Cover: poster for the prose poem series. Image: Brian Michael Barbeito.

From the prose poem series The Blackhawks of Spring and the Northern Towns Aged — horses and ranches, abandoned boats, churches and their graveyards, and the hawks gliding into the sun.

Prose and photograph by Brian Michael Barbeito

The weather is cold, is clear, and traffic doesn’t seem to be so bad. There is time and petrol and the ways are easily travelled enough. Countryside smiles and whiles. A break from the crowd that can be so loud, oh to absorb and observe the countenance of something pastoral and wildly plain, honest, succinct. Watch immense field and infinite skies.

Horses and Ranches

Fences. A small river. Horses in coats. Grey black, brown white. The ranches have some electrical poles designed in an old-fashioned manner. Iron. A trellis is somewhere. Stables. Hay. It’s all so large look at it. Some have hills and little valleys. A different world surely. They are calm. Eating. My grandfather might live to see them there.

The Old Boats Abandoned

Broken and old,- windows missing sometimes. Sadness. Many from the 1980’s even. I guess, if you think about, where do they go when they are done with themes of waters and owners, sunny days in bays and estuaries? Pebbles and stones now. It’s overcast soon. Will rain in the night. Maybe wild animals live and nest in them sometimes. Man these towns are so old. You can sense their vibration and aura. One time they thrived. Perhaps not anymore…

Churches and Their Graveyards

Tombstone by the yellow dandelions. Wild. Farmers and towns and their wives. A hundred years ago! More I say! Plaid. Denim? Shovel. Grain. Corn stalks. A tall cross. Solid brick. Old sills. Barns wooden on concrete forms. Feral cats. I noticed through the years I rarely if ever see anyone visiting the dead. Where are the ancestors and the progeny and the flowers? Where is anyone these days in the crestfallen towns?

Do You Remember the Water?

Glimmering. Sun. Walking by its side. Sand. The boats out there. People happy enough. Joy. The day. Mid-summer. Where did all that go? Lakes and ponds. I know which fish live there. Wild. Sanguine. The trout and sunfish, the perch, eh? A squirrel ran by. We swam sometimes. Take pictures of the horizon line and clouds. Put them in a book of writings. I walked on the rocks as far as I could go. An old solitary fisherman was at the end. Leave him alone to his moving prayer in the day.

Turquoise Cars Rotten and Forgotten

Chevrolet mostly. Sometimes trucks. So old. Broken and lost, like lost souls. Forgotten. A crane. A stone. The trees over there. The traffic going by forever. Gas station. Little birds about. A pizza parlour. A donut shop. The police officer with radar waiting. Antique store. Stones. I don’t live there. I just pass through. I never had a car like that and am not a car person. But those were somebody’s cars. One warm July day, say.

The Blackhawks Under the New Spring Sun

By the hill after. Look. See. Be. The deer cross over there. A strange sudden gull visited me overhead the other day, a sign and an auspicious one. Grace. Goodness. The hawks appear then. Two of them. Glide and glide. Then they are by the sun. Spring has been so cold. A moment to forget. Looking at those hawks. It must get warmer. They are like magic but quite real. Deep. I think the mystic watches the hawks but that the hawks are mystics also. Yes, that’s what I think.

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About the author

Brian Michael Barbeito is a Canadian poet and photographer residing in the Southern Ontario area.