hard to believe
looking at us now that
this was once a slow town
where men were slaves
to mammon and
compliant or
incompliant women
bore their children
many times
with or without
complaint.

they drew water from wells,
washed linen for themselves
added bleach to the
bed sheets of the nouveau riche
for whom they scrubbed
to the bone for
six pence each week
in clear cold-water streams.

sheets were twisted
into ropes
until damp enough
to spread and dry
as great white patches
pinned by coloured pebbles
scattered on their little corner
of the beach.

they baked their daily bread
hung frayed carpets out to beat
breast fed their children
believing it prevented birth
and in September gathered
blackberries and mushrooms
while their men folk
mended worn out nets
made lobster pots or
broke the crusty earth
to lay in kelp
that came ashore in autumn
augmenting growth in
seed potatoes
cabbages and carrots
all of which were set
in tidy furrows
early on in spring.
throughout the year
in backyards
families
kept a pig or two to fatten
a cockerel to impregnate
a dozen hens for eggs and stew
and staked a single cow

out
on the long mile of grassy commonage
between the stony margins
of the old highway.
in fine or squally weather
men launched heavy
black topped
wooden boats and took
their sons to sea
to hunt with long seine nets
lay out lines a mile wide
with baited hooks
await the leaden
wrench of cod and
listen for the squish
and plop foretelling
shoals
of mackerel
salmon homeward bound
and herring by the barrel.

when times were thin
they snared the master’s land
for hare and rabbit
stole a lamb
or two
took the master’s turnips
robbed his orchards
and squeezed
a gill of milk
from the master’s
priceless herd
while the sun was
down.

it was such a simple life
our elders
looking backwards
tell us
making it a simple sum
with calculus removed.