Cabin, Slocanada, 31 August 2017

The last day of absolute summer began,
Astronomical and meteorological versions
In sync for one more spin. I had completed
Fifty-five orbits as an earthling since birth.
I was not likely to complete another,
Although no one knew how unlikely I was,
Not even me, who suspected the worst.
Back at the disjointed little cabin on the lake
After seventeen days orbiting Canada alone,
I stayed up for the personal New Year's Day
While daughter slept in her cubby with toys.
I waited out night and thought of the absent.
Someone unknown moaned in the woods,
Possibly a neighbor, probably nothing
Serious, but an unnerving cry nonetheless,
So close to midnight. The news of the world
Was one unrelenting moan that night,
The moon glowering orange through the smoke
Of our great summer of ashes in the north.
The lake lay low under the smoke, existing
As accidental phenomenon to which I gave
The holiest identity it was mine to bestow.
Past midnight, the most arbitrary human line,
I thought of my mother in labor with her first
Child that old night, and of the long winter
Night I waited for daughter myself, howling
In unison with her cleaving mother. Suffering
Is special for our species, we who know it
In our moaning bones for what it really is,
Simultaneously temporary and inevitable
As is a season, a year, a vanishing, a sleep,
As any return to a difference, as a three-part
Shout in the dark from an unknown throat,
Then the sound of an engine in the woods.

Decomposer, Saskatchewan, 30 August 2017

Got on my prairie playlist, Jimmy Rodgers,
Jesse Mae Hemphill, and Django Reinhardt.
Grasses, grain silos, cows, and irrigation
Jacks flowed past. I saw the red pill, said I
Want to paint it black. No Wonderland under
Hill here or anywhere, only underground.
That's where the real adventures were.
But there I was going, horizontally, stuck
To the surface of change like a stowaway
Barnacle stuck to a hull it mistook for a rock.
On the top, it was Canada, prosperous.
Underneath it was the realization that
If you could follow your demise down
You wouldn't only wake up revelatory,
You wouldn't wake up at all. All my songs
On the playlist were recorded by bodies
Insistent but infected, and now long dead.
They never existed. And I thought, we all
Live on the lives that never existed. Yes.

Brokenhearted River, Manitoba, 29 August 2017

The name was convenient, but the river
Was real, as rivers are, as far as rivers go.
Why not camp out there, out past
The western edge of the kettle lakes
And the eastern woods, where grasses
Gathered, cut by barbed wire, under
A half-faced moon? Henry Threadgill Zooid
Would be the right backing track
For the sound the water made as it crossed
That threshold hemming it in, say, "In
For a Penny, In for a Pound," if you know
What that would sound like. Chortling,
Almost. Ruminative as the cattle around it,
Like the gurgle of a broken heart trying still
To pump without drawing too much attention
But failing because it's bleeding self pity and
It stains the sunset red, such a bloody mess.

White River, Ontario, 28 August 2017

It got dreary, after awhile, how reliably
The most probable things kept happening.
It was probably time to be done with myself.
The town of Wawa with its rampant giant
Statues of Canadian geese on the north
Shore of Superior weirdly reminded me
Of the giant white crucifixion statues
In the cemeteries of small-town Quebec.
The town of Timmins distinguished
Its self-similar streets and scruffiness
By being the hometown of Shania Twain.
In Rossport, one cafe stood open to the wind
And rain, but accessible only by steep stairs
Through dense gardens, the mists blowing
Spindrift all the way into the hills, like me.
In White River, a dirty filling station boasted
The sale of a half-million dollar lottery ticket
Barely a month ago. Might as well been
Forever and gone to the dark of the moon,
But I bought a ticket myself, predictably.

Kenogami Bridge, Ontario, 27 August 2017

At the pub there was no one, but the light
Was on and the kitchen hadn't been closed.
In the last afterthought of a gone daylight,
The small lake communed with a gleam
Past the deck of the joint. The air indicated
A locally particular combination of woods,
Mosses, a bit of damp highway strip's oils,
Wildflowers faded into dark, a musk,
And the unnameable that would have to be
Named after the place it identifies, the way
The color of an orange is best called orange.
It smelled like Kenogami Bridge on the deck
Of the Kenogami Bridge Inn last night,
That's the best I can describe it. You can't
Remember being anywhere anyway if
You have no memory of the scent. If you can
Remember a scent, then you know you were
A lover once, no matter what became of you,
The only way you know you were there.

Quebec City, Quebec, 26 August 2017

Back in British Columbia, daughter was
Closing in on a year of Sundays since birth,
Doing so in a cabin by the lake. I was gone,
On the road, across the country, a farcical
Company of pronouns, with no idea of where
In hell was home, beyond what small hope
Daughter anchored. Where I was, who knew
What language first to speak? Bad French
Or vulgar American English? Stumble badly
Or natter on rudely?  You would know, I
Think, if only you weren't a hope they long
Ago schooled me to imagine my own. Mercy.

Baddeck, Nova Scotia, 25 August 2017

All afternoon on Cabot Strait, the porpoises
Passed the city of the ferry in small pods,
Always swimming in the opposite direction.
A few people on the seventh-level deck,
Of ten, hung on the railings, spotting them.
Inside, hanging televisions, a dining room
Serving diner food, and clusters of berths
Bustled above the the clutches of metal
And polycarbonate machine eggs awaiting
Their owners, locked and silent in the hold.
Outside, around the boat and porpoises
And everything else the ocean held alive,
Mechanical, organic, coincidental, or dead,
The waves swelled relatively quietly, horizon
To horizon, nothing magical or menacing
About them, about anything, about nothing.
Then we docked in orderly fashion, left
The parking decks in orderly fashion
And proceeded on our various ways.
On the deck of a back room at a motel
That evening, one of us, me, who was legion,
Watched the pale gold, nacreous glow
Of sunset in the clouds above another sound
And read, in peace, "I had caught a glimpse
Around the blinders, and what I saw
Was the landless grey expanse of a northern
Sea, that emptiness of pewter ribbed
In wind and sun. There was no channel
Marker I could find, no shore to crawl up on."
Which was truer, the details or the vision?
There are at least six major traditions
Of thought in Indian philosophy that bear
On this question. In at least one, the facts
Are not only the illusion, they're the menace.
Where were those porpoises going, anyway?