Come Back (23 page)
Authors: Rudy Wiebe
September Saturday 21
Wedding, Mir, Aspen Creek / white rose, red rose
O Gabriel my son, O my son, my son Gabriel
The leaves did nothing
neither did the trees, nor the birds rehearsing
their long fall journeys to their homing
south, they all saw him back the pickup slowly
between the pale black-knotted trunks of aspen
along the track bent away from the cliff cabin
very carefully so the wide tires crushed no
small birches, the youngest already thinking winter
and bowing down to let him pass over and straightening
again so that two days later it would seem the pale
blue steel and glass and white fibreglass
had simply grown, been sifted over
by autumn snow, a strange extrusion suddenly there
on the insistence of some green and barely yellow
lightning and the moist soil where peeling aspen
stood dead grey, enjoyed for too many summers
by armies of insatiable worms, a month
after we two were together exactly there
cutting a narrow path through grass, brush
together, sparing those very birches
to contain this indifferent hiding. But now
you are alone. There is no need to work quickly
because of course you know you have all the time
there is and not even the thickening night
need hurry you in this boreal stillness
where am I
why am I not here as you make your bed
so neatly, your cabin pillowcase and sheet, sheathing
the foam mattress in a blue matching the ribbed
metal you lay it on, as you miter the brighter
blue corners of the blanket as your mother
taught you, as you raise your head
stare into the deepening perspective of trees
hear a pest of robins harry a great horned owl
before you steadily continue—why don’t I stretch
out my hand to your shoulder as you drop
to your knees, bow to the chortling exhaust, as ever
do such neat work, not a fold or wrinkle in the winding
tape, when you climb in again and clamp
the tailgate up tight and pull the canopy door
down firmly over the white hose, as you remove
your shoes, fold your favourite tan jacket beside you
to the acrid mutter of motor
all this relentless, steady work
and when you lay your long body
down on your back and pull the blue blanket
up against your throat and breathe
smell
why am I not there, my arms around you
saying Gabriel
Gabriel
| Machine: | - | from the Greek mechane / machos, contrivance |
| | - | from the West Teutonic magan , to be able |
| | - | any instrument able to, employed to transmit, force |
Humans rely on countless machines without thinking
Because that is why they have contrived them: to apply
Mechanical force through their various connected parts
In order to change our environment, to control and alter
Our surroundings or ourselves for our convenience, our omfort
They are built by imaginative logic, they operate by logic
And logic tells us that at some point they will invariably
Break down and then there will be a discoverable
Logical reason for how they must be fixed in order
That they will function again this is unlike human beings
If you hold that humans function like machines
A Chevrolet three-quarter-ton truck, in Alberta mostly called
A pickup, is a contrivance for moving things, for 96,773.8 miles
This blue pickup has moved things, from a family camper
To lumber or a kitchen stove or garbage or comfortably carried
People from one place to another, whatever it is loaded
With and wherever it is steered, besides all the hours
It has been forced to stand and idle in searing cold
Why is it so reliable?
A machine this used, this complex, has infinite reasons
To stop functioning, to sputter, to hiccough, to rattle
To a stop. So why, here among these small birches, to the last
Whiff of gas vapour in its tank, why is this particular machine
Of such staggering reliability, how is it possible that such
A ludicrously finite contrivance for moving things
For standing inert
Is able to transmit such unending
Force
The black grid of the high city bridge
was long my fear, the quick valley
with rocks and trees and gravel-bars
and water motionless as sky, the deep
welcoming air
I should have known you better
That night the animals came
First the twitchy squirrels, perhaps they heard
the engine sputter as they leaped from spruce
to poplar, heard the click click click of the machine
cooling, having done everything it could do, so completely
reliable, and then the flutter of bats and the invisible insects
they hear, the porcupine climbing down ponderously
from the tree notch where she slept sunning herself
all day, humpling through fallen leaves, the nosy badger
a scurry of mice, two beavers heaving themselves
up the cliff from the creek and snipping, peeling
an evening breakfast of aspen before settling to their night’s
work of cutting. Four white-tailed deer wandered by,
nostrils wide, a spruce grouse treading so lightly
two hesitant rabbits, perhaps the black she-bear the Cree
trapper said lives in the valley though neither he nor anyone
has ever seen her track, not yet, his medicine more certain
than tracks in that shadow, there, beyond the edge of your
left eye, the hunched darkness that isn’t there when you
twitch to stare at it, but if you walk quietly
enough you may smell a faint musk, like a memory
of black not quite touchable. Three stepping deer
muleys this time, and then evening coyotes begin
to call and answer, crying high beyond their echo
all along the valley
What did they say, the animals?
Happy are the empty
for they shall be filled
Happy are the dead
for their eyes see no more
Happy are the poor in spirit
for they will know
Or sing?
Were you there when
Everybody knows the
When peace like
Nobody knows the
Their voices may still be there matted
in the earth with the September leaves and you
would feel them if you walked there again, your feet
and body bones shiver with their barking, their raw
laughter, their squeals and long carrying sorrow
their aloneness like the moon fading behind
cloud but always somewhere, on the other side
of the earth perhaps and, as it seems, gone but
always somewhere, growing larger or waning but
forever there, more and more, a desperation roaming
up and down the valley like the gigantic moose
a black shift between the silver trees, calling
and then at last hearing a faint answer, you cannot
tell is it sound, is it echo, is it the torque of intense
listening in the harmony whorls of your ear
is it Coyote still and pointing at the sky
like you with mouth fallen open
softly, silently now the moon
walks the night in a silver rune
It did not snow the first night, though clouds
trundled noisily up the valley, hesitated, sniffed
over the cliff like an incontinent old man poking
at the world with his cane and cackling heh heh
when he turns over something worse than even he had
imagined. Snow fell the second night, a humming
warmth edging leaves and branches, the blue
metal, the fibreglass modulating into flawless
white and only the black-knotted aspen remained
grey and groaning in their occasional movement, stiffening
And the long knife lies inside
the canopy that has always been more or less
white, lies waiting to be unsheathed, waiting
for an uncle’s soft, indelible approach.
