Niagara Falls in October: cold day, warm hearts. Photo by Theresa Bowles.
In the past four columns I have described in prose the five-week, 8,000-mile road trip my wife and I took to the northeastern rim of Canada. Here I recount the same journey but a different experience—as a poem, a bridge between illusion and reality, allusion and fact, past and present. This is how it felt.
FALL ROAD
I
Imagine Labrador:
as big as New Mexico,
a population the size of Gallup,
half descended from First Americans,
living on a frozen plain of permafrost
isolated, destroyed, suicidal, drug-addled, alcohol addicted—
murdered is not too strong—
by global warming,
a weapon wielded
by you and me.
Fall
drops early
along the road to Labrador,
blazing boisterously between
lascivious lounging in summer heat
and skiing snowy December depths.
Fall
in Newfoundland
is Joseph’s coat of many colors.
Blueberries bedeck barren land between
fallen red and yellow leaves.
Painted homes ape hues
of tundra and tussocks
in towns hugging the ocean,
whale-whipped waves in the bay,
the Atlantic no longer gray
but for these moments of ours
as blue and serene
as a southern sea.
Four thousand miles there,
four thousand miles back,
eight thousand miles round,
far from home,
in a place called scissors.
II
It never ceases to amaze
me
how much joy is there in
the hard places of the world,
where sun seldom shines.
In St. John’s, Newfoundland,
people make their own sun
in the vivid pastel paint of buildings,
in murals lighting every streetscape,
in songs swinging and shaking
the greatest density of pubs and clubs in North America.
The climate may be grim but the people aren’t.
They are poor—indisputably poor—but their lives aren’t.
In many a rich and snug place
people seen in the street seem
so solemn and sad and desensitized,
their fortunate lives such hard work.
To have so much and enjoy it so little
seems a crime.
To enjoy it not at all
seems a felony.
So much joy can erupt
in a festival,
an impromptu dance,
a greeting in the street of two old friends,
a friendly stranger
(a Montreal beggar’s sign: “anything can help even a smile”)
that it makes me wonder at
the intensity of our culture’s struggle for wealth.
Why fight so much
when the best is free?
Four thousand miles there,
four thousand miles back,
eight thousand miles round,
far from home,
in a place called scissors.
III
Quebec Route 138 runs and races,
prances and pirouettes,
dances and dawdles
betwixt and between,
not quite the arctic despite whales and bergs,
surely not the tropics despite Latin heat,
not quite La France despite les francais,
not quite Amerindian despite Inuits and Inus.
You can’t drive Route 138
all the way to Labrador;
after a thousand miles it drowns
in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
“The ship is our road,” a mayor says,
but unlike a real road
it starts and stops when it wants.
Four thousand miles there,
four thousand miles back,
eight thousand miles round,
far from home,
in a place called scissors.
IV
The road between home and Labrador
drives New England villages
and the brown Midwest
and, God help us,
Oklahoma and Texas,
where cops ambush cars going 7 miles too fast
and threaten picnickers with jail for a bottle of wine.
But no matter where it goes,
the road is more than geography;
it’s freedom.
Despite the song, freedom isn’t
just another word
for nothing left to lose.
Freedom is
the long lazy road
to and from Labrador
amid the aura of autumn.
Freedom is
just another word
for the road.
V
We took the road—
part of the same road
but a different world—
34 years ago,
together the first time,
and later became man and wife.
Now again we stand on the shelf of Niagara
and watch water thunder over cliffs
of American and Horseshoe falls,
two nations divisible.
Every road trip is the same—
finding out what is
between there and there.
But it’s ever unique
for you are never
the same twice.
Four thousand miles there,
four thousand miles back,
eight thousand miles round,
far from home,
in a place called scissors.
VI
“One can’t buy happiness
but one can buy cheese
and it’s almost the same,”
says a sign in Quebec’s vast market.
So I stop and buy Manchego cheese
at $24 a pound
made from the milk of Spanish sheep
living on a plain of rock monoliths
where Don Quixote roamed,
because 45 years ago
on another road trip—
a month through every part of Spain,
in the dying modes of fascist dictatorship
and misbegotten marriage—
a different wife
a different road
a different country
a different love
but the same cheese,
another wife and I
on that road we
munched on cheap Manchego and coarse Spanish loaves and sweet olives
in the last best time
of a misaligned love
I can but mourn
for what it was
for what I was
for what I did.
You can’t forget
You can’t forgive
You can’t forgo
the memories.
VII
Color the road red and orange.
Color the road long and lush
Color the road lustful and lascivious.
Color the road us.
This is today.
The road home begins
on the whale-spouted,
iceberg-lacerated shores
of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
At the end of this road,
like all roads, like all trips,
resides past and future—
downer and detumescence,
like letting air out of a balloon,
the adventure is over;
and ardent arousal,
for at home, real life lives on,
beckons us back.
But there will always be another trip—
always,
until there isn’t.
Four thousand miles there
four thousand miles back
eight thousand miles around
far from home
in a place called scissors.
VIII
The road is paved
with memories.
I am old
and remember
and want to cry.
I recall the young man
who made many a mistake
with panache and pizzaz.
I am no longer young,
make few mistakes
and have lost panache and pizzaz.
But I remember everything.
The road is long.
Where does it begin?
Where does it end?
No, the road is short.
It begins,
and ends,
here.
Four thousand miles there,
four thousand miles back,
eight thousand miles round,
far from home,
in a place called scissors.