Versions of Water

Vignettes for fitful March

1. After the last big ice storm, highway’s surface translucent blue, spears of ice falling from power lines, great coins of ice spinning off tractor trailers, the sun getting caught in our eyes.

2. Walking to the lake—Hastings and Huron in mind at once, small and large, a-ka-ka-kwa-tikh, the lake that doesn’t freeze, and Gichi-aazhoogami-gichigami, great crosswaters sea—through bush, scrub, sand, stones, the water mingling so gradually with the earth. And the only sound is birdcall by the hundreds: waterfowl, warbler, over water, on water, in the trees, dozens of species doing all the talking.

3. Cell tower and church spire, old March snow hanging on, the sun about to do things, the forested hills beyond. Getting out for a while to locate them, focus on them after all the dental floss, packets of mints, wooden clothespins, tweezers, jar lids, cotton balls, a deluge, a life’s worth, gripped and socked away and now the integrity’s collapsing and a virus is closing in. Her head in her hands, painter’s mask around her neck again, knowing it needs to be tended to, completely unable to tend to it. The slopes of these hills are not so dramatic, the green of the trees not so bright when there’s cloud.

4. Young fry on a trampoline, mesh cage around a bouncing ball. Slender, skittish dog poking through the grass below, unphased at this familiar frequency of energy. That day in July every tree in the neighbourhood reached its fullest green expression. That day the clouds to the west looked like mushroom clouds. At the river, the words dried up, the brain stopped its churning.

5. The season of lilac and smoke. Raccoons brought to rest all over the highway. Sick peach of iris, sick peach of the air.

6. Proceeding through endless cladding and mud, a city’s new natural state. What it does to live every day in a construction yard, sudden craters everywhere, dumpsters overflowing, groundwater not allowed into ground, parks cleared of people.

7. YouTube ocean waves. The view of hills from the top of one of them. The shelter for rabbits hacked tree limbs make in the yard. A dearth of birds. Pink clouds materialize in the east. Small creeks unfrozen, never frozen.

8. Last night I dreamt I was a carnival barker at her memorial. I don’t know what that was, that gathering, but I was required to manage it, host it, be the entertainment. All this family I didn’t know was there. They were laughing and fussing around.

9. Flail, scythe, reaper, thresher, combine, and what will come after. Is the combine the apex. Implements in place of stories. What we keep, and what we let go. Sun optimistically high in the sky, bringing on thoughts of seeds and planting, this thing I love to do, this growing I think of as legacy, stakes gone but they might be returning. Which seeds I share and which I save in this coming season of hope and dread.

10. For the nuthatch any which way can be up. The dog lies down in sadness at the top of the stairs, wanting out there.

11. A stake in the ground is still the measure. Still with the arbitrary rectangles. This table is a perfect square. Writing a pysanka, I realize the kistka asserts geometry. The art, the craft of visual proofs.

12. Minivan on flat tires becomes storage. A hoard of pallets becomes stairs for a dog to escape her yard. Bench into cot. Grate into heater. The unintended use. We will always figure out alternatives.

13. Saying what is without using the verb to be. This is a process question. How tenuous things get without existence expressed. Feeling stunted, sick, sleep-deprived. Sun shifting. Out to the river. The urge to make a plan, absent any action. To gather oneself in perpetuity.

14. Another dream of her memorial, but this time a table full of pictures of her that I don’t recognize, that don’t quite look like her, and I’m scouring them for a sense of recognition, or to take in this person she was and never showed me.

15. To articulate what I love, push past reticence. Water that grounds, waves that measure. The wind today sounded like the ocean.