after tree planting near Campbell River, Vancouver Island

 

we yo-yo the cut-block all week, vulture-flair

forest clawed to the tissue on terminal broadcast

root-dislodge, plucked earth swung dissonant

 

an allergic reaction to the bit and bridle

of chainsaws scratching an itch into its side

whump of old-growth shortening its angle full horizontal

 

end of the week we burn the empty seedling boxes

on a fragged junction of logging road, damp sawdust-

caked pant-legs kilned, flame’s limbo

 

confused by its incarnation, blazed-mouths suckling

at the gloss-edge of waxed cardboard like hard candy

from the treeline a presence darkens back

 

 

later in John’s room, liquor waterlogged in a dozen faces,

ten-dollar poker games with the hotel owner

ugly fucker stripped from chthonic parentage, watershed

 

of bloat and sweat, Bacchaeic slur of his eyes familiar

with a species of cruelty wives don’t remark on

around him art deco exhibits of beer cans arranged

 

in miniature Stonehenges, mapping the tilt

and declination of weather’s cold compress

against an old ache—all of us audience to our own

 

title credits, wondering what happens next

he gloats about murder, rifled laughter nearly Promethean,

“I got a cougar in my freezer, goddamn beauty too!”

 

 

we follow him like one of Bram Stoker’s attendants,

deadbolt shed tomb-like in the back where he lifts the white lid

on our disbelief—that stillness unavenged

 

apocryphal even after I touch the snarl

of her eye, tawny fur blood-crusted, all of us sick with wonder

at something that should not have been so still

 

outside, drunk-clung to a severed faith in things,

ocean-tug of moonlight, salt curing the air

 

against a boat ramp the laboured gasping of an exit wound

as the tide brings an anger back into the world

 

from subTerrain #73