Peter Such is a writer of novels, and other books, plays, poetry, T.V. dramas, documentary films, operas and articles. His novels include Fallout, Riverrun, Vanished Peoples and Dolphin's Wake. He was an editor of Books In Canada and instituted the magazine's first novel award. He is a founding member of The Writers' Union of Canada, founding Vice President of the Canadian Magazine Publisher's Association, founding Director of the Writers Development Trust and the ACTRA-Screenwriters Guild of Canada. He teaches writing and theatre part time and lives in Victoria B.C. He's working on finishing three new novels: Ravines, Forevering, and The Shrapnel Generation. This is his first chapbook of poetry.
The following poem is the first from a series of poems under the title “Their Breath is the Sky”.
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Spruce Tree: Picaea
Day One
In suspended animation for eons
under the press of iron ice
this land even now
is barely breathing
Clattering through silver corridors
of pale-skin birch
we switchback
in this mythic train
in dead of winter
live and warm
Festive drinks in hand, we peer through spattered
windows of the observation car
while purposeful as paratroops the snow-storm
colonizes every surface
The world swirls in confusion as
we hunker down through amethyst
and soft pink rock-cuts
past bare-armed tamaracks
swamp cedars with their simple floppy hands
stands of soot-black balsam
zebra striped and snowbound
And then on every ridge - a march
of feathered arrows shot into the earth -
a phalanx of white spruce take up
their southern guard posts
fending off encroachments while
their black spruce brother legionnaires
confront the arctic ocean
or on polar tundra
dwindle into bonsai
Three thousand miles of picaea until
the Raincoast Cordillera lofts
its salmon nourished cousins
those Pacific Ocean swells
the giant Sitkas velveteened with moss
one hundred metres tall
Onto the Canadian shield
and everyone chinks glasses
toasts "Group of Seven".
"First Snow in Algoma",
"North of Superior"
all those pretty summer pictures
I think how cold and desolate
would be my nineteen-thirties forebears
traversing these unending forests
lying undiscovered
wrapped in everything they owned
chest and limbs stuffed full of newspapers
flat with feet against the wind or
dangled dangerously between two freightcars
fighting every mile against a fatal sleep
yet dreaming
hour by howling hour their frigid agony
would terminate at some
warm lighted settlement a bowl of soup
a woman's smile soft bed
Those things I soon am going to
and take for granted....
Snow-burdened vintage Pullman carriages
their clanking muffled
snake towards magnetic north
Once Spruce thrived where
we left the birch behind
and even further south
but eaten like a vegetable
got nothing in return
If anything the mastodons'
massive defecations ripened newly-minted
glacial grounds for other species
those deciduous bullies:
oak ash alder poplar chestnut
Clung to mother glacier's skirts
spruce fled temperate zones
became arboreal Inuit
a circumpolar swathe electric green
beneath aurora borealis where
only harmless moss and lichen grazers
musk-ox, mammoth, caribou
survived the ten-month desert whites of winter
The last thin herds of mastodons--
who could not browse on
poisonous deciduous leaves-
were hunted to extinction by hungry |
Paleo-Amerindians -- Clovis clans
who also disappeared....
Day Two
3:30 in the monochrome of frigid twilight
we whistle through a settlement
Half the town is gathered at the crossing
in their bashed-up snowmobiles
sporting cheerful discount nylon parkas
yellow, red, green, blue
We are a minor inconvenience once a week
Ancient broken farms are on the outskirts
Deer are floundering in the snow
Above the spruce woods micro-wave
transmission towers suck in trash from southerr
civilizations, dish it out again
Despite this Boreal forests' endless tracts
its cryogenic sameness I could not
avert my gaze to read or write
A day so sky-blue bright
so white on dusted white quicksilvered
evergreen was driven into paleness
under-water almost
Hour by hour entranced I stared ahead
-- bushed I would call it in the old vernacular --
anticipating each amazing opening of a forest doo
the sudden spill of lake or river's vast milk floor
beckoning and empty
I kept saying to myself
never will I see again this particular
shining lake, these islands, or
this pastel river with its startling
open water by the falls
this sharp escarpment tressed with icicles
I could feel the fish recumbent
under glassy roofs I knew
I could look down and see them
from inside that lone dark fishing hut
- ancient and brooding sturgeon
in grey green reeds.
Someone by me says
It's all so beautiful but oh so cold
How could anyone survive here?
We all once did
at least our ancestors I answer
but always on the fringes
always nipping at the edges
of what actually belonged:
moose fish marten deer
spruce woods themselves that made it home.
We lived like wolves when we were here
like wolves
but clumsy in the snow....
Day Three
All night across the northern prairies
Qu'Appelle to Batoche
The broken dreams of a Metis nation
Spruce boughs cut placed upside down
make natural springs for mattresses
" love beneath the awesome sky --
When waved in front of you, a sign of peace
a means to cover your tracks
convince the lynx to step into the trap
For ambush when you are one against the many
When fallen despite everything
a sweet smelling shroud
women threw over their dead
massacred by Middleton's borrowed Galling guns
Over the plain the train
Under your light you might be
lying beside someone who is good to you
Whistle can you hear how
this train isn't moving really?
It just stands still here
Only only is the earth turning
under its spinning wheels
turning and turning all of us learning
what we never taught each other then
back then
Abruptly we confront the Rocky Mountains
Dwarf spruce skitter down loose scree on dry sides
Rain-drenched slopes are vast arrays
green waves forever roiling
In their combed green hide
animals like fleas except
where clearcuts grid their panoply
Beside the tracks men tend the bite-and-claw
machinery of industrial mastodons
that turn the forest into stinking pulp
Toilet paper, newsprint, studs for building houses
standard, common, vulgar
indispensable
as service personnel in these rough hinterlands
whose labour lines with fine mahogany
corporate boardrooms in metropolis
Day Four
A giant has spilled creamy
gruel from a massive bowl
Some of us de-train, survey the damage
Keep your distance shouts a guard
the snowpack is unstable
A snow shed has collapsed in front of us
It will be hours, a day perhaps
before another train
can dig through from the other side
We expected to be home for Christmas Eve
now everyone is sharing cell-phones
contemplating hours and hours of bridge
The porters bless their hearts
aren't disconcerted most of them
descend three four or more generations
from slaves fled from the States
by the underground railway one jokes
I climb a blown-bare outcrop above the train
the view spectacular I notice
how high crags which the glacier did not reach
are rough as dragon backs, the lower peaks
like women's thighs
I can feel the might of all that caverned ice sheet
gouging through the valleys and suddenly
the brute force train below seems insignificant
some delicate and transient manipulation
Hours later after dark
comes carol singing from the lounge
The porters have invited us to join them:
free drinks romantic candlelight
When we have congregated
all one merry company
a sudden blast of frigid air brings on
a big commotion cheers
Two young porters trundle in a torn-down
spruce tree rescued from the avalanche debris
roots and all replanted in a plastic bucket
A woman laughs, removes hoop earrings
and her necklace and begins
festooning it.
Others follow suit with offerings
their men divesting watches neckties scarves
The dead train sits in stillness
Outside our sheltering cave
dance northern lights, flash green ....
Curious elk like massive reindeer
lumber past the windows