ON THE WOLFPATH AROUND THE LAKE

ON THE WOLFPATH AROUND THE LAKE

On the wolfpath around the lake,

a narrow-eyed moon keeping an eye

on my intrusive solitude, my equivocating silence.

I can feel the air saturated with wet noses.

I try to imagine how the stink of a human

must impinge upon the wild things that live here.

Mustard gas in No Man’s Land.

I listen to the recombinant rhymes of the nightbirds

to see if I can remember them by name.

I hear the water moving like a rat snake

through the stuffy cattails

standing like an honour guard of cannoneers

from Napoleon’s Grande Arme beside me.

Encylopedic duff of decay. Wet black leaves

of last November’s body found six months later

perfectly preserved under the snow,

cling like leeches to my leather jacket and boots,

trying to patch me with their colours

like skin grafts, as if there weren’t already

enough constellations and starmaps on my back for that.

The sun in the Circlet of the Western Fish

committing murder-suicide, or were they hung

like ballet slippers with blue ribbons

beside a door way that gave up dancing for good?

Stubby birches that have been

through the pencil-sharpening beavers

once too often to make much of a point anymore.

Vlad the Impaler’s idea of a white picket fence

around a pioneer stockade of pick up sticks.

On the wolfpath around the lake,

strewn with branches like handlebars

and the genderless frames of mountain bikes,

I hold on to whatever I can

to help me keep my balance.

I make my way to a stony clearing in the woods

nothing belongs to but a space

where everyone feels right at home

like the prime focus of a neighbourhood watch

with eyes like suspicious windows.

PATRICK WHITE