fresh-cut pine for sale
where cairns of stone
like those on precipitous
passes skirt the highway
and the last of the Lake
of the Woods islands
shrinks from sight –
perhaps the island owned
according to the Moose
Jaw guy, by Bruce Willis –
the bus is quiet, septic
reek now masked
by the agglomeration
of the hours, like fifty
eggs whisked seamlessly
together, much as the ice mint
water and pallid spears
of sunlight strike fewer blows
on me – I’ve no food
no appetite for pit-stop diners
no energy – no fiction to write
and so I gnaw
at poems – isn’t that how it is?
no time for the setup
maybe, no selflessness left
in the tank to make any kind
of start on or peace
with imagined lives, when there
they are, the curious
stone portents, the makeshift
stand that would be for mangoes
at home, sappy wood
piled high atop its counter
higher on either side –
its counter unmanned, oddly low
as if the customers were
all doubled over
a pointless rampart that an old
horse could jump.
Ontario called, at last, by a new name –
*
Manitoba – the Trans-Canada
a prone stick
scuttled across by beetles
rhinoceros beetles
with oil tanks on their backs
mobile breeding farms –
to be done with this
grotesque line of thought
I close my eyes
imagine a protagonist
an Indian man – First Nation
I should say – who
keeps watch over his droplet
of road and sells
firewood with minimal success.
He’s baldish on top, long
everywhere, no
hair but scars on his arms
from the metal
sculptures he used to make
when she was still alive –
brown eyes
good heart, good jacket
worn always
bracing, endangered smile –
remarried? I wouldn’t think so.
but he’s a father
and his
kids stay in his shack
every other weekend –
two kids, a girl and a boy – one
*
loud and one quiet, both
smart but trying
their utmost not to be –
just like their dad –
they’re the ones who serve
a young Australian man when
he knocks
on the counter like a door
and in an alien
accent says, anybody there?
the kids go – dad’s out somewhere
gathering stones
for a new cairn – he’s had
a presentiment
as in his kooky way he often does
*
that there needs to be a spike
in blessings –
I didn’t mean for it to happen
the Australian says –
they can hardly understand him –
but my bus – it drove away
while I was in
the woods heeding nature’s call
and now I’m stranded
no phone, no internet, my lift
from Calgary to Vancouver
won’t know how tight
my schedule was, only that
I haven’t shown up –
can you kids help me? so, mister
you don’t want to buy any pine?
I’ll buy a piece
for a phone call, or a room –
where’s your mum?
in Saskatoon, they reply, but our
dad’s here somewhere. where?
where’s your dad?
meantime, under clouds strung
up like clothes
by lines of light, the man forages
out of earshot, past the break
in the tree line
where the prairies unfurl
the good stones lie –
puffed, saddled by auguries.
No comments:
Post a Comment