Sister

You used to call me Brother and sister I don’t know why.

Once  you were my Sister but that is long goodbye.

There’s a scar above that blister and I know you’ve had it tough.

I don’t know how to let this go but I know I’ve had enough.

I’ve taken all I’m taking, all the rest I’ve left is yours.

There’s a message in the leaving, a hope for finding cures.

Dennis Mantin

The Letter And Vimy Ridge

I got a letter from Jacqueline that was mailed before her sister Mabel died… Jacqueline gave me our families history; The MacIver’s, and I found out that our Grandfather Jimmy MacIver had a brother who died at Vimy Ridge in April 1918 during the First World War.

His name is written on a Plague there at Vimy Ridge in France; Daniel John MacIver that is now part of Canada for the sacrifice he and his comrades made.

I will pass this along to my daughter, so she will know she is the 11th Generation that has been tracked back to Neil MacIver born in 1670, in Parish of Uig, Isle of Lewis, Scotland.

Dennis Mantin

6 a.m. Archetypes

It came to me at 6 a.m. on a Sunday.

The way things like this do.

Between a dream and wakening.

With a voice not mine telling me what it is.

This Mystery inside a riddle.

“She has problems with “Authority Figures.”

Of course she does, and little wonder.

More specifically, Female Authority Figures.

‘Yes, of course!’

She is battling the mother archetypes of female teachers at school.

We should be able to solve this by making you aware my Dear…

I will wait until you are awake.

Dennis Mantin

Laugh

She had this laugh.

That made me feel something…

Something I mistook for love.

Something over the sands of time has made me understand it was just me seeing someone truly free and happy.

I can’t remember her face or name; she’s just this memory of a laugh…

I don’t even know if it was real.

Dennis Mantin

Memory

I remember being a child.

Being alone down by the river.

Just me and the tide, rising and falling…

The hunger for something more and others.

The quiet was all a bit too much.

So I left the river.

Life has happened since then.

Just me and the others, rising and falling.

Away from the river.

I have this memory of a life now.

The others are gone.

The river remains.

I am getting used to the quiet.

Dennis Mantin

Trapped Memories

I have this memory…

It’s the north shore of the the island and the water is frozen over. This was before the causeway and no ferries can break the ice and we are trapped there without any way off, unless you want to walk and cross the miles of black and white frozen sheets of ice that crack and groan with each step.

All of this does something to the mind… Stranded in paradise is still stranded for those trapped by their thoughts…

I was young and there was this lunar eclipse  and I saw the curved shadow of the earth on the moon which proved to me the world wasn’t flat and we were on this rock floating in space with the moon on one side of us and the sun on the other, and there was nothing much more to say about where we were or being trapped that I could see, for we really are in paradise.

I remember the thaw and the rise of excitement as the fishermen rushed to their boats. That is where I first saw Ian… He was laughing in his dorey and smiling at Mabel who was holding my hand on the shore and for the first time I saw people in love.

Reminds me of the old joke…

The man from the city asked the fisherman what they did for excitement around here. The fisherman answered, “In the summertime we fish and make love; in the winter we don’t fish. “

Dennis Mantin