The poem that has never left me

my contribution to a community writing challenge about enchantment

Jul 24, 2024

We read to put present circumstances in a different light.

The world is going crazy AND it’s summer. These are two good reasons to keep our nose in a book. Stories offer a broader perspective, they remind us of what it means to be human and they give our weary soul a break, which we all need sometimes.

This is my contribution to

Quiet Reading with Tara Penry

’s community writing challenge where we share a piece of writing that has enchanted us. With Tara’s permission I’m submitting the same piece of poetry as last year so most of this essay is from the archives. If you’ve been here awhile you may have seen it before. It remains my favorite piece of writing and time constraints don’t allow for a new post.

According to the dictionary to be enchanted means to be ‘utterly captivated’, to hold one’s attention. Many light years ago I was captivated by a poem I came across in my college English class. It seems magical to me that this piece grabbed me the way it did given the context of my life at the time. David by Earle Birney landed in my heart decades ago and has never left. It holds a great deal of power for me so I do not share this lightly.

Looking back I think it was a foreshadowing of things to come. The poem pierced through the outer layers of a young adult, a college student newly on her own, one who was honing her skills as a top-notch partier and fun-getter. Poetry, or depth of any kind, was not on her agenda yet but this piece still managed to get through, like magic.

The assigned work for the class was a poem from the text The Evolution of Canadian Literature in English: 1945-1970. Let’s just say I was not excited. While flipping through the book I stumbled on a different piece than the one assigned and in doing so my mind was blown, my heart was opened and I never forgot it.

The poem was called DAVID by EARLE BIRNEY. I loved it so much that, at the end of the semester, I took that textbook with me and I still have it. (If you are reading this and you’re in admin from my Alma Mater I am very sorry and will pay for it, please let me know!).

Amidst controversy over its content the poem, David, reached great acclaim following its release around 1940. It won the author, Dr. Earl Birney, one of Canada’s foremost poets, a Governor-General award as well as plaguing him with constant public speculation.

The poem is set in one of the most spectacular places in Canada while at the same time containing a riveting story that will never leave you once you read it. There was great debate whether Dr. Birney was writing from experience rather than creating fiction which has spurred many climbing expeditions. There has even been a mountain near Banff, AB named for the one in the poem.

For all that, none of these reasons are why this piece is the most enchanting piece of writing I have ever encountered. The randomness of finding Birney’s work the way I did and how, in retrospect, I see it forecast my future life, are why I feel I was guided to it, or rather why it found me. The beauty of the Canadian Rockies and the joy and sorrow of mountaineering are part of my daily life now.

My sons at the world-famous Bugaboos many years ago.

When I initially read this poem as a young adult, I was riveted by the bond of friendship the two boys shared through their joy and heartbreak. I was awed by the split-second, life-changing situation they found themselves in and the ethical dilemma they had to navigate. The story had a power that did not simply seep slowly into my bones as some poetry does, rather it electrified me. The words made me sit up straight to pay attention, while thoughts of what happened on the mountain stole my sleep at night.

Fast forward a few decades and this prairie girl lives in the mountains, not far from where this (fictional) poem took place. I have gained a great deal of depth since my partying college years, I read a lot of poetry now and contemplate all the questions.

Most importantly, I am the wife to a guy who loves mountaineering. I am Mama to two boys who were born and raised in these mountains, children (now adults) of the Kootenays, who explore everything the mountains have to offer. They live this poem - it is their life and what they do. While there has, thankfully, never been an event of this magnitude they have overcome a great deal of adversity and learned a lot from the mountain. Challenges of choice, as well as navigating the unexpected, the mountains have touched their souls and impacted their lives like nothing else possibly could.

Husband with our son, on his 12th birthday, doing an epic summit

Were there forces beyond my understanding preparing me to be present with my mountain boys? Was that poem shown to me to help me understand? The magnificent power of this piece, decades later, holds every time my guys head to the hills with their ice ax and crampons. Whenever they take their climbing rope to the pitch or their bike to the trail this beautiful Canadian poem has me saying ‘May the Grace of the mountains hold them, may they stay safe, may they find peace.’

David and Bobby have remained with me my entire life. This is what enchanting art will do and why it is a vital part of the human condition.