Grampy—respected alum, Federal Minister, his honorary doctorate’s black floppy hat hanging on my office wall, flattened and mounted under glass, Hon. Gerald S. Merrithew, Doctor of Laws, Honoris Causa sewn on a square of satin. Grampy, MLA for East St. John during the Hatfield era and reciter of doggerel verse, might’ve known Nowlan well, might’ve known his poems; yet he doesn’t have his books among his military histories and outdoor guides at the family farm. After he dies, I find a 19th century Wordsworth with gilt-edged pages, tooled leather cover, the publication page missing. Mountain etchings for The Prelude. The last time I see him he’s lying on a chaise lounge they put in the kitchen; he’s wrapped in a blanket and it’s the first time I’ve seen him unshaven. He asks about my poetry, asks if I’d read T. S Eliot. I wish I’d asked him what he knew about Alden.
Nowlan lumbered. Can only the large lumber? I like to think it was the geography of UNB, nothing to do with size, the hill canting us, feet ahead, steps larger and longer, a lope, a saunter, the slow dip of the St. John River valley creating in our bodies a downhill compensation. Nowlan lumbering down Windsor Street—his big beard and big hair catching the snow, his tie blowing out behind him, his post-op neck distended as if he’s swallowing the day’s weather, his myth trailing behind his gait.
And we, too, lumber years later to his repurposed home—Windsor Castle turned grad house, the downstairs full with formica tables, the upstairs offices where we get our student IDs, file our grievances. Which room was the bedroom? Where he slept, snored off the whiskey? There are framed copies of his best-known poems throughout. “An Exchange of Gifts” is installed by the front entrance: “I will keep on / writing this poem for you / even after I’m dead.” And I want this to be true when I walk in after the angst-ridden one-upmanship of seminars, after I leave half in the bag, head down into a snowstorm, the door banging behind me.