Blue Satin

 When my mother died last year,

I had to sort her corporeality,

Give away dusty memorabilia,

Reserve something precious,

A leather Shakespeare,

Tarnished silver rosary,

Paisley Shawl, her Doulton prize. 

But in a drawer, wrapped in tissue

Was the Butterick pattern for the gown

Which I wore for my high school prom,

With another ample roll of

Della Robbia Satin and matching blue filigreed lace. 

Twenty-five years with never an allusion,

She had kept it flat and ready to stitch

For some private but compelling reason;

Or had that fabric been a tenuous bridge

To a time fragment eternities ago when

She was seventeen and might have dreamed

Of parading in her own cerulean debut

 Against the prairie winds of Saskatchewan. 

                        
       Where Do Moose Go? 

Where do moose go in winter?

They're not furtive in fall,Mowed down by clumsy hunters,

And in summer bolt fly-blownInto bewildered cottage traffic. 

But come January, no palpability:

A few prints cross a frozen bog,

Some droppings dot a ski trail,

A spruce bud cluster plucked.

Are human senses tricked? 

They don't wing south with loons,

Don adaptable rabbit white,Spend Christmas eve gobbling corn In

 Peterborough like spoiled ducks

Unwilling to make the Carolinas. 

Half a ton of muscle and bone

Can't hold Moosonic conclaves

Where snowmobiles fear to thread,

Burrow bearlike under stumprot And sup on satisfying brown fat. 

Where are these ungainly masters

Of legerdemain and camouflage?

What gnostic secrets do their

Old mammalian brains retain

To hold technology in thrall?

                                      
                Kite on Paul St.

 It is summer again and I miss

My neighbour Gaston Rochette.

Last August over our fence

He offered me his plum wine.

Harmless pale pink lemonade,

It issued from old rum barrels

At 30% and melted my afternoon

Into a surprising pleasant haze.

 "Helps pass the time," he would say,

Whittling at nothing or flying a kite,

Then he ordered a tandem of maple,

Brandished a chainsaw in one hand

With his Lions friends and stored

Five years' warmth for his family. 

With twenty cords left he was dead,

Morphine no subterfuge for blood.

But today as I searched my cedar tops

The scarlet tatter of his kite waved,

Recalling the rich price of life

And the cool deceptive wine

We shared that sunny afternoon.

                                         Aunt Belle's Album

 In l910, a fragile seventeen,

She took the train to Dryden

To school her uncle's brood.

Her father, the miller of Alva,

Thought the bold Northern air

Might strengthen her heart.  

Yet these photos capture her

In white bombazine dress and

Huge black boa-feathered hat

Under a twisted jackpine,

Locking eyes with a darkly handsome beau. 

Next she kneels with a wrinkled

Pipe-smoking grandmother, both laughing,

Birch bark cannister beside

A Jersey Cream Cracker tin. 

Then the HBC canoe ferries the gang

To an Edwardian picnic, all caught

Mugging on the white cloth smoothed

Beneath the cedars, pose by Seurat.

 In this dusty album, even blurry

Or spliced shots were preserved,

So precious and rare the new medium. 

I always pictured her strolling Yonge St.,

A retired Hydro draftswoman in l945,

Prim old maid playing solitaire,

Warming the Brown Betty pot for tea.

Never in a wild Canadian west

With a dashing bush man half my age.  

          Ice Village 

April evaporates Brigadoon,

One hundred crowded huts

Chattering over Wanapitei.

Popped like January mushrooms,

They vanish prudent in the thaw. 

Trucks, cars, and snowmobiles

Crammed this medieval stockade;

Dogs scratched and fought,

Fir trees planted in the ice

Pointed the way to paradise. 

Plump Christmas tortieres and

Soft plum wine were juggled

Between mittens and gloves

As harmonica trills and ballads

Warmed the still wilderness. 

Now spring's deadline balances

The snatch of a fat lake troutA

gainst the risk of bogging boots

Or freezing skids into the lake

In a sudden overnight snap.  

On this foggy morning,

One lone hut remains,

Confident, insisting

Its false dimensions on

Inconstant foundations.