.
Confronting buttons,
in the guise, as someone said,
of appalling bearers,
we put Stephen into the oven,
gave the door some closure,
signalled to Darlene and Dan,
who pressed one
that beamed Stephen off, on his final flaming trip.
Britannica tells me that Hereward the Wake
was "erroneously styled."
I don't know if you got Hereward in school?
A rebel against, as we called him, "William the Conker,"
Hereward, when all else failed, ran to the fens,
and lurked, like a bug in a bog commercial,
where no ordinary Norman could reach him.
All I can think in my fuddled way now
is that if the title's going somewhere for a song,
maybe I could pick it up?
For surely wafting to an ash-dry place,
to a dusty boney badland,
where I can't find him,
qualifies Stephen for some honor or title?
Nah.
Not his thing.
After the desultory drinking,
the sharing of anger, blame and love,
we trooped off to beds.
The next day began with a breakfast that Stephen would have loved.
He wasn't much for food,
but he liked a good short order fry-up.
Then, in a twist of fate,
and group decision making,
we went sailing.
On the Vancouver Sound,
we found,
generally all around,
with sparkling waters abounding,
that we slowly felt more sound,
near by downtown and the bonnie Magdalen ground.
And so, paradoxically, we finished the wake,
by making wake...
no longer drinking...
near by downtown and the bonnie Magdalen ground.
David Ritchie
Portland, Oregon
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