"Mildred Howarter" by Leslie Mundwiler

Mildred Howarter

by Leslie Mundwiler

Who were the great? Question from the Taoists,

from India's philosophers. Teacher's questions

once upon a time, in fifth grade.

Mildred Howarter small and fragile, poised

as if always on the tips of her toes.

In sober colour--umber or navy--

contrasted with cream-white skin. Light moustache

I never missed staring at, or the gray

wisps in her black hair, pulled back in a bun.

We drove by her house, white shingles and black

shutters, twice a week, never stopped. What would

any parents have said, in defence of

their right to children and ignorance? I thought

she was dying, so often away from

class, a distant nearness when she was there.

What did I want to be? she asked. War planes

and glory, the classroom preparation

for a grand disappearance, shake of blue

cloth, bang and a puff of smoke. Dreaming to

fly I'd fly to dream. A pilot, I said,

the fantasy flat as soon as spoken.

Wealth didn't rate. Or fame. Her voice low

and quiet, we had to listen. Pasteur, she

told us about, Jonas Salk, Walter Reed.

What did we want to be? No one before

had given this such weight. The world in us.

Flying became something miserable

and selfish. I was ashamed to have cared

so little for what I was to become.

My friend Leslie Mundwiler, who died last November, was born the same year as I (1944), but in the United States. Declining the Vietnam War, he came to Canada in the sixties. He told me it was quite a tussle to squeeze everything he wanted into "Miss Howarter." I imagine the fourth stanza says what he wants to say about the patriotism he was leaving behind when he crossed the line. The contempt he has for the magical death buried in his childhood ambition gives me pause though, as does his contempt a stanza earlier for his parents' "right" to generation and ignorance. For Miss Howarter, he doesn't quite have contempt. A mutual friend of ours suggests maybe he would have done better to query her values too, they adding up to just one more alien intrusion. But we are social beings. Where is a ten-year-old to turn? There was a distance to close things in every direction for young Les, unbridgeable.

(The poem is copied from Miss Howarter's Fifth Grade by Leslie Mundwiler, Highbrow Books, 2013. Naturally I'll delete it if asked to do so by the copyright holder.)

Late breaking news—For a year I've thought of "Mildred Howarter" as a thirty line poem, filling one page in the collection, closing a section. Only now do I discover it continues overleaf; there is a second page to it, another thirty-five lines. No, no! I'm not prepared to adjust!

"Crossing Our Campground" by William Stafford

Crossing Our Campground

by William Stafford

Part of the time when I move it’s for
Bret. On the path my feet nimble along,
avoiding a root, adjusting easily to some
rough place and lightly stepping on.

This is for you, Bret, I think; this
is the way an old man walks who still
stays vigorous and strong, firm, alert,
holding on through the years for you—

The kind of old man you could be,
    or could have been.



Stafford wrote this poem about five years after his son Bret killed himself and just a few months before his own passing in 1993. I find it curiously moving how the role he has developed for himself as a kind of ordinary hero and model for the rest of us, as one who knows the better way, persists despite the catastrophe.

Readers my age (I'm almost seventy) will immediately link the title to Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar." We all took that in school way back when.

(I've copied this poem from The Way It Is, Graywolf Press, 1999. Of course I shall remove it should the copyright holder wish.)

"The Visitation" by Arthur Adamson

The Visitation

Death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. — Revelation 21:4

by Arthur Adamson

I hear the black wings of mortality beating over my head
I hear hoofbeats in the night   I hear unearthly chords
sometimes it's hard to get up in the morning   especially in January
I'm lying in bed still in my pyjamas thinking
I should get out and do something   something to further history
someone's at the front door   a man and a woman
they are going to try to save me   of course anything is possible
the man tells me God has a message for the world
he reads a passage from Hosea   the two are standing
on my front steps   it's about thirty below
through the door ajar I look at them intently
as the man speaks his gloved finger in the Book
brushes the passage he quotes which is crudely underlined in ink
could these people possibly know something I don't know?
I study them for a clue   they look absolutely ordinary
now it's the women's turn   she tells me about the garden
the tree of knowledge   the serpent   the calamitous fall
outside the sun reverberates in cascades of light
off the snow   it's brilliant enough for an apocalypse
the world is a place of horror   hunger and war
they say   but God is about to change all that
he is going to introduce plenty   joy and peace everlasting
and I am willing to admit that anything is possible
so I thank them   they go   and I wonder   could they have been angels?

from A/Cross Sections: New Manitoba Writing. 2007. Manitoba Writers Guild.


I like this poem a lot, probably because it reads cleanly and has got my bright wintry city in it, as well as promise of the bright comfortable old age I'm hoping for myself. I'm a few years younger than the poet, but we are both retired. Though we never met, we seem to have been at the University of Manitoba in one capacity or another over the same four decades! The poem's got the same kind of religiony stuff I would have picked up as an English student. I doubt if the writer actually got it from the man and woman who came to his door.

The extra spaces are an unpretentious modern touch. At least we would have called it modern half a century ago. I think they work well. The poet has also painted many pleasing pictures in various styles.

(I've copied this poem without seeking permission and will gladly remove it should the copyright holder object. That said, it's a shame how Canadian poets hide their lights under bushels!)