You mustn't mind our being lost like this;
The weather can't be keeping you,
Even if the rains blew harder than
A hurricane, you'd come, you'd circle
Round and save us if you tried. . .
Champion oarsman, strong swimmer that you are.
Maybe you cannot see our plight
From fathoms down in your own dark night
(surely you could see us if you surfaced once or twice.)
Well, the tide will change,
Will make that distant island closer.
It may be from there we'd have
A clearer view of who is really drowning
Off Eggomoggin Reach,
It may be you.

When I come here again. . .
I'll bring the inland wind to stay the pull of islands on my mind
-I'll anchor down my feet in solid soil
when I come here again

I'll sing and dance, but when I do
The music that I hear will be from other places, other times
-music of the buzz of bees in dark, red buckwheat fields
and of the wail of winter wind in Northern pines
when I come here again

I'll bring the sound of lilting, lapping
Water from the edges of a long remembered dream
-a Northern lake where I was born and bore my own. . .

And if I cannot moor myself to that
I will not come here again. . .

Winter:
Is a force without motion
Except in that sometimes at dusk
The long purple shadows change
The black etched treeline into
Unfamiliar shapes
And the whole, still landscape
Moves into an uncertain dimension.

Spring:
Is a season of light
Of movement
The Northwest wind carries in it
The smell of summer
And the hearts of old men at the
Fishing hole quicken.

Summer:
Is a broad, flat still time
That asks nothing.

Fall:
Is a wind tumbled gathering
Of leaves and seeds and loves
And hopes falling downward.

The Northern sky is purple & the trees in this midwinter light are
etched in black,
but the light from the quickly setting sun fades in the face
of the approaching storm.
The young micmac woman banks the fire in her small house,
pours a cup of tea and settles into a chair close to a stove.
She thinks about her mate who left in the early morning darkness,
She worries about the snow, beating hard against the windows.
She remembers his promise to her this morning,
to return from his traplines with the silver fox he had been tracking.
She imagines the feel of the fox's fur agains ther cheek and thinks of the way it
would look lining the hood of the parka she has been beading and quilling.
Her mate would tease her,
tell her that she was so beautiful in it
that Glooscap's brother would steal her.
But she feels it, too, the quick snap of steel around the fox's leg,
like her mate's strong legs around her own,
and she sighs with resultant weight
with the fourth child within her.
Suddenly, the dreamy reverie is broken by the honk of the Great Goose.
The silence is scattered by her dropped tea cup as she darts out of the door,
hoping for, at most, a clear sighting of the goose. . .
but she encounters claws, swirls of feathery white, close in around her.
Icy, yellow eyes glare at her, distorting her vision of the Great Goose.
As the roar subsides, the need to see the goose penetrates her fear and
she opens her eyes and takes her hand from her ears.
She is brought back
by the hearty laughter of her mate,
astride his Snowmobile,
with his silver fox slung over the seat behind him.