This then is the grandfather poem that I told you about.
My grandfather was a Baptist minister
who came over to Canada at the age of 12
after having worked for three years in England
all by himself.
Matter of fact, a little more than that because he
started before he was nine.
Then he came over to England and went to University
and became a Baptist minister, and roamed all
over the Canadian prairies, building churches.
I mean, with his bare hands and other people
helping him, and building churches, and then preaching
in them for a little while, and then going
and building one farther West.
And he finally wound up in British Columbia,
having started back East in Ontario.
Grandfather.
Grandfather Jabez Harry Barring strode
across the Canadian prairie, hacking down trees and building
churches, delivering personal Baptist sermons in them,
leading holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty songs in them.
Red haired man squared off in the pulpit,
reading Saul on the Road to Damascus at them.
Left home, big walled Bristol town at age eight
to make a living.
Buried his stubby fingers and roots
gnarled Earth for a suit of clothes
and 700 grueling meals a year.
Taking an Anabaptist cane across the back every day
for four years until he was whipped out of England.
12 years old and across the ocean
alone to apocalyptic Canada, Ontario of bone
bending child labor.
Six years on the road to Damascus till his eyes
were blinded with the blast of Christ.
And he wandered West to Brandon among wheat kings and heathens
Saturday nights.
Young red haired Bristol boy shoveling coal
in the basement of Brandon College 5:00 in the morning.
Then built his first wooden church
and married a sick girl who bore two live children
and died, leaving several pitiful letters
and the Manitoba night.
He moved West with another wife and built
children and churches, Saskatchewan, Alberta British
Columbia.
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.
Struck his labored bones with pain
and left him a postmaster, prodding grandchildren
with crutches.
Another dead wife and a glass bowl
of photographs and holy books unopened,
save the Bible by the bed.
Until he died the day before his 85th birthday
in a Catholic hospital of sheets white as his hair.