prince edward island

For my cousin, Laurel, on her 60th birthday

From the family gravestone at St John’s Presbyterian Chuch:
“Tho’ lost to sight, to memory dear,”

Daniel MacLeod (1863 – 1927)
Flora Murchison MacLeod (1869 – 1956)
Katherine MacLeod MacDonald (1894 – 1989)
John Glenn MacDonald (1928 – 2009)
June MacDonald Young (1935 – 2016)

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How deeply stored,

the memory of those tunes.

Road to the Isle, Red Wing,

and St. Anne’s Reel—

my long-limbed uncle,

worn cuff of his plaid shirt,

large hand swaying the bow,

fiddle cuddled warm to his cheek,

almost a smile.

My cousin and I

walk miles of rippled clay,

along the shores

of Prince Edward Island

past the red soil fields

of our great-grandparents’ farm.

Our grandmother,

a strong bear of a girl,

worked alongside her father

and five brothers, set potatoes

in that white shed right there,

and rode Point Prim Bird,

hard as that horse could run.

While inside her six sisters

baked breads and pies, stirred stews,

roasted one hen to feed 14,

hung sheets and long johns

for tall brothers who slept

head to toe on the attic floor.

Sunday mornings,

they crowded and clonked

in horse and wagon,

baskets of dinner,

blankets laid across hay—

five rolling miles each way—

to sing the hymns we are harmonizing today.

There is a dream-like quality

in who we almost see.

Our cousin Dottie, long gone,

in the face of the shopkeeper

who sells honey.

The sheep farmer

leading morning announcements,

tall and lean as our brothers.

Later, in the aisles

of Cooper’s General Store,

we know the voices, the cadence,

that intake of air as affirmation—

from island stories and Gaelic lilt—

passed on to us as surely

as our height and able hands—

but are unsure

how to answer

when the owner asks my cousin, Laurel,

“Dear, is this your first time home?”

Kate Young Wilder