by Arleen Paré
MONASTIC LIFE 2
It is interior. Hidden in cochlea. Behind lenses, just under the skin. It is the sound of chair legs backing away from the table. Three times a day. The fragrance of beeswax. Soundless prayer. Morning mist, incense lifting from the censer’s broad swing.
Not the censer. Not the convex of the bells, silver-etched, angels and stars. Not twelve wheels of cheese or a hand held in the forge. Not the hammer or horse. Not white robes, hoods, tunics of wool. But the effect of it all. The bells’ seduction. Geese rising from shore. Not the wafer, but the wafer’s weight on the tongue, light as ash. Not the man, but the way a man disappears in the habit of all.
MONASTIC LIFE 3
It is confession. Inside: envy and anger, trespasses, how to forgive. It is prayer and the mother who still mourns her long-vanished son. It is God behind rib slats, God in the hollows of mouths. It is angels, feathers weighing down scapulas. Nightbodies flying through the solitude that sanctity can make. Alveoli-frilled gloriosa and clear tenor notes. It is waiting for the break-openness of clavicles. Snapping in two. Rat-scurry sounds become wings at the narrow night window. Wild roses twine round the spine. Bees colonize the innermost ear.
CALL AND RESPONSE
1.
The Canadian Shield calls to the fault
in Timiskaming Lake. The Shield shelters
more than half the land. The fault, tectonic,
replies with the Ottawa River, whose waters run east
and spread at the place of two mountains.
Becoming lake. In this way the lake is of lake,
song of song, Deux-Montagnes out of Timiskaming.
The lake there, at the two mountains, calls
to the trees near and around, riparian trees
on rocky shores and the terrestrials
within two miles of the shore. Perpetual loop.
One verse then the other. Connecting
trees to the sand, the orthic, melanic, brunisol soil,
tree canopies, consolations of climate.
The way birds in the morning define the new day,
call sunrise from night.
2.
The trees call to each other their own
names: sugar maple, hickory, eastern white pine.
Black willow chants the alphabets of green ash.
Yellow birch calls to red maple, chokecherry to beech.
They bear multiple names: formal, scientific,
common French and the names that are Mohawk.
And no names at all. Their calls
travel through air, water, through earth,
sedges and shrubs, algae
and cumulus clouds. All conversing.
Rocks and black leeches. Sturgeon, green frogs.
Limestone and vascular plants.
3.
How does the sky
reply when silver-backed leaves tug at the wind,
blocking the passage to sea?
Clouds ring with rain
and the lake lifts small pewter washes
in rows of applause.
What listens to sugar maples’ clear amber flow?
Rays: yellow and cold.
Fine beads of drizzle
hiss the filigreed ice.
What answers flood cover drowning hickory knees?
Clay or silt. Till or clay loam. Sap in the spring.
4.
Sugar maple is always and in all places attentive,
alert for replies from the open terrain.
The soil, fine or sandy, alluvium,
measures the length of flood time in spring,
speaks a name to the climate,
the warmest in the whole province. Call
and response: a dominant tree, Acer saccharum,
a sweetness that humans tap into.
HOW OWN A LAKE
A child begins owning
the lake,
its lifting haunt in morning,
its sun-slapped birds. Begins
to own the rud
that coats evening,
sunsets hinged
behind the gap to the west. Begins
owning the islet that floats offshore,
boulder-pinned.
She upends smaller stones,
plucks innocent snails. She claims
the islet’s frogs and the ribbits of frogs,
moves the stirring lumps.
Owns the waves
and the far shore that looses them. Owns
water lilies bobbing beneath the far-end bridge,
yards them out, lays them in layers
on the rowboat’s wet floor.
She owns water weeds that yank at her feet,
tadpoles butting, which she collects, black leeches,
which she salts.
And the monastery across the lake,
which she can’t see, does she own it as well?
And the reservation across the lake,
completely unknown?
The duck blind near the point, she claims.
And lapping sounds.
And darning needles
switching blue, and rapiers of grass,
the briny pong, the smart of slime that chokes
the small elbowed bay.
And the lake. The lake
begins owning
the child, carves its winged shape
into her young,
green-stick bones, into places there
where holiness will soak,
and a loneliness she can’t hope to shake.
KANESATAKE
the reserve on the lake banners maple and oak
sumac a warrior flag
the road through is knee-high grass-flanked
northward for miles only trees and grass moving
no people no dogs
your car driving
nowhere you know
until rain speckles the windscreen
a sense of trespass the threat
of a downpour
you decide to turn back
everything flashes by in reverse
rain-splattered signs maples and oaks
Christmas lights at the ends of the driveways
hand-lettered signs or neon signs blinking
eggs for sale fireworks cigarettes cigarettes
Tabac Chez Nous and Best Butts Mohawk Gas
once a figure appeared gas station to car
then a warning: we don’t collect taxes
for any foreign government
and the flag red yellow and black
the nine-hole golf course next door
only two cars on the road a small truck
the shush the wet road
not that you live here but
would you leave if you had to
(your life being trespass)
and where would you go?
to Ireland’s south-west where your mother’s people are from
or to Antrim where your father’s father or Glasgow
where your father was born
displacements and exile
this not being your people’s original place
can you go back
to where
you never have been?
IMPERMANENCE
elm trees dead now
still fan-shape under your lids
silver-roofed barns blister your sight in sub-zero cold
a pharmaceutical plant
stands where a woodlot once grew
and the creek behind the McTavishes’
is now covered over with fill
the pussy willows
&n
bsp; on the hill near the creek
ploughed under and gone
but the summertime lake
its vast runnelled sprawl
reluctant in late day to let anything go
your lips as a child turned delphinium blue
your knife-pleated fingers
pale as small fish
WHETHER WIND
I walk on ghosts / apparitional gatherings carry me along.
Don Domanski
the night you lost your parents it was
evening first summer maybe August
parts are missing
the length of the shadows
the mileage from Fran’s house
to yours missing
or never known
how you got home
why the doors were all locked
darkness
inking inside and outside your body
you were nine
but even your age
or if that night
the bullfrogs made any sound whether
your dead grandmother hovered
in front of or behind
the outer screen door
the kitchen window streaked
reflecting
you said good-bye leaving Fran’s house
light hanging by threads
you ran the road
evening wind picking up
but even the wind
or if maple leaves bled to black if trees
began hemming the road
or if you wore nothing at all
on your arms
you knew only the night something lost
whether wind or black leaves
whether you found them
Or were found
whether either is true
MONASTIC LIFE 4
It resides with honeybees, rows of hives along wire fences to the west, each queen drowsing in the jellied centre of a world. Bless each queen, that she survives the freeze, that she recites sweet piping sounds in spring as icicles release the sun. Bless the orchard trees as they hold up their plain grey twigs. Fields of clover one day will levitate, hover in July’s keening light. Bless the workers too, dull-huddled in their combs: that they remember flight, uncup their double wings against leftover cold. Bless each monk who dreams of honey, pantried light, stolen to illuminate dim winter shelves. They are praying for forgiveness. And for blossoms to burst April buds.
MONASTIC LIFE 5
It is liturgical. Worship, proper times of the day. One time, then another, in order, each time reaching. When one ends, thoughts of the next arise. Quotidian. Before collecting the milk, Matins. Before resting, Compline. Before reaching God, reaching out for God. Everyone becoming a saint. Before contemplating the miracle of clouds or of fish, the hour’s office. To praise God. Who hovers over the ferns, over faces hooded in barns, the brown backs of cows. Life among maples. God in herringboned pine cones, in clams boring into the sand. Worshipping the wild horse-tailed sky. When wind rises. Snow falls. When sap varnishes the flanks of cold trees. Every season, God. And reaching out for God. Every hour passes ordained. In this place of yellow perch and bluegill, trillium and ribbon grass, all eyes know when to close. All eyes look at what they are looking for.
WHOSE LAKE?
My lake says the man
with the speedboat
because his uncle
once owned a camp at Rigaud where the river
breaks into the lake
God’s lake says
Frère Gabriel because
he believes God owns
whatever He wants
and who wouldn’t want this particular lake
My lake you say
and the lake of your sister
because your grandfather
and mother and aunts
and your uncle
once owned the white house up the road
and you stayed every summer
and swam every day
rain or shine
Our lake say the Mohawks
and the lake of our dead
because they lived
here or near enough here
and died here
if not from time immemorial
at least almost as long
My lake says the woman
who rents you the room
who owns the patio chairs
and the curved turquoise pool
and the long windy fore-shore
performing before you
and the house like a rock
or a deity
watching your backs
LAKE 1
The lake harbours no greed. Rain comes, the lake simply receives. Rain comes in spring, and the ice, in plates and in discs, moves east, leaving crust and a thick, ragged skirt. Grit that falls through, trail of a fox falling in. Everything is poor. Rain comes, and wind. Wind like a cousin, not always kind. Wind-scrub and wind-wash, rough play and tease. Wind drags the lake’s floor, casts up what’s past dying. Swollen boards from fish huts, rented in winter, towed onto the ice, bird wings, broken at shore, rotten fish. The lake has nothing to ask, its ear cupped. Its hearing fills with nothing but rain. Water rises. Herons shrug in rock hollows, frogs wallow deeper in mud. Floods well. Lake opens up, gleaning, a chalice brimmed to the lip.
RELIGIOUS LIFE
Daring move. The school is old, made of wood: one match would torch it to ground before lunch. Who’d save the children? Even now, old snow still shrinks their schoolyard. Splinters fester inside their pine desks. Each groaning stair, saddle-bowed. Still, God shoulders in – grade four, the last tractable age.
He sneaks in through catechism’s call and response:
Who is God?
God is love.
How long is eternity?
However long it takes a dove’s wing to wear away the marble-hard world.
God slips in at 2:30, brushing past the folds of Sister Zita’s grey gown. His beard swirling dust. Through the Stations of the Cross, through His Son, He enters their stories, their grade-four adventures. The man’s terrible gore, his thorn-tangled hair. Father and child, sufferings and wrongs.
Once a month, Sister Zita fire-drills a bucket of flames on the unsafe escape. God tends the flames. Day by day, He replaces black snow-melt with spring. The wolves at the chain links are flame-eyed with want.
MONASTIC LIFE 6
Silence colludes with shadow, pervasive blur that underhangs archways between granite walls. Walk, look at the feet. One boot, then the other. Note how clay dries in stiff clots, sculpts frills around heavy soles. Note the monk-shaped shadow falling from boot soles heading away from the sun. Silence lasts a lifetime. Life lived beneath, burrowed under the sky. Say nothing: think only of God. The last consolation. Silence enters the body; the body does not enter silence. Beseech the Holy Spirit to haunt the chiaroscuro of soul. Watch the soup fall from the ladle into white bowls. Eat the bread. Be grateful. And for the boots that keep to the path. Grateful. Look down at the feet.
DAD BEFORE LAKE
Before the ocean liner, Transylvania:
homing pigeons on the coal-scuttle roof,
pink and pearl grey, tin grey with rainbows,
and white with red feet:
Maggie and Nessie, Mrs. McWing.
Before Montreal: Mossend, west of Glasgow,
the old Bloch Hearn Yards on the Clyde where his father
slung sheets of hot steel, each one
the size of a bed. Family home,
a block from the pub.
Before the lake: Montreal, new,
and the French, Jamaicans and Jews.
The Protestants he already knew how to hate.
Be
fore the lake: the Depression.
Not enough food or work. The wagon horse. Winter
on the treacherous ice.
Before my mother, he organized dances,
wore dress suits, lapels like dark folded kites.
After my mother: the lake.
He called the lake Shangri-La.
SWIMMING UNDER THE OVERHEAD FIXTURE
in measured strokes the crawl
right arm then the left head and backbone
aligned head-pivot
synchronizing drawn-back elbows
first one up a piston
breathing in
breathing out
then the other
all along the long hallway
two feet below
the stained plaster ceiling
no windows
fingertips glancing against
the overhead fixture’s
bevelled-glass rim
feet flutter-kicking toes
grazing the wallpaper once
once kicking a framed watercolour
right off its nail
the end-stop faraway door
unopened maybe sealed
each stroke defying
the unfluid laws of aerodynamics
the air warm and unwet
somehow buoys the methodical flight
arms tire then
a careful stroke-switch to the breast
head down legs frogged
and push push again
the continuous risk of the height
a thin carpet runner on the far-below floor
headroom capped cobwebs
and the small distant door
still unopened unmoved
DAD IN THE LAKE
Lewd, his close-fitting jersey-knit
swimsuit, della robbia blue, drawstring
at his waist, dark hair coiled on his chest,
his sinewy thighs,
his knees, small onions, ivory-hued.
His pale feet, unprotected, rock him
down to the edge. And in. He stumbles
on the slip of stones, almost pitches,
before the shallows knee-deepen,