Country Life

We read the advertisement
for the estate auction
north of Luskville
beside the Ottawa River;
drove up to a dingy farmhouse
the auctioneer already
rattling prices on
wardrobes and washstands
the crowd bidding eagerly
on old quilts and scatter rugs
as I wonder whose body
they warmed and whose step
they muffled on long
northern winter nights.

Rain began to muck the grass
and everyone moved to a field
beside the broken-roofed ban
where two flat-bed wagons
held the sum total of a
man's existence. Block planes
and draw knives, hoes and
shovels take the block.

Generations of Quebec
dirt-scratching. He'd cut ice
from the Ottawa river, set traps,
hunted waterfowl. Decoys
and traps go quickly;
quaint articles in demand.
Red plaided Quebecois joyfully
raise bids on pick-axes and
shovels, themselves pick up
inflated tabs; neighbours
swelling the estate.

A handful of countryfolk
full in years and lean in pocket
bid slender for rusted wire
and nails; scraps with frail value
but high in practicality in marginal
farming. Before we turn to leave
we share a whispered confidence.
The old man had been murdered.
That old myth re-surfacing
yet again, of sock-stuffed savings.