Poetry Porch

Poetry Porch: Poetry

CANOE TRIP
by Paula Bonnell

Setting Out
We glided into the first lake
outside the motorboat region,
the gunwales of our broad-beamed baby
low with our first day’s duffle.
Each dip of the paddles
hinted of the chain
of lakes beyond.
The far corner of this lake
(said the map)
had a campsite;
we turned our course
to the peninsula’s jut
looking for the blaze on the tree.
Suddenly the water in front of me unbuttoned
and out popped a sort
of flat large duck.
He chortled, got back
a chortling in return
and dived again.
“A loon! It’s a loon!”
Our first —
fishing and
claiming
these waters.

Copyright © 2016 by Paula Bonnell.

CANOE TRIP (a poem in ten parts)

Matches
We had no matches.
The aluminum film can
with its parafinned matches,
each whittled to size,
had somehow been
left at the last motel
before the park.
We fought there,
bungling —
colliding with dodge’em car bashes
and dead blue sparks.
Today, no matches,
so we paddle across the inlet
and borrow a paper matchbook.

Guitar sounds and voices
carry across water.
The match-lenders’ music
follows us, dulling gradually
to a distant burble.
We light our cookstove
with a borrowed match
and in the lull of the day
warm to the borrowed gaiety
drifting across the lake.

Copyright © 2016 by Paula Bonnell.

CANOE TRIP (a poem in ten parts)

Night
The tent was steamy
the night I dreamed about roses.
In my dream
you gave me roses,
eight of them,
longstemmed,
dusky dark red.
They were wilted as badly
as lettuce
the vendor throws out.
I put them in water
and they stoutly revived,
each petal lifting
fleshy and red.

Copyright © 2016 by Paula Bonnell.

CANOE TRIP (a poem in ten parts)

Day
Morning: breaking camp,
collapsing our gear
to fit between thwarts,
then breaching the silver
till it enfolds us.
We merge into rhythm,
colors, shapes.
Evening:
after setting up camp,
cooking and eating
our freeze-dried food:
in water it swells
to what splendor it can.
Loon calls
and deep sleep.
Day is this:
one clear hour:
lunch on Needle Island
(three yards by one hundred)
under the pines
with the lap of water
simple as breath.

Copyright © 2016 by Paula Bonnell.

CANOE TRIP (a poem in ten parts)

Wilderness
Here in the woods
we huddle around the coals.
We are like primitives
surrounding the flames,
or so we like to think.
What are we doing
out here in the woods?
Fumbling at the source;
we feed it and bank it
and take turns eating the smoke.

Copyright © 2016 by Paula Bonnell.

CANOE TRIP (a poem in ten parts)

Still
A small hummock, on
the edge of a lake.
Canoe wedged in.
Lunch eaten,
we sat, quiet.
Then the reeds
resolved, some
few of them, into
a picture within
a picture. We
saw the bittern
with its bill
pointed to the sky.
Immobile,
only a few
feet from us.
Seeing it, we
froze too, in
sympathetic
camouflage.
Pretending
not to notice,
we paddled
away, awed
by patience,
natural artifice,
the detail
of the reedlike
feathered chest.

Copyright © 2016 by Paula Bonnell.

CANOE TRIP (a poem in ten parts)

On the Lake
Like a large flat cloth
it billows, a coverlet.
Plaids of current form
where the rivers
let in to the lake.
Waves wave higher —
the lake is a tarpaulin shaking.
Spurts of wind in our face.
Trying to tack,
sky dark and darker.
The hills in the water
split now, spattering us.
Our strokes tug vainly at the water;
we hardly move;
the storm pushes harder.

The shore is rocky, steep;
we labor past a point,
winching by slow ratchets
toward one of the island patches.
A gangly red-headed man
beckons from its brow.
He shouts, but the wind
lops off his words,
chops heads off the waves.
We round the island
where he points,
and ease in:
momentary respite in the cove.
We land.
Freed of fighting the
leaden wind-in-the-water,
we flap and flail
throwing up the tent.
We dive in
just as the clouds
split like the waters
and begin battering the lake,
ourselves just two hot spots
in our neon-green speck of a tent
on this pebble island
out in the middle.

Copyright © 2016 by Paula Bonnell.

CANOE TRIP (a poem in ten parts)

Marsh
Two city slickers,
bright yellow,
out here in the rain.
One pair of dun-colored rain pants
and one pair of old jeans, soaked through.
We paddle downwind
in a drizzle,
curlicuing
through the
moose-lush marsh.
Perfect country for moose,
perfect moose-sighting weather.
We paddle miles of S-curves
between stands of reeds,
achieving one map-inch mile.
No moose obliges,
no moose shows its knobbly head
or northern bulk.
At last we lift the canoe
over the top of a beaver dam
and portage over the hill,
leaving behind
a scraggly bog
thinly bordered with woods
on a mooseless
perfect day for moose.

Copyright © 2016 by Paula Bonnell.

CANOE TRIP (a poem in ten parts)

Emerging
Getting out of a canoe
is like getting off roller skates:
the friction is deadly.
Worse — there’s portaging,
laden, slow.
But now we walk so light —
unweighted by canoe
or any need to carry one —
we nearly fly.

We ask the outfitter
“What happened
while we were in the woods?”
“Oh, Elvis died.”
Every TV had it,
every piece of newsprint.
We saw
everything about Elvis
at the next two motels.

Copyright © 2016 by Paula Bonnell.

CANOE TRIP (a poem in ten parts)

Return
We return
from vacation, the fifth season,
rumpled, simple, ready.
You put away your rainpants
and take out your three-piece suit.
I stow the binoculars
and just use my near-sighted eyes
to read the fine print.
We go back to thinking for a living.
No more backbreaking portages,
only hard cases
and protracted negotiations.
We won’t be back
for a year.
Now we are
qualified, capable, testy,
with flavorless muscles,
absent from blue.

Copyright © 2016 by Paula Bonnell.