al purdy,
I want you to know
I am saying the names –
here they come,
like r o l l i n g
rocks
in the blasted out canyon
big and heavy, down
the mountain side
filling the river
I am choking on dust and ashcroft
-- singing, with breathy lilt lillooet
wisk
the sky is a projector:
clouds move over the treetop
green-screen at a slow crawl
sand and deadwood slide with a desire
to swim.
i’m driving again while
two girls are kissing
in the back
of my mind
the sky grows appropriately pink
6pm
sun sinks over sandy coloured hills
she says,
there is a particular feeling of loneliness
in places you can still buy a gold pan
in places that are no place
and then i start thinking about missing people
that left the cities, carried out
and are now here—
in this no place
women and children, mostly
i see them walking over the sage
walking out of the sage
and the river
out of cut blocks,
ditches
an abandoned shed
(the women are holding the children’s hands)
and they wave.
8pm
the evening is blue mint,
warm only at the edges now
the window whistles
while she sleeps at my elbow
we are
100 miles from mile zero
on the caribou wagon road there
are horses struggling,
the wheels creek under the jens brothers
and the two handled saw they brought along
the clocking of hooves
horses grunt into the dark
as the older jens mumbles
soft timber through his red beard
the younger brother sleeps upright, rocking--
there are coins in his fingers --
sawdust in his hair
9pm
headlights cut the canyon like butter
and the shadows of big horn sheep
scurry at every bend
in the black
we talk about going to alaska
and women poets
and my mother’s rhubarb pie
chinatown in barkerville
a chinese gardener moves over the frozen ground,
between the tai hu limestone,
bamboo and magnolia,
with a trowel and orchid seeds,
no light
he’s dreaming of that payline --
the one that has reached out from the rock
and wound its spidery gold legs around his heart
his family line is gone:
they stopped his wife at the border
and put a restaurant in his house
tomorrow he will crouch in the river
for two hundred years
10pm
hixon remembers
andy and bertha colebank
burning underbrush,
soot and cinder stained hands
she’s in the root celler
on mitchelle road
andy swallows hard and wipes his brow
there he is:
on the sagging stoop he built
his coarse pants smell of rotting pine,
his head in his hands
soot and cinder stained
maybe we should go to alaska
she rolls her head away from me
the chocolate wrapper crinkles in her hand
and the air smells of sweets and gasoline
