journal 20/07/11 (powell river/tofino)
Mountain’s edge filed to dust, sky plied with hawks, the fly-plagued trail to the satellite-dish summit where we could remain righted on the sea of the world (where we could see the start & the end of the sea of the world [where we could make love in a dream on the swim-happy surface of the sea of the world]). Here was a map of our fever, your old bedroom in the attic, the paper mill, the wedding hall. The muddy truck track to nowhere where you took from your brother your first pressed pill thrill, that blind dancehall dolphin dip that remained chaseable thru year after glistening year in the city. We’d sit on tree stumps, eat raspberries, drive out to a fog-closed secret bay, ride motorcycles & hesitate, scared shitless, at the swimming hole’s cliffside rim, wildly beholding each other. You grew tired of sunsets, living out here, you said. I’d watch the sky turn colours as you slept off the night-shift, think of the dogs and beater trucks, the grow-ops in the woods, your first kiss and ours under a hidden multiplicity of stars.
We’d drive onto a boat — off into the island — find the body adrift in a slow rainstorm with cedars all around. There are vague memories of a campsite, shamanistic dead sea lions bringing throngs of eagle-eyed good omens. Six months in each others’ sights & we’ve got a ring & an atlas of back roads to prove it, the finned velocity of your car upon the solemn road sewn hard into our bodies, shifting the tenure of our dreams. I couldn’t trade this for anything, couldn’t try for a more magic life. What else could we do by the beach but eat cherries and drink tallboys, but ride til our thighs grew thinner, but kiss til the sun went down & we began to hunger for dinner & stronger liquor? Sometimes this whole place goes under: miles of spellbinding mist. Here & there you’ll steal a kiss. Kids swim the riptide & love soars outwards from Incinerator Rock, time stills thick as honey upon a sea that sits as glass between islets, a dim & grey eternity with your hands ploughed deep in mine…
