Neptune sighs
With the breath of a god who’s lived too long
And the fog descends
Over the living and the dead of Saint John.
Centuries of Protestant pride
And Catholic shame
Loyalist blood
And famine-starved bone
Crunching together
Like continental plates colliding
Ploughing up mountains
Resembling steeples.
Providing the habitat
For that singular species
The Old Saint John family.
They’ve created their own gods
Thick-featured statues with broad shoulders
Squatting outside Market Square
Appearing again
In the paintings of Miller Brittain.
But these thick people are only aspirational.
The Saint Johner
Is as thin-skinned
as the Pinot grapes
as the Pinot grapes
That also thrive
under cover of fog.
under cover of fog.
The bricks of their ancient buildings
Mortared together
With centuries of insults
both real and imagined
(Seven parts of the latter
to every one of the former).
to every one of the former).
They know their prayers.
But the one they know best
Is the one they'd never dare say
Before their neighbours.
A prayer the people in their Sunday finest
know better than the Lord’s
Than the Hail Mary.
We are afraid.
We feel alone.
We want to be wanted.
A prayer that still echoes
Against the stone walls
Of their family chapels.