In memory...

Hi there cyber space world.

My Poppy, Jack (John) Vincent, died at the age of 91 on Monday March 19 in St. John's Newfoundland. It was a sad day for me. I just recently got back after having gone down for his funeral. I have always been very inspired by Poppy. I loved him very much. I wrote this poem during my trip, about Newfoundland, my grandparents, their history, my childhood and the feeling I have every time I go there....the very vital attachment I feel towards the land. So here it is:

for Jack and Nellie...

Many stories have been told
Most of which I've never known,
But i can feel them growing stronger in the marrow of my soul.
The legends wait and whisper in the ancient parts of me -
On the island,
On the island of my birth.

My Poppy had a fighter's heart,
and Nanny's was the same.
Their years were etched in rock and sand; through mists and driving rain.
An ocean held their deepest love and loneliness and pain -
On the island,
On the island of my dreams.

But I was just a small bird in the sky of such a place,
And yet it lit the passion of my tiny heart ablaze -
The day I set my eyes upon the face of Mother Sea,
It was the home,
It was the home inside my heart.

Shining days like crystals dropped upon a childhood land.
The moon, reflected on the deep, would take me by the hand,
And lead me to a silence where the beauty gently sang -
It was the magic,
It was the magic of my youth.

The bluest eye I've ever seen has rested on me here,
I can see myself inside it; I've inherited that stare,
Of worlds within the worlds of deepest blue and salted air,
Upon the island,
On the island of my birth.
---------------------------------------------------------the end.