Category: Poetic Musings

An exquisite adventure in poetics and artful use of digital space by Innu poet Natasha Kanapé Fontaine.

As the National Film Board describes, “From her family’s ancestral hunting camp, Natasha Kanapé Fontaine sends a message across time and generations.”

Tetepiskat

 http://legacies150.nfb.ca/tetepiskat/

Natasha Kanapé Fontaine

Cliff-Jumping Process Poem 

Jumping intimidates – standing on the grassy rim of the sand cliffs, snatching glances at the distant islands across the Georgia Straight, Mount Washington’s white-capped peak visible in the background, the forested slopes of the North Shore mountains rising up from the bottom of the bay (ooh, vertigo), and the shining city bulging from the side of the horseshoe-shaped abyss into which we will fall. To jump here involves a freefall of 25 feet to the first sand-ledge and springing off with sufficient force propels you past a second rocky ledge into the near-vertical, 150 foot chute, golden sand cascading down with each fleeting contact as the jumper pushes off for more airtime, finally breaking into a run as the sand levels-out to the beach head far below. In 40 seconds the jumper descends a distance that takes forty 40 minutes to climb, clinging to roots, getting sand in the face, hair and eyes, traversing precariously across the paths that erosion had made rocky enough for a foothold: This was a daring person’s sport; dangerous, and for thrill seekers only. “You chicken?” my pal prods, pretending to push me, but I have banished him from my mind. If I concentrate hard enough, focusing on where I want to land and only on that one spot, I can make it appear to be a mere foot or two away, a small step, rather than a death-defying leap that will scream every molecule of air from your lungs before you even contact the cliff-face. I am not a chicken; I’m no flightless bird; I’m a cliff jumper. Anyway, I figured, if he can do this, so can I.

******

(This poem was used as an example of changing relationships to place and memory. Structure = Sentence starts with: Gerund, Infinitive, Prepositional Phrase, Direct Speech, Conditional Sentence, SV/O, Sentence Adverbial)

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Windsweep Event poem

Photo Credit: Yuya Peco Takeda

 

Go to the edge. Lie face down

arms extended, gripping the bar.

The sand cliff is a hand glider

the nose is stuck in the beach below

the wings extend to the sky above.

Once you have reached the core

of the earth, turn over and look up.

Point the glider at the sky, with the

tail stuck in the sand banks below.

The hand glider comes unstuck.

Sail the alphabet of salty gusts.

Swallow up the limitless suns.

Either way, return with fire.

Speak, be lustful, be animal,

recall your minimal viable self

resemble an ancestor.

Become a stick figure and dance badly.

Get permission from ghosts to be afraid.

Give your ghosts the names of trees.

Fall to the ground like a leaf.

Rise up with the force of the tide.

Wear the moon like a hat.

Become the plunder of harvest.

Avoid Mars, curling past your shoulder.

Write a journey with firewater contrails.

Shower the sea with perpetuity.

Photo Credit: Olga Glukhovska

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Recompense of the Lately Arriving

birdwatcher on the

gratifying climes

of the junctions eye,

focusing sandbanks

at the distinct 

climb-it – change

ushered across the

spring-armour climax

making visual the

Semioticians, the

forested

Straightness of the

Mountebank Washtubs

peals of scream

profaned uphill from

the backlog of the

slopes (Northerner,

Short-changing),

and

clinked from the

bougainvillea of the

horseshoe-shaped

bayou into which we

will

glasnost. To

filch hereinafter

bulking an ooh of 25

feet vested to the

first-home of civics

and

beaching off with

sugar-coated whales

side-glance

risking your past

second-half hopscotch

into the near-vertical,

150 foot drop

freelances feldspar,

good sand-wedge

descry down with

reruns return

some fleshiest

forcemeat as the

leer

breasted off for

more-muscular

footing, spot-rot,

not financially

rung into a cicada’s

chirp as the sandbank

container to the

west junctions aisle

farcically,

beneficially lead.

Sneaking back

up the sandbank

pussyfoot a stride

that levels-out

that

banked forty

year beachwear to

intone,

ghosted to

wants,

prettied secretion

in the junctions,

tastefully

and

talk preciously

across the yarn

that docked

face-creams hair-oil

roguishly enquiring

for an eyewitness:

This

hawked a darker

patina’s erratum;

dank,

and

masted headboard,

amalgamating to crazy

Dennis, what screeched me,

but

holds

him from my

sports. If I fall

ionize harder

tread on where I

hipped to throat

and

slipped it

incased to

every

property-casualty of

notable erosion

leaps; unmolified

no flimsy

air-interdiction:

the lure of a cliff-face.

Down Into

Among many other things, it felt like the stories shared on our walk explored time and timelessness of place; how place stories and is storied by deep time, individual and communal time, and the experience of our own lives.

I am fascinated by how languages and naming paint time on this landscape like cycles of sun and dark on rings of a tree and the lengthening of reach of a cedar trunk over 8 centuries.

Stories are like little time capsules. They carry pieces of truth and meaning over time. Whether it is a myth from 4000 years ago or your own untold story from childhood, the meaning waits like a dry ration; only by the next telling does it enlarge and soften to become edible. It is the sweat and tears of the telling that bring the meaning out of its sleep as if no time has passed. It is the telling that heals. Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening, 2000, p. 303-304 

Sometimes, that which we lack allows us to spiral into new forms of life.

i am surrounded by a
noisy silence

a calm in the air
yet
the sounds of the wind and rain
on my left
and
the sounds of a whirring vent
on my right
how strange this
cacophony of sound

how strange this
battle of sounds
competing for my attention
unfolding before me

and suddenly …
the whirring vent is
tag teamed with the
whining fridge

and now all i hear
is deafening mechanical
noise.

~ claire s. ahn

with six students

upside down

in the pond

 

a koki wonders

who we are, where

we came from

 

dew-soaked moss

on the lantern

light’s memory

 

the maples

gnarled like

an old man’s feet

 

garden composed

behind a wall

isolated from

 

the world outside

the koki knows

nothing about

 

a gunshot crack

hawk swoops soars

with empty talons