(for L. C.)<\/i><\/p>\n
He floats you supine on the sea. Your body<\/p>\n
a small island, strangely
\nhuman. With compass and quadrant,
\nhe comes to know you,<\/p>\n
charting the elongated coastlines
\nof your torso and limbs,
\nyour fingers\u2019 intimate inlets, riding
\ncharged waters around your face.<\/p>\n
At dusk, you hear
\nthe birds singing bright news of
\nhis landfall upon your shoulder
\nto grazing, oblivious sheep.<\/p>\n
He releases you without
\nthought into the sky,
\nyour body, burning,
\na distant star.<\/p>\n
With crazed lenses and mirrors,
\nhe comes to know you,
\nclimbing the mountain,
\ninto thin air,
\nto site you through
\nnight\u2019s telescoping eye.<\/p>\n
At dawn,
\nhe names you for a lost sister
\nfound cataloguing God\u2019s praises
\nat the bottom of a well
\nsunk in the shoulder of
\na small island.<\/p>\n
He strips your velvet skin,
\nyour body, a holy
\nscroll, carried down the mountain
\naboard a ship of cloud.<\/p>\n
From cloisters and alleys,
\nhe summons the scholars
\nto interpret the message of
\nyour ancient flesh and bones.<\/p>\n
(for Anthony Selbourne<\/i>)
\n<\/i>
\nOne stray letter and we might have heard
\nSt. Blasius\u2019s cast iron peal. Now, sun strikes
\nthe booth standing guard atop the trail.
\nSix quid each \u2014 to tame the \u201csavagely grand\u201d.<\/p>\n
Backwards climbers, we set our gears
\nin reverse. Descend to ascend. Treading stone,
\ngravel, two centuries\u2019 steps, over arched bridges,<\/p>\n
back and forth across the stream,<\/p>\n
which sings its living lesson, carving
\nits cleft deeper into greened cliff.
\nWhere the fall pools, I look up,
\n\u201coooh\u201d and \u201caaah\u201d like a pensioner.<\/p>\n
You light up another Mayfair,
\nyour cough almost consumptive,
\nconjuring the ghost who led us here.
\nThe stream makes its own weather.<\/p>\n
Bathed in spray, we walk on through
\nliverworts, mosses, horsetails, ferns;
\ntrees, like tourists, native and foreign,
\ntransplanted from Brazil, Japan;<\/p>\n
calls of wagtails, crazed cockatiels.
\nDown and down we go. Our mountain peak:
\na whitewashed cottage, rolling waves.
\nPilgrimage is process, too. Arriving,<\/p>\n
we do not linger. Arm in arm, turn back on
\nour heels. A breathless climb to home comforts:
\nTea and scones under combed thatch.
\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0But the sea, Jack, the sea\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Leaves of cloud
\ncast against
\na porcelain sky.<\/p>\n
Haloes \u2018round
\nthe angel moon.<\/p>\n
You took stock:
\nsun, wind, vapour,
\nthe weight of air;<\/p>\n
earth spinning on
\nits axis
\nbeneath your rooted feet.<\/p>\n
More than Abraham\u2019s,
\nyou were Aristotle\u2019s scion:
\nyour prophesies —<\/p>\n
patterns perceived
\nin all that\u2019s connected,
\nin perpetual flux.<\/p>\n
*<\/p>\n
Eight years to the day
\n(Eight years! Can it be?),<\/p>\n
I mark the day you left:<\/p>\n
thirteen below; the wind, northwest;<\/p>\n
over Toronto towers,
\nyour boyhood\u2019s arctic blue prairie sky.<\/p>\n
In the cemetery:
\nyour impossible grave dug in
\nfrozen ground,
\nsolid as the shield,
\nbeneath.<\/p>\n
*<\/p>\n
This cold January eve,<\/p>\n
my palm grows warm
\nabove a candle\u2019s small flame.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll sit beside you, Mother, here,
\nin your closed den, sinking slowly into
\nbeige ultra-suede, and, together,
\nwe\u2019ll watch the Weather Channel.<\/p>\n
Above Atlantic waters: a whisked vortex,
\nwhirling counterclockwise into the white
\nseed curl of embryo
\nwhose open eye stares back<\/p>\n
at space. No pathetic fallacy \u2014
\nthat king gone mad with grief fell
\nsilent long ago. This is nothing
\nbut the plot\u2019s bright thread. Out<\/p>\n
on the boardwalk, his T.V. hair blowing,
\nthe weathercaster rattles off stats.
\nBehind him, nervous waves rise, crash.
\nWe\u2019re far from the front, but<\/p>\n
your Filipina caregiver is playing it safe:
\nRecalling childhood\u2019s typhoons,
\nshe slides shut condo windows, fills buckets,
\nhunts down matches, candlesticks.<\/p>\n
\u201cEleven hundred miles in diameter!\u201d
\n\u201cA Frankenstorm!\u201d Between clips,
\nyou watch the ads for Celebrex.
\nThe mundane, too, holds you rapt.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook,\u201d you say, \u201cit\u2019s sunny in Calgary;
\nraining in Saskatoon.\u201d Repeating
\nbites your mind can grasp.
\nI\u2019ll sit beside you, Mother, here,<\/p>\n
in your closed den and, together,
\nwe\u2019ll talk about the weather.
\nSuspended for these few brief hours
\nas vapour in billowing cloud.
\n <\/p>\n
Will we go for a manicure in heaven?
\nWill we sit like this in deepening blue,<\/p>\n
side by side at petite, lacquered tables,
\nabove mute clouds, the highest jet?<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll have all the time in the world
\nin heaven. The Angels of Beauty<\/p>\n
shall attend us, their hummingbird wings
\ninvisible as they hover in mid thin air to paint<\/p>\n
each of our nails a different hue. In heaven,
\nour nails won\u2019t break nor our polish chip.<\/p>\n
Our hands ever soft inside belled sleeves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Companion Poem (for L. C.) He floats you supine on the sea. Your body a small island, strangely human. With compass and quadrant, he comes to know you, charting the elongated coastlines of your torso and limbs, your fingers\u2019 intimate inlets, riding charged waters around your face. At dusk, you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2279,"parent":229,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1412","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1412"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2427,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1412\/revisions\/2427"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}