What Last Golden River Run: 17 Canoe Poems for Autumn

by Lenny Everson

What Last Golden River Run:

  17 Canoe Poems for Autumn

  By Lenny Everson

  rev 2

  Copyright Lenny Everson 2011

  For Dianne, my paddle-partner.

  This free ebook may be copied, distributed, reposted, reprinted and shared, provided it appears in its entirety without alteration, and the reader is not charged to access it.

  Cover design by Lenny Everson

  ****

  Chapter 1: Octobering My Soul

  October:

  Rain at dawning. Warm breakfast, but I

  ended up at the window, gray-feeling.

  At nine the clouds headed for Quebec

  leaving stunning blue on the world's ceiling.

  Got the canoe on the car, feet soaked with dew, and

  on the water by ten-thirty, making paddle-whirlpools,

  Octobering my Canadian soul. I tell you, I went

  down the lake for no particular reason.

  Portaged just to step on crackling orange leaves

  or maybe just to ruffle a grouse. I think

  eternity could start this way. I wouldn't

  mind. I wouldn't mind at all.

  --

  Notes: The days in October are short, and often cloudy. Rain, sometimes snow. Not the best way to end anything, including a year. The rivers, and Ontario’s one million lakes, are abandoned to the winds and the occasional duck hunter.

  But there are usually a few topaz days in October. Clear air and clear water and all the hills are a-dazzle with colour.

  The warm sunshine competes with a chill breeze, and the geese overhead remind you that this day is a present, wrapped in coloured ribbon.

  I can read this poem and I hear the sound of bright leaves underfoot on the portage. This is where time should stop for me. (If I don’t get a lighter canoe or lose some weight, it just might someday.)

  ****

  Chapter 2: But I Had Red Mitts

  The river ran brown past brown trees

  The sky slid, brown, to the south

  Brown ducks flew by

  Brown on brown on brown

  It was like canoeing through

  A Victorian photograph

  I had red mitts

  Thank God

  ****

  Chapter 3: November Paranoia

  Warm day in late November it's raining

  It happens

  They say winter never lasts forever

  - trees turn green

  - ice melts

  - the river turns blue again

  Hey, I don't know

  As I grow older, I get more suspicious

  --

  Notes:

  Q. What’s long and hard on a Canadian?

  A. Winter

  In November, sometimes, my soul becomes the colour of long-fallen wet leaves. Some days I’ve learned to love the brown, brown land, the scudding clouds, and the cold rains. Some days I take pictures of those landscapes and don’t know what to do with them.

  But some days just remind me that winter’s coming and I’m a summer boy.

  Nobody but me likes these two poems, and I like only the first one, anyway.

  ****

  Chapter 4: September Question

  Ah, love, could we find but one

  Of all the dreams we lost

  Would we pick it up again

  Regardless of the cost?

  Would we trade September’s days

  For what we missed back then?

  Would we take a different portage, now

  Or do our route again?

  Almost asleep in the canoe

  In the quiet of a weedy bay

  You touch the question carefully

  And smile, as if to say:

  It doesn’t matter how rough the route

  When you’ve finally camped in peace

  Sometimes the shelter matters most

  And the passage matters least.

  --

  Notes: In the September of our lives I wrote this poem to ask the question, “If we had to do it all again, would we?”

  It is Dianne who answers the question, and only with a “sometimes.”

  We’ve always loved September, every year, because the crowds are gone, and we have the lakes and quiet bays to ourselves. Our daughter, our only child, was born in September. But not, rumour to the contrary, in a canoe.

  This poem is a popular one, maybe for the sense of tranquility, or maybe for the answer to the question.

  ****

  Chapter 5: Tying Down Canoes

  Somewhere past Alberta the winter walks on diamond feet

  Shuffles across the prairies in sparkling shoes of sleet

  The day, today, is sunny, but the northwest whispers rain

  It’s November, in Ontario, and I prepare the canoes again

  And yet, the moving sun is warm on me

  And yet - the river outside town is sliding free

  And tying down canoes is hard on me

  The hulls are hieroglyphics traced in curving lines of white

  Two passports stamped by passages I didn’t get quite right

  My heart, too, is marked by river brook and lake

  I tie the blue canoe to another driven stake

  And yet there’s five more hours to this day

  And a lovely stretch of river not so far away

  And I find covering canoes is hard this day

  A heretic pause lengthens as I contemplate the sky

  And snow and moving water and a thousand reasons why

  The last brown leaves of willows where the river makes a bend

  And the aching way of autumn things that may not come again

  The moment lost has not been spent on me

  Tethered to the truth is never to be free

  And tying down canoes is hard on me

  --

  Notes: Sometimes, even in November, a weather system called an “Alberta clipper” develops out west then comes barreling eastward towards me, my canoes, and the places I like to canoe. It means the season’s over, and it’s time to put the canoes up off the ground, cover them with tarps, and tie them down.

  I think the first two lines are among the best I’ve written. And maybe I’m partial to the last line. Because season endings are hard. Many endings are hard.

  ****

  Chapter 6: What Last Golden River Run?

  In the autumn sunlight

  What new route shall we take?

  What last golden river run

  Cross what last blue lake?

  Do October’s embered hills

  Mention the small word, “where”

  Or, like some neon Vegas act

  Can they just “be there”?

  Ask me some other lesser month

  For schedule, reason, plan

  Today laughs at “I shall, I will”

  And blazes out, “I can!”

  Notes: There’s no time in autumn to redo the canoe routes we did in warmer weather. The year is running out and it’s dark way too early. The last chance to find new water comes in the fall. Maybe I want to end the year the way the trees do – going out in glory.

  There’s an intensity to the fall experience. The lake waters clear out and the air’s so clean the sunlight almost gouges me.

  We’re both older, now, and we take each lake more slowly, enjoying reflections, leaves falling onto water, and the last flowers growing out of a crack in a shoreline rock.

  ****

  Chapter 7: To the Edges of Drown and Sing

  It was too cold to be on the water

  The shores of wi
nter groaned at the edges of the province

  The sky was the arctic’s lesser brother

  Out to conquer souther lands

  Much too cold to be on the water

  What the hell, I thought, that’s what a canoe

  Is for

  To carry us to the edges of cold fish and air

  To the edges of drown and sing

  And in the long run, cold white hunts us all

  Life was always an edge of sorts

  Our unwilling temporary challenge to cold white

  It was too cold not to be on the water

  Notes: I wrote this for a guy up at Algonquin Outfitters, who wanted a canoe poem about canoeing in November, but didn’t care for rhyme.

  Algonquin Outfitters had taken to putting a copy of my poems, back when I wrote and mailed one each month, on the men’s toilet wall. They made extra copies because people kept stealing them. I took it as a compliment.

  So I wrote him this one. He liked the line about the “edges of drown and sing,” he said. So I’ve made it the title.

  I’ve gone canoeing in November – and even December – and I’ve seen the cold look in the eye of the water. It’s an experience.

  ****

  Chapter 8: Sonnet for September

  As I canoe September’s quiet days

  I leave another summer in my wake

  Receding, fainter, fading into haze

  Like passing ripples fade on summer lake

  As I pass, the waters close behind

  The bass returns to watching rocky ledge

  No trace I leave for man or loon to find

  The smallest ripples die at water’s edge

  Summer’s wake is fading gently, now

  The mind forgets the dates, the scenes misplaced

  And I, near some September riffle-pool

  Pause while Ontario turns cool

  To wonder at the season’s routes I’ve traced

  And all the waters gone beneath my bow

  Notes: September is the month for contemplating things. (October is for exhilaration, and November is for watching movies.)

  ****

  Chapter 9: Sonnet for November

  Compass Lake is cold and dark these days

  Clouds slide by, just touching barren hill

  The atmosphere goes east, the dampness stays

  It looks like rain, and maybe further chill

  November’s gusty winds recharge the lakes

  With air that ought to last the fish till thaw

  I’ve come to watch the way the land retakes

  Itself from me. The winds grow further raw.

  I’m three portages from the highway now

  And have the feeling I’ve been told to leave

  I cannot trust this wind, nor like the sky

  And when I feel the water, I like not how

  The shock of cold is felt. Believe:

  November lakes bid summer men goodbye.

  Notes: Winter is when Mama Nature stops playing nice with you. November’s her warning.

  In winter, when the lake’s covered with ice, there’s not much oxygen for the fish. So the winds of November have a purpose. But in November the winds seem stronger, the waves bigger. And the canoe seems too small sometimes.

  ****

  Chapter 10: October is the Church of God

  October is the church of God

  Built in yellow leaf

  It calls for not the slightest doubt

  Impels, instead belief

  Each lake’s a chalice deep with time

  Craft with fish and dreams

  That give us faith the world is more

  Than merely what it seems

  The final portage takes you through

  Aisles of quiet beech

  The geese the choirs of Eden

  Now brought within your reach

  --

  Notes: This is one of Dianne’s favourites.

  ****

  Chapter 11: The Vanishing Month

  Halfway home in the sunshine

  In the slow and patient September sunshine

  I picked some late violet flowers

  That you set in the canoe beside you

  Without comment

  The pond is stiller, now

  The sky and water become

  Clearer again, the fields yellow

  With patience

  Ah, love, September

  The vanishing month;

  Ten degrees cooler at night,

  And Canadians start preparing for

  Winter again

  --

  Notes: Each September I pick a flower when the canoe gets close enough to a rocky shore or deep enough into swampy areas to find a lotus. I put it onto the flat of my paddle and pass it to Dianne, at the front of the canoe.

  Strange, the way the waters are abandoned in September. The weather people say summer here starts in the first week of June and ends in the first week of September. But as soon as school starts, the waters are left to those of us unlikely to be successfully further educated.

  Some days I think I am too much like September.

  ****

  Chapter 12: November Dance

  Too early, the wind is dancing with the night

  The canoes are blocked, plastic-wrapped and still

  By nine, the rain will dress itself in white

  And waltz in darkness’ arms across the hill

  In the basement, varnished paddles now reflect

  The ropes and hats and sundry summer gear

  The packs are hung on pegs, the shelves collect

  The sorted debris of another year

  Outside, November dances with the year

  The trees outside tango in the rain

  I make sure the basement floor is clear

  And, carefully, I roll the tent again.

  --

  Notes: Tents don’t really want to go back into the nylon bags they occupied last spring in the stores. But things have to be put away or I’ll be tripping over memories and stakes all winter.

  All summer nature is my lover, but when November comes, she’s out dancing with forces a lot bigger and meaner than I am. Then it’s time to retire to interiors.

  ****

  Chapter 13: The One-Pine Inn

  The evening water’s still as space

  And as clear as London gin

  I sit beside the fireplace

  Down at the One-Pine Inn

  The residents murmur quietly

  And inspect my tender skin

  Approving of the evening meal

  Served at the One-Pine Inn

  There’s dirt beneath my fingernails

  And hair on my unshaved chin

  But nobody seems to really mind

  Here at the One-Pine Inn

  The supper is stew, as usual

  Served in a sooty tin

  But it’s hot and filling and what I need

  For my stay at the One-Pine Inn

  I had to park my own canoe

  And drag my own stuff in

  And after midnight it gets right chill

  In October, at the One-Pine Inn

  But the Management responds to all complaints

  With an awkward lunar grin

  And serves an after-dinner round of peace

  Again, at the One-Pine Inn

  ****

  Chapter 14: Camping Alone

  Don’t camp alone; in the early night

  Pterodactyls leap

  And thrash in trees above your head

  Gnashing about, as you try to sleep

  The long October darkness brings

  Krakens in from the dark, dark lake

  Touching the shore, caressing the canoe

  Keeping such as I awake

  Wraith winds threaten midnight rain

  Dead leaves fall, starved and bent

  And close outside, the pad, pad, pad

  Of direwolves snuffling around the tent

&n
bsp; Unless you’re deaf, don’t camp alone

  In bed at six, asleep at four

  The autumn nights are far too long

  When spent alone, on forest floor

  --

  Notes: When I camped with Dianne, I was pretty sure that she wasn’t going to be able to protect me from escaped tigers or misplaced grizzly bears. Yet I slept like an oak log (except for my snoring, of course) in a flimsy nylon tent the middle of nowhere. The loons on the lake and the rustling of leaves just lulled my weary body.

  But when I camped alone, it took till after midnight to get to sleep. There were always sounds which I couldn’t identify and which my subconscious refused to ignore, despite my civilized logic. When I’d eliminated anything in the current biology books as being capable of making such sounds, I was left with things imprinted onto my genes by ancestors long gone.

  Part of me was always surprised to wake up in the morning, uneaten.

  I’m the only one that likes this poem, actually.

  ****

  Chapter 15: The Canoe Becomes the Passage

  But still I think of distances

  With time enough to share

  I would not give you promises

  I would only take you there

  The canoe becomes the passage

  The paddles suffer love

  The moment comes from gravity

  With nothing from above

  I’ll show you where the river ends

  Beyond a hill or two

  I’ll bind within an azure line

  The moment, me, and you

  For us there are distances

  In October’s jewelled air

  I’ll teach you where the rivers end

  Come - if you dare

  --

  Notes: Holy Mazinaw! What the heck am I talking about in this poem?

  Send answers; maybe win a prize.

  ****

  Chapter 16: Necropolis

  Half a day in Sepiatown

  Six miles on the Grand

  Necropolis of November

  River, sky, and land

  Brown. On brown. On brown.

  A norther threatens rain

  The nudge and nuzzle of amber flow

  Shoves us downstream again

  Two neurotic nomads, centered

  In November’s numbing hue

  The colding wind attacks the skin

  Drops leaves on our canoe

  We paused to steal some apples

  And left the cores behind

  So shared the water with a resurrection

  Cold, deaf, and blind

  --

  Notes: Al and I went on an afternoon canoe ride on the Grand River, north of the covered bridge. It was only a few hours, but it was a world where everything else that wasn’t dead had either gone into hibernation or was heading for warmer climates.

  Along the shore was an apple tree, with apples that had fallen into the water. We tried them: not bad. I bit into the core and saw the seeds there,

  and suddenly it struck me that the those seeds were a promise of spring. Then I knew that the whole landscape wasn’t dead; it had just gone to sleep.

  I’ve always liked this poem. That makes one of us, anyway.

  ****

  Chapter 17: Not Because

  Not because I promised myself

  Last winter, kicking snow off the car

  Not because I told myself I would

  When summer's heat was gone