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| 1853 | |||
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| 1953 | |||
Cracks in rock, some might say a hole, could a man fit, Fit? Physically, emotionally, spiritually, sexually? The man does not question, curiousness is his answer and his constant companion, His direction is clear, gravity helps it, Are curiosity and gravity partners in discovery? Imagination betrays the preservation of senses, preservation of self A boat, a rope an adventure, a virgin place on this planet, an anomaly, Lets go, water rushing, dictating the course, course of what? Knowledge, personal growth, insight, business potential, how will this feed my family? Geological curia, who would want to see this, I’m here. Darkness save for a lantern and a flashlight and a camera Deafening turbulence of water, what’s around the next corner? Satan’s disciples, angels of safe passage, maybe just what’s around the corner, A welcome sight, a meeting of water and stone, a reason to go back, finally! Turbulence of water is not always kind, Commotion, excitement, tipping boat, hold that borrowed camera There goes the flashlight, A slow dark trip back along a braided umbilical cord towards a warm sun, A grown mans rebirth into his future. |
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| Alexander Murray | |||
| 2006 | |||
Igneous, metamorphic, sedimentary, glaciers, erosion Why does Miss Coleman want me to remember these names? All I want to remember are the pretty colors, The shapes of creatures imbedded in grey hard stuff, Get on the school bus, pencil and paper in hand, towards a cave in the country. Paper bag lunch, juice in a box, Kraft squeeze a snack, a five dollar bill reeking of onions and salad dip, I hope the man at the store will take it, Hills, buildings, fields, trees, a bus window kaleidoscope, When will we get there, I have to pee |
Two Weeks Later | ||
(A poem stapled to a bulletin board in the hallway of any elementary school with other poems amid bristlboard cut outs of cephalopods, crinoids, gastropods brachiopods and bats) |
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| by: Clem
Cristoff 'Miss Coleman’s’ Grade 4 Class |
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| Twisting
passageways, boardwalks to discovery, new words, new feelings Shadowy darkness of an alien environment like in a movie, That poor man dropping his flashlight, Did his wife worry if he’d be all right? Thank you long since dead kind sir for our trip, The teacher’s words now make sense, sedimentary, silt, fossils and glaciation, Add them together they make a strange formation. |
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"Four years ago I went to a poetry workshop that was absolutely liberating. I learned that poetry did not have to rhyme, nor did the cadence of the sentences have to connect, in other words we were encouraged to let ideas free flow. Anyways to make a long story shorter I returned the next week with this poem I had written to honor my former employer and friend Tom Woodward the man who founded the Bonnechere Caves. After my reading the organizer came up and asked me if I had ever read poetry by, and she said the name of a famous poet whose name escapes me right now, because she thought I should as she explained that “our Work” had a similar style. I write one poem and it was already being referred to as “my work.” I laughed!!" Chris Hinsperger has spent most of his adult life as a youth worker, with Browndale in his early years and later with the Ministry of Community and Social Services and the Youth Services Bureau of Ottawa Carleton. For the past 17 years he and his wife Val have owned the Bonnechere Caves. He is also a member of the Delfi Group whose motto is “Helping people and organizations to be the best they can be.” One of Chris’s pleasures of owning a geological treasure like the caves is to welcome school groups were he can pass on the wonderment of the planet earth and what lies above that earth and deep down inside it. |
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Chris and the Grade Four Class of 2008 from Kanata Public School getting ready to go deep, down inside the earth |
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| Check out the
caves: www.bonnecherecaves.com |
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