Agnes Walsh was born and raised in Placentia; she now divides her time between St. John's and Patrick's Cove. A poet, playwright and actor, she is founder and artistic director of the Tramore Theatre Troupe, and continues her work with them to collect and preserve the oral history of the Cape Shore. Her collection of poetry In the Old Country of My Heart (Killick Press) has recently been released as an audio book by Rattling Books. 

Into Town
You sat at the table where you always sit
that last morning I entered your kitchen
for the last time with you in it.

It was a Monday and the first time I’d come into
your kitchen on a Monday morning without the smell
of Javex and the sound of the old ringer washer clunking away.
Perhaps the first Monday in 90-odd years that it wasn’t wash-Monday.

You sat and looked at me coming through the door
and I looked at your suitcase tied around with a bit of rope,
two cardboard boxes tied round with a bit of rope, and your cap
and winter coat laid on top. It stopped me short there in the doorway.

I knew you were going. I knew this was the day.
But the awful stillness. You shook your head at me
and I saw you were baffled by your own sadness, for you were
always up for everything, a change, anything.

We didn’t speak but sat there waiting for Wishey to come –
him to take you to live in town, me to live on up the road without you.

What do I do now if I can’t get around that knot,
or more desperate get to make a proper one?
Who can I ask where the wind is off of,
where the path to the inner pond begins?

And what was old Bartley’s step-mother’s name
that he pitch-forked over the hedge in Tipperary?
What to do when the only way forward for me
is back, back in time through you and this house?

Bachelorette, Placentia
Now your room is like a whistle, clean as a shriek
and a television on your dresser and the brown suitcase
(rope still around it) up on top of the wardrobe,
an indoor toilet, you show me, happy like a boy with his first apartment
you flick on the elements on top of the stove and wait
until they glow red, and the dishes supplied by management
(no more Chinese blue to tell the future by), and no need
hauling wood, you pat the thermostat.

Can’t say much for the tap water though, you tell me,
so Bridget brings me in a drop from Point Verde.
And you sit down next to me on the bed and swing
your long legs and put your arm around my shoulder
and when I lean in to rest my head that’s
when I know, but I don’t say a word.

You’ve lost your smell. The wood smoke, the oil, the musk,
the years, the years and years. So, I ask, the shower then,
that must be a treat?
Ah yes, you laugh, the shower. That’s the first time I had a wash
since I fell overboard in 1942. I’ll have to beat the women off now.