"when you live in your car"
when you live in your car
rather than a room
you get up more slowly in the morning
waiting and watching for the warm light to strike
roll out of the slightly cramped position,
and the morning blossoms
a waste field full of dandelions;
the bushes along a tiny creek will do for trees
having branches and leaves
and even the blank wall of the closed-down factory
we furtively parked behind
has its Zen-like associations
a flood of memories
something you were then
which now you can smile at, accept. . .
not having a roof, a ceiling for thoughts
and getting things going while she sleeps
you sit on the hood of the car
and your mind slowly opens to the extent of the sky
its striations, great masses of low clouds. . .
sounds and shapes seem more distinct
the singing of the highway in the distance
someone drops a tool, it clangs on the concrete
a delicate hammering with its high-pitched-chinking
a crow comes over the roof
with a disconsolate cry piercing and full of curses
you scare each other when he first sees you
and flies limping off with a few choice words
you remember an evening in northern Ontario
after the long empty stretches had passed
with nothing but thick taiga on both sides
a moose that paused at the edge of the woods
then disappeared
Arctic watershed beginning just to the north
then a few fields again, farms
through French-speaking towns
where the French and Indians coexist
sometimes looking both so bleak and distraught
there was a strange monument along the road further on
you pulled off to see. . .
scuplted man, woman, and child
holding hands atop a stone pedestal
"In the early morning of Aug 4, 1963
not far from here 3 members of the Lumber and Sawmill Workers Union
were killed as well as 7 other wounded
in order to saveguard the rights
of organized labor everywhere."
we stood struck —
the prairie wind fingered our hair
the silence breathed very slowly
—then not at all
"This is to the memory of Jodeph Fortier
born 1928, Irenee Fortier
born 1938"
and one more
brother and sister? husband and wife?
or from the same clan
and one whose name you forgot
were they mostly French caught in some ethnic pverty
or had they, crossing lines, joined with some others —
immigrants perhaps, to struggle fraternally. . .
but the inscription in English? for us maybe
as though to say, we'll tell you in the way you'll best understand
you imagine sighting down the rifles of the Mounties
or the company men — the instant after they fired
into the crowd of unnamed strikers
as though from there,
seeing the cruelty of it straight on — the crimson splotches
the bloody tableau as though fixed in time
and then like a film that starts up again the cries
the fearful moaning, the agony of the bodies strewn out
the 10 p.m. sun cast its bright luminous Arctic glow
the black flies bit us on the neck and back of the head
they swarmed over the dogs
we walked back through the little woods
and looked at the abandoned shacks
hardly anything left —
put in a liter of oil and started off
the mornings come slowly
and more simply if you're lucky
and other times estranged, claustrophobic, and lost
your friend still asleep in the back
you see over the fields to the lake
the mist rising slowly
something straightens in you and reaches out
does justice begin then in fragmentary glimpses
of things barely imagined?
but will-o-wisp you wonder — and it's gone
__________________________
CHUCK MILLER
NORTHERN FIELDS
COFFEE HOUSE PRESS
1994
