Soapstone Carving

I have never written you a letter, nor made that phone call,
all I have had are these reams
of sad, writhing words that someone says is poetry.
I dream you less often.  I seldom wish you here.
But, god, I miss Lake Athabasca, and those great rocky shores
I would not dare to visit now.

Those pelicans, skimming water with such grace
as I shall never know; didn’t know then, do not now.
You knew the turbulence underneath; drowned bodies,
secrets, like puppies, downed in brown burlap sacks,
horrible stories written on stones that have sunk beneath the surface.

You said you were ill.  I could not see it for the brightness of your eyes,
the ancient wisdom scrolling from your mouth like soft brooklets
and tiny waterfalls in the small bay by Stony Rapids.  I had no idea
those were mere camouflage for the rabid disease within.  I could not
have borne to take it out and examine it for truth and dying pieces.

It was easy to move from the North after you were gone.
Goodbye to uranium toxins were not hard to do.
But, god, apparitions of those shrugged shoulders
of banking and Brant are hard  to ignore.  Both are, to me,
glacial internments and sharp claw of thunderbird
have left me permanently scared and scared.

It has not happened suddenly, that memory fades, your face,
your beautiful face:  It was more like shortly after take-off and we stretched
to look out the little portal windows to see it disappear.
Perhaps age will erase many things, but not those things
imprinted on my heart.  There’s evidence around me, above me, below me,
within me, that there has been a past and that passing left wounds.

You will never read these.  I have hidden them in places you do not know.
They are tucked in the volcanic folds of a thousand pounds of pressurized
molten lava leavings.  These are mere epitaphs, journal-writings, diaries,
of how a woman lets go when things change that she had no way to stop.
Evidence:  Soap stone cliffs along Mackenzie Valley, I brought home to carve one day.