History Lessons by Pat Lowther‏

1.  A family legend:
       my great-uncle Johnny
       came back from the Klondike
       diamond-fingered,
                           pearl-pinned,
       gold in all his teeth.
       He never put hand to shovel,
       or panned a stream:
                          he opened barber shops.


2.   Eliza McCain,
        height five foot one,
        when the government ordered striking coal miners
        and everyone else) off the streets of Nanaimo,
        threatened to thrash a six-foot militiaman
        with her umbrella
        or, if he still stood,
        to go home for her husband's horsewhip;
        until the poor fellow,
        fumbling his hat and rehearsing
        alternative explanations for his superior,
        let her pass
        with shopping list triumphant.

        Unfortunately, the stores were closed.

3.   In 1945, in Japan,
        walking alone,
        Private O'Day
        came to a hillside temple,
        saw in its delicate carvings
        swastikas twining around the door;
        smashed, with rifle and rock and muscle
       (stone chipping, lacquered wood splintering,
        gut-lovely sounds of destruction);
        till with the return of breath
        and binocular vision
        he saw the symbol
        as it was really
                          old so old
        so much older than the thing he hated

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