ELORA – Known for being a local, eccentric character and attracting waves from neighbours and strangers alike, Jim Black has now published a book of poetry.
Jim, who turns 91 in August, said he started writing poetry while in kindergarten and he’s constantly jotting down notes and phrases and ideas.
Many of those wind up on the fridge, he said with a laugh, and then in the garbage.
He was a farmer most of his life and a mechanical engineer at a company in Fergus for 25 years, so writing was never even on the back burner in those days.
But in 2000, while receiving radiation treatment in Sudbury for cancer, he had time on his hands and mortality on the brain.
He started writing down his thoughts. Some of them emerged as poems.
“He’d send us letters with his poems and musing,” said his daughter Lorie Black.
“All these poems I’d heard before, just a little more fleshed out. It was quite a treasure to receive them.”
Lorie kept those poems in a binder but as time marched on she thought they were worthy of a book, “even if it was just for family,” she said.
“It’s a wonderful thing to have.”
So Jim selected some poems, her sister Linda did the editing, Lorie’s art – a painting of two cardinals – is the cover art, and the family self-published the book, called Ordinary Cardinals: Musings by the Bard of Colborne Street.
It’s a slim 50 pages featuring 18 of Jim’s writings – poems, letters and a few stories.
They are short. They are direct. Some are very funny. And with some, while the words are simple, the meaning is deep.
“These are different things I’ve thought about over time,” Jim said.
“Maybe I have a poetic mind. I put some into words, I made up a few, and some didn’t matter.”
If there’s an overarching theme in this book, it’s that nature is the boss.
“You can’t fool nature,” he said.
During this interview Jim recalled his days on the farm and how that taught him to be realistic. He saw a lot of life and death, a lot of weather events that impacted the farm, and a lot of folly with human beings trying to beat nature at its own game.
He says people are quirky and he enjoys watching them – “not judging, just observing,” he stressed.
Some of that comes through in his poetry too.
His favourite poem in the book is about his mother Isabel Black called To Mom, With Love and he read it aloud with a strong voice.
You sang us little ditties,
How we loved the songs we heard.
From you we’ve learned to wonder
At the power of printed word, reads one of the stanzas.
That led to memories of Isabel, who had 10 children, raised them on the farm, and taught them all right from wrong.
“She baked 20 to 30 loaves of bread a week,” Jim declared, adding that on top of other household duties, she volunteered with numerous church and community groups.
“She inspired us all,” he said.
Jim’s grandson Matt Black said he was raised by a single mother and Jim was the paternal figure in his life.
“I spent a lot of time with Papa,” Matt said, adding they would spend time in the workshop, “and he would teach me about everything in the world.
“Something I learned is that you don’t have to be perfect – just make it work. He’s always done that and it inspires me.”
Local author and historian Pat Mestern is a longtime family friend. She wrote the foreword in the book.
“He can write,” she said. “And he has a terrific sense of humour. He has a way with words people will understand, even if they think they don’t understand poetry.
“He makes wonderful observations. If you never read poetry, read his.”
Mestern said her own family preferred to pass stories down verbally so there is no written record of those stories she called “amazing” and “wonderful.”
“That’s why I was so glad Jim got his poems on paper,” she continued. “He needs to be remembered forever. He is a unique gentleman.”
Ordinary Cardinals: Musings by the Bard of Colborne Street is available for sale at the Bookery in Fergus, at the Wellington County Museum and Archives and at the Karger Gallery in Elora.
