BLACK ICE AND FROZEN RAIN
In canada they call it black ice, it falls as frozen rain and ices up the roads, the great transnational highway is slippery and hazardous, black ice is the wet equivalent to australian bulldust, it conceals, it flurries, it snows, canadian poets write about ice and winters, i catch a cold and stare longingly out of the window, it is a squirrel with a pine cone in its mouth shooting straight up a trunk, it lifts the cone that has fallen from the tree back up into the branches, this is the squirrel's labour, a pine tree, pencil thin it grows into the sky as much as it grows into the land, i thought the animals were clichés, straight from children's story books, but here they are suddenly real, going about their own private business, like the first northern hemisphere sunrise, its frozen dawn viewed from the plane coming into vancouver, i knew the sky as foreign, the sea and clouds, i desired its light quicker than it could be given, during late autumn, in australian schools we learned more about these north american animals than we did our own, and when we grew up we knew nothing about either, we know that bears are frightening and that kangaroos hop, and that now they are all endangered so we switch off, and every time a canadian talks about wildlife, it sounds like a commentary on one of those cable television documentaries, and i want to know what the trees are called: fir, spruce, pine, maple, aspen, evergreens past the snowline, then I'm pushing my luck with the round river stones, that come to rest in my palm, next to a local who says, 'it's rock okay? It's a goddam rock!' but what kind of rock?, i want to receive its knowledge, it's a canadian northern hemisphere rock to be sure, all the magnetic fields inside the rock are in reverse, like the basin water going backwards down the plugholes, what kind of rock rests here?, where is it from and what slow habitats have smoothed its surface?, how many stony creeks, rivers, lakes and settlements has it passed or have passed it?, i feel twenty five percent of the world's fresh water supply in its cold crevices, canada your rocky mountain forests are watching me from the bus and are worth watching in return, hundreds and thousands of christmas trees, in valleys of wildernesses it is christmas all year round, this country is straight from australian carols, populated by hibernating bears and the loons have gone south for the winter, so while i'm here i'll never hear one, and when i say 'i'm after something' or 'It's on the blink,' they don't know what i mean, i called a blue jay a cardinal, it may seem close but it isn't, highway observations: a small herd shaggy white mountain goats crumbled some big rocks down onto the road, there were solid brown elk grazing along at the sharp base of the mountains, i didn't see them at first, but sensed something huge and gentle in the undergrowth, then her enormous shy head and fierce brown eyes, well back along the distance of the face, as watchful as ever, velvet ears twitching like radar's, this is the face the hunter looks into before he is sprayed with blood, the hunters create pulp from the character of the elk, here where the air is thick with snow, five thousand feet above sea level, it's giddy short of breath thin aired country, it's light green skies are pale, watery and barely warm, there are the long dry stretches via kamloops that make me homesick, but this is an icy desert, the mountains are something we must always look up to, they are towering down from every direction, their changeable weather is just behind them, solid rock yet cyclonic inside, they have a presence on a full moon or just before snow, but i don't know what they are trying to say, how is the snow in australia different?, well, grey kangaroos hop through it, snow gums are twisted by cold in roots and branches, the snow in australia smells like a eucalypt, a gum tree, have you smelt eucalyptus oil? australia smells like that. |
