Mount Polley Mine

August 2014

1.

This morning upon waking
your body warm sticks a little to mine, last night’s heat that kept us apart and restless evaporated slightly
The gentle Brillo of beard against my neck and ear sending
waves of pleasant firing down long reaching nerves as we
align bodies, breathing, hearts and rhythm
in quiet, humble prayer in the dark
of our basement room.

You say, “I’m remembering my dream. There were so many people.”
I reach tendrils out to your thoughts, a sleepy offering of stimulus to
charge your memory, a beam of light from my head to yours but
your body swiftly, kindly, intervenes and says,
“dreams do not live in our brains, sweet one,” and shows me how
your memories are stored not in careful compartments in your skull but
rather
in chains of illuminate synapses through your neck and shoulders down your arms to your
fingertips
embedded in your hips and wrapped round and round your leg bones ­-
I stand corrected.

2.

There are dogs everywhere when I rise. Draped over couches and on the floor so that I
stumble as I walk, their heads quickly turning upright, their curious eyes
shining in the light and lack of light, the sounds of their collars on laminate floors, claws
stretching lazily on vinyl.

Before cooking breakfast I kiss each one on its blessed forehead,
that dip between the eyes, where muzzle meets cheekbones.

 

3.

Somewhere far away my horses stand in the early light, facing north and south as they let the sun wash over their fly­-battered bodies, an hour of cool air and silence before the drone of predatory insects begins again. I remember my cheek against Spero’s white-gray shoulder, my hands on his leg and belly. The churn of my feet without shoes on bare earth as I climb the ridge that rises above the river with my horse at my heels, ravens calling out a death somewhere far off. Two wild ponies stand with bright eyes fixed on me, waiting to be offered treats from my bulging pockets.

4.

Today, though, I’m sitting in dark rooms in the city, while Mount Polley mine tailings spread quick like blood poisoning through my thoughts. Like a girl I once knew, and the story about her alone in the cabin, her man gone for help, watching her skin turn black as the infection from a deep cut climbed fast and silent towards her heart, like it knew where to go and intended harm. The pain unprecedented. The fear visceral and completely real, the seep of poison moving faster than her boyfriend in the truck, still not home. What would he do, anyway? She roots desperate through the thin offerings of the kitchen cupboard. With oil of oregano in hand she grips the lid with her teeth and twists the bottle open, spilling then pouring it onto her outstretched arm turning gray, rubbing and rubbing as it burns into her skin and watching wide-­eyed and disbelieving as the progression of blackness slows, then stops, then actually reverses, leaving her stinging and stinking of the herb, completely alive.

Have you ever looked from above, on maps or from helicopters or floating, in dreams, and seen how streams are only arteries and veins, that water moves everywhere, that notes in bottles and paper boats travel exhausting distances to reach their destinations? ­ Have you ever had a vaccine in your arm or leg and felt it swell like angry dragons through your entire body in a moment’s time? Have you swallowed something and felt it diffuse almost immediately, into every cell it touches and into your blood, your body, the pulsing sides of your head? Has wine made you drunk, has soup made you warm? These miracles are no small feats, no large mysteries neither. Simplicity is beautiful, and so are these tiny hydrogen bonds and properties of osmosis that shape our reality and the laws of nature. In grade school science classes I found God not in the answers but in the endless questions. Every new thing I understood illuminated a hundred things I never would. But I did understand that blood flowed cyclically through the system of my body, carrying with it everything that entered whether produced, eaten, injected, or absorbed, whether full of nourishment or bent on destruction, altering or repairing, and when I looked at maps of my land or flew above it in dreams I saw the circulatory system of my world and understood what was clear and simple to understand.

And I wonder when you say it is safe to drink, if you went very often to science class. I wonder if you ever coloured arteries red and veins blue on photocopied handouts; I see your little faces stretched and puffy with boredom, your eyes bleary or wandering. I wonder if you ever marveled at the brilliance of nature, the clear and concise expression of cause and effect, or the properties of arsenic and lead. I wonder if you ever stood without shoes on the bare earth and felt yourself change, felt the tingle of consciousness entering through the soles of your feet and climbing through your blood vessels to the tips of your fingers and the tops of your ears.

As Mount Polley mine tailings spread quick like blood poisoning.