Land Is a Loom

Land Is A Loom I sailed the fiord like inlets between Powell River and Drury Inlet. The land itself spoke from mountains, torents, islet From bird song and bear splashing fishers From rutting moose and cougars sharp incisors. The place has a scale that needs no advisers But in our bodies felt, sensed in our story talking. The Chinese spoke of sensing place by the four dignities Of Standing and Lying and Sitting and Walking. Indigenous peoples of the passage added Paddling by degrees For the Haida and Salish sang their paddles to taboos To the rhythm of the drum in their crested clan canoes Trunks transformed indwelling people who swim like trees. First Nations marked this land, made drawings above sacred screes As they walked together, to gather, share and thank with spirit sapplings. So Dao-pilgrims in the blue sacred mountains of Japan rang their ramblings And conjoined with the soul of their place. Now the loggers’ chainsaws were silent as men who had sinned - Motoring now for of wind not a trace - I could see stories from the slopes, hear tales in the wind. Modern hieroglyphs spoke from clearcuts convex and concaves Slopes of burgandy and orange bark shaves Atop the hills, beige and silver drying snags In the gullies, the brilliant pink of fire weed tags A tapestry of times in work. A museum of lives that lurk. Once the logging camps floated close to the head of inlets. Now rusting red donkeys and cables no longer creak, Nor do standing spar trees sway near feller notched trunks, Nor do grappler yarders shriek as men bag booms and Dump bundles in bull pens. The names bespeak the work. Bull buckers, rigging slingers, cat skinners, boom men and whistle punks. ……………………………………………………………………. Ashore to pee with my my dog I saw a ball of crushed bones in scat Later we heard the evocative howl of a wolf And my pooch and I go alongwith the song Conjoining with the animal call In a natural world fearsome, sacred and shared. ------------------------------------------------------------ Old bunk houses have tumbled, crumbling fish canneries no longer reek. Vietnam Draft dodgers and Canucks that followed the loggers forever borrowed The hoisting winches, engines, cutlery, fuel, grease and generators. While white shells rattled down the ebbing sea. Listing float homes still grumble when hauled on hard. Somber silhouettes of teetering totems no longer whisper in westerlies Near undulating kelp beds of Mamalilkula. Petroglyphs talk in pictures veiled by vines. History is a tapestry And land is the loom. Every rock, headland, and blissful fearsome bay Has a silence that speaks when I hear it. Has a roar of death from peaking storms when I see it. Beings and things can be heard and seen that Enter and pass through me to evaporate like mist From a rain dropped forest fist And are composted into soil. Where mountains heavily wade into the sea To resemble yes the tremble and dissemble Of the continental shelf. Where still waters of deception Hide the tsunamis surging stealth. Inside the veins of Mother Earth the magmas flow Beneath fijords where crystalized glaziers glow. Here sailed I, my dog and catboat Of ‘Bill Garden’ build The H. Daniel Hayes In mountain water stilled In a golden glory of my remaining days. In Cascadia the images sang and thrilled Mamalilikula, Kwak’wala, Namu, Klemtu The Inlets Jervis, Toba, Bute, and Loughborough. I then I chose to rip from out my mind Ugly sounds and vulgar images, that could recall Unhuman stories of Nagasaki, and Bophal.