the separation

The separation between 

Mary and her hands

deepened after Joan left.

caught in the rolling turn 

of changing times

Joan was sucked from the kitchen

into an opening beyond 

the picket fence.

Needing something other than the life

of a logger’s wife Joan took

small steps that led beyond barrooms

and the haze of smoke and voices

to a difference she constructed.

A change happened one Sunday

over the stove
deftly flipping

white and orange

against the black cast-iron

seasoned by time,

slow heat and fat.

Mary’s challenge shook 

her mother’s body

turned her face and made another

same September impossible

An old taunt new voiced.

“why don’t you fuck off

and do something with your life”.

Familiar words exposed, stripped

of the rasp of tobacco 

and the smell of beer

countless times more potent.

In Joan something moved,

and a primitive fish

turned in Kootenay lake

past the hotsprings 

past the Ferry

west to Nelson,

Joan followed..

museum

standing

welcoming arms
still
outstretched
looking intently
nowhere
bought and paid for
moved and stashed
before our troubles.
You moved
to the island
to your new life
of being,
looking
in a
souls statement.
Do the waves
still whisper
your name
on the salt wind?
Do white-headed
eagles cry 
for you?
Does the bite of salt
miss your ribs
where
dark haired people
netted freely?

Out of the woods

noble trees
stretched broken
born before boots
beat a new drum
in these woods
and bare feet
and deerskin walked
softer paths
fifteen thousand years
in the making
raped in fifty
what remains

Blindness with eyes
backpacks and boots
chains, saws, cables
steel ships to Asia
and the mills
golf courses
where perfect girls
and boys in dark
glasses and black
shirts ride green
Jimdeeres on tarmac
for those taking the
Air

Bosses in regional
development where
everyone chases
a buck, economies
profit or a salary to
meet a mortgage
or a banker or
medication costs
keep it up
as the final firs
Weep their last

i saw them today
because i could
and you took me
after fifty years
since as a boy
looking for silence
i found the home
of letters
where leaves rustled
and giant cedars
peeped in pictures
saying
come to me.