North and south spread over either side of the great lakes. In the east, there are as many trees as there are leaves. In the fields, rumors bloom like truth. On the broad side of the trail, the air tastes sweeter and the holy lake occasionally reflects the light of the north star at midnight. Air and beasts and rumors that bloom like truth in the fields. Light in the fields. Numberless breaths and thoughts and voices and presences. Stars will shine at night. Evergreens will grow. North and south will spread through glimpses of the western sky as seen through the branches of trees, and the west will wait. Above the pines, the sky is bright and delicate. Where are the deep shadows? What forms out of the damp morning air? What bitterness? What glory? What country? The rippling stream bends towards every vista. The sun sets in a flood. Coolness spreads through the beach. The woods and the broken masses of rock and the distant western hills and the spectacle of darkness and the pure exhalations of spring and western shore and the north island and the mountains and silent moments and the shaggy outlines and the tall pines and nearly everything in between.
Empty Spaces 2
September 14, 2017
This poem “Empty Spaces 2” originally appeared in Indigenous Literature and the Arts of Comunity. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 230-231 (Autumn/Winter 2016): 85.
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