a matter of taste —
what I don’t do
’s what I can’t stand.
But you —
your Presbyterianism was
an art form you enjoyed.
(“I like the strength
of my own backbone.”)
I’ve
no strength. It hurts to think.
(“Then don’t think.”)
How you stood it then.
Dad’s dying toughened you
like iron. I can’t.
I can’t endure it.
I can’t talk. And here you are
still talking —
Henry was
the shut door standing
in between
you and my self.
He loved me.
No one does
love me.
I want someone to say
love me.
I spent a life on you!
(“You did what was right.”)
Now I keep house
for nothingness.
*
Shut in a closet
this closed house
I can’t see —
Henry —
why can’t I talk to you?
Not his voice answers,
it explains:
(“But dear, you never invented me.
I was real. I am dead. I’m sorry dear.”)
Eat of my darkness.
Taste and see.
Henry, you should be with me now,
love me, somebody be with me —
Mother, invention, be with me now!
Bear with me
these
long
funerals.
BUSHED, a pastoral
I
Setting: Mid-woods,
a half-logged clearing just regrown,
short spruce, young poplars, willow bush,
boulders, stumps, a pile of brush,
and at one side a sagging shack
black with neglect and winters.
Not far from here two men are camping out.
Their campfire’s faded into coals,
the clear stars shine above them.
The first is Verne McGuigan, Mountie, getting on,
not yet retired, slow moving, country bred,
a big man, reddened with his years.
The second is Ed Bear, short, stocky, Indian,
more of an old acquaintance than a friend.
They sleep in their clothes
but aren’t yet sleeping.
Verne: I get cold nights when I camp out
these days. I’m getting old.
I dream things and don’t know they’re dreams.
I used to know.
I used to travel with a map all through these woods —
still got the map,
but all the roads have changed since then,
the logging roads, the highways,
where the lines went through. . . .
They used to bring a big boat up the river
with the kinfolk on it, once a year,
and picnic out front of the old house.
I’m getting old.
Ed, how do you get from here to there?
Ed: You can’t get there from here.
Verne: You know that joke.
Ed: But I ain’t lost.
Verne: And that one too.
Ed: I’ll tell you one.
They say the moon got lost.
Young thing she was, climbed down the hill.
This fellow’s halfway up the mountain
wet with dew, all wet, all dark,
all cedar boughs and spruce, the grey-white moss
like fur. Camped out,
he couldn’t sleep, but sits there bolt awake all night,
like you and me, and sees this beating in the branches
like a bird that’s caught
except it is the moon that’s caught
and frightened of him,
sure enough, being a foreigner and all.
They say he beat her back,
hitting against the bushes with his gun butt —
good thing it didn’t go off — like once
or twice has done some guy —
banging the ground to scare up game —
He beat her back;
she scrambled up the slope
and there she is, back home again,
a little wet, clothes tore.
But she’s not lost, except she sometimes is
again inclined to come out down and look —
just a peek to see how things are.
She’s scared, you know, she don’t come far,
likely she’s feared of him,
the violent man.
Verne: You make me see things in the dark.
I close my eyes —
I see this college kid
he’s lost his self last night
birdwatching with the wrong map,
brand new equipment he don’t know how to use,
and a brand new wife back at the camp.
His feelings are hurt.
It shouldn’t happen to a guy like him.
We see Verne’s dream:
mid-morning and mid-woods.
Young Jerry takes his windbreaker off,
seeing there’s sun, and shakes it out.
He matches map to compass, landscape,
sun. Finds
no meaning, and undoes his boots.
Jerry: What kind of map is this?
It doesn’t list the roads that are,
but only roads that used to be.
I should be doing better than I am.
He nurses his toes, each, one by one;
this young man’s sorry for himself.
Jerry: The Indians did this sort of thing. Eat bark.
See visions. Be a man.
Those days the woods were full of game.
It’s different now.
He pauses.
I wouldn’t know how.
Again.
The birds don’t lay eggs yet.
Nothing’s up.
I don’t know what wild plants to eat.
Too early in the year.
And she’ll be scared.
Call in the Mounties.
No!
And again.
Elaine, not yet.
I want to find myself.
Big deal,
the paleolithic man.
Your true self in the wilderness!
I’ve got all day.
I’ll whittle out a spear,
lie on the bank, so my shadow falls
onto the grass, not on the stream,
so not to frighten them.
He dresses, stands,
and grunts.
Jerry: My feet hurt up to my ass.
Limps off.
From the dark beyond this vision:
Verne: You saw that Ed?
He’s making out OK.
But then there’s that old dear Sarah lost!
What’s she want now
out in the bush to go borrowing
teacups of sugar! She should be back
in the kitchen minding the window flowers.
These woods is wilderness, old girl; they’re no backyard.
Playing games she is,
just full of it.
All but the sink, in that bag of hers.
But she’s further along than she knows she is.
That worries me.
And into the mid-woods clearing comes
old Sarah in her baseball cap,
two cardigans on, and walking shoes,
blue jersey slacks and a raincoat,
with her handbag big as a rucksack,
full, with God-knows-what
of the useful sort. Comes on unworried,
due to set — for a spell. Midday.
She smooths her raincoat out.
Sarah: There now. You’re dry.
She fo
lds it up and bags it in a bag
that goes in her handbag.
Then marks her bird count in a book.
Sarah: A pileated woodpecker,
a great horned owl. Not bad.
Two years ago that hummingbird,
brave little soul — she wouldn’t leave her nest
but glared at me.
I couldn’t say I wouldn’t take her eggs.
I’d take them now. Hungry enough.
To have to kill that little fish! It tasted good.
Poor thing! And I feel good.
Indian summer. A glorious day.
Thank the Lord for a warm fall.
Sam would have laughed
to see me standing in the briars
nibbling away at the rosehips like a grosbeak.
Get more seeds than anything.
They go right through.
She changes socks, takes out her map,
and lines her place with a pencil.
Sarah: Well, there’s nothing like a nature walk
for feeling natural. I’m not lost.
And here I am upon the map.
What I am is —
is too blessed old to get back home.
I’m in no sort of hurry though.
They’ll look for me.
I didn’t mean to get this far.
A red squirrel chatters at her
and she smiles.
Sarah: I’m glad they let no hunters here.
I should be wishing for them though.
Oh no. They’d shoot me.
Navy blue deer, bang, bang!
That’s what they’re like. Don’t trust them.
Me, I’m looking for the eastern panther.
And habenaria. I found it,
trifle past its best.
She pats her purse, a little proud,
a little shamed.
Sarah: I should have left it there.
Sam says I tear the woods down bit by bit
trying to save it in my yard.
You only want to garden it, he says,
not save it. Sakes,
if I thought they’d let it stand a while,
I’d let it be.
I don’t dig all of anything.
I always leave some where I find.
Unwilling to get up just yet
she grubs the soil around her seat,
finds food, a tiny tuberous vine,
and bags it in a plastic bag,
another specimen.
Sarah: Indian potato. That’s rich soil.
Boletus. Not a purple one. I might try that.
Too desperate. I’m not that sure.
I should have brought my book.
I keep thinking of things I should have brought.
I should have a pack mule like a prospector.
I’m having fun.
But Sam will worry. At my age.
I might dig worms.
I’m not to worms just yet. They don’t appeal.
I should be on the road I’m on.
I should get up. Get up.
As Sarah leaves the clearing
Verne sits up. It must be midnight
where he is.
Verne: Let’s pack up, Ed. We’ll have to look for them.
They scramble from their bags
and pack their gear.
II
Same place, same time, or more or less,
midday. Verne’s brought Elaine
with him. He’s soothing her,
or thinks he is, with talk.
Ed’s off alone, somewhere,
looking. There are soldiers out
from Camp Gagetown;
there are dogs sent for,
should be on the trail by afternoon.
Verne’s got a lunch,
a walkie-talkie on his back.
He don’t look too perturbed.
Verne: He’s quite a character, Ed Bear.
He speaks English real good
but he don’t answer straight
when you speak to him.
Sometimes what he says you can’t make out
or you make it out but it don’t make sense.
Or it makes Indian sense maybe.
Like when I asked him would these two
likely meet up and Ed says no.
“No two get lost in the same bush,”
he says. That’s Indian.
What he means by it,
I can’t say.
He indicates a bench-like stone.
You rest a while.
Elaine: Won’t the rain wash out the scent?
Verne: Might from the dogs.
Not from Ed Bear.
He’s better than a dog someways.
He always finds them, sooner or later.
And there’s them army boys go through the bush
like trucks. Don’t look where they’re going half the time
but who could miss them?
Elaine’s indifferent to Verne’s chatter.
Drenched in her thoughts, she huddles
with her fears.
Verne: He won’t be hurt real bad, dear.
Can’t be. We cleared the cliffs.
He’s got no gun. What else is there?
There’s been no wind to speak of.
Can’t have drowned
this far from the water. He’s sprained himself.
A smart young chap won’t have gone far.
If he’s on his feet he’ll follow the brook,
end up at a cottage on the lake
or find this here.
Do him some good to get himself bushed.
A chance to prove to himself he’s a man.
Elaine: He might be hurt.
Verne: He might.
He indicates the hut.
I’ll have to check that out.
Pause
No one’s been here.
Your leg’s cramped up?
You rest a while.
Your man’s all right.
I got some coffee here.
He lolls beside her
on the stone.
Verne: You hear the derndest things out here.
Like last night, listening to those boys sing out
and the moon comes out for a short while
and some guy shines his flashlight back at it —
I hear a voice cry out real weird:
“Oh scoor! Oh scoor!”
Pauses, reflectively.
Oh scoor. Now that’s not English.
French?
But nothing came out to us talking French.
Some bird. It’s like that in the woods.
And there’s Ed Bear.
He walks right by and nobody hears him.
They say the deer don’t smell him.
He can’t spook a moose downwind from him.
Verne laughs.
You ever see a ghost? Now I did once.
Out in the woods when I got lost one night
down by St. George when I was young.
I saw a ghost. Brush so high I didn’t know I was
as near to the river as I was. All farms there once,
way back. The roses took it over, sharp —
boys! and I seen these lilacs
meant a house was there one time.
I figured I could map my way
right back to where the farm road was.
Just doorsills in the ground,
rocks for the barn’s foundation, all growed over.
Night on me, so I camped right there.
I woke up once. You can’t sleep restful
when there’s a moon. And all the birch trees
white as white. Even the stones where the barn were
shone. And there in the scrub beyond the stones
this little kid in a white nightgown.
She looked that lost.
Course I thought I was dreaming,
I dropped right off. Paid it no mind.
You know. Well, that morning when I got up
I saw this gravestone I’d never marked,
eleven years old and died on a visit,
1886. Up from Back Bay.
Verne stretches, ready for the walk.
Elaine’s still crippled from her cramp.
She murmurs to herself.
Elaine: Ghosts. All I need. I feel a ghost myself.
As if I wasn’t real.
I don’t feel real with Jerry gone.
I never did feel very real till I got married.
She stands. Verne’s talking still.
Verne: You’re lucky seeing it like this.
They say they’ll flood this for the power.
Two million cord of wood, maybe.
They’ll log it first.
They got to do it though.
We can’t all live like Indians.
Wood mice.
It’s like we must use it all up.
Then what.
At least I won’t be here.
Elaine: Why aren’t we looking harder than we are?
Verne: You want to know? I’ll tell you dear.
There’s that old lady lost as well. She’s dead.
She’s bound to be, her age.
She couldn’t last a night out here
this time of year.
Your man’s OK. I knowed it since I seen your camp;
he’s sense. That’s how I know.
He’s healthy, young — he’s only lost.
He can’t stay lost unless he tries.
Elaine: What if he’s slipped and hit his head?
Verne: He can’t do that and not get found.
He maybe was asleep and didn’t hear
the men go by.
But the dogs will find him, or Ed Bear.
Maybe already has. Ed Bear don’t use the telephone.
Ed Bear could see him, think he wasn’t lost,
and maybe he’d be right.
Say, he’d be on the right road back,
Ed Bear’d walk right by and saying naught.
A fact.
A man don’t like to say he’s lost.
Ed Bear knows that.
If your young man’s all right
Ed won’t be damned to bother him.
As they move off an old man strolls in view,
almost as if he’s following them,
just far enough behind to keep out of sight,
but in no hurry to catch up,
his hands in his pockets,
his straw hat pushed well back.
Sam: Seems I’ve been walking this road here for years.
It’s been so long I always knew
where Sarah was that now I don’t
it’s like I’m lost not her.
Pause.
I can’t be worried for her though.
My Sarah, she’s ok.
He leans against a tree.
A pretty day.
Good company, a day like this,
the kind you needn’t speak to, like that tramp.
An Indian I’d guess.
Poor company some say
of the ones that don’t speak. . .
like God’s poor company.
The Witch of the Inner Wood Page 8
