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Catching a Snare Drum at the Fraser’s Mouth
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THE LOVER DROWNS IN AN OCEAN OF WHISKY
Coyote loping through the Tsilhqot’in grasslands, tied by a rope of cinquefoil and snowmelt,
tied to the Fraser River draining the sky,
through Xax’lip and Lillooet and the snapped
canoe of Simon Fraser
to darling British Columbia cursing a broken nail,
searching through her purse for a spare,
Coyote falling from the sky to the water,
as an anchor hammers down out of the eye of
each container ship’s, of each container ship’s,
of each container ship’s needle.
Praise beyond praise.
Dance beyond dance.
Song beyond song:
Coyote
taking the night bus from Spences Bridge,
with his diamondback hat band and the turquoise
inlaid
into the heels of his boots,
on the way to take darling home forever,
taking the bus down through Kumsheen,
where two rivers meet,
on the road to wash the sea from her
with the dryness of his tongue,
down through Boston Bar, Kanaka Bar, Alexandra,
Coyote
dressed as a skeleton, his heart in his chest
like an apple,
red as a John Cabot Explorer Series rose bred for a
prairie climate,
snoozing on the night bus, down through his
dreaming
at Skuppah, at Spuzzum, at Yale,
at Yale, Oooooooooooooooooh!
Coyote reaching a hand inside his chest, lifting
his heart out, polishing it
on the plush back of the seat before him,
Oooooooooooooooh!
as it beats in his hand like the moon above
bunchgrass,
then slipping it back in, where it stills in
his dreaming,
a trout’s
mouth forming the moon on the surface of the
silk-thin
Nicola River at Shackan;
swallows
lacing the stays of the sun, each
caught within each
pane of glass at Siska.
On the other side of the glass: the rain,
with her perfume and her Fabergé choker and the
bone stays in her corset,
undressing,
with her train and her absent lover,
undressing,
with her heart on the tip of her tongue,
for the dance.
*
Shhh-shh.
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