There was always a twinkle in his eye/ Under that gruff talk/ Booming voice/ and unique bushman curses/ that’d make any other metaphor blush bright red—/ red like the sunburn on his barrel chest./ Gold chains glinting/ Catching that twinkle again/ Midst a brooding, serious look—surveying the sky/ Sage purveyor of seasonal patterns/ Working out when to plant his potatoes/ over a bottle of beer, a cribbage game,/ a rubber-glove condom rolled onto his finger—that wicked grin:/ “Hey, Carrie! You got some butter for these brownies, or what?”/ Swigging back milk from his special glass; etched green with a narrow stem/ Talking about the pipeline, the mines/ An authority on the signs of nature: animal tracks, skat, broken branches./ “Beaver went through there, for sure.”/ Sketches roughed out on a scrap of cardboard/ The garage whirs to life in the morning/ a luminous spray of welding fire worms/ Fashioning strips of steel into personalized shapes./ A mechanic, an engineer, an artist./ Always tinkering, busy with projects—/ All unique and perfectly functional/ Get the job done—right/ Footstools for the grandkids/ Red wagons sporting swivel-turning mechanisms/ Family names dotted around the barn/ he built himself,/ which is, of course, next to a cabin/ he built himself./ Wander in the woods/ Watch a deer dart over a hill/ See a rabbit sit alert, listening, nose twitching/ We’ll remember him/ in the woods/ on a trail/ À la prochaine, notre ami, René Grenier.