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Love Song on the North Saskatchewan |
My ribs are like a york boat,
carrying a packed cargo up this river.
Trade goods of distant fashioning spread my gunnels:
articles of faith, trinkets of desire.
Casks of rum of foreign brewing weigh the keel:
one currency of self-delusion.
I have a sail,
but of little use against a northwest wind,
so I keep it packed away against the time of leaving.
My shivering skin would billow if it could;
instead, the fingering wind finds a hole
and whistles through. My heart
keeps time with the rowing
--the clean bright splashing, the greenwood creaking,
the drawing of breath and release.
You bring to me your fragmented treasures:
the furs of marten, fisher, muskrat, ermine,
lynx, beaver, wolverine
--the diversity of soft warmth astounds me--
you bring them to me
in barter for my commodities of quick, exotic dreaming.
But rum does not mask me,
nor do brass kettles divert the steady eye;
I am here to draw removable gain and secret profit.
While sleeping, my ribs align themselves as palisades,
barricading too free a trade,
too vulnerable a visitor's position.
As they skim the winter's frozen river
my ribs like ashwood runners on a sledge
accumulate the piles of ice-blocks:
I learn to use them to preserve the winter's kill,
to prolong my indecision.
My ribs become the crossbeams of a coalmine
burrowed into the giving riverbank.
From these blind sediments
I mine the brittle inklings of your memory
to light my way and warm me:
for I begin to accommodate your ways.
I learn to know the turns you take for granted,
to feel your mild surprise before my own.
Still headstrong, I drill for insight,
and when I tap your deepest memories
they rush through my high rig of ribs
with a raw wealth too sudden to encompass.
I must somehow bring a subtle chemistry to their mulling.
I stop. I settle. I sink roots.
My ribs cluster here
like birch trees in a stand of pine and spruce.
From near riverbank to far I see
blue jays glitter in the aspen leaves
and magpies careen through maples.
Inland seagulls fold the seams of breezes
and all the earthen sparrows complicate the air.
- 1993 | LISTEN to this poem:
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© D.D. Elves |
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