we were two souls who found each other and knew one another immediately
bloodlessly. peddler of wonder, you knew the secrets of the sky flying
kites impossibly, putting magic into my hands. that was a blue day,
a bright day, glaring bright northern ontario sky meeting the curtain of firs
and harshly humming with cicadas and heat. where is the line where the water
becomes the sky? the two have become the same, i swim, drowning in
clouds. i sail the kite through the sea of the sky.
place yourself in the world. on the map, we are in the sage
green band of boreal forest that stretches around the continent
beyond. perched in the forest amidst the great lakes with
their shipwrecks and storms all grey green blue, island
home of spirits and older things than your proper noun god.
it was a gold day when you became seriously ill. maternal grandmother’s voice
drones on
and drifts
out
the car window.
she is a housefly and I let her words drift away on the wind.
it is a summer of horses
finally, smelling the acrid smell of barns, juniper, rattlesnakes, feeling the world through
the senses of a horse who saw three hundred and sixty degrees around her head
who saw the fields who saw the brush who saw the bee drinking the nectar of the flower
who saw the rustle of the toads in the dry grass.
she tells me you are dying and i spend a summer as a horse, as a bee, drinking in the great gold day
all wildflower calm and repetitive. horses are a prayer
the first fish. le grou lake. we are in the vast swath of sagey green where the
earth thrusts rudely through the soil, heaving her bony shoulder through
the expanse of straggly coniferous trees tenuously growing in the harsh
cold short days. sideways winds and days of snow, we knew.
but this was summer, days northern long cast
with cathedral light of bright gold columns
filtering sacred through the boughs of spruce and fir and casting their illusion
twofold upon us where they reflected on the stillness of the lake.
how to cast a line across the water in a graceful, lean arch
across the surface of the still lake the waterbugs and flies annoyed,
dispersing scattered while i reel back the empty line again and again
and again. how to pray without words. how to wait for an answer. how to be still.
how the lake is an answer, how whatever god you believe in is here
quicksilver on the line and the prayer of the fish who dances
close to mortality, thrashing violently in the air, drowning
in it and the answer of the snapped line he falls back
into the deep green gray iridescently alive
the one that got away. the fish first
summer of horses, last time i saw you and couldn’t look. horses blindspot.
what do i know of death? animals beneath the apple tree tenderly
laid to rest in shoeboxes. once the dogs brought home the tail of a cat
who had gone missing, probably victim to the combine or baler.
summer of horses i am twelve still find religious equine dust smell
dense bodied sentience largeness and simplicity
to walk among them quiet and still and feel them quiet around me. l
listen to the chew of hay and horse noises earthy and
dust mote gold dancing in the light.
horses are a prayer, not an answer,
sending their celebration up with every action of their being.
where is the line where the sky meets the heavens? where is the line where the water becomes the sky?
i love the unknown voices of the trees and the
random wonderful world. sometimes i will perform a ritual resembling
the early evening prayer at le grou lake, stilling my body and trying to slip easily into
the stillness but coming through gasping and
struggling instead.