Camber by Don McKay

Author:Don McKay [McKay, Don]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-55199-667-7
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2004-03-15T16:00:00+00:00

TO SPEAK OF PATHS

… c’est le moment de parler de vous, chemins qui vous effacez de cette terre victime.

– Yves Bonnefoy

One gestures to a blue

fold in the hills, meaning

follow your heart. Another scrawls

follow your nose into the raspberry canes

and may later show itself to be

the deer’s own way to the water.

Some will speak

only to the third and fourth ears that persist,

vestigially, in the feet.

One way or another

they feed us a line, and we go,

dithering over the outwash or angled as an oar

into the forest, headed for the top,

the lake, the photo

opportunity, the grave of the trapper

who lived all alone and trained a moose

to pull his sleigh.

Strange marks on a far slope turn out,

hours later, to have been your zigzag path ascending,

earning every inch the waterfall beside it spends

like a hemorrhage. And always

the thrill of the pause, when your eye drinks

and your heart pounds and your legs

imagine roots, when your whole life,

like a posse, may catch up with you and tumble

headlong into the moment.

You may wish to say something to it, but your tongue

seems to be turning to an alder twig

and you must wait for wind.

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