Skip to content

Neall Calvert Poetry Collection

Neall Calvert Poetry Collection

– Poetry by Neall Calvert –

Poem Long in the Making

C. G. Jung: “Recollection of the origins is a matter of life and death.”

*

Malidoma Somé: “If the ancestors are not healed, their sick energy
will haunt the souls and psyches of those who are responsible
for helping them.”

*

Only an empty heart . . . remembers, sixty years later,
that one heard, at age three (but only once), mandolins
and Dad’s deep voice melding with his older brother’s
in “Vetsherni Zvon” (“Those Evening Bells”), a song
of longing for the bountiful Mennonite homeland
in Russia before war’s chaos—a holocaust—came;

Only a seeking heart . . . finds, on the Internet in 2017,
transit papers bearing one’s father’s, his siblings’ and
their parents’ names, declaring the refugees’ arrival
in Canada via Empress of France on July 17, 1923—
an event never spoken of at home;

Only a universal heart . . . must have balanced
the unsteady boy fearing the raging father’s next
Thou Shalt Not–infected blow: a homegrown
holocaust . . . somehow saves the angry teenage
son seeking missing power racing other teenage
drivers at 90 mph in Dad’s potent V-8 Ford
on suburban Surrey streets;

Only a sheltering heart . . . at twenty provides
prayed-for relief in a position 3,000 miles away,
where thinking for oneself can begin; where
C. G. Jung, wizard of the psyche, master
of the unconscious mind—in a dream—provides
a diagnosis, promises a long (and necessary)
journey into wholeness . . . uplifts the adult
during decades of distance and dislike.

. . . “DO YOU NOT THINK THAT I LOVE YOU—”
whispers, on an ordinary spring day at a ferry
terminal, a voice within “—AND THAT THIS LOVE
CAN BE RENEWED IN EVERY MOMENT?” . . . (Did
one’s forebears not hear an eternal voice too?) . . .

Only a winged heart . . . can fly via shamanic
journey to ‘find the last happy ancestors’:
German great-grandparents who settled
Russian farmland granted Mennonite colonists
the previous century by Empress Catherine II.
Their son (who would prosper and then lose
it all), is born on August 12, 1859 in a village
where my father would spend the ages five
to ten among war’s marauders and murderers
experiencing unthinkable things he would,
unconsciously, pass on to his vulnerable youngest
(which he had been too). “We put pillows in front
of the windows to keep the bullets from flying in”
went a rare family tale.

Only an emotionally healed heart . . . triggers
a spirit-to-spirit visit to a son by a father
three years after his passing to say “I’m sorry,”
then repeat the words twenty minutes more;

Only an expanding heart . . . one that under-
stands Those who ignore their history are doomed
to repeat it [Santayana] can rewrite the old
victim scripts and pen the poet great/grand/
son’s epitaph:

Write Only This in Stone:
Over Rage and Revenge,
Over History’s Vagaries,
Peace Won Out, Eternity Emerged,
the Love of Christ Triumphed

Only a fatherly heart . . . can whisper meaning-
fully the day this poem is done: “You got it right.”

The Day Words Didn’t Fail Me

Sitting near you under summer trees
I gaze into your eyes, and in this tear-
filled glance, seeing into all things,
I grasp timeless reality—all that I am,
and am not yet. I see for the first time
the wounded inner man, and now
you know him too.

But in the seeing, the revealing,
the unconscious becoming conscious,
in this holy instant peace descends,
healing occurs, a lifetime of bad habits
fall away.

And then my three syllables of recon-
ciliation rise up, to rejoin worlds, repeat
the resurrection . . . reaffirm
this love’s miracles.

The Man Outside My Door

When at night my solitary rooms became still
I sensed lurking outside my dwelling’s door
a mysterious silent man; sometimes I feared
he would break in with a great smashing
and splintering sound;

For weeks I strained to hear thumps of approaching
or leaving footsteps, especially after midnight
when corridor light streamed around my entry’s edges
into the murk; in daylight I puzzled this perilous
male power;

WHO ARE YOU? I finally thought to challenge
and then startling facts began trickling in:
I’m handsome, with a ready smile;
I’m healthy and walk with a confident step! . . .

The noiseless knocking had been announcing
a shimmering shadow brother—Man of Light—
who’s everything that I, in dark, self-hating hours,
think that I am not.

About the Author – Neall Calvert
Neall Calvert

Neall Calvert has twenty-five years’ experience as a journalist and book editor. He began writing at midlife after studying the German-speaking poets Friedrich Hölderlin and Rainer Maria Rilke. His articles on these writers appear at neallcalvert.blogspot.ca and academia.edu. Neall’s poetry has been published in The Men’s Journal, Thunder Stick, Borrowed Solace, Open Minds Quarterly, Fresh Voices, Recovering The Self online and in the Alberta book Vistas of the West. He is an associate member of the League of Canadian Poets.

Did you like this poem by Neall Calvert? Then you might also like:

The Identified Patient
What I want the surgeon to know
Sanctuary, and other poems
The Body as Poem
Metaplasia and other poems
This is What Death Does
Where Courage Lives
The Psychiatric Patient Profiled in My Application
Modern Medical Miracles
What the Mirror Says
Writing Myself Alive: An Episodic Poem
Breathing; Love These Lively Things
Oh Emma; Slow Dancing
In the Mirror, For My Mother
Zenstronomy: Zen of Instruction, Godma, Astrophysical Reality

To check out all the poetry available on Dreamers, like this poem by Neall Calvert, visit our poetry section.

Like reading print publications? Consider subscribing to the Dreamers Magazine!

Pen Notebook Writing
Dreamers Writing Prompt Generator

Experience the power of simplicity with our unique writing prompt generator. Designed for writers who crave spontaneity and surprise, our tool delivers one meticulously crafted prompt at a time.

Read More
Tags: