In the Plunkett Hotel
stairs creak all night
the prairie grass
beyond the shivering glass & the windowframe
rustle
train rushing by
& the dust, the air,
move in thru the pub's open door
this man asking us
'you Walt & Ag Workman's kids?'
& we were/are
blood is the line you write thru history
shows thru
he knew them
stayed in the hotel too
1932 he said or 33
from the Plunkett Hotel
i watch the solitary car turn beneath me in the street
the kids who
drinking in the bar all night
eventually bought some roadies
took off
returning now
parking
the trains roll by
stops near where the station used to be
& the kids take off again
returning home
unlike me
in the Plunkett Hotel
climbing the narrow stairs
sleeping where grandma & grandpa did
'i think this is the original bed'
rooms rented
ten fifty a night
'if they made any improvements
i can't see what they did'
i is trying to come home
i piles i's bags on the bedside table
i lives there
from the Plunkett Hotel
walking up the street
my sister Dea, her husband & kids,
this family tree
branch begun in Saxony Germany
eighteen thirty-
nein
ja
seems to me
i take the ja way
everytime i admit this history
gaze over tracks into fields & trees
prayer 'e made 'n
(e's me
(ease me thru
to truth or true
conclusion)
i'm mi
i is simply
mind in motion
instances in i's notion)
singing 'ifamily
fiamly
faimly
family
famliy
famlyi'
in the Plunkett Hotel
my grandmother, Agnes Leigh,
made the beds, cooked the meals
day after day for
the commercial travellers stayed there
& her husband, Walter Workman,
ran the dray service
stabled the horses
fed them water, hay &
raised kids
welcomed them when they came back again
as they did
til the hotel was sold
1941
& we are only travellers when they return
customers for someone else to serve
from the Plunkett Hotel
my mother moved out into the world
returning here
her first few children born
this is where she went when she went 'home'
none of the content remains
only the frame
like Great Grandpa Casper's house
out there in the midst of that muddy field
we stood in the wind & rain
Great Uncle Fred telling me
'that's where your ma was born'
no road or path to lead us there
over the dark furrowed stretches of that earth
from the Plunkett Hotel
the roads run everywhere
arbitrary centre
soul heir
in no way we could ever plan it
we orbit there
spin out
centres for some other we never see
Great Grandpa Casper
dead fifteen years before Ma ever thot of me
Great Grandma Sarah
fifteen years before him
we stood over their graves in the little graveyard
by the side of Route 16
Dea & me
these family plots
more layered than we'd like to believe
leaf
these femme Leigh trees
in the Plunkett Hotel
no trace remains of what my grandparents did
- the building painted, walls papered -
only the memory of conversations
Dea & i
as kids had with
grandma, ma, of what went on
in this building, these streets,
little you can use now to feed a story
- only the name, a few people in town -
most of us drive by or
tear down someone else's history
(drove 20 miles to show Dea the house where Ellie was born
'torn down only the week before'
don't give me that shit about the old home town)
some few photos we hang onto
as keepsakes
from the Plunkett Hotel
the roots run everywhere:
Minnesota (where my grandparents met);
Vermont (where my mother's mother's mother came from);
England (where Walt's father came from);
Saxony (where Casper's dad was born);
or Toronto, where Ellie & i met,
Saskatoon, where ma & pa were married,
Burnaby, (where they were living when they had me) -
the me runs everywhere
like a theme
moving reservoirs of cells & genes
stretches out over the surface of the earth
more miles than any ancestor ever dreamed
we trace our dreamtime in blood,
the colour of an eye, line of a chin,
say 'you remind me of your grandpa' or
'you do that just the way my mother did',
tribal, restless, constant only in the moving on,
over the continents
thru what we call our history
tho it is more mystery than fact,
more verb than noun,
more image, finally, than story
in the Plunkett Hotel
we became what we really are,
transient, temporal, i's in motion
crossing the flickering division lines of history
(our own history incomplete
(more oral than written))
moved by love
by longing
by fear of what that love contains -
possessive, passionate,
original, consuming,
all part of
finally
a state of mind
the real
the only borders of
my kind
July 31st to October 23rd 1983
