We borrow Larry Poor’s truckly, Nan calls it
It’s a homemade wooden wheelbarrow
With a wooden wheel wrapped with a metal band
An old hoop from a beef barrel, perhaps.

We head down the lane to the beach
Down below, Nan always calls it
The wind has been up these last few days
There’s probably lots of driftwood on the beach.

We comb the small beach high up
Close to where the lands meets the water’s edge
There’s plenty of driftwood pieces, large and small
Many are short, ideal for the stove.

The larger piece we pile on the ground
We’ll get them later when all the small pieces are found
A dozen trips a day we will make,
I wheel the empty truckly down
Nan pushes it back up the lane, full of sticks.

We store the smaller stuff in Pop’s old
salt pound, it’s back of his bunkhouse
I never knew my Pop, he died the year
I was born, in the house where I was born.

We carry the bigger sticks up the lane
Nan has a turn on her shoulder
I carry one in each hand
We work well together, me and Nan.

Nan says she’ll heat the house
And cook her dinner with the sticks
When the weather gets cold and
She’s all alone in her big house.

Now and then we have a bonfire
On the beach with the driftwood.
I think of me and Nan
And the wheelbarrow with the wooden wheel.

Cyril Griffin
New Perlican, NL