For several years my desk was in the left upstairs gable window shown in the picture. The poem is a sestina, a form in which the words ending each line of the first stanza are repeated recursively across the following stanzas and echoed in the final 3-line envoi. For me, this form captures the nested, concentric nature of memory while mirroring the rocking, contrapuntal nature of hand papermaking. There is always a deeper history: spiral stairs To #1 basement, wooden chests with rust and mold, A paper machine with a bronze wire! Pictures drawn From memories nearing retirement: journeymen lapping Crews who knew when drying was slow how to catch A belt around the driveshaft building steam's release. "They used to lean on a wooden clutch to release The turbine in the mill-race—there." Climbing stairs Behind Carl Solohub, machine tender, trying to catch Each word he said. Water power! "They broke the mold Once those guys left: real papermakers then, everyone lapping The cream now, pensions spent before they're drawn." Tour Bosses and Beater Engineers were drawn Into trade unions reluctantly, unwilling to release The respect they had earned through craft. Lapping At the risers of an older order's stairs: Waves of progressivism, classes breaking free of molds— Labour solidarity became the bigger catch. "Stan Leishman was manager you'd pray he didn't catch You with your feet up on that chair. Yes, characters drawn From stronger stuff. Bill Logan too, the way he could mold Respect for the lab. Uh-huh. No tour boss dared release Tonnage Logan held. Before them, Doc Hoover, striding up the stairs— Always in a suit and tie, neat as any carpenter's lapping." You came to work across a bridge, old canal lapping At its base. Early sixties, bigger fish to catch— They filled it in for number seven. Boom time: stairs Straight to the middle class. Already feeling a bit drawn By 1974, time to look back: postage stamp release, And a plaque for Lock 23 cast from a mold. Owners, unions, generations—forces that mold Montrose Division, St Lawrence Paper; name lapping Like the river, lives rounded like a stone. Release Us too, more free unbeaten, whose throats catch Should we ask for help. Our pride is drawn From darker sources—halfway up or down the stairs. Descending a flight of stairs, mold and deckle In one hand, drawn to sounds of lapping water— Catch, release, release and catch, now and ever after.
