Behind the Poem

On July 2, 2021, Peter McIntyre and his wife Karen decided to visit the Woodland Cultural Centre (the site of the former Mohawk Institute Residential School) to witness the shoe display on its front steps.

“We wanted to see this demonstration of empathy and solidarity with the students who had attended, particularly those who did not leave,” says McIntyre. “Our intention was to see a place we had barely known existed and pay our respects to the lives of children who had had their futures imprisoned.”

They stood at the front steps where the flags and banners hung along with the empty shoes. Several minutes passed until they looked at the second-story windows.

“Both of us had the sense that several sets of eyes watched us,” explains McIntyre.

“Following that, we walked around the building out onto the open space behind and then around the other side. Throughout we shared the sense of others who continued to observe us.”

Upon their return home, McIntyre felt an urgency to write. “The words came in a flood as I wrote as quickly as possible. Except for creating stanzas and arranging the lines, the poem is as I heard it. I had a strong sense, then and now, that while I wrote, others, the remaining souls at Woodland, had spoken the words.”

“I feel this is the point. If I received this communication there, where else are there souls who feel trapped, blocked or stymied in their journeys home? Perhaps there are others out there who can speak for those souls,” says McIntyre.

An educator by trade, McIntyre has taught primarily English and History, along with Geography, Arithmetic, Spelling, and Creative and Academic Writing at the primary and secondary school levels. His early writing is mainly academic; however, poetry always found its way into his consciousness. While he pursued other professional careers over the last 40 years, it is only recently that he realized that poems constitute a calling to express ideas and feelings, and he sees the natural world as a guide. “I have had the sense from those earlier days that I wrote from a different place than the room where I sat,” says McIntyre. Over the years, McIntyre has gathered a collection of poems in hopes of publishing them one day soon.

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