'Houses in Old Trois Rivieres'

Poem revised on the Happy Occasion of Lost Bayou Ramblers from Louisiana's Acadiana performing in Quebec, Trois Rivières' Parc Portuaire, TODAY.

‘Houses in Old Trois-Rivières’

(Poem written after visit during Christmastime 2017,
revisited and revised 
on the Happy Occasion of Lost Bayou Ramblers
performing in Trois Rivieres tonight, August 10, 2024.)


Houses in old Trois-Rivières
Stand side-by-side like Line-Dancers
Of Sants' red brick. 
Their windows sturdy, their balconies 
Brave above porches. given Winter in Quebec!

Usine-workers hung socks of wool
To drip and dry on those porches.
Soaked by pulp mills' furnaces,
Wet as salmon and smelly too
And maybe scaley too
Despite wives' best efforts.

When one River,  the Sant Maurice,
The River of three mouths
To the Atlantic's Sant Laurent,
Swelled its banks, big and rough 
With snow's run-off,
Cutters' logs lay thick as tobacco leaves,
Rolled up among slices and traps 
Of ice on the Fleuve.

Then, though, like now,
Drivers' gangs didn't care for fear.
How those draveur fellows 
Skipped from their boats!
They skipped in calk-boots
Across the River's shifting floor
Of logs and icy water
With their balancing, hooked poles!
Like jaunty aerialists--like
Walendas, or Charlie Chaplin, 
Buster Keaton, Marcel Cerdan--
Le courage was complete, every day,
Because it had to be.

Les draveurs came out with the Spring's
Flood-time and its Harvests 
Of berries, beets, pears--land so green
With the snow gone.
Their courage and skills fostered
Les Canadiens, ever the home-team
Of our Quebec, Les Champions 
Of the National Hockey League,
Its Stanley Cup Montreal's 
And the Richards', Geoffrion's, Beliveau's,
Lafleur's, Cournoyer's, Dryden's, Lemaire's, ...
1950s, '60s. '70s, '80s, .. 
Decades after centuries, the Rocket's
Headlights-like flashing glare emblem
Of workers who spoke French
While their bosses (Clarence Campbell!) didn't.

We made reason to dance 
On those porches 
Of red-brick houses side by side in teams
Who mastered Rivers and socks
And we still do!




Earlier version of 'Houses of Old Trois Rivières' is up on the We Are Revolutions website. The page there has more photos!