I just walked the street of my
father. The street is called North.
I paused in front of his white
apartment building as the sun
fed me from the west. There were two
shopping carts chained
together, one from the liquor store.
My father turned empty
bottles into full ones, into food and
into rent. He pushed
his cart across the city gathering
emptiness.
*
North is the repository of our best
intentions, Ursa Major
overhead when I am exactly this old
in a winter
without fathers. He left when I was
an infant
to take on liquid. He took himself
away.
A cosmic stone cast into this
ancestral wind
I cannot afford. The Pleiades still know me.
Seven sisters who know me to be as bold
as a conjectured fjord.
*
As I write this
in a Tim Hortons
a man next to me asks
what does this word mean?
pointing to a spot on the page
of a MacLean’s where the word
'rapport' appears.
*
My father's skin had yellowed and the
sclerae of his eyes,
half open but clouded by sedation. A
tear slid
from the corner of his right eye to
past the bone
of his indigenous cheek. This tear
had not yet dried
when they began to withdraw life
support, machine
by machine. The breathing machine
that jerked his
head back and expanded his chest with
decreasing
regularity was the last to be
withdrawn. A nurse said,
"He is in the process of
actively dying now."
Actively dying.
*
In the ancient Near East a seer would
look to
the stars or the livers of sheep for
divination.
What does a liver show or hold?
Spurinna
the haruspex foresaw the death of
Caesar
in the entrails of a sacrifice.
Paugak,
the cursed Anishinaabe skeleton
who flies through the Boreal forest,
is said to consume the livers of his
victims.
Prometheus’ punishment for stealing
fire
from the gods was to be chained to a
rock
and have his liver torn out daily by
an eagle.
Every night his liver would
regenerate.
*
Two days have now passed. Two days I
have been
in Halifax. Two days since my father
has passed.
He has passed from mystery into
appearance, laying
bare his totality on a death bed,
distended cirrhotic belly
and ethereally beautiful face. He
passed from unknowing
into eternity as I watched the neon
lines above him lay flat.
I am still watching. I still do not
know what I know. A nor'easter
now passing over me, spilling its
moisture from the Atlantic,
heavy rain that by midnight may turn
to snow.
*
What does it mean to actively die?
Actively?
At this time Knausgaard is very much
with me,
For the heart, life is simple: it beats for as long
as it can. Then it stops. Full stop as in a period,
as a period is a flat line, extended.
I have been
given my father's papers, his Polaroids
and a pocket watch
that belonged to my
great-grandfather. I have been
given his ball cap that kept the
maritime sun
out of his eyes as he scavenged for
bottles.
The band of this hat has collected
his scent
which is lemongrass, earth, and
discount smoke.
I have been given his small tools,
cologne, nail
clippers, a water canister, a small
plastic box of razors,
a picture of me as a baby, a drawing
of electrical currents,
a knife.
*
I'm here, wedged within three
nor'easters.
The first fell after he died. The
jaundice,
the eyes that are mine, the snow a
white-out
of every street. The third will come
Tuesday
and cover Halifax in a foot of lace.
Today I
bought Ocean by Sue Goyette. A black dress
and a pair of tights. Today I ate
berries
and drank black coffee. Today I felt
the harbour folding in. A sphere
flinched
in my portal vein. Today I woke up
late.
This evening I looked up at the
constellation Orion.
Tomorrow I will see my father's body
for the last time.
Tuesday he will become ash.
Become ash.
Actively.
the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan
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