orange because it does not get mixed up
with asphalt, gravel, coniferous trees. orange because
it does not get lost -

as it was so we would not get lost
that they trussed us up
like clownfish on camping trips,
in lifejackets and safety vests
and orange whistles around our necks
on trails bedecked in flagging tape

and it was so we'd be noticed
we'd grinningly wrest
handfuls of dogberries from the bush
on the corner of walsh's
to toss at overmodest girls - or during church
brusquely lick an index finger
and pass it slowly through the knife
of a lit candle - or eff off afternoons
in a gravel pit to share a fire
or a cigarette, in attempts to impress
each other, and to test the patience

of parents as boring, we thought, as those plodding orange monopeds
squaddled in droves on the side of the road, or in the middle,
slow-moving, lugubrious - who drove us, who drove
too slowly on autumn evenings, whose apologues of moose
were a poor excuse. who furthermore, for sure, drove far too quickly
past miraculous highway accidents, with their attendant
sirens, sense of urgency, instinctive excitement,
reduced too soon in a blurry back window
to the disappointing
dot
dot

dot
of orange pylons.

Then she stopped dead still and Tirian saw her gradually sink down into the grass and disappear without a sound. A moment later she rose again, put her mouth close to Tirian's ear, and said in the lowest possible whisper, "Get down. Thee better." She said thee for see not because she had a lisp but because she knew the hissing letter S is the part of a whisper most likely to be overheard.
· C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

vessel. the esses there, the excess breath
whistled through lips; the sinuous promise
of floss, press, caress, kiss. S, the sound
and shapelessness of misfired fireworks,
of indecisive rivers. vessel, possibly
a shell, envelope, bottle, fist; anything that simultaneously
holds and is held.

ferry insinuates
an eternal to and fro, like a misaddressed letter
lost in the mail. from north sydney to port aux basques
to north sydney, to port aux basques. the mv caribou,
the mv joseph and clara smallwood. merchant vessel. why do i think
of mussel, kestral, sessile, fossil? of fissile, of driftwood or bone
split along the grain, of ventricle, vascular, of plumes of steam
from smokestacks as thick as a butcher's wrist,
smokestacks the colour of shallowed veins. whistle, the shrill
of a kettle threatening hell, visceral. yesterday
i dropped that glass with the hairline crack, it shattered i swear
before it ever hit the floor. the mv hopedale, twenty-three years ago,
guttered on fire for thirty-six hours before going under. the records say,
sank at berth. seven weeks later she rose again
to be properly scuttled, twelve miles south. glass slivers easily
into invisibility; sweeping up
is something you shouldn't be careless about. SOS
because it was easy to morse, not because
it meant anything.

At Port aux Basques we are caught in bureaucracy. A man in an orange vest and matching moustache isn't sure he can let us board the ferry because one of our passengers doesn't have a reservation. He mumbles something about a waiting list. The parking lot is vast and vacant, and this seems ridiculous. Looking at the massive ferry looming in the windshield and thinking, waiting list. There is no one here and it must hold a thousand. The man in the safety vest goes to make a call and we watch the half-dozen vehicles ahead of us disappear into the gullet of the ship, incredulous. The next crossing is not for twelve hours.

Later I find out: The Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act stipulates the number of passengers that may be carried on restricted sailings based up on the type and quantity of the commodity to be transported on the vessel. Paint, turpentine, batteries, propane, toilet bowl cleaner, adhesives, fire extinguishers, oxygen for hospitals. "They're only taking fifty-nine passengers today." But they wave us on anyway.

MV Joseph and Clara Smallwood, along with her sister ship MV Caribou, is the largest icebreaking ferry in the world. Her capacity includes 1200 passengers and 370 automobiles or 77 tractor trailers. The vehicle deck is packed with eighteen-wheelers, but the passenger decks are empty. My travelling companions are napping and I have an entire section of empty seats to myself. On my right there are two model ships encased in plexiglass, on my left two vending machines. I have a notebook and a novel, Michael Crummey's The Wreckage.

This ship is a museum in many ways. Though commissioned in 1990 her decor is haunted by various decades, none of them later than the eighties. Overly-ornate carpets, a garish cafeteria, dimly-lit hallways lined with faded photos, outdated advertising. A black and white photo of Joey Smallwood lends a kind of saintly eccentricity to the man; a halo of smokestack hair, glasses as thick as ferry windows, spine leaning into sky. A small chalkboard near the steward's office announces our estimated time of arrival at North Sydney: 18:00. Eighteen hundred hours.

Travel is riddled with small delays, limbos, loopholes. The half-hour in the parking lot. Another half-hour or so after they let us board but before the ferry goes anywhere. And then there is the half-hour the ferry finds herself perpetually lost in, somewhere between Newfoundland and Atlantic Standard Time. She borrowed a half-hour when I crossed before Christmas and now on my way home to Halifax she is reluctant to give it back.

As I am writing the boat has started moving, so gradually I hadn't noticed, but rapidly now - I look up to find houses, streetlamps, long fences drifting past the windows, distorted eerily in the doubled glass. A few smaller outbuildings, a wiry guardrail, modestly mossy hills giving way to balding rock, then eventually a muted white which is just as much nothing as it is a sky. Cotton batting.

On the outside deck I watch the sun set behind clouds, as if from a window with the curtains closed. After dark the ferry's wide trail of wake slips quickly into oblivion, a darkness deeper than the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. I want to photograph the ferry at night, the glow of light on the smokestacks. I haven't brought a tripod but laying my camera on a guardrail works almost as well. Somewhere below me in the gut of the ship I can feel a constant shaking, as if every nut and bolt is nervous. I can see my breath. I shiver, and step back inside.

October 10, 2005; December 20, 2005; August 4, 2006; October 19, 2006.

I've been photographing this trail in Pasadena, Newfoundland, whenever I've been home. Pity I didn't visit sometime between December and August. Not that I missed anything:

Spring is a time of indecision; in fact, there is no spring.
· Peter Scott, The Origin of Newfoundland's Flora

It's the last night of the Writers At Woody Point festival. I am in the van with mom, dad, Guy and Doreen. We detour first to Trout River for a feed at the Seaside and a long gawk on the beach. Stopping by the Tablelands on the way back to Woody Point, we pick our way over broken brown rocks and ridges, talking and taking pictures of tuckamore. One side of the road is lush bog, the other this strange landscape as if suddenly we have stumbled upon another world. The road must be built right on a faultline, says dad. How is it that we live so close and yet rarely visit here? The innards of the earth offered up on a vast platter. A geologist's immoveable feast.

Despite our dawdling we arrive at the Sea Breeze Lounge early enough for second-row seats and a good look around. It is a small, well-worn building, one room really, with a deck at the back overlooking Bonne Bay. Dartboards and video lottery terminals dot the walls. In one corner I find a poem by Al Pittman, typewritten and framed, and remember this was one of his haunts.

It's a warm overcast Bonne Bay afternoon.
There's a slight north-east breeze on the water.
Inside, Black Hat George is tending bar.
He, myself, and one other patron are the only
people here. The younger man has made his way
to the gambling machine with the aid of some
awkward machinery designed to keep him
upright. A truck ran over him in Toronto
and he's come home to learn to walk again.
· Al Pittman, The Sea Breeze Lounge

People trickle in, securing seats with a strategically-placed hat or spouse. In the dimly-lit bar, the rectangle of blue light on one end magnetizes our eyes, and everyone inevitably wanders out onto the deck. It is late evening; sunlight skips across low waves like a thrown stone, sailing towards Gros Morne. There are a dozen or so people on the deck, constellating into three or four conversations. Someone yells they see a whale but by the time our eyes follow their finger it is already gone. We watch the water's surface for a few minutes afterwards, hoping the animal will resurface. Someone comments on how nice the light is. It takes the promise of spectacle to cause us to pause and focus on the bay itself, its surface pocked and polished by wind and light. The depth, the weight of it. The bay is the shape of a bell, upside-down. Another word for bay is sound.

From the moment the music begins, we are transfixed. Pat and Joe Byrne wear twin beards as trim and round as their acoustic guitars. And Allan Byrne, the young one, Joe's son. And Linda Slade, Joe's wife. All four from Placentia Bay, all with bold loud voices and hands that grip guitars with firm familarity. Clyde Rose reads from Al's poems as they play The Merasheen Motif, then The Labrador Motif. Allan nails Free In The Harbour, "by a man who shoulda been a Newfoundlander." This's Placentia Bay music, said dad. Plenty of music coming out of there.

When Linda Slade sings The Pollution In Placentia Bay, dad recognizes all the names in the song, all fishermen from Little Harbour East where he grew up. He has never heard it before.

Songs strong and celebratory, yet cautionary, about people who were wronged or abandoned, but survived - or are at least resolutely remembered. Songs written on a boat, songs written on a bet. Songs that tell stories, or have accumulated introductory anecdotes over the years - hand-me-downs, passed on from parents to children like a quilt or a house or a parcel of land. Songs from an older world, taken on as our own.

We wrote these songs, said Pat, when everyone was moving from St. Leonard's to Arnold's Cove ("centralization" he calls it, not resettlement) - and now it seems everyone's moving from Arnold's Cove to Alberta or to God Knows Where, so we're still current.

This is a performance, and also a ceremony of sorts - the handing down of the old songs to Allan and others, the next generation. A chance to hear the names of the old communities recited again: long-abandoned outports like St. Leonard's, like Toslow. There are many others I don't know; I remember those two because of a song. It's easy to see the role songs play in remembering.

Joe Byrne, Pat Byrne, Clyde Rose.

There is a For Sale sign on the Sea Breeze Lounge. The problem with tourism here, says Guy, is you can only do it really five, maybe six months of the year. Sure this is beautiful beachfront property here now, but who'd want to come here in winter? That road up to Trout River is a hard old road in December. Downright treacherous. Most of these are summer homes. When the park closes and the restaurants and the gift shops close and the students go off to school, there really isn't much of a population left here, mostly seniors.

We drive slowly home in the dark, five pairs of eyes fixed on the side of the road ahead, watching for moose. It takes the possibility of a collision to cause us to pause and examine the roadside itself, its tufts and rushes and reeds. Look says Doreen, hoofprints. On the ride up I had been reading John Steffler's That Night We Were Ravenous:

She reminded us. She was the ocean wearing a fur suit.

She had never eaten from a dish.
She knew nothing of corners or doorways.

She was our deaths come briefly forward to say hello.

Despite all our amenities, this is yet a place where, travelling home on the freshly-paved highway (no lines painted on it yet), a ragged, rugged shadow with four knotted legs can crash up from the underbrush to meet us, almost instantaneously, and windshields and airbags and seatbelts and safety glass are statistically just no match

for the sideswiped weight
of all that wilderness.

O, the wild rose blossoms
On the little green place.

He sang that song. That was his song.
· James Joyce, A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man

we moved to fourteen walsh's avenue
when i was two. when i was twenty-two
my parents built a new house
in the same town, and sold the old one.
in the twenty years between, i grew up
with my sister and brother. we had
a big backyard, and when we were young
dad tended a vegetable garden.

father footprint garden stone
the fence is stained, the lawn is mown,
the firewood thrown in a pile downstairs.
our yard is filled with summer smells:
sawdust, woodsmoke, wet paint, sods.
i am three or four years old,
taking a sip from the garden hose,
languid green and long in the sun.
it tasted warm. i was born in st. john's,
and this house was someone else's home
before we came. my mother sang
Michael Row Your Boat Ashore,
Polly Put The Kettle On,
and songs from Sharon, Lois & Bram.

carrot, turnip, parsnip, beet,
drowsing in rows of furrowed earth.
dad ploughs stones out of their beds
each spring, in hopes they'll properly sleep
sound and deep and round and grand.

potatoes slowly open eyes
and send up shoots like periscopes
while tall, attentive ears of corn
congregate along the fence
and heads of lettuce in sunday best
dutifully mouth the words
to O Hosanna In The Highest
as a lowly crow leads mass.

father footprint garden stone
the crows are at the garbage again,
stabbing at bags with pickpocket beaks
gobbling crumbs with cackles and croaks
scattering scraps on the side of the road
then laughing out loud from a telephone wire
singing All God's Creatures Got A Place In The Choir.

my father built a sturdy frame
from planks of wood he'd painted red,
stapled up plastic to trap the heat,
and planted tomatoes. the bristly leaves
prickled a bit, and we picked them green
to ripen on a windowsill. for a while
we kept rabbits in the greenhouse too,
two tame ones we gave names to.
their ears were as warm
as homemade bread, but their noses
were as cold as cod. one was brown
and the other was gray. their eyes
were the colour of motor oil
spilled on an asphalt driveway.

father footprint garden stone
someone left the gate undone,
the dogs got in, the greenhouse torn,
the smell of blood. two rabbits gone.
the lawn is strewn with tufts of fur
cleaned up before the kids got home.

once a year i'd read Watership Down
and imagine they'd escaped somehow.

a muddy road ran beside our yard,
wild raspberries on either side
and a gravel pit near the end of it
where bonfires were lit on Guy Fawkes Night.
beyond that was a guard-dogged farm
and sprawling woods, stitched with snowmobile trails,
strawberry patches, rabbit-traps. when we were older
dad took to making snares himself,
snowshoing in, and coming back
sometimes with a brace of them
he'd skin in the greenhouse, and give to friends.

i am seventeen years old
opening the door, the bodies there
limply strung and long in the snow,
hard as the lump in the back of my throat.

father footprint garden stone
the weeds are young, the kids are grown,
the garden gone, the fence leans low.
fourteen walsh's is listed for sale: a four
bedroom, two-story home, electric heat,
a large backyard, a quiet street,
suitable for starting a family.

my parents built a brand new house
when i was twenty-two. it has
a smaller yard, and instead of a garden
a brazen stand of woods - the neighbors mostly
razed their trees, but mom and dad
preferred it naturally haphazard -
the bunches of birch a haven for birds,
the sound of branches in the wind.

father footprint garden stone
the fence is stained, the ferns unfold.
see, there where the birdseed spilled
a sunflower sprang. the birds are bold
and appear in droves after it rains. i am
twenty-four years old, spending august
visiting home, listening to rain
and radio, and writing poems.

standing on the shoulders
of a road needing repair, trying to decide
if the sun's risen yet, and if this's
considered fog, or rain. you can just make out
fireweed smouldering on the side of the road,
puddles the colour of cold tea. behind you
the ferry terminal's string of strong lights
punches holes in the parking lot, and a steady stream of lowbeams
drifts up the incline. don't suppose anyone notices, at least not
this early in the morning, your faded stain of rainjacket
against a landscape like an unmade bed, a trampled sod of hair,
a thumb glumly aimed at the wind
like an illegible weathervane, and a sign hoping:
St. John's. might as well be a billboard
bidding Welcome to Newfoundland and Labrador,
for all the attention it's got so far. walking backwards
out of port-aux-basques, the road's shoulders slowly rise
in a resigned shrug, as if to ask What did you expect?
What possessed ya? What got into your head
that made this sound sensible? possibly it was
a drop of salt water, a bit of birdshit, some scrap
of radio static, a musicnote wrongly wrung.
perhaps you mistakenly used
your sister's shampoo, the one labelled
for wild tangles. could've been a combination
of moonlight, homemade wine, and saliva
from the tongue of a certain young woman
who's spent too much time up north. a ladybug,
an earwig, an incubus. in any case
it's cleared out now, just like that last
straggling minivan. this isn't quite
what you had in mind.

junk: a piece or lump of anything.
1. A short log to fit a wood-burning stove or fire-place. "The wood was sometimes quite green, and hence making a fire was quite an art, and required back-junks, fore-junks, middle-junks, triggers, splits, and brands; and the fishermen would sometimes say whoever can build a good fire with green fir can build a boat."
· The Dictionary of Newfoundland English

moving involves
a measured dismantling, taking time
and taking apart. my apartment
is overladen, a tree hunched with snow,
a hull too low in the water.
my shelves are full of souvenirs,
as amusingly useless as miniature ships
built in the gullets of thick glass bottles.
as sap clots wood, my closets are clogged
with flotsam, jetsam, junk. moving involves
a willingness to jettison.

just look: this splint of driftwood
i took from a beach
because it was hollow, smooth,
grew warm in my hand. if i were eight
it might make an excellent telescope -
as it is, all it shows is a handful of stones
gleaned from the same beach
because they were pale, translucent,
reminded me of moons.

similarly, this small curled shell
i plucked from a sidewalk in montreal,
thinking it looked lost. tucked in my pocket
it weighs almost nothing, as if it's been there
all along. pressed against my ear
it echoes only my heartbeat, quick and distant,
like my footsteps on the afternoon i found it.

this ring of green glass was once
the neck of a bottle. look,
here are the threads where the bottlecap went,
the rough edge where it broke. i picked it up
from a firepit, washed it with pondwater;
a wedding band for a vagabond. it's exactly
the diameter to fit my finger,
but proves difficult to remove -

moving involves taking stock,
and taking a deep breath. my apartment
is taking on water; the first step now
is to build a good fire
with green fir.

today i wanted to shout out loud HOW ARE YOU softly to myself
· bpNichol, talking about strawberries all of the time

A routine flight despite the apparent presence of John Stamos in the seat across the aisle from me, baseball cap pulled low. I am assured by a young businesswoman that it is him. We have a celebrity on board! she titters delightedly. In precisely the same tone, an authoritative prerecorded voice describes the aircraft's state-of-the-art safety features.

Oh yes, says Marilyn afterwards, they're filming three movies here, so that sounds right. She is driving cautiously through thick fog, "pea soup" as my uncle Roy puts it. He calls her Marny. I haven't seen either of them in years but they are driving me from the airport to Joyce's where I will stay. I recognized you right away, says Roy.

Goodness you look just like your father. Are you hungry? asks Joyce. Do you drink tea? When your father was here he drank a lot of tea. She makes us chicken sandwiches with tomato sliced thick, and lettuce and cucumber, on multigrain bread. I don't know how many grains the bread is, she says. It doesn't say.

Do you like partridgeberry muffins? You can get them here, but they call them foxberries. And of course bakeapples are cloudberries.

So here is the bathroom, she says, and here is your room where your father stayed. It is square and pleasantly sparse: a large bed in the center, a small closet, a mirrored dresser. A doily blossoms on the bedside table. These rooms look just like the rooms in nan and pop's townhouse in St. John's, I remark. Well yes, she says, it's an old house. Here's an empty drawer if you want to put in your clothes. See you in the morning.

In another drawer there is a tattered copy of The Treasury of Newfoundland Dishes, printed in 1958. I make note of some of the recipe titles: Grandmother's Apple Crow's Nest. Blueberry Roly-Poly. Marsh-berry Jelly. Never Fail Cake. Thrimble. Brawn. Baked Turr. Fishermen's Fish and Brewis. Bublem Squeak. Rhubarb Catsup. Bricks Without Straw. Kedgaree.

Its yellowing pages are sprinkled with bits of wisdom and etymology, colloquial sayings, and anecdotes.

Bakeapples: Yellow berries of delicious flavour, shaped like blackberries. They grow low down in bogs. In Scandinavian countries they are called cloudberries.

They are often confused by the stranger with baked apples, but, of course, they are not at all the same. It is said that when the French first landed on the shores of Newfoundland and found this unknown berry they said "what is this berry called?" or "Baie qu'appelle?"
· The Treasury of Newfoundland Dishes

crabapples, pinecones, chokecherries, stones:
anything that fits a fist,
makes wrists restless

as if earth was goliath

at the snap of an elbow
the crack of rock on rock
recklessly echos.

a field, freshly ploughed
yields a small pile of boulders;

darryl and i spend an afternoon
knocking deadwood off an ancient birch
until the only rocks left to toss
are the ones that ricochet back at us.

under the trestle we abandon bicycles,
wrest pebbles from the river,
take turns straining slingshots
until our fingers tremble

bottles propped on rocks
shatter with a satisfying crash
though no one dares go barefoot after that.

we skip shale,
reckoning the rings
that hang on a pond
momentarily, like footprints in sand

or pitch thin stones,
arrowhead-sharp, straight up

squinting as they plummet abruptly
to plunge the pond's surface
with a muffled choke,

call that
slitting the devil's throat.

i toss a pop-tarts box
into the campfire, not noticing
a dead battery in the bottom of it

which in furious rebirth
rockets twenty feet
and grazes david's leg, a black streak
on the shin of his splashpants

us sitting on driftwood,
a chorus of holy shits

from the roof of the one-room dining hall,
we lob snowballs
at grayjays swooping low towards the garbage bags

a flock of them speckles a nearby birch,
chuckling at us

and we hit not one,
though when sir catches us up there
his bellow scares the branches clear.

The Montreal launch of Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry happened last night. I read some poems, along with five other contributors to the anthology, four of whom had travelled bravely from Ontario despite messy weather. Editor Angela Rawlings introduced the book, then Max Middle started us off, followed by Jon Paul Fiorentino, Mark Truscott, me, Angela, and Rob Read. It had been proposed that we jointly host the event, each reader introducing the following one, which suited the spirit of the anthology, and worked well.

It was great fun. Café Esperanza was fairly crowded, in a cozy way, and the audience was warm and appreciative. The room was brimful with comfortable couches and chairs, and colourful lamps hung randomly around - plenty of ambience. Max remarked afterwards that it was quite a different setting from the Ottawa launch the night before, which had been in a bookstore.

It was wonderful to hear (and get to meet) the other contributors. Max was astonishing, from his charming opening poem dear jc to some startlingly guttural interpretations of his visual work. Jon Fiorentino cracked open the crowd with his sardonic wit - I loved his poem about "boring people holding hands." Mark Truscott was enthralling, flipping intently through his books and dispensing quick, subtle poems (and a "grammar joke"). I read four poems, and probably looked a bit nervous, but didn't feel it. I was glad to get to introduce Angela, who I'd heard once before, at Casual Jack's back in Corner Brook. She gave an equally engaging performance this time, with an acrobatic voice that leapt from one syllable to another, her poems from wide slumber for lepidopterists interspersed with gasps. Rob followed, reading some of his quirky Daily Treated Spams - his bellowing "O Amazon Dot Com!" was one of my favourite lines of the night.

I hadn't read my work publicly in quite a while and had forgotten how refreshing it can be to read aloud. It's something I should do more often. I love hearing laughter at a reading, and there was plenty last night. Audiences sometimes seem unsure whether it's appropriate to laugh at poetry, but this crowd showed no hesitation, and really warmed up the room. Overall the evening was immensely enjoyable and rewarding. I'd brought my camera but didn't take any photos, not wanting to interrupt anything. I know other people did, and if I am sent any (hint, hint) I shall try and put some up.

Added March 2, 2006: Here's one of Angela reading (thanks, Wanda!):

Here is one of the poems I read at the launch (the others were excerpts from answers, stewed heads, and midnight ode to typewriter).

South Brook Area No. 7 (found poem)

All that area of the Island of
Newfoundland beginning at the
Humber Canal Spillway Crossing;
thence following the south bank of
the Humber Canal to Main Dam;
thence following the northern shore
of Grand Lake; the railway bridge
over Main Brook (near Howley) and
the eastern shoreline of Grand Lake
to its southeastern extremity; thence
following the Camp 33 Road to the
TCH; thence following the TCH, in a
generally northerly direction to the
mouth of Humber River; thence
following the southeastern bank of
the Humber River and the
southeastern shoreline of Deer Lake
to the point of commencement.

I grew up in Newfoundland. I've never lived by the water, but nonetheless have always been conscious of being an islander. I imagine I would feel a little lost living somewhere that wasn't an island... the disorienting vastness of a house without walls, or a map without boundaries. There's a certain comfort and closeness to be found in a place surrounded and defined by water... islands naturally incubate culture. I feel lucky to have such a distinct idea of where I am from. I know the shape of home.

Now I live in Montreal, on an island in the St. Lawrence river. Most of the places that I would like to visit are also islands, or archipelagos: Japan, Ireland, Iceland, Saint-Pierre & Miquelon (which I've wanted to revisit since high school). I am drawn to the romanticism and isolation of islands, to their distance and mystery. To walk along a beach is to tread the edge of something deep and mysterious: the slow, merciless mechanism of the sea. I retrieve driftwood and beachglass the waves have churned up, like weathered relics from another world. I skip rocks, and ponder how long it will take them to wash back onto shore. I think about perimeter - if I walk along this coastline long enough, I will circle back to where I began.

Though Montreal doesn't offer easy access to the shore, I love the wide vistas of the Old Port, and the river's reminder that, though trussed with bridges, this is undeniably an island. I find similar solace in Parc Mont-Royal. Recently, I read:

Contrary to popular belief, Mount Royal is not an extinct volcano; however, it is the result of magma intrusion during the Cretaceous to Tertiary time. It is a site where magma was emplaced into the Earth's crust and crystallized into gabbro; subsequently, the surrounding earth was eroded, leaving the mountain behind.
· Wikipedia

I like that: the mountain is an island, too. An island in the middle of the city. Montreal is as rushed and busy as the St. Lawrence River, and Mont-Royal rises above it, quiet and isolated. No doubt that is why I feel so at home there, in the park. An island on an island, my home away from home.

As a child, and later as an adolescent, André enjoyed wandering on the mountain which rose like a camel's hump in the heart of Montreal.
· Mordecai Richler, The Acrobats

Tib's Eve, also Tips* ~ and, by folk etymology, Tipsy Eve:
1. A day that will never come; never.
2. A day or two before Christmas.
· The Dictionary of Newfoundland English

so it's tib's eve - or is it tips, i said.
and n. said no, it's tim's eve.

in any case, it's in tim's downtown
that i'm remembering this. early morning,
warm mocha, and my corner by the window,
waiting for someone, watching snow, filling notebooks
full of yesterday as i always do

last night, waiting for n. and m. to finish work
i wandered west street, down to the millbrook
then back up by the glynmill inn,
making night photos again

steadying my camera on the staircase railing,
i photographed glynmill inn pond, a bowlful of water
lower than surrounding slopes, like the cavity left
by a campfire built on snow. the orange glow
of corner brook a smouldering coal,
the steam plume from the paper mill
like lingering smoke. just days ago
they closed the mill in stephenville.

trees black, coniferous or just branches
skeletal against brightly streetlit snow.
winter, the most monochrome time of year,
the season of extremes. even animals
migrate rather than wait it out, and undoubtedly
not all of them come back.

"we could not find a viable long-term solution"
lamented the spokesperson, black ink bleak
on newsprint the colour of birchbark.

yes or no, stay or go: the arguments
of factories, of families, of one-way tickets

gales of snow flicker
like flankers from streetlights, regaling trees
already necklaced with christmas lights
in the little park by the majestic.
speckles of luminous blue, yellow,
pink, green, gold: for now at least
there is still colour here

later, at sorrento's
m. says, when i was small i was
scared of black and white photos,
especially abbott & costello

this is the last time i will see them
before they leave for south korea.
and i think, at least spring
will bring back most of the leaves.

Margaret Bowater Park and the Sir Richard Squires Building, Corner Brook, Newfoundland & Labrador.

walking home slowly
on the longest night of the year,
snowbanks narrowing streets

threequarter moon (a fingernail
freshly clipped, cut to the quick),
pale pearly areola

my boots plunk wooden steps,
my door clicks open, unlocked.
i come out again with my camera,
locate a vacant lot, away from stray light

wait fifteen minutes in blunt cold
for the moon to re-emerge from a cloud

a passing van's single headlight
shuffles the shadows of a fence.
otherwise, the noise of stars: the pause
after a hand of cards is dealt

(in this winter air
wind tastes like tinfoil)

shadowy clouds gradually subside
like sediment settling in a pond,
and my mute moon, poker-faced,
pokes through

no tripod, so i stand
as still as possible, camera steadied
against my chest, feet far apart
for support, hold my breath,
hear the mirror flip

twelve seconds multiplied by silence

under barnacled moon, breath
compressed in my mouth, clouds
a flotilla of fishing ships,
it is easy to imagine i am underwater

this kind of silence
anticipates loss:

fogged film,
collapsed cardhouses,
stones crumbled into sand

dash 8, halifax to deer lake, probably forty people.
an attendant dispenses shortbread biscuits packaged in plastic
and a propellor shudders just outside my front row window.

several men in the back spend the flight joking loudly,
so upon landing a woman stands and jovially scolds,
"You crowd make some racket! Feels just like home on here."
"Where's home, my dear?"
"Morton's Harbour."

and instantly the entire aisle choruses
"All around the cir-cle!"

chatting with j. at o'reagan's,
folded preet's mitten into a map of newfoundland
(thumb the northern peninsula):
here is where i'm from.

later re-created my mitten map, and photographed it.
so, with apologies to the avalon and burin peninsulas:

five hour drive; we arrive in Little Harbour
by late evening, along a wavering road
paralleling the river's broad curve
until a final culvert funnels it into estuary.

three kids clambering out of a cramped car,
tattered books on the backseat floor.

narrow white stairs, and a screen door
where grandparents wait to greet us
with capable embraces, eyes squinting into smiles,
and chuckles calculating how much we've grown.

kids i don't know
walk bicycles past stacks of lobstertraps
as dad and i lug in the suitcases.

the richly bitter smell of turr
quickly fills a small kitchen.
a dinner of boiled roots (potatoes, carrots, parsnip, turnip),
and this ash-fleshed seabird, a delicacy
tasting faintly of oil and salt water.

someone brings in a chair from the hallway;
seven plates crowd a spindly-legged kitchen table
where tomorrow we'll eagerly upend and empty
a piggybank heavy with coins they've saved,
a year's spare change clattering, young hands
fanning for loons among pennies.

from the livingroom window we watch the river
swell with tide, while seagulls reel and squall.
sunlight glitters the faceted glass of a small chandelier,
and my grandfather's accordion in the corner.

fingers find the dangling cord, and a single bulb
throws shadows throughout the cellar.
i found a secret once, tucked between ceiling beams:
it fluttered to the floor, red as a cardinal feather,
and we unfolded, in awe, an unfamiliar prime minister
and a snowy owl: a fifty dollar bill. reluctantly
we turned in the treasure, and my grandfather laughed
at his forgetfulness, but didn't let us keep it.