Sediment

Bone of the planet that was just last week laid bare by the blunt
Sculpting of the nice: it seemed a land designed
To summon mammals – haunched and shouldered,
Socketed. Each lake we entered
Was a lens, curious and cold
That brought us into focus.
Would I go back to that time,
That chaste and dangerous embrace?
Not unless I was allowed,
As a carry-on, some sediment that has since
Accumulated, something to impede the
Passage of those days that ran through us
Like a celluloid. Exceperts from the book of loss.
Tendonitis. Second thoughts. Fields guides.
Did we even notice that the red pine sprang directly from the rock
And swayed in wind like a gospel choirs?
Not us. We were muscle loving muscle, drank
Straight from the rivers ran the rapids threw
Our axes at the trees rode the back of every moose
We caught mid-crossing put our campfires out
By pissing on the flames. Sometimes, In tom thomson's paints you can see vestigial human figures, brushstrokes among Brushstrokes. Would I go back to that time, those lakes? Not without my oft-repeated dream of diving for the body – possibly my own, possibly the lost anonymous companion's – and surfacing to gulp in air (the granite ridges watching, the clouds above them vacant and declarative) and plunging once again into transparent
Unintelligible depths.
seconds, the space I make for worry.
Even now, the random image on the retina
will forever be this small child hopping over
puddles of warm, muddy water,
his skin bronzed and dark, bathed in ruddy gold,
like a still-life, ablaze with colour,
fixed in iridescent words
on the black and white marble of the poem