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..
