Author: toddanderson

A special piece for Father’s Day, written a week ago as a tribute to my dad, whose latest labour of love demonstrates clearly what can only be described as a lifelong instinct of faith, as James says: “I will show you my faith by my works.”

Let me say what service is:
Along the roads that carve these seven hills
(Fair Peterborough, city of drumlins
And lost souls wandering like the Otonabee)
Generosity passed with an unheaving heart.
Mind, turret-like, swivelled left and right in search
Of the ragged people tucked away in the verge,
The outer margins, the thresholds and edges
Of humanity, where much more kindness must rise
Within us to meet the lowly and downtrodden.
I saw him descend and ascend with meagre gifts,
But such humble cloth, when it goes down so far,
Needs must rise golden treasure of thankfulness,
Though it be hardly possible for these lost ones,
These precious ones, these hidden ones to speak it
In the open air.  Whispered then tent to tent,
And looked for expectant through the fly sheet
With the morning’s hangover heavy as rain
Still clouding all their better, inner light.
Here comes the bus – and what a thing to see cresting
An old east-city lane, unlooked for but sought,
As all true fathers are, when we crave gracious strength
In the bleak hours of our weakness.

Todd Anderson (Stuff of the Rind, Sand and Sail, Collected Poems) writes the newsletter Mirth to share a behind-the-scenes look at his writing process as well as to offer readers the first fruits of his poetry and reflections. He grew up in the forests of small-town Ontario, contending against nature in all its beauty and harshness.  His training as a literary scholar of Latin and English literature inflects his love of poignant turns of phrase, but it is the influence of his family and their myriad adventures together that infuses his story-telling and poetry with its substance and power.  Todd lives and writes in Ottawa with his wife and six children. If you are interested in supporting Todd’s work, please follow the links below to donate or buy his books.