Here is a poem from Partake with a reading of it by Robert Chelmick on CKUA Radio's: The Road Home in the YouTube Link on the Right
A Punishing God
Reading the one surviving poem
Of my grandfather’s
I realize that his God
Is not the punishing God
I’d always believed he knew
But a nameless God like my own
A God of ideas
Stripped of clothing
Of anything human
Except the idea of God
The way he moves not like an animal
Or sound or bit of water
But like night moves
Across a green field
And strips all colour
Leaves only
Shadowless dark.
I would like to speak to my grandfather
Ask him if his God
Is different from
Oak or cherry wood
Or a crust of bread
Or the swing set lying broken in an overgrown yard.
The few pictures I have of my grandfather
Are bits of unattached time
My grandfather wore hats and used a cane
Looked like an English gentlemen
Although he lived in the bush outside Dryden
And would pick blue berries in the summer
Wearing a grey flannel suit and felt hat.
In my midnight head
Thoughts careen towards
The badly lit exit
In that dark a crowd mingles
My grandfather amongst them
But I can’t find him
Only the scent
Of lovemaking
A finger pushed inside
All of it so warm
And true
It will never stop being.
