The second son of Edmonton pioneer york boat builder, ferryman and mining, telegraph and lumber entrepreneur John Walter, Stanley set out downstream to gather the
family business lumber which had floated away in the great flood of 1915.
A father's legacy,
logged and sawn to corded lumber,
lifts in the flood of expectation.
Like foam it floats away downstream.
The son must leave to gather it,
strain oars through rolling water to gain on it,
faster than currents of father-son descent.
He squints at riverbank bush,
at full-stream flotsam,
searching for clean-cut, stackable domain.
Hidden in boiling rills and mud-flood
—there, and there—are pieces to collect
and sell at riverside, sell to whoever
will value the father's work and wealth
before it is gone,
before it can no longer be the son's. | LISTEN to this poem:
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