The garden once played beside with grazing stock,
These many long years forever gone,
Inherited piecemeal by sleepy suburbia,
with house, garage and modern manicured lawn.

From out of the east of the immortal north Atlantic
A fresh breeze arises gently to whisper quiet and fair
A tender summer caress to my warm damp brow
Whispering softly through the slender silver tendrils of my hair

Decades passed since I first left my rocky shore,
Now on this new town bench I rest and gaze across the cove,
into crisp, blue, cold north Atlantic waters
As youngsters in my own antiquity we fished, swam and dove

Been thirty and more since I'd truly home
The bustle of wooden stores that sat precariously from the rock,
The launch and cove with skiffs, dories, anchored, once full
Empty and ousted now by an idle, pitted, weather-stained concrete government block.

I sit, contemplate, reminiscing alone,
Of the ghostly wooden stages that met haphazardly by the sea swept stony wall,
Today, no more bounty and living from the sea
Yester year fishers foretold "the cod byes, are gettin' awfully small!"

By the main road, up at the head of the launch,
bottom of Noseworthy's Hill, sat even then the old mercantile shop;
with a few coppers, a dime, a nickel or maybe a quarter we'd pick in the bins
for peppermint knobs, candy kisses, some chips, a bar, or a nickel pop

About the ol' shop, the cove road, and by the launch after Saturday evening Mass,
we'd hang out "beatin' the path" as Nan would say, for a time and lark;
the shop now our history but of memories and forever gone
supplanted with a small, public youngsters' play park,

Nary cabbage, beets, carrots or potatoes grow,
The pound and Nan's kitchen garden grown under forever fallow now;
With grassy scrub, poplar and alder bush.
T'is easier to "town for a bag of foreign taters I, low,

The old family names of the past are still about,
On the pinch, the hills, the cove, the ponds, to the cape and around;
In the lane, Butler's, Connors, Evans, Jane, Newell's, Shea's, and more
Though smaller, as others come to escape the chaotic life in "town"

And mine and more, in uniform, off our island to the main and foreign land,
With other family, friends also left to help pay their bill,
While the ocean of time surges forever onward aging our cove,
Though others are left home, forever young with the old, in eternal rest on the old church hill   Submitted By: Gerry Connors