Two Poems

On Reflection

• The smallest memory
• can upend me
• like a canoe tipped
• into a rapid—splash
• of cold water to the face,
• shocking and delicious.

 

• Cowbells in the Dolomites,
• the smell of sunrise
• in Arequipa.
• Persimmons on a bare
• black tree in Seoul—
• radiant little suns.

 

• Beauty is a privilege
• requiring peace,
• freedom, the negative
• space that curls itself
• around fear.

 

• So many things
• can sink it in an instant.
• A glimpse of archways packed
• with dynamite on the scenic
• highway to the DMZ,
• an angry lover’s knock
• on the oak hotel door.

 

• I wish you, my friend,
• my confidant, my stranger,
• all the quiet moments
• you desire in this world.
• Steal them if you have to.

 

When My Mother Calls, She Tells Me Stories

1.

• She says, I watched wolves chase
• a moose into the river.
• They were standing around a break
• in the ice, looking down.
• The moose in the gap, swimming
• for its life. I couldn’t help it—
• I wanted do something. So I yelled,
• chased those wolves off.
• The moose looked so tired
• when it limped away. The wolves,
• hungry.

2.

• Because none of the walls have pink
• fiberglass insulation showing through,
• none have 1970s faux wood paneling
• turned wrong-side out, none of the ceilings
• have rodent droppings visible through
• the plastic, she calls it my fancy house.
• Do I feel guilty for climbing
• to the lowest rung of the middle
• class? Only some of my clothes
• come from thrift stores. I own
• a refrigerator. I garden, but less
• urgently than she did, heading out
• each summer morning in her long skirt
• and halter top, going to work
• to grow all we needed in those three brief
• months of northern summer.
• No one to see her but squirrels and her kids
• but she looked magnificent—the muscles
• of her swimmer’s back flexing under the sun.

3.

• The next-door neighbour died, she tells me.
• But what’s worse, no one found him
• for a month. There I was, just driving
• past his house every day, while
• he was lying there, already gone.

4.

• When I was two, in a church
• thrift store, my mother
• combed through the racks
• while I played with castoff stuffed
• animals. “Goddamn it, you go home!”
• I yelled at the bunny. The woman
• behind the counter was still
• a moment, but found her voice
• of shredded metal and said
• “get out.” I cried and cried.
• I never swore again in front
• of my children, my mom explained
• each time she re-told the story.

5.

• No other mother I know lived
• in a rural cabin alone for all the years
• of her children’s young lives. No other
• mother split her own firewood, built
• her own shed, carried basins of hot coals
• outside to heat the oilpan on cold mornings
• as the river steamed into the purple sky
• so her children could go to school.
• The coals glinted and writhed in their heat.
• I never questioned her ability to carry fire
• in her hands, to make anything possible.

6.

• And another thing happened
• with the neighbours, she says. A feud
• over firewood. One neighbour barreled
• down the road, as usual, to fill the box
• of his old F-150, the other popped out
• from behind a fence, blocked the road;
• when the one got out of the pickup,
• the other shot him in the chest with a pistol.
• He had a cell phone in his pocket,
• over his heart, so he lived.

7.

• Every once in a while the mainstream
• media writes about my home town.
• Poorest in BC, Highway of Tears,
• Rash of Suicides. Murder Trial.
• Bridge wiped out by snow plough.
• No mention of the way light strikes
• the top edge of Stekyodin at dawn,
• how the breeze sifts so gently
• above the emerald rivers.

8.

• I was chopping celery, my mother
• across the table mending tiny gloves.
• I was in a bad relationship, looking for a way
• out. She said, I was seven months pregnant
• with your brother. His father
• had just fled the province, but I refused
• to go with him. Then the cow escaped;
• it joined the neighbour’s herd, and the neighbour
• wouldn’t give it back. So I went at dark,
• I shot the cow, butchered it in his field all night,
• and brought home the meat. That’s how I fed us
• the year your brother was a baby
• and you were four, and we lived
• in that tiny cabin, just the three of us
• sleeping in the same bed.

9.

• When I became a single parent,
• my mother spent four days packing
• her van with tables, butterknives, blankets,
• then drove up the Stewart Cassiar Highway alone
• in November, snowflakes sifting lightly
• out of the pale sky, her heart full to the roof
• with all the practical things I needed.

 

Photo by Yann Allegre from Unsplash.