‘The Light Under the Door’ and Other Poems by Tiree MacGregor

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The Light Under the Door

for GGG, in lieu of roses

On school days, dark on winter mornings, my mother rose
Before us all and in her quiet way imposed

Rough order on our little world. I’d lie listening
To kitchen sounds—the kettle filled, the openings

And closings, porridge bubbling volcanically as though
In answer to the rumbling, screaming kettle blow,

My mother softly singing, and her light, barefoot tread.
Such times dispelled the sinking thoughts that claimed my head.

I felt such peace as settles at night when downy snow
Falls lightly, when you nestle in the afterglow

Of some wild play as, lagging with stick and skates or sled,
You trudge your way lead-legged home, to food and bed.

Outside, the huddled spruces swayed in the wind below
The shifting stars, the grace, the burdened lift and flow

Latent with dialectic. —Thus to look at things
Would ease, in time, my skeptic fears, at last to bring

Meaning to light from under a door, to things composed
As to suggest the wonder latent in a rose.

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The Gleaner

When, in November, I set out to face
An icy northeast wind, I saw her squat
Down, up ahead, as though she had to lace
A shoe. But something else detained her, what

I could not tell. And she just squatted there,
Intent on some essential enterprise,
On my path, dead ahead, her long brown hair
Disheveled, dangling before down-turned eyes.

She heeded nothing: both the stares and seeming
Oblivion of the bus-stop crowd, the wind,
My approach—all seemed not to touch her dreaming,
As though in dreaming she had never sinned,

Never known anything that led her here,
No brutal treatment from a loved one’s hand,
No choices to regret, no single tear
For hope in anything she ever planned.

So much of life forever out of range,
She seemed undaunted, this small figure dressed
In a light top and nylon sweats, this strange
Domestic bird who’d fallen from a nest.

Then I saw practicality meet need:
She’d gathered ends of cigarettes; with thin
Red fingers pinched and rolled them for the weed,
A ziptop bag to catch her winnings in.

As I came near her, she took out a leaf
Of paper for a cigarette: though scattered
Flurries began to swirl, some scant relief
Beneath the wintry sky was all that mattered.

As snowflakes lit upon her tangled hair,
I passed her, moving to the right, at pace,
And glanced her scarred and ravaged face, an air
Of bitter knowledge in a bitter place.

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Domestic Scene

Wind roars this sunny winter day,
While sitting by the window they
Drink coffee, read—sometimes to one
Another—and enjoy the sun
And peace and the inflections of
Their ways, their lifetime spent in love.
Even the ticking clock, the dust
Motes in the air, the waning fire,
The certainty that all expire
Deepen the beauty of their trust.

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Tiree MacGregor began publishing verse with The Epigrammatist in the early 1990s. Since then his poems have occasionally appeared in print and online journals. He taught university English for many years in three Canadian provinces and now works as a freelance editor. Born in Scotland, he lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.