A successful long poem is an immersion, a trance, an emotional time capsule which leaves the reader changed, "been away."; This is characteristic of all good writing but the long poem form is particularly suited to the rambling nature of childhood memories.

The poet/child is in no hurry and can unfold details and take detours. David Zieroth begins this account with the night of his own conception, continues through early childhood to schooldays and ends with his family's move to B.C. Taken by the hand by his young alter-ego who has "the gift of sliding time,"; he leaves North Van and revisits the Manitoba farm where Zieroth grew up in the 1950s, disproving the adage, "You can't go home again.";

Zieroth skillfully avoids cynicism and nostalgia, engrossing the reader in a memory album that is not narrative, although narratives are implied, as he describes his young father as "learning unselfishness among the nest of us."; He also recalls: "The women and their connection/with eggs of hens, ducks, geese/ carrying in their red hands/ the delicate life/ always close to the hurt things first/ the first to know.";

A halfbreed muskrat trapper and his family are "nomads/ never worried about/ seeds washed away/ or choked out."; Loneliness, family ties, farmyard slaughter and schoolboy pranks; this is a loving but not mawkish reminiscence. The undertone is an awareness of death that insures against the sentimental.
With tenderness for the boy he was, the poet returns to his sixty-something West Coast identity and has learned, "I haven't left behind what came with me."; It amounts to an engaging and highly readable memoir. 1-55017-388-X

[BCBW 2006]