by Emily Nilsen
Copyright © 2017 by Emily Nilsen.
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). To contact Access Copyright, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call 1-800-893-5777.
Edited by Karen Solie.
Cover and page design by Julie Scriver.
Cover image: Boba Fett, the Driven, copyright © 2015 by Ilja Herb, www.iljaherb.com.
Ebook by Bright Wing Books, www.brightwing.ca.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Nilsen, Emily, author
Otolith / Emily Nilsen.
Poems.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-0-86492-962-4 (paperback).
ISBN 978-0-86492-952-5 (epub).
ISBN 978-0-86492-953-2 (mobi).
I. Title.
PS8627.I55O86 2017 C811’.6 C2016-907041-7
C2016-907042-5
We acknowledge the generous support of the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Government of New Brunswick.
Goose Lane Editions
500 Beaverbrook Court, Suite 330
Fredericton, New Brunswick
CANADA E3B 5X4
www.gooselane.com
For my parents,
and their parents.
Contents
Fog Pre-dawn Walk
In the Forest I Found an Organ
Directions to Crabapples
Float House b. 1919
Fog
Float House
A Geologist Conducts an Aerial Survey of the British Columbia Coastline, 1995
Float House
Float House
And What of the Fog?
And What of the Fog?
And What of the Fog?
And What of the Fog?
Cabin Fever
Otolith
In Order to Say It Exists We Must
Meanwhile Meanwhile, You and I in the Endless
Meanwhile, Earl Grey in Port Hardy
Meanwhile, I Take a Glass of Scotch to Bed
At the Surprise Birthday Party
Meanwhile, in His Dreams
Meanwhile, I Have Started to Fold Things
My Lip Sits in a Petri Dish, Meanwhile
Intertidal Pre-dawn Walk
Pre-dawn Walk
Fragile Morning of the Landlady
Fragile Mornings of the Couple Moored to the Dock Next Door
Fragile Morning of the Farmhand Who Longs to Leave
Fragile Evenings of the Man in His Trawler
Fragile Night of the Hitchhiker from Up Island
Fragile Hour of Dementia
An Address to Dusk
An Address to Dusk
An Address to Dusk
Screef
Meanwhile On Day Eight We Cross the Arctic Circle
Midnight Sun
Little Stick Man with a Knife
Mouth of a River in Greenland
Meanwhile, I Wait for You in Arrivals
In the Cornfield with a Horse
Meanwhile
Fog Return to the Coast
And What of the Fog?
And What of the Fog?
And What of the Fog?
And What of the Fog?
And What of the Fog?
Burdwood Islands, Ten Years Later
Directions to the Burdwoods Fish Farm*
Otolith
Meanwhile, the Anchorage
And What of the Fog?
Notes and Acknowledgements
Fog
Pre-dawn Walk
Who walks
behind you, wringing
your shadow over the marsh?
First frost and beneath the bridge
water slows into ice whorls.
An otter chews through
a trout, chews the gnawing
winter, thins the world around you.
Who skulks through the valley, trapping
your sleep in invisible snares?
You step nearer
the river as morning mist lifts
the drowned night
onto shore.
In the Forest I Found an Organ
My amateur forensics
reckon it was dumped last spring.
Recent rain lends it the sheen
of a displaced liver, fresh out
not yet belonging to the moss
it sits on. I distrust spring: the showy
promises. Some things just end.
We keel over from abundance
of hope. Lifelong deflation,
withering like a balloon spiralling
from the sky. I prefer a fall-time forest
when the aspen thin, their heart-shaped leaves
in smithereens. The brittle
keep us honest. Spring forward —
fall back. Today I wear a tool belt
from which dangle a small frying pan
and two rabbit pelts. Over my shoulder
the city scuttles like crabs under a rock, blindly
tinkering ahead. I approach the organ
with caution, inflate the bellows, to play
a minor chord. It wheezes off-key.
Eight dozen nights outside, sponging up
fog, would do that to anyone. This is the sound
I, too, will make one day.
Directions to Crabapples
Rogers, Scott. Personal Communication.
Keep Baxter Shoal left as you pass
Pym Rocks. Head north
across the east entrance of Fife Sound
and northward up Raleigh Passage, between
the Burdwoods and Pearse Peninsula
of Broughton Island. Hook a left at Trivett
westbound up Penphrase Passage.
Pass Sir Edmund Bay
on your left. Turn northwards
towards Shawl Bay then through
the nameless tight passage
into Moore Bay —
don’t run into Thief Rocks.
Continue northwards up Kingcome Inlet
and head NNW where the Inlet diverges
into Wakeman Sound between Upton Point
and Philadelphia Point. Continue northwards
to the Wakeman estuary:
Ha-xwa-mis
Alalco.
Float House b. 1919
I heard cupboard doors open
and close. A trap snapped
without a mouse. I saw a pack
of cannery workers, huddled at the table eating
pork and beans out of the tin. Didn’t I?
Did I? Sorted postage and stamped letters
in my sleep.
Sewed a new pinafore, one wrote.
Waiting out the long winter, one replied.
Have you seen the ghost? Billy asks.
Fog
Eight-headed fog, plate rattling
fog, dirt under the nails fog, fog
of unseen trees where the blind
follow creeks, fog fattened
by memory, flip-sided fog
and swimming on land fog,
throat-bellied fog of the broken
hearted, night fog that slipknots
three moons to the dock
and knee-buckling fog with spittle
on its chin, fog rotting in the cupboards
and a shelf of pickled fog in jars, shaking
your limbs as you sleep fog, that curls tails
of foxes and wets moth wings to
uselessness, clique forming fog
of kitchen gossip, and
thirsty for rain
fog that taps us instead, fog of the floating
house, unknown to undersea fog, fish milt
fog, slap-in-the-face fog, fog that smells
of a logger’s boot, untying its apron fog,
rhododendron fog, thick as algae bloom
fog, a pond of bulging frog eyes fog,
that drops poems in your lap and sinks
pebbles in your pocket, thick as gravy
fog, fog to grow old in, bearded
fog, running its hand through
a patch of thinning hair fog,
bacon fat fog, arteriosclerosis
fog, fog staggering half-cut
along the rocks, bottom of the bottle
fog, hooked to the disappearing
dragnet, fog adrift, a bundle
of yellowed love letters washed
ashore, waiting
to be read.
Float House
She holds the damp like a duck down pillow.
Damp as a waterlogged fir. Buckets she hauls in
ache when spilled (sound of oars)
seawater wets my shivering feet.
I mop up sorrow with a dry-wood fire
and wait for the berries to shrivel
before trying again. This house contains both
land and sea, its floorboards tickled
by stickleback and herring, chirp of an otter
beneath the bed. Now, all gone to grass.
Have you seen the ghost? Billy asks.
A Geologist Conducts an Aerial Survey of the British Columbia Coastline, 1995
While flying at 200 feet he found a large number of simple curving rock walls along the low tide line of more than 350 beaches in a concentrated area.
Tide lowers, he circles back.
The sanded underside overturns, lets out
a gull-like mew. At forest edge, a woman
scrapes a bear hide, clouded fat gathers.
Her eyes are set deeper than the sound
of pebbles dropped down a well.
Can we measure
the depth?
We cannot.
Float House
In the bunkroom a presence catches,
quick whiff of propane, a metallic tinge
hits the roof of your nose. Watch the window —
hummingbirds land midair. Spook
the black bears. Ring the gut hammer.
Have you seen the ghost? Billy asks.
Float House
Night mice. Their nibbling a distraction
from sleeplessness. If mice live on average
two years, these are 48th generation,
a moving insulation keeping the building
upright. Great- and great-great-grandparents
are nocturnal. My eyelids both open and closed,
it’s that dark. Latin for little mouse also means
muscle. Another translation for musculus
is mussel. A mischief of mice, their eyes,
all pupil, wink like wetted shells.
Have you seen the ghost? Billy asks.
And What of the Fog?
Caligo nebula. An extinct species of marine bird
used fog to navigate. Even their tongues were white.
They built nests in the mist and laid round eggs that bobbed
above tree-tops. Without fog, these birds were grounded. Their feathers
useless. Protruding like miniature telescopes their eyes, the colour of clotted
cream, swung towards magnetic north. The thicker the fog, the more certain
the direction. This function made them susceptible to capture by those lost
at sea. The last mating pair poached in 1904 by two fishermen, presumed dead,
while only fifty metres from shore.
And What of the Fog?
It arrives with evening
rainfall like an eclipse
of hungry moths.
Sleep well amidst its patter
on the windowpanes.
And What of the Fog?
No use laying traps.
It will find a way in
and out.
And What of the Fog?
It brings amnesia, blind spots.
Recognize this offering.
Cabin Fever
Every Monday and Thursday, we rush to the dock to receive news of joy
and disaster. Gossip rides on the pulsing back of an eel, enriches the village
like vitamin C. We fend off scurvy and make-believe our way
out of another tragedy. Told or not, stories bubble and fall
between low fog and high tide, pressurized, carbonated
in the indefinite weather, without a boat to board.
People have stopped using language.
Every sound from our mouths
the shape of a different sorrow.
Otolith
Ear Stone. Annuli within vestibule.
Age concentric, dark-light, dark-light,
each season encased in the next.
The centre deep-sea
bottomless, compressed,
an undiscovered pit of felled
shadows, detached long ago
from their source, stain
of beginning where fish became.
In Order to Say It Exists We Must
measure the distance
between xiphoid process
and brain, seal in Ziplocs
and send to a lab in Kentucky
then subtract or divide it from
itself. We must stalk it stealthily
on our keen kitty haunches, and smell
its odour, pungent, an unopened jar
of beaver castor. In order to say it exists
we must collect its hair, clip its fin, wing,
earlobe, capture it with our cameras, record
the audio, pixelate and play it forwards, backwards,
stack it amidst layers of deep house to play
at a harvest potluck for an upbeat woodsy feel.
We braid it into our own hair, drop it into a bucket
of saline and stare for hours recording
each movement on a spreadsheet.
We give it names like Honeysuckle,
Walter or Specimen A. Item B. Plot C.
Hold its greasy fish-oiled fur in our hands
and indicate in our Rite in the Rain notebook
that it screamed like a mountain lion
when the sun rose.
Meanwhile
Meanwhile, You and I in the Endless
Sun. Grass not yet ripe.
How unbundled we are
in never-ending light. No hatches
to batten. No blue hour
to tuck into. Two
sheets, pinned
on a line, fluttering
dry
over the untied
hayfields.
Meanwhile, Earl Grey in Port Hardy
No fresh-cut flowers
this time of year, just fistfuls
of salal. Sure, let’s sit
outside in the puddles
of afternoon leftovers. Inhaling
second-hand smoke from strangers
is one way to feel not so
alone. You pour a thick stream
of canned milk into my BC Ferries mug
and the weight anchors the cup
to my lap. Rain
peels carnations off
the can’s dog-eared label.
In the motel parking lot
we float apart
on plastic chairs.
Meanwhile, I Take a Glass of Scotch to Bed
because my grandfather, the man who knows
things we may never, wet himself
at the dinner table. Someone, please tell him
he is older than most of us will ever be.
We pad him in a life vest, draw straws
to decide who will push, then look the other way
&nb
sp; as he heads out into the bouncing sea.
It is not easy to watch the dying
set adrift, harder yet to know
we are responsible. Some of us cope
by calculating the onset
of extinctions, the sea turned
equation as we seine bucketfuls
of salmon, sea lice sucker-punched
to scales. Copepod. Motile. Chalimus.
Parasitic. The parameters of data
keep hands steady as we skim over
the single-pane of low tide. Below us,
laissez-faire sea cucumbers softly tide-tumbled,
cream anemones in a flop-top thicket, magenta
starfish colonizing the bladderwrack
bedrock, a dimpled surface of young pinks
on their outward migration. And us,
stagnant as a slick of boat oil
lollygagging over slack tide. The water
will decide where we go.
At the Surprise Birthday Party
I try on a baby. Someone across the room
yells, Hey! Looks good on you! They are a drunk
rambunctious bunch tonight. I try on
two babies, one on each arm. Bottle me, I say
with a pretend slur. Someone sticks a rubber nipple
in baby one’s mouth. A dirty blonde with a true bowl cut
talks financials and wealth management at me. I tell her
I have no money to put anywhere, not even under
the sofa cushions, am not yet tired of being broke.
Thing is, she says, these things are kind of an investment too.
Koochie koochie koo. She wiggles a finger, the baby
wants to bite it. Bite it, baby, I whisper. Sic’m.
The moms are in the kitchen rolling joints
on the laminate floor, tight as a pack of hyenas
laughing on the edge of town. So I smuggle
their babies out to the quiet plains flickering:
green — yellow — green —
our secret show.
Welcome …
say the northern lights,
pretending to be neon.
