This is Where it First Happened
See, this is where it first happened.
There were two of them. Two foot prints, nowhere near the path.
See, this is the first one.
We found splays of toes tangled together here, ball pressing and
heel deep between fronds and moss humps.
And there, two left feet in a tangle
Some spots, it was ball and toe, ball and toe, ball and toe.
Some skipped along logs, and I swear, there by the mud,
I saw knees in the mulch.
Down a colonnade, we found two full sets,
heels together, a foursquare. And then twenty paces.
At the bottom of a hill, they took clock angles and sometimes
there was just one, standing alone
for the next casting in the woods.
Toes dug into pond edges, heels carved mid turns
and sometimes when they were still, you could make out
cracks in the calluses.
We traced the steps
picked them up one by one out of the leaf mould
and put them in your bag.
You turned at the end of a trail, no place in particular,
and cast each one in a wide fling.
They flew between and bounced off trees
dropped to the ground where we
could hear them
ah – shh
ah – shh
undoing themselves. Inside out, reverso.
We waited.
I said, Let’s go see.
Whip Poor Wills
Say a prayer for the
whip poor wills
where you stand.
They are building a wall
in the yard, low
a centre line for sitting
with smooth stones, river smooth
that are easy to throw
up in the air from where they lay.
We are not ready. Not yet built.
A tourniquet
flexible and hollow
snakes trees and road sides not used.
Not for a long time.
Dim light, it cuts passage
river smooth.
Pick up and lay down the wall
from the field to be emptied.
Watch.
The wall echoes and
you stand, staring, caught.
Christine Spinder is a Yukon-based writer and storyteller who loves jazz, shoes and puppets. She's also the director of the Yukon Family Literacy Centre. Christine hopes to have a deep-winter-silence-writing-lock-in soon.
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