(There is nothing worse, when you are far away, than hearing no news from home. That lonely feeling inspired this poem.)
Write a letter, big or small. Just one letter. One. That’s all. If you fear to write at all, then just phone and make a call. We’ve been waiting since last fall, I really don’t know why the stall. Even if it’s Alberta drawl, scratch a scratch, scrawl a scrawl.
Raise a ruckus, scream a squall, write graffiti on my wall. Entertain or plain enthrall. Throw a punch, start a brawl. There must be something you recall. Something big, something small. Mailmen now refuse to crawl through the webs that drape the hall. My mail box I must re-install, If I’m to get my mail at all.
Or better yet, here’s what to do. Send future mail to Kathmandu, Now, now, friends, don’t pout or bawl. It can’t be worse in quaint Nepal!
(When you serve a mission, one day each week is set aside as a “Preparation Day”: aka “P Day”. It is intended to be used to run errands, do laundry, buy groceries, and that kind of thing. While serving in New Zealand, my wife and I often felt like we were on our own. Who would ever check up on us and see how we were using our time? This poem takes a lighthearted look at our isolated situation.)
Everyday’s a P Day since we’ve been on our own, We spend it on the beach or we spend it on the phone. We send a fax or just relax and make ourselves to home. ‘Cause every day’s a P Day since we’ve been on our own.
Up and down the countryside, it never seems to stop. We travel to the best towns and then its shop to shop. Just like ruddy tourists, we have to pay the shot, But every day’s a P Day and we don’t care a sot.
There’s little to do for us folk, but stand around and teach, Unless the Bishop calls us up to fetch us round to preach. We might get asked quite candid like. ‘Ere now, what’s to do? So we tell them it our P Day, so there’s not to misconstrue.
Someday we’ll meet St. Peter, when time comes to cash our chit. I do hope he closes both his eyes and lightens up a bit. More sure he’ll say, “Wait up a bit, I recognize you lot. You’ve used up all your P. Days mate. You’re off to where its hot.”
My little fax beside me stands, upon my desk with dignity. And yet between its plastic bands, a blank sheet rests for all to see. Green lights brightly blinking shine, bringing courage to my heart. I’ll wait for someone’s push online to send the signal, “talk, send, start.”
In silence I repeat the call to stem my wave of mounting rage, Perhaps today I shall be blessed with writing on the empty page. Should I send faxes? Perhaps by luck, like arrows falling who knows where, Someone’s hand will find and pluck this random cipher of despair.
Come then, your destiny fulfill, seize the moment I implore, Lest my dreary monthly bill remains unjustified once more. Even you must know (and dread), the end of fax machines is near. So write this on your empty page: “We’ll only need you one more year.”
(This poem is dedicated to our granddaughter, who wrote to us while we were serving a mission in New Zealand.)
Olivia Constance said to herself, “What shall I do today?” I have no school ’cause its cold outside and the cold won’t go away. So into her toy box she put her hand to see what she could find: A plastic doll, crayon and clips, and a piece of orange rind.
“Oh,” Olivia Constance said, “I know what I can do: Write my Grandma and Grandpa a note to tell them everything new.”
So that’s what Olivia Constance did, with doodles, circles and squares. About her life and important things like, how she didn’t like curls. Letters like “G” and “M” and “D” and happy faces as well. Olivia Constance found that she had so many things to tell.
Round the corner and into the post, off then the letter flew. Up in the plane and away to the coast, down to the house painted blue.
What a surprise to Grandma Shirl, as she read to Grandpa Doug: “How do you do,” said Olivia C. “Please find enclosed, “ 1x Hug.” As for the doodles and circles and swirls, the “G and the “M” and the “D’s,” It was perfectly clear to them what it meant – and it made them perfectly pleased.
There is a reunion being
held in my backyard this fall. They are expecting hundreds to attend out of the
thousands who were invited.
Even though its being held on our property and in our yard, we have not been invited. As a matter of fact, they have been holding these reunions for a very long time without our permission. They have been coming long before we lived here, even longer than the coming of the Europeans to the Americas, or even the indigenous people who once lived here.
I am speaking of the annual
return of the salmon to spawn in the creek that runs through our property.
For the past two years they
have been gone from this stream. But now they are returning to lay their eggs
and finish their life cycle –here — where it began at the bottom of the clear
cold stream among the sand and pebbles.
What a marvelous thing it would be if we could sit on a log and ask them where they have been. What incredible tales of adventure would they tell us? How many thousands of miles have they traveled? How many struggles did they have to overcome to reach home? So many rivers, so many streams that all look alike, how did they find their way back?
With so much swimming,
through so many strong currents, with so many obstacles, did they ever think
about giving up?
I have seen them in strong tides where they were just able to hold their own. I have seen them streak through water at great speed, darting from rock to rock, finding eddies to rest in. Then, a few minutes later, I have seen them go again, then rest again, repeating the process over and over. I have watched them leap through the air, just to get over a single water fall. Some of these extraordinary efforts only gained them a few hundred feet.
In the interior of British Columbia, Canada, a damn was built many years ago. It stood in the path where salmon have passed up stream for hundreds of years. When the salmon came, they tried to get over it, but it was too high. So they hurled themselves at in until their bodies were smashed and broken. The men who built the damn were so impressed at their determination that it was decided to build a concrete water ladder so the fish could circumnavigate the damn in small leaps.
What made the salmon do
this? What thought in their tiny heads was so powerful as to compel them to
succeed or die in the attempt?
I suspect, as each left the
tiny stream where it was hatched, it had no such compulsion. Rather it was
probably filled with a great excitement for adventure, a feeling of freedom, a thirst
to swim, to eat, to look, to play, to do anything and everything with reckless
abandonment.
What happened and when? How
much time went by before there came the feeling deep from within that they must
return? Did they ignore it at first, perhaps mistaking it for something they
should not have eaten? No doubt they became restless as the feeling became
stronger. Is that why they began to gather together in large schools to see if
others were feeling the same? Were they looking for someone to tell them what
to do? Where to go?
Visualize them then, like ballet dancers, pivoting in unison, first this way and then that. Their movements become faster as others joined in. “ Where are we going?” No one answers as each becomes transfixed in the hypnotic spell. Then, without any visible signal, they all begin to move in a single direction. Somehow, from somewhere a long, long way away, they hear –or rather feel — a calling. “Come home” it beacons. “Come home. It’s time. You must complete the task.” Some respond, yet others stop to ask,” What task? What time?” We are mature now and strong. We are already home. We will continue doing as we have always done.” They break off and swim away.
Those who begin the trip start
with enthusiasm, but gradually some slowly drift away because the journey seems
so long and the reason so unimportant.
Others moving on ahead hear
and feel the call again. ”Come, hurry, there is not much time left!” Swimming
through and across large nets, they struggle against fast moving tides, Over
and up water falls, past enticing lures and strange looking, brightly colored
minnows they move onward, always onward.
Still, it is too far and
too much to expect from some. They pause, and rest, and play with the exciting
trinkets that dangle from long, shiny spider webs.
Now the few remaining are traveling further and longer each day. Many have scars and bruises, while still others limp and work with all their strength just to keep up. “ Move on, Move on, Don’t delay, there is only so much time left!. You must finish, You MUST finish.”
When they finally arrive,
there are not many left. They look nothing like they did when they left. Their
backs are humped, and their snouts turned up. Their skin is a strange, bright
red color. But they have arrived and their joy is high. They have come home.
They will lay the eggs that will ensure the continuation of their species. Once
the eggs are fertilized, the males make
great sweeps to cover them with fine sand so they may lay protected among the
pebbles on the bottom of our clear water stream.
It will be a few months
before the cycle is repeated. Then these new hatchlings will too go out to sea,
as countless millions of others have done before.
As it is with fish, so it
is with man.
We have left the place
where we were spiritually raised. But now, we are all away at sea. From
somewhere afar off, we have heard, or rather felt, a stirring which is calling
deep down inside of us. “Come home, come home,” it calls. “ You must complete
your task. There is not much time left!” There are many who respond. They
gather together looking for directions on what to do, where to go. Yet some
prefer to cling to old ways. Still others are busy chasing trinkets that move out
of their reach on invisible spider webs.
Still, the call has come.
Can you remember hearing it? I can. It was when I was a little child. It came
as a distant voice on a summer wind. I remember knowing that there is a God and
I had something I must do. When the missionaries from The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints came and called at our door, I remembered that day
in my childhood. The voice sounded as familiar as “a voice on the summer wind”.
Come home, come home” it called and I responded.
Later, I read what the Lord said in Matthew 4: 19: “…Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”
We are not home yet and
there are many challenges and obstacles to overcome before we get there. The
early Christians used the sign of the fish to identify themselves. We might
consider how many other things “fish” could teach us.
