ke George,
the classic invasion route
up the Richelieu valley
past Plattsburg,
Verdun,
a Montreal
across the North Shore
reroute again

to savour Albany;
last of the trading posts east of Oswego
before New York
protective sanctuary
lodgings,
free from the scalping knife
barrens and
the horrors Fenimore Cooper described.

Apple crisp, fall damp the air
with an unbroken stretch of forest
and Adirondack mountains,
there, delicate slip
of fair womanhood
bliss, she lies, gentle as the finger lakes
clothed in autumn crimson.
24

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PRESENCE OF MIND

Spring heralds the summer with lilacs perched from that door.

In snows, a swarm of bushes lie black and apparently
rootless as the town's iron-gate bridge collapses under the
centre part of the main road.

Little enclaves of activity pass as stores,
mere centrefolds across busy highway arteries this time
of year.

I am a grey fleck in my dark wool coat near the perimeter
of a winding fence.

The casual observer gives me half a chance to be seen in
the deathless white, opaque coloured moonstone so still
against the field's shores.

A plaster river, her sides inserted with isle-dotted chunks,
hands across a winter solstice tribal dance.

Ostensibly, I poke the land from stylized limbo,
a chalky substance disturbed with every movement's cough.

And if I were to fall, lie down, and cry,
the agonized winter's frantic sun
would bury me with shadows,
give forth dark branches to my freedom.
In the growing dark, I ponder white and infinity.
The hectic pace of the distant highway absorbs
less and less my hope.
In private cold, my face burns a tallow white,
toes flake in frostbite or erode every sensation.

Stars in the dark canopy above are cryptic mourners and
people frigid sorrow.

Black is my colour as I ebb steadily toward their heights.

By morning, when the first wisp of straw or dry leaf
catches light near this stringent fence, an occasional
passerby with the presence of mind shall comment how
lifeless fields are in the clutch of brittle snow.
25, 26

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FISHING NETS

The polar stars drip in blood . . .
Orion's mythical crystal white
with clarity of forest and
low expanse of sky;
wooden b