A little mixed up with my days this week… hence I posted Sunday Soliloquy on Friday and Poetry Friday on Saturday… hope you don’t mind? Without any further ado, here’s my poetic offering today from my expanding collection of poems that I’m working into a manuscript.
And another gorgeous photo from Joel Clements, shot in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
A Hundred Miles up Spruce River Road
The time you were a hundred
miles up Spruce River Road with a bunch of buddies
came around a corner
Birds ~ Snow Ptarmigan ~
blinding white on the first dusting of October snow
I once saw a white like that
on a stone grizzled with ice crystals
It stopped all of you in your tracks
The sheer blessing of that moment
not one itchy trigger finger
feast of souls
Tracking stopped when
you gave your guns to your brother
left you having to ask
left you
ripped like lichen from bedrock
roots exposed and drying up
like empty bones.
I hear them rattle when you speak.
You tell stories now, take
long drives down back roads, county lines
out past Trout Lake and down to the Lappe Store
Old man in the Pontiac,
Full tank, time to kill
like you once killed birds.
You called Ministry of Natural resources
The clerk, hard as shield rock and just as immovable
advised you,
(in no uncertain terms)
that you couldn’t buy a game tag without owning a gun
I know the talk, hear it sometimes on Sunday mornings.
Blood pumping red with adrenaline
bureaucratic double speak poking
that part of you that used to come alive in
pine and birch
aspen fir and poplar,
You told the guy to ‘Go to hell’, and hung up the phone.
Tomorrow you might head down to Shebandowan,
cousin there catches walleye worthy of tall tales
you’ll bring one home,
fry it up for supper.
Lesley-Anne Evans
October 2010
BUDDY BREATHING 