Material

Besides the text of my 20 min presentation, I brought this poem to the Prairies Lost and Found conference.

The poem (and the presentation) was taken from from the Wrought Substance Project, a social history of the Prairies via the derelict buildings in Winnipeg's downtown core by Ariel Gordon and Jon Schledewitz.

Settle in; it's a doozie.

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The Langside Suite: at the loamy shelf

Premise: taking ownership is about the attitude you have about where you live and the skills or time you have to look after it.

1.

You dig at the loamy shelf the soil between your house and that vagabond next door and every attack with the shovel is a thunderclap across the territories between your shoulder blades every attack with the shovel is a strike against the impermeability of iron

You dig up worm-grey seams of clay soil so old and irritable it has made granular stones of itself you dig up old interests jug bottoms pipe stems porcelain chips

Premise: vacant property affects everyone that lives in uses the neighbourhood. It is the most visible sign of the death of a neighbourhood.

The boy stops his hands large on your half-painted pickets while his mother hurries by her shoulders turned in over the thinness she can’t hide in her layers to ask if you’ve found any more because he last time you tried this flinty knot of soil undoing its bindings of roots its layers of broken glass and random plastics you unearthed marbles hand-made hard-packed and they rolled in your palm when you showed him

Fired up he started seeding the ground with marbles throwing them over fences as he racketed down the sidewalk on roller blades as he made his rounds they wink at him now from between geraniums and marigolds that allow no guesswork over colour that shout red orange into the unrelenting sun waiting like drunks for the coming shock of water from the hose but they are twisty glass things that roll with the least provocation

Premise: the presence of garbage on the streets and in the back lanes supports a lack of respect for neighbourhood space.

As if they could really see and he could fix all these eyes on the families that have appeared around him he might understand what it is to be surrounded by others and their attempts at domestication plants breathing hard in stretches of dry soil that only received cigarette butts lite beer bottle caps before only knew feet as they crossed from alley to street and back wearing strips of need into the ground

You lean on your nearly-new spade shake your head as his mother shouts his name already at their door ducking the decorations he insists they erect as the seasons fall and wither and as he runs after her you can see him standing in the dollar store fingering the mesh his mother hovering somewhere behind trying to find the right way of seeing himself

Premise: the physical attributes of a place can make a big contribution to actual and perceived safety.

Later you will find a battered thing in your yard a marble no longer effortlessly round its surface blurred with a hammer you will understand that he needs to see how much these eyes know if they can be made to blink

2.

You tightrope-tread the territory between your house and that derelict heap next door evidence of its occupation buried under swathes of grass shiftings of soil but even so you have stolen china dolls coins crockery from the long succession of feet

You sidestep the subterranean security system the smug things blown down from the roof crooked into fingers that scratch as if they might make up for what the house has had to endure

Premise: the historic character of the buildings in the neighbourhood contribute positively to the character of the neighbourhood and are a resource that should be preserved and supported.

You stand shovel in hand as the man unlatches your gate and strides this sidebar of land his jaw clenched his eyes wide both of you unsure what is before and what is after what is iron and what is soil but the nails fill your hands

The nails bristle between your fingers bleak against the use they were intended for the wholesomeness of wood the beams and crossbeams and predictable angles so barnacled now you are sure they drifted in a more suspicious medium salt-singed out of their clean lines but you watched them plunger pulled from the soil you know better

Premise: there are many people who are not ready or are not interested in home ownership. Current residents should benefit from and be strengthened by improvement initiatives, not be displaced by them.

The man knows better but he wants to walk this way wants to run your long glassy gauntlet and in the weeks between possession and succession he walks this way but this is nothing against the night terrors the long sirens the smash and gnash of breaking glass the fillip of midnight fists on your back door

Later you will notice how in his absence the nails have been keeping company with clumps of chives spiked into that sharp-scented stuff riveted into that richer soil a decadent mixture that will provide more than glass that will offer more than veilings of paper and plastic with their stray meanings

Premise: it is not enough to fix up the properties that are already vacant. Unless problems that are causing the vacancies are addressed new vacancies will continue to plague the neighbourhood.

You dig now with expectation not to move soil from here to there but to know what the soil hides what it what it might be willing to confide grids of time and place exposed and can almost feel the patience of metal the waiting for the single stroke of ending they’d been promised becoming a part of four walls a roof a thing that rises from soil that is a secure place to spend the long dirty years

Italicized text from Spence Neighborhood Housing Plan (Spence Neighborhood Association, 2002).

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This poem, along with four images by photographer Jon Schledewitz also appeared in the August/Sept 04 issue of Canadian Dimension.