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..