Absence in Numbers

Friday, 22nd May. ...the men are much crowded, but the Officers have good quarters, the boat being considerably larger than the old Northcote, although of similar type.

Post-battle pleasure cruise for
soldiers, down the North
Saskatchewan river. Amusing
to think this vessel contains
the largest population for miles
around: a portable town. Floating
ant colony. Wish I was instead
a spider with my own web,
space to spread, spin, scuttle.

Rain, sun, wind - days
stretch and unravel like
a poorly knit sweater. Eternity
is a boat ride on an endless
river. We try to forget
why we came here.
Oh, what I'd give
for clean clothes, uniform
or otherwise.
***
Took me four days
to walk home, always listening
for gunfire or the heedless noise

of soldiers who've won by sheer
number; thought for sure I'd find
maman and the girls.

This, this was not
what I expected. If not
for the tree, the initials still carved

there - how could a life, a house,
a barn, a family
disappear in smoke?

Even the henhouse,
the chickens
were gone

as if our homestead
was sugar dissolved in tea
melting into air and earth

nothing left but fine black residue at the base
the very ashes trying to leave
on a north wind

I kept vigil three
days and three nights; there was
no resurrection.

Now I walk west,
because the endless lines of soldiers
came from the east.

I have 14 years. I fought for my family, my life, my future
and Dumont. Then surrendered my rifle
to the priest.

Adrift

Friday, 22nd May Boarded the steamer "North West" this morning for Battleford, and hope to make it in three days.

More boating
in this landlocked flatscape
than a summer within sight
of the Great Lakes. The riverwater
almost as smooth, mundane
as horizon and domed sky. Grasses
ripple in wind, vast emerald ocean: today
a galloping beaver dashed ungainly
through snapping undergrowth,
dove sleekly silently as a seal
into the water, almost without
ripple. I did not see him
surface.
Enviable his escape, his shape - swift most singular
purpose.
***
I would like to see
the river one more time
the stars at night
my mother's hands
my father's eyes

I would like to know
who I was going to be partnered
with, what it is like
to bear a child.

Instead, these twelve
winters are all
I will ever have. I saw
only three moon-times, never knew
the touch
of a lover.

What entered me
was a bullet, sharp and piercing.
I bled. My hand trying to hold in the red red
river that flowed. Here I lie.
I'm dead.

Of fighting and war and hate and violence
I was completely blameless.
I'm the Dakota girl that died at Batoche:
forgotten, cold.
Nameless.

Worry


I step off every curb assuming
the car won’t brake for the stop sign

I imagine the nurse rifling through my pockets
for a phone number, wonder if you’ll be home
when she calls, if you’ll crumple

I think about all the things
I haven’t written down

How lucky you are to trust
that I’ll always make it home

To believe the plane will be righted
before impact, that an absent wallet
was tucked away for safe-keeping by a stranger

But that just means I have to fret double-time,
carry the gut-twisting weight for both of us

how to do a hit and run

if physics has taught you anything, it's this. you are the air around bruised fruit, the dome of age that surrounds the body. you are here to speed things up. to sex things up. remember, there are two ways the body can buckle. you allow then you enable. see how the automobile was invented for luxury? see how we all sing zoom zoom? if you watch enough tv you will know a thing or two about the victims eyes. so go ahead, make the first move. become the answer. because knowledge is stored in the body. because secrets can spill like blood. because the crime scene was already there. because our fathers paved the way. because this is the age of collisions. because this is the age of slow-mo. because the body is slippery and impossible to identify. because personal property is a myth. because it's always easier to drive. because no one returns phone calls anymore so why leave a note. because isn't this what we all want? the human and the machine...to see just how far we can go...

the angel's share

Slainte mhath
North Atlantic peat-men
you cut fat cubes of smoke and heat,
trickled clear the water rite
for tongue, lips, throat, the belly,
re-created celebration, consolation, wisdom
that swallowed smooth all the way down,
was done, dusted, distilled
decades, hell, centuries,
before this war was invented.

Slainte mhath Orion
light Cubans,
break chocolate
tart and black as Kuchi tents
pegged by the Arghandab river,
palm almonds, freshly shaken/cured in Dande,
raisins made in grape huts used for grapes
not ordinance, not hiding nor attack;
cut wedges of pomegranate fat, red,
let them bleed on our fingertips
the colour of all our dead,
the colour of the hunter’s dress uniform pressed
for Brigade Officers’ Dinners in the mess,
that we should savour each glossy seed
so damned sour, so damned sweet;

Slainte mhath
say it aloud for the boy we witnessed,
though words are so God damned meaningless,
come far too late to do any good
for the boy carried, then shouldered
all the way home strapped
carefully, the tender side of war,
the one who’ll never know an afternoons’ best whisky;
pour for him, for ever here, now,
before the wind is up, the lanyards on the flag poles click,
and it’s too late for sails across this Great blue Lake,
say it before this moment passes as his cortège passes
beneath overpasses, down Canada’s own ring road,
a threnody of Harleys singing a lament
as the piper pipes his Flowers of the Forest
on hot black tarmac, and the turbines click click,
and a thousand people pull over to the side of the road,
go silent;

Slainte mhath
to the worn grass you stand on
within the starburst of the old bastion,
the Martello towers squat and sturdy,
such quaint limestone, so comfey in their history,
your shoes are buffed so black and shiny
we see reflections of ourselves
as you pour good whisky gone to ground,
and you are tired, have seen too much,
and I am so tired, have heard too much,
as we offer just for him
the angels’ share.

I drove my son to the edge of town

I drove my son to the edge of town,
handed him his things, some cash.
Even a mother's love breaks down.

When he was a baby I felt that I could drown
in love so deep, so vast.
I drove my son to the edge of town.

But now the sea of love has dried and run aground.
Our children run so far, so fast,
even a mother's love breaks down.

I sped away, and heard the broken sound -
my heart, its shattered clasp.
I drove my son to the edge of town.

I left him by the freeway, not a soul around.
I left without a backward glance.
Even a mother's love breaks down.

I keep his picture on the mantelpiece. I've found
it helps appease the worried past.
I drove my son to the edge of town.

Blow by blow the bloody cord unwound,
it left a tiny little gash.
I drove my son to the edge of town.
Even a mother's love breaks down.

Pax Aeterna

Wednesday, 20th May Chief Beardy visited camp today and swore eternal peace with the whites, which was the immediate result I suppose of the victory at Batoche.

He was hard
to read, his eyes
gave away nothing. He is
rumoured

to be bold and fierce,
his name from the scattered
grey beard on his chin.

From the frightened way he spoke
it appeared there was little enough
of a man, within.

Eternal peace, easier
to swear
alive
than dead.

They crouched next to the tent
- one private joked they were
waiting
to be fed.
***
Beardy and Okemasis
went to Middleton today.
The Redcoat General
Said had they not come, he would have
Burnt their reserves away:

as it was, he shamed
and scolded them
like an old woman.

Forbade our peoples any gifts of food or meat,
Tea, flour, or the stores promised in times of
Famine and pestilence. We hunkered down on the ground
at their feet.

I acted as interpreter, hard
to walk between these two worlds. Words
and meanings, slippery devils. Like catching
fish from a river with one hand.

They stared and joked
among themselves. Looked
down upon us.

Okemasis said he was trying only
to make a living for his wife and children.

Beardy said his men were frightened for
their lives and he prayed them to keep still:
towards the whites, he wished no man ill.

The clergymen with us
pled for stores for our little ones,
our wives and Elders. Middleton
said Beardy was lucky not to be hung
by his thumbs.

Beardy
Pledged
Eternal peace and left
Empty-handed.
Threatened loss of leadership and land, then stripped
Of his medals - as
The General
Demanded.

Sweet nothing


That time you were in the hospital
coiled in a nautilus of pain,
my palm too warm for your forehead
(before the morphine shot
you through with magical sleep),
I wanted, for the first time, to call you
darling sweetheart honey dear

But they didn’t sit comfortably
on my tongue, the situation too dire
for twirling cliches in front of you
And a decade in too late to christen you
with some pastry-sweet endearment

So I sat on the cracked lip of a plastic chair –
even my weight on the mattress hurt you –
and repeated your name,
oh your name oh your name oh your name
investing it with more tenderness
than it had ever held

7 a.m. to Montréal

Suits rustle into seats. Hands release seat-back trays,

pull out papers, touch cellphone keys.

Hi, it's me. Yeah, I'm on the train.

Laptop screens wake to white and blue,

fingers feel their way across keyboards.

Eyes turn aisleward to signal

a want of coffee. Hands know how

to hold the heavy liquid in white foam cups

without squeezing, to pass cup to lips

while scanning lines of type.

The last sip. Conductor calls

Dorval. Five minutes to Montréal.

Laptops click shut, coats rustle

and rear balconies of row houses

attract fleeting attention— a signal,

window blinds a flag code:

gather your things, get up,

watch. Be ready.

So fast

Oops,
slipping away
is May...

Perhaps it was overly ambitious to want to participate since # of days away from home during May = 16 1/2... I do have some snippets that have arisen during my travels that I will attempt to translate to the screen in the remaining days of May...

But it's great to see so much participation and poems being created! Kudos to you all!

(eleven)

(Note: poems six, nine & ten are not visible due to severe cloud cover.)


Behind the clouds
....................it hid
day
after day.

Unexpected it arrived
through French doors
......mid-day light
spilling hope
on the cherry wood slats --
flooded them, really.

He smiled for
the first time in eleven days.

Mr. Statue of Liberty Addresses the Nation

It was a shotgun wedding—
the guards chased me out of her when they heard me read religious literature aloud.
Most nights I had to be content with a 12-inch model,
the details imperfect, the surface too new.
Nights too hot for compromise
or too cold for deprivation,
I snuck out to see the lights shimmer on the water,
imaged her crown like a superhero might at the climax of the movie,
as the scene of a pitched battle,
as the brush with quick death, and then out again
on the other side.
Eventually even the plainclothes officers grew to like me--
the ones really looking for the nuts—
for I am charming, and wear my allegiance on my chest.

Comparative reading


Too serious for the frivolity, the gawdy posters
of the children’s department, you spent hours alone
with the comfort-smell of dust and dry paper,
the wood polish and antique waft
of the reference section of Cornish Library
You carefully turned huge atlas pages,
traced coastlines with your small fingers
Checked out only bird guides, returned them
when you’d memorized wingspans and breeding ranges

Meanwhile, in the bright air conditioning of the Westwood branch,
I bee-lined for the candy-covered laughs
of Bruno and Boots, Judy Blume,
searched the shelves for any crisp new book
(the thrill to being first, ever, to peel open the cover,
wolf down those pristine words)
I hefted stacks of paperbacks on the counter
and waited for a librarian, round or thin, to nod her approval

You chose your own adventure from the saffron frames
of National Geographic – the more remote the better –
and I watched for the latest issue of Owl,
which my Mom would prop in the front window,
so I could see it as I rounded the corner home for lunch

Your family had Collier’s Encycolpedia and when I tell you
we had World Book I hear the old jealousy in your voice,
know how you yearned for the luscious colour plates,
the strata of clear plastic that built the shocking entry for Human Body

But we were both drawn to the flame red braids of Anne Shirley
You’re still proud of the softcover you brought home as a classroom prize
and I tell you about the thick early edition my sisters and I read and reread,
the soft pages that also bear my Mom’s young fingerprints

Parade

Tuesday 19th May Reached Prince Albert at noon today...The people of Prince Albert have been shut in from the rest of the world for several weeks and they welcomed us with joy as their deliverers.

Poplar, spruce, tamarack
farms tucked in between
dappling glades: a man
could grow roots here,
like the ones that surface
serpentine, twist
and coil along resined
groves. We are
heroes for these
shut-ins, blockaded and
held hostage, separated
from bastions of civility by
the rebels and their
savage uprising.
The occasional sullen
look that I catch
is, confessably,
quite surprising.
* * *

May 10, 1884 1 year earlier, the Prince Albert Times says of the Dominion Government, "Where they get the information which induces them to believe the people are likely to submit much longer , we do not know; but we can answer them that they need not look for their friends among the Canadians, half breeds, or Indians, as they are likely soon to be made aware of in a manner at once startling and unpleasant." The editorial is translated into French and circulated among the Metis communities, too.

The town is filled with
redcoats and despair;
but civility hides
hostility like red hides
the true colours of these
men from the East, drawing
wage to teach us who
calls the shots, who
fires them, too.
Even a borrowed American
complete with the latest
war machine.

Dealing death
efficiently, what else are taxes
for.
Save your breath
in cheering them on, they've won
the battle, not the
war.
***
Poundmaker
resumed control of the
bands today. Fine Day's
war lodge
was taken down. Father
Cochin
has been sent to sue
for peace.
And we ate well five days, from
supply wagons. There is that,
at least.

Kitchen: Vegetables

My brief days count up to one hundred
and no further: I am whole vegetables,
sprouted beans, buffed skin hiding seed

There is no cooking here, the day is
just so: sun setting shadows,
birds no longer singing, chirp automaton

Like the clock ticking
on the shelf that holds the dishes,
the dishes that will never be used

My tongue makes spit and begs tomorrow
thoughts already with the fall
even while the lilacs bloom: profuse

Intoxicant. One hundred day is fleshy purple
(hunger rubs a hidden bruise)
I am a table full of vegetables

The sun has hit the leaves
birds say what is necessary
clock ticks a going

Tongue licks the lips of vegetables
it is as it is
as it is

what to do when you suspect your husband is having an affair

start shaving your legs again. get a sitter. remind yourself that love is god's greatest magic trick. you have to believe in it if you want it to work. want it to work. remember that tears are the body's way of saying enough and you swore you'd never have enough. begin with the basics. wedding vows, birthday dinners, the speed at which he undresses you. the space your body has made for the weight of his hands. how he looks you in the eye every time you make love. how when you make love something like a soul inside the carriage of your body says, honey, this is it. now is not the time for questions. so bury them in the backyard beneath the swing set. they will only rise and fall with legs of nausea.

let suspicion enter your life like a new lover. let it tease you with the briefest of kisses. let it win you over. recall the depth of the senses. apply yourself diligently to the task of taste, smell, touch, and sight. do not covet. do not call. watch and follow. lean and brace. do not be afraid to let the fabric of your life pull and tear. do not adjust your wardrobe. do not weave. soon these threads will disappear. simply flick off the lightswitch of your desire and never tiptoe back. get used to the dark. familiarize yourself with exits. leave windows open, doors unlocked. do not turn the living room lights down low. do not loosen the kitchen's overhanging light. this is a crime you can never interrogate. a case you will never solve. so let him in. watch him undress. but do not meet his eye in the screen of gentle shadows. think of women in red bandannas, flexing. think gloria stienem. think tie dye. do not fall apart with love.

finally know that sex has always required trespassing. that bodies lose their marks. list the things that belong to you and gather your belongings in a safe place. (this is what family is). console yourself with the knowledge that divorce is simply the distance between two bodies, the river of sheets that rises after love. there is no border finer than skin. assure yourself that this was inevitable. that all flesh falls away.

Thirty-day pass: 5. The Island

Red

Iron-rich dirt the color of brick,

red rocks, rusty sand.

How startling to see it:

the soil is red.

Blue

Heavier than sky, deep

cradle rocks the island

in dense aquamarine light.

Green

Needles, blades, sharp-toothed leaves

viewed from a distance, coalesce

into a soft mass.

Northern Lights

Monday 18th May Started for Prince Albert this morning and made one half the distance...it is a small scattered town of about 1,000 people...the centre of a flourishing settlement surrounded by a fine country...one of the finest that could be desired. Excellent for farming purposes; abundance of firewood and timber.

Knifing north, away from
the eye-dulling flats, from riverbumped
hills and gophered grasslands.

Land more like
home. Forest, farmland,
something akin to
civilization. Country
worth fighting for.

***
May 10, 1884 - one year earlier

The Prince Albert Times newspaper taunts the Dominion Government, labeling it, "a greedy, grasping, overbearing bully"

Dictates from the East:
always appearing
like unwelcome weather
blowing in too fast;
an infestation
of grasshoppers.

Pretending they know best
as an honoured dinner guest
at the far end of the table.

Selling our weekday cutlery to buy
their Sunday sable.

how to tell if your neighbour is a psychopath

does he pace? does he look you in the eye so intently that you need a nap or an asprin afterward? does his handshake leave you fumbling for weeks? does he sometimes answer to a different name? does his body spasm and rock whenever a joke is told? does he stand on his doorstep and shift his gaze from house to house like a soldier absorbing the proportions of bodies before he shoots? do you find yourself fantasizing about the strength of his hands in the dark of your house? do you find yourself feeling choked?

Mrs. Eiffel Tower Crashes Her Jet

Picket fence, barbed wire,
arrows and fighter jets,
latticework of metal going up, up, up!
Everything comes to a point, eventually,
except, what was it, two parallel lines? Forever
distant, unable to kiss, though on the horizon
they may give this illusion.

Distance to the tower: too far.
The tower asks for her intentions.
She is silent and thrumming, thinking
of the architecture of love, resolved
to point her jealous hunk of metal
to ground.

Youngests


Both youngest of three, neither of us has known
the weight of expectation, of leadership,
nor the glory of their fulfillment

Ground broken for us, curfews already eroded
But with a price: a lifetime at the end of a pointed finger,
an older sibling always claiming: not fair

We were the lookouts, the stoolies, the fall guys
More mascot than member of the team,
as easily blamed as ignored

Disenfranchised, we were forever too small,
too late, too slow, too far behind
and never given the chance to catch up

Sequestered to bed so early, born so late,
we missed everything good,
stood on the outside of every joke

But we learned how to split the vote
To see the warning signs and defuse a fight,
create diversion with jokes or tears

And even if we can’t make a decision between us,
there is room in our home for two youngest children
and our easy love of hugs, our sweet uncertain need to please

AWOL

WP gone AWOL

from May Day Poetry Project

apologies

but this May has brought more witness

to sorrow's field,

the awful flowering

Sunday, beside a tarmac,

in a curtained room,

I held a grieving mother

I knew her boy, stood sentry with him.

she thanked me for remembering,

we stood on the tarmac

watched the plane bring his flagged coffin

home.

poets, (but you already know this so forgive me)

take your words,

scatter them wild,

seed this earth with redemption.

Dawn, Dusk

(On the Northcote again) the only sleeping accommodation for junior officers was the cabin floor; and the cabin was, at once, dining room, lounge, and card room, it was impossible to get to bed until a late hour, only to be routed very early in the morning by the boat's employees...the hurricane deck was the most satisfactory bunk of the trip, except that the sun rose rather early in the morning.

From the water
Days are getting longer; the bleak and frigid
pause
before dawn
less cold, less
hard.

I was kept up too late
by the men gambling, laughing,
playing cards.

My eyes half-closed on the hurricane deck,
I imagine myself at sea. The waving grasslands
beyond the banks could be ocean, not desolate
prairie.

The white half-light between four and five
interrupts my dreams. But worth it to see
the sun birth at dawn, colour bursting crazyquilt
the night's dark
seams.

* * *
From the bushes
The old men said for us younger ones
to flee to the banks, beyond range,
while they bought us all some time.

My mistake: to look back.

Macabre jig danced at the end of a rope
behind a slapped and galloping horse:
this is what I see in the blue half-light at dusk.

Only a month past, I fell asleep dreaming
Of my dark-haired love, our plans to be married
summer, next. I have only seen her dead brother these past days,

cannot find my family or hers. Strange
shapes settle in the horizon as twilight
deepens to night. As sunset fades I find I'm straining, searching for

The missed step that twitches me awake
just as I'm falling into a dreamless sleep
on the still trembling earth.

My life: an unstrung fiddle, a loosened bow.

Provenance


You came from a neighbourhood of single moms
Just one whole home on your paper route,
one kid in your class whose parents were married –
and to each other – so you made fun of him for it

It was a land of hand-me-downs from your brother
and sister, Sunday mornings sullied with chores,
a price tag on every broken juice glass, every little-kid goof

You had to teach yourself to ride a bike,
didn’t feel a steady hand under the seat, the shocking delight
when you realized it had disappeared

You never came home from school
to an unlocked door, the smell of peanut butter cookies
just pulled from the oven but off-limits until dessert

And yet much the same as the world I knew:
library books,and straight-A report cards,
that grade six lunch hour when the Challenger
cracked blue sky into three uneven pieces

But when I have to explain to you the concept
of a birthday party loot bag – candy and flimsy plastic trinkets –
I am at once thankful and ashamed
of my two-car, two-parent childhood

Mrs. Berlin Wall Cleans her Guillotine Collection

She remembers the day the bulldozers came, plastered
all over Svenska
Dagbladet.
Young people who, in another life, would have been hipsters,
crushing it to concrete turds
with their stolen sledgehammers,
her heart with it, ventricle ripped from aorta
and aorta from ventricle.
She clutched at her stomach that day, and every day after,
keeping the name, though married to rubble,
an historical curiosity. The venom,
she had taken it, the blame,
she had shared it, but this—unforeseen,
unprepared, a stake, blood dripping from her mouth,
her body to ashes.

Today she cleans the guillotines.
Blunt, and smaller than you pictured them,
but free of dust and lint. They filled her basement each by each,
since that day, begging for someone to love them.

Sowing

May 15th, Friday ...I ought to have mentioned also that we had on board with us Major Howard, US Army, better known as "Gat" Howard, and one of the two Gatling Guns which he had brought over for use in Canada...he occasionally did a little target practice with his gun for our edification. He was a fine chap, but a typical Yankee who believed that the only good Indian was a dead Indian.

We are journeying down
the South Saskatchewan:
monotonous and void.
Broken only by sandbar maroons,
paddlewheel repairs,
and the target practice of Gat
gunning down anything approaching
the river for a drink. A pregnant
doe bullet-strafed in the shallows; a line of goslings
puffed into the air,
dandelions gone to seed. Muttering
murderous incantations over what he'd do
to a Redskin or two.

Seated square-shouldered on the deck behind his gun
as if it were a farm implement to be ridden in summer sun.

Every day, the weather grows hotter.
Drifting down the river I'm reminded:
All things begin and end with water.
***
Gabriel's Last Military Manoeuvre
Nights are still cool
But day by day the land
is greening. Songbirds have
returned, somehow strange they
still sing. I am travelling south,
mostly under the stars. I will arrive
in Montana by tomorrow. I have made all
my farewells. Riel, in the glade, one last
conversation. Leaving Madeleine behind with our
daughter: will I see them again? My brother, nephews,
soldiers: we are all wanted men. On the horizon, the bluing
of the Cypress Hills. Beneath my horse's hooves, homeland. Maybe for
the last time. In other years, it would be time to start ploughing. This
spring, not the crop we'd thought to plant: bodies of our men, seeded with bullets.

Every night my last thought as I offer tobacco
to the Great Mystery: I am
a General
without
an army

what to do when your neighbour starts sleeping with your ex

lose weight immediately. let your organs fold and double like those of a baby or a mouse. slip beneath doors, open windows, etc. and with gloved hands inspect underwear, sheets, towels. when you catch his scent in a room or spot his beer in the fridge do not melt with nostalgia, do not set yourself on fire, do not take yourself in her bed and think about his biceps. never think about his biceps. instead recall how he would cry upon ejaculating. laugh at this. laugh even though you think it's kind of sweet. attempt wall climbing, hanging from ceilings. adopt a new look, that of a post or a window box full of flowers to match the patterns on your shirt. become two dimensional like bad art or a country song. just blend in. train your ear to love's vernacular, you know it well though it's been awhile, and meditate silently letting the sounds from her house fill you like smoke. do not exhale. above all do not get caught in your housecoat, without makeup, eating, crying, or feeling fat. nakedness is also best to avoid. remember, he knows your secrets: how in junior high you made out with that cheerleader (you were drunk), how in fifth grade your mother sent you to a camp for fat kids, how you thought sex inexplicably involved belly buttons, how you stuffed your bra, how all throughout college you likened beer to a dry season in the desert. these things are unimportant now even though your neighbour will soon parade them around the neighborhood like a new pair of tits. some things to keep in mind: you still give good head (best he's ever had), the trainer at the gym thinks you have the calves of some exotic animal and will probably ask you out soon, the boy who bagged your groceries last week thought your daughter was your sister, you're a good listener, you kept the number of that plastic surgeon, and even if you end up alone you know how to draw a good bubble bath and the stack of romance novels is a descent size. finally, assure yourself that men are like parking spots, hard to find, easily stolen, impossible to leave, always too distant, and you're a shitty driver. walk.

Conkers

Hang like horses balls, drop
one by one, clock cars and sidewalkers.
Upon impact, the heavy rind splits

to reveal brown flanks birthmarked
by an asymmetrical moon. Ambilical cap,
still musty with sex, we nose

before gathering in our pockets
to ward corners. Growth rings
store the season’s intervals:

from beach volleyball to Windsor knot.
Summer flown south on the back of a swallow;
the lakes we swam in are turning over,

heavy water sinking to the bottom.
So too our blood cycles, as we
armor ourself for the coming cold.

Rebel


When you were ten you rebelled against your mother,
started calling her mom
instead of the first name on which she insisted
as part of some new-fangled parenting technique

(You’re still the only one
brave or sentimental enough
to call her that)

You must have needed to plant a steady claim
after the house shifted, family set adrift
To clarify that you were not colleagues or buddies,
but blood-bound, inextricable

Or maybe you just wanted a mom
because all the other kids at school had one

She must have picked and frowned
at the soft, common rank you assigned,
tried to shrug off the title like a well-meant cardigan
tossed over shoulders she preferred bare

But she acceded and even now
she signs every postcard
Love, Mom.

Thirty-day pass: 4. Ontario

We're going to fall into the lake.

That's all I can think, unprepared

for the size of it, so close.

The far shore's invisible, a thread

dividing blue from blue.

You lean toward the window.

No, you say, there's ground

between us and the water.

Look.

I don't want to look.

The train stays on the tracks,

you know you say with a laugh,

and I bristle.

The man across the aisle

stares out the window too,

eyes half shut, saying nothing.

Drinking a beer slowly. Then another.

When the cart comes again he says Well

we don't have lakes like this in England

and orders two more.

Crossing Over

Friday, 15th May Crossed the river today and encamped on the north shore and in the evening learned that Riel had been taken prisoner and brought into camp. We were not invited to view him, however.

I am glad to cross the water
leave the south shore
and its blood-muddied banks.

We have captured the rebel.
They say he's half-mad, disheveled.
They found him wandering, alone.

Hard to believe
he negotiated the province of Manitoba
some 15 years ago.
***
Louis David Riel
is gone from my sight.
I am carrying our third child
but I cough blood each night.

Jean-Louis is but three,
Marie-Angelique, two.
Dumont brought us to safety,
then fled. What more can he do?

Our children are young:
may Louis be spared his life.
We've been married four years,
not so long for a wife.

Jean-Louis says he's now the man of the family:
Big shoes to fill for someone scarcely past three.

Au nom du pére, et du fils, et du sanct esprit
ainsi soit-il. Mais qui
protegéra nos biens nos foyers nos droits
et maintenant qui protegéra nos vies?

ritalin, a love story

3.

How do they do it, the mothers?
Managing four children, a husband,

a washing machine. Recall
the floors of minivans, soccer fields,

the joints of stairs littered with laundry,
dishes, pancakes. They plod on with their invisible

bodies that drag like days. They just don't
quit. They have the phone numbers

of doctors but perhaps they don't believe
in grace. Buzzing high

you soar above squirming children
until all you can hear is the gulp

of liquid in your throat. A vision
of the future stretches

above you like an Oak tree. And this
is what it comes down to: a ghost

in your living room, a gun. You grab
your children, swish the medicine

down the sink, phone the mothers
and admit your desperate, you don't

enjoy this. Then dive
into the whirr and needles of their hands.

Postcards for January

Remember grass? The soft cool itch
of it, freshly mown, under feet
calloused from so many barefoot
walks home in the dark.

Enclosed is a mental photograph
I took today: The year's first
cabbage butterfly in the garden,
a flapping scrap of white
silk, like our apple tree's frothy
blossoms. The sudsy
foam from five o'clock
backyard beers, their cold
breaths exhaling into the long yellow
light. The smoke from the fire pit
and cigarettes on the patio
filling my hair.

Please know, when you are shaking
at the bus stop in your wool coat
and thin boots, the possibility
of naked legs and sleeping
with the window open, that
silent snow gives way to hushed breath
through the screens, the whoosh
of traffic and the wind
in the elms, like a lover
who has finally returned
his sticky limbs and steady lungs
to your bed.

I remember you standing
in the dull purple twilight
of the early year, searching your pockets
for change, stomping your bootprints
into the snow, body revolting
against the season's deprivation.
Take these scraps of paper from another
unimaginable place and remember
the colour green: let it lead you through.