with all the forest as silent voyeur stretching for a look, black fur & quills in disarray like Crazy Horse's warpaint after the Big Horn, this roughneck Canadian porcupine shot clean with bumper & chrome. Then little hedge-pig quaint as porcelain china cup half a world away greeting pints of milk in an English doorway half his scalp torn thru dirty, British lorry choking fumes the petrol in its tank loose. 64 Back to the Contents Page 

 

ENTRY POINT

Ants colonized it -- huge abodes littered with the dead (leaves, sticks, the occasional granulated insect piled high, totemic-fashion) reaping a fortune in scenery, though probably not food Ojibways were next -- their tell-tale encampment by pocket-sized waterfall, inlets off a winding cataract & moss, loam-thick with black soil a future arboreal dream inching over rock, darling crevice for northern orchid, then kiss of red death the hybrid trillium & more sinister cousin, jack-in-the-pulpit for Indian foragers. Animistic limestone shone hands, poked thru the forest with stealth, petroglyphic lava beds -- a cougar pouncing -- runic carvings the cold in the Giant's stone nostrils billowing off the lake like a presence. 65 Back to the Contents Page 

 

BLOODCOUNT

My mind had almost died. It had refused a game of tag on a common with surly children and they steadfastly took revenge. My fate like Blondin's walk across Niagara saw cataracts looming large, hiss & foam, then visions of serpents, farawy monsters & inner tension of rocks opening. The churned, brown water opened like a basket before me. Maurading bubbles took on elephantine shapes, my barrel creeked. Faraway, the edge & drop yawned in indifferent harmony. The brown walls of my fortress barrel became like palates & sutures of my skull imprisoning the brain; the trickle of invading water ever a reminder. The close of the story? Nothing. What is there to record after a river passes? What remains of things unseen, of antelopes in flight? The shroud of Monte Cristo tossed carelessly into sea did not fall open to the touch but was knifed with rifle force. 66 Back to the Contents Page 

 

BLOODSTREAM

Camping out, a miraculous thing happened. The kaleidoscope of vision was focused on a precipice, caught endangered water about to fall under microscopic attention. Moisture was shortlived; so, too, congealed lava sheets & bedrock over 

 Prev. P 18/25 next