My father rode in a helicopter
1.
Before his Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis diagnosis, my father
traversed a stretch of Eastern Ontario
in an air ambulance emergency helicopter. Unable
to properly breathe,
before they discovered his lungs no longer strong enough
to discharge carbon dioxide. The syntax
of exhalation: this orange helicopter, arriving
somewhere on the farm property to transport him the hour’s drive
to the Ottawa General Hospital. As the crow flies,
a distance only he has travelled. Whatever else
I might have garnered,
that would have been worth seeing. Did it land
in an adjacent field? The driveway? Did it make a big noise? Did it
frighten my father’s dog?
Nearly eight unbroken decades on singular property, feet firm
on the ground, my father: his premier
helicopter jaunt. Was he able to enjoy it?
2.
At fifty-one, I have outlived Paul Celan, Jack Spicer, Frank O’Hara,
and will never be, thankfully,
a member of the twenty-seven club. At nearly eighty, my father
outlasted most of his parents’ generation, some by more than twenty years,
surviving cancer surgery and a triple-bypass, knowing
either heart or cancer discharged the entire assembly
of his immediate relations. Fifty-one and adopted, both of my birth parents
are still of this world: at times, one appreciates the articulation
of alternate genes.
3.
As my birth mother offers: I’ve much
from her matrilineal path: Whitteker hair
and Whitteker eyes. Early cataracts. A social energy. To introduce this list
of previously unknown genealogical details
I’ve yet to fully incorporate. Fragments formed
of words, alone. To fractal into parts once mine,
a complex web of interconnected selves.
4.
Christine suggests I misunderstood: my father gasped,
my sister delivered by car to their local ER, a helicopter
not at homestead, but instead, from their
small regional hospital. As the crow flies. Hardly
a period of reflection. Or a comma. So easily
worn, worn out. He could not breathe.
5.
Was time not different, then? What rare, unwieldly crow
might soar in one sustained direction. An absence
that spreads through the bones.
Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (1838): We cut over the fields
at the back with him between us — straight
as the crow flies — through hedge and ditch. And yet, that hardly
sounds direct. Clouds drift, clouds drift and spill,
and still spill, light.
6.
My father, his once-charcoal tussle, crow-black,
gradually eroded into silver grey to white; reduced
to ash. Where my sister set him, there, in the soil,
just by our mother. I’m sure she complained. The headstone
already his adjacent name. In the end , it was where
he needed to be.
rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. His most recent titles include the poetry collections the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022) and World’s End, (ARP Books, 2023), and a suite of pandemic essays, essays in the face of uncertainties (Mansfield Press, 2022). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com