First Things

by Mark Belair

     “My last thing will be first things slipping from me.” -Seamus Heaney


The first things
that slipped

into my boyhood
soul

were the departure, from this life,
of my gentle grandfather

followed by
our family’s departure

from our hometown
in Maine—

so from our whole
French-Canadian clan—

and from the sea
that always beckoned me

to run alongside it
as freely

as my three-year-old legs
would take me:

these first, commonplace
losses—

held
uncommonly

long
and dear—

the last things—
come my last,

commonplace
departure—

set to slip
from this soul

of exile
they made.