nouspique.com

self-congratulating signs
litter roadsides all
across the country
harper masturbating
on our shoulders
what a good boy am i
tearing down mountains
raising up valleys
wrapping ribbons of highway
around the nation
knotting a tight bow
like mickey mouse ears
a great big beautiful package
three lanes each way
squirting goods from a to b
k y gel efficiency
but nowhere
not a single stop
no pull out rest area
place to stretch and gawk
no snow caps and treetops
and rocky river beds below
no place to whip out
my long lens and shoot
shoot shoot

and now it’s time to say good-bye
we liked the fantasy of living here
an almost perfect daydream imagining anew
a new house
a new view
a new routine
Paul, who made the leap from fantasy,
gives the grand tour: this is where
I worked my first job
we had our first date
our boy was born
the drunk driver spilled diesel during the salmon run
you can get great Vietnamese food
we take the dogs for a morning run
I got my tattoos
that Korean guy killed his wife and kids
the woman gave us the evil eye
when the dog pooped on the path
the cruise ships berth in transit to Alaska
my cell phone thought it was in Washington
and almost cost me some dineros
I found the body
I get kombuchi
we fell in love
and when the day has faded
and when we’ve settled into our not-house
and when we’ve nestled beneath our not-sheets
we remember our own this is wheres
the ones that belong to us
the ones that we belong to

Eighteen years since Clayoquot Sound
Today the trees keep falling
Inky tears drip on the page
A pulpy sheet for writing
More organic, they exhort me
Grow your words like corn stalks
But I press them out precise
Planed and stacked like lumber
i’d throw a wrench
drive a spike
fill the gas tank with sand
if i knew how
or where
after that what would i write on?
the water?
the morning dew?
the snow?
maybe i’d fling my words to the wind

i bear my camera
like a cross
framing good
excluding evil
turning a cool
compassionate eye
on injustice
but mostly conquering
death
with my obsessive
recording
recording
recording
when i return
this will all be gone
through photos
my grief will find
its consolation
but when I’m gone
no trace of me
will remain in my
recording
recording
recording
only a deep hole
an absence in the cave
of my vision

Wobbly-legged, we rise from lunch
and chardonnay, the capstone
on a noon-time tasting.
Best to pause, recover
equilibrium, gaze across
the vineyard rows, reminiscent
of corduroy or shopping aisles.
In the middle distance, a farm,
hot-houses where flowers grow,
row on roses, all of it—
grapes and blossoms—handled
by Mexican workers shipped
north for the growing season.
With cool weather on the threshold
they’ll be packed back where they belong
year-over-year (eight months here
four there) a rootless life.
I hear the wives of two have left.
What they say of absence is a lie,
a violence done to soldiers
and now to migrant workers too.
In the far distance, on a high hill,
an observatory, a keen eye
gazing at ancients suns, honing
the science of avoidance.
Wobbly-legged no longer,
we return to our temporary
home—a rental in the city—
past the church where five or six
smoke crack on the brown grass,
past the skateboard park
where a kid tokes and grins,
past a mall where we ease our
discomfort with fresh souvenirs.

Can’t you snap the cap of the toothpaste tube?
Keep the invader microbes from breeding there?
I admit: I’m supposed to be large-hearted,
above the nit picking details of domestic
living, but this issue grates me so.
How will I make it with you through this journey
if the toothpaste gapes on the countertop
moldering night after night in the open air?
Our lives depend upon the civil give and take
of spouse and spouse, all of it your fault no doubt,
as I hold in high esteem the simple act
of snapping the cap back on the toothpaste tube.
My electric shaver went on the fritz.
Having served well for fifteen years,
it’s started buzzing in a way that sounds
like a bumble bee in throes of death.
I’ll make do (I tell myself) with a blade
and shaving cream from the drug store.
Ha! So many choices! Such advances
in shaving technology! all to render me
smooth and sexy in ways formerly
unthinkable, with my five-blade razor
oozing lubricant, and canister of gel
that hockey players use. I’ll wage a war
on my face, wash the hairy casualties
down the drain, hide all evidence
that I might once have been an animal.
In the same aisle, you find tampons
for your feminine hygiene needs,
a polite way to say your ovaries
still go through the motions, lunar
egg-popping with attendant mess.
And for all the uniqueness an ova
suggests (what with DNA etcetera)
there’s a surprising universality
wrought by the global napkin trade.
Absorbency here is the same (I suppose)
as it is at home, or in Scotland
or Nigeria. Is this solidarity
through free markets? Communing
through the woman’s body politic?

it rumbled here at four a.m.,
an aftershock; i felt nothing,
but the dog upstairs barked and barked,
sensed something below the threshold
of my feeble cognizance

where has the graffiti gone?
across the rusted rails
a pale sickly ochre
washes the bricks below
and above, faded corporate
poster art, suffering sun,
fog, unplanned exposure,
scotiabank, investors group
money this and sponsor that
before, the walls below screamed
a tagging riot spray cans
colour explosion eye pop
the shock of blank walls
draws me up short huh!
where has the graffiti gone?
i bow my head, solemn,
like i’m at a funeral or
touring an ancient tomb
from an age when giants played
and even those without a place
knew a measure of freedom
i trudge from the barren walls
resigned to my time – bland,
blank, controlled and uninventive
when, before my eyes in half
degrees, a graffiti apotheosis!
seedlings now – a sidewalk
stencil, fencepost tag,
rooftop face grinning down –
flowering soon (as weeds
through pavement cracks), the bloom
of the unauthorized, the illicit,
the inconvenient, the uncomfortable,
the damning, the prophetic
there has the graffiti gone

The beach, the south side, Esquimalt,
dancers come into view, pas de deux.
Our dogs sniff & whizz while the dancers
whirl in the light / out comes my camera –
snap snap snap — raised to the unexpected 
(how often do you stumble upon dancers
on a beach?) Furious waves foam
not from the water below but from the lookout
above, arms flapping high overhead.
Squinting, we see the movie camera.
“You spoiled the shot.” Accusing tones.
“We didn’t realize.” Our poor defense.
And later: “You took photos of my actors.”
“Yes.” I scuff my feet on the dirt path.
“We have a permit. We are allowed here.
All the images of my actors belong to me.
Please delete.” I push my button, gone.
The unexpected vanishes, leaves behind
only the planned, papered, duly permitted.
The dogs run off on another scent.

Winding along thirty-one as the moon rises from the mountains, river splashing beside the highway as it stalks us from New Denver, the town leaps into view like a postcard from the rack, white wood-slat church, quaint cottages, crafty shops, a stern wheeler moored on the lake, a three-story hotel where we book a room, more than we wanted, but why not? a king-sized bed instead of a frugal queen, and a wrap-around balcony. After we’ve unpacked and stretched our limbs, stiff from the drive in, we go down to the restaurant for dinner and a bottle of wine. We lie awake in a room where one, maybe two families lived for three years. You use the word interment, then laugh at your mistake. We listen in the dark for murmurs of buried things.

(with a curtsy to Lady Tweedsmuir)
Slow while I roll down the window.
No, the breeze flaps the maps.
But I want to take a photo.
We’ll never get there if I slow.
Brilliant scenery don’t you think?
Like a postcard, a painting, or
wallpaper for my computer:
endless forests of north Ontario,
boring expanses across the prairies,
inconvenient mountains in the west.
The people of British Columbia,
they’re a lardy lot, no? The way
they lay down roads through mountain
passes – Rogers, Kicking Horse, Crows Nest,
the way they beat the land into submission.
The people of Alberta – let me write it
in my book – a magical bunch,
the way they turn tar into crude
and natural wonder into money.
As for the people of north Ontario,
don’t get me started on that rugged band.
I’ve never talked to any of them,
but I look at the places they live
and imagine what I’d be like
if I lived there. That’s how I know.

I got me an acre of Bad Land. That shit is mean. – Mitch Hedberg
Bad to go through
Bad for wagon wheels
Bad for horse shanks
Bad for settlers
Bad for ice fields
Bad for erosion
Bad for hoodoos
Bad for sediment
Bad for mammoths
Bad for megaflora
Bad for snaking rivers
Bad for Albertosaurus
and that mounted skull
leers through razor teeth
and says to me: one day
probably bad for you too.

That I belong here.

I held your hand through New Liskeard
and kissed you in Kapuskasing.
In Hearst, where we stopped for gas
by the pulp mill, I kneaded your back
while you stretched your stiff legs.
By the shore of Klotz Lake, I kissed
you again because it was so good
the first time, and then in Nipigon
I nibbled a lobe, but you pushed
me away: it was dangerous, you said,
all those curves and a slick road.
Love seemed risky through the palisades—
Pijitawabik—piercing the sky.
Falling exhausted onto our bed
beside the sleeping giant, too tired
for more than a peck and a curt
goodnight, we rose early and I
captured you in Kakabeka Falls, an
indeterminate smile at the lens.
In Vermilion Bay, we hatched a plan
that required a bottle of merlot
and a motel on the Pembina Parkway,
Vietnamese takeout and a corkscrew.

The first installment of my poetry challenge (a poem a day through the month of September) is a response to my drive through Muskoka where the granite has been covered by red paint to hide the “kilroy was here” graffiti that has accumulated over the years.