Born In a Dry Year by Robert Currie

October 3, 2023
Poem title: Born In A Dry Year Poet name: Robert Currie Poem: His crib in the corner of his parents’ room, a sheet over the window to keep the dust out. His mother stuffed rags beneath the door, stacked dishes upside down on the shelves, strung a towel like a roof over his crib. An old man now, he isn’t sure what he remembers and what he was only told. There were nose bleeds, his skin so dry it hurt to take a deep breath. Mucous membrane problems, his father said. He remembers that. His nose hairs were like dead grass at the dry edge of an alkali slough. Someone must have told him that. He doesn’t remember his first rain when they said he backed away from the window pane and began to shake and cry. He wouldn’t do that. Another time, a hot day in July, sudden cool rain, he and his friend threw their clothes on the front step, and ran naked into the yard, their heads back, mouths open, water running every where as they dashed from puddle to puddle, dancing in the deepest they found. His 85th year, another dry summer, he recalls that strange day, heat and rain rush, remembers being drenched, water sliding into his mouth, his feet pounding through puddles, rhythmic sloshing and splashing as he danced in delight. If it rained today, he knows he’d want to do it again. End of poem. Credits and bio: Copyright © Robert Currie Robert Currie is a former Saskatchewan Poet Laureate who was thrilled to deliver the Anne Szumigalski Memorial Lecture for the League of Canadian Poets in 2012. He is the author of 13 books, most recently SHIMMERS OF LIGHT: New and Selected Poems (Thistledown Press, 2022). He lives on Treaty Four Territory in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and hopes to keep writing until he dies.