28 Monday Apr 2014
Posted in Turkey
I cannot say
Just what it is that starts the journey back
To those Anatolian nights on the ratchety and ancient train
Dreams not summoned but filled with sounds and scents
Even the night light is different
The moon larger
the shadows of hills more defined
Voices from the darkness of the compartment
Comrades from the years of uncovering the past
Scattered, gone on to other places
Other worlds.
ARW
1998
28 Monday Apr 2014
Posted in Turkey
How do we decipher with any assurance
The tantalizing debris of the faceless, wordless past
Buried by sand and soil and
the unimaginable span of millenniums.
There are the tumbled stones that take form
with the diggers’ spades
Recreating the phantom village
With its precisely placed houses
Charred hearths cold with age
Tools of stone, bone and obsidian fashioned
by hands and minds
With an uncanny beauty and symmetry
Tiny figures of fashioned clay
Also faceless but profound with infinite meaning
Then three are the centers of ritual
Structures of amazing beauty
With polished altars and human skulls
Placed with purpose in small cubicles
All presided upon by the overpowering and enigmatic
bucranium of the bull.
ARW
1995
28 Monday Apr 2014
Posted in Turkey
Our train to Ergani and the past
Pauses, sometimes for hours,
On a siding to nowhere
Waiting patiently so patiently
In the indescribably silence
Of a long Anatolian night
For the train to Ankara and the benighted present
That will free the long and silvered rails
Which allow one journey at a time.
ARW
1994
28 Monday Apr 2014
Posted in Thousand Islands
Tags
Age, Companions, Heart, Mothballs, River, St. Lawrence, youth
How often did I hear words of dismissal
when I spoke of having a summer place
on the river
The place where remembrance lives.
Of course one doesn’t listen
when the urgency of encroaching age
interferes with rational decisions.
Of course it is too far from the present life in mid-country
to return to the northern dream where youth was spent
with lavish squander
on islands of mysterious importance.
But the place of dreams is never far from memory
arguing with the concept of too far away.
So which is it? Too far in space or too near at heart?
Of course we know we can’t return
or bring back the companions of old.
Yet there is a double reality here –
as in a dual dimension.
Youth living side by side with the reality of age.
So I suppose the time has come finally
to fold the linens and the memories
and tuck them away where
they will lie quietly
wrapped in the mothballs of put-aside.
ARW
2003
28 Monday Apr 2014
Posted in Thousand Islands
Tags
Our neatly scheduled lives that
correspond to seasons
Arrivals and departures to warm sun,
pine cooled nights
And holidays back home
Sometimes interrupted
For whatever reason – sometimes
urgent
Other times less so
But breaks in time-crashing routine
Somehow reset the clock of dwindling days
And make the measured hours seem longer.
ARW
2001
28 Monday Apr 2014
Posted in Thousand Islands
Tags
Abandonment, Houses, Plank, Poetry, Souls, St. Lawrence River, Weeds, Wooden
Finally
In early Fall we returned to the river
The cottage shuttered and locked
since last August
Seemed, in the grey and windy afternoon
Shrunken into itself
As though it was aware of the Spring and Summer
spent alone.
Intrusively, tall weeds thrust themselves
through wooden plank steps
While inside the drawn green shades kept
minuscule light at bay
Just a brief visit of reassurance –
Certain houses have souls of a sort
They miss the humans who stay away too long.
ARW
1999
28 Monday Apr 2014
Posted in Thousand Islands
As if to atone for the last season’s river level
When docks, made to float, were sunken in silt
And cottages were closed in midsummer
Or left unopened
Lonely in the silence
This year the St. Lawrence flooded our small bridge in June
Making a miniature rapids for little ones to float twig boats
Now it is August and there are few signs of a diminished level
Rocky shoals still lurk just below the surface
Tricking the inexperienced boaters
Much like life
With wisdom grained and then forgotten.
ARW
28 Monday Apr 2014
Posted in Thousand Islands
Tags
Now it is late afternoon
in this dwindling day of summer
the light is intense
all blue and green
with shining river
Like a visit from the past
come the sounds of an ancient
recording
with all the scratches and imperfections
of early artistry
But the fluid and seamless voice
of Rosa Ponselle
melts the heart
as well as the years that have mourned
her irreplaceable presence.
ARW
28 Monday Apr 2014
Posted in Thousand Islands
Sometimes when skimming past
The island of happy summers
In a boat never imagined as a child
If I look quickly at the east end
Where the granite and pines
Slope down to the rocky shelf
And the river teases the pink stone,
I can see, in a scene of black and white
Superimposed (over the green and blue of now)
Two young sisters
Standing, laughing on the rock
With the long-gone canvas canoe
Pulled up next to them.
ARW
28 Monday Apr 2014
Posted in Thousand Islands
Time on the island
is down to a few days
no point in stating the obvious
about summer fleeting
There was a chill on the river
with northeast wind
lowering the water level
and grounding our larger boat
So it is with heavy heart
that we prepare to leave.
Such a long time to wait
until the river is high again.
ARW
Andree Robitaille Wood 