Sailing Alone Around the Room (13 page)

thoughts of rhetoric and the physical sciences

whenever I had to strain uphill

bending under a stiff wind,

and when I reached a rise and coasted down,

I thought of nothing

but the encrofted cows, and the low hovering clouds.

God knows what I must look like by now,

my shoulders slumped,

my face saying the end of the world is coming,

which it will soon enough for me,

bringing all my pedaling to a close,

easing the pressure of my thumb on the silvery bell.

Then I will dismount, swinging

a leg over the crossbar, standing on one pedal

while the bike slows to a stop

and falls over on its side with me under it,

all the traffic whizzing by

and a woman in a drab raincoat walking over to see.

After three days of steady rain—

over two inches said the radio—

I follow the example of monks

who wrote by a window, sunlight on the page.

Five times this morning,

I loaded a wheelbarrow with wood

and steered it down the hill to the house,

and later I will cut down the dead garden

with a clippers and haul the soft pulp

to a grave in the woods,

but now there is only

my sunny page which is like a poem

I am covering with another poem

and the dog asleep on the tiles,

her head in her paws,

her hind legs splayed out like a frog.

How foolish it is to long for childhood,

to want to run in circles in the yard again,

arms outstretched,

pretending to be an airplane.

How senseless to dread whatever lies before us

when, night and day, the boats,

strong as horses in the wind,

come and go,

bringing in the tiny infants

and carrying away the bodies of the dead.

I am standing on a disused iron bridge

that was erected in 1902

according to the iron plaque bolted into a beam,

the year my mother turned one.

Imagine—a mother in her infancy,

and she was a Canadian infant at that,

one of the great infants of the province of Ontario.

But here I am leaning on the rusted railing

looking at the water below,

which is flat and reflective this morning,

sky-blue and streaked with high clouds,

and the more I look at the water,

which is like a talking picture,

the more I think of 1902

when workmen in shirts and caps

riveted this iron bridge together

across a thin channel joining two lakes

where wildflowers now blow along the shore

and pairs of swans float in the leafy coves.

1902—my mother was so tiny

she could have fit into one of those oval

baskets for holding apples,

which her mother could have lined with a soft cloth

and placed on the kitchen table

so she could keep an eye on infant Katherine

while she scrubbed potatoes or shelled a bag of peas,

the way I am keeping an eye on that cormorant

who just broke the glassy surface

and is moving away from me and the bridge,

swiveling his curious head,

slipping out to where the sun rakes the water

and filters through the trees that crowd the shore.

And now he dives,

disappears below the surface,

and while I wait for him to pop up,

I picture him flying underwater with his strange wings,

as I picture you, my tiny mother,

who disappeared last year,

flying somewhere with your strange wings,

your wide eyes, and your heavy wet dress,

kicking deeper down into a lake

with no end or name, some boundless province of water.

You’d think we would have had enough

of one another

after all the rain streaming down these windows,

the walks out to the garden when it clears,

the same yellow and white flowers,

all the sleepless nights—

the toy car going in circles on the bed table.

But still, you stay perched on my shoulder,

cricket or bluebird,

wild parrot digging your claws into my loud shirt.

Is it because I do not pester you

with the invisible gnats of meaning,

never release the whippets of anxiety from their crates,

or hold up my monstrous mirror,

a thing the size of a playing field?

Whatever makes you stay,

I hate to think of that morning

when I will wake up to find you gone,

heading toward the open sea,

dragging the cables that bound us together,

leaving me with nothing more to say.

But don’t get me wrong.

It’s not that I cannot live without you,

cannot sit under an ordinary green tree

with no desire to reach for the pen in my pocket,

or lie contented on a couch all day,

one hand over my mouth.

It’s not like I have a crush on you

and instead of writing my five-paragraph essay

I am sailing paper airplanes across the room at you—

it’s not that I can’t wait for the lunch bell

to see your face again.

It’s not like that. Not exactly.