Laura Hope-Gill

Canada


They call the land of the silver birch.
I call the land of the northern lake
That braces me. I paddle my canoe,
calling out, heart to throat, to loon
with the pearline neck. I don’t deserve
its reply today. I’ve come but not returned.

The land knows when I return.
My body peels itself off like birch
Bark, white paper marked, I deserve
To lose only if my touch the lake
Stills and my call resounds the loon
Into an answer back to my canoe

Which moves only as I deserve.
A girl learns how to work a canoe
Sooner than she learns the loon
Call. She learns the texture of birch.
She learns the surfaces of the lake
And of her body, and how to return

To both of them like she deserves
It, like it’s a good thing not to canoe
Too deeply into oneself, that darker lake
The darker stars shine in, a moon’s return
Back and forth like talk, white as birch
Upon the black, like spots along the loon’s

Back, if I dare to speak of the loon,
Its 250 million years of life. If I deserve
To approach it with words frail as birch
In a language tongued by too many canoes
Lapped against its shore. I can’t voice return

To something that immense afloat on a lake
Vast enough the moon tides it, its own loon
Call silent in its depth. Some summers I return
Hesitantly. I receive from it only what I deserve.
They teach us all to kneel in the canoe,
It's the posture of setting fire to the naked birch.

I never return to Canada without the lake
Within me turning birch white or the loon’s
Silence. I try to deserve the hold of my canoe.

But the red cedar canoe, the life I deserve
Has no loon. It is not frost-bitten by birch
Along the lake-shore. It has no return.

I fear I have left too many places. Birch,
Elm, oak, maple don’t become canoes.
Only what is practiced in the craft deserves
Its greatest use, to elevate and at last return
To its source in silence which the loon’s
Call breaks open like the moon shatters the lake

My paddle strikes. Alone I unloon the lake.
Give me time. I’ll even argue with the return
Of ice that caught under it the dog like a canoe.
Speak about a capsized world, see the birch
Winter keeps leaving. What I don’t deserve
I destroy. It’s simple like acid rain kills loons.

Precambrian Shield does not remember loon.
Or me. It is changeless in a lifetime, unlike the birch,
Gone from a photograph by summer’s return.
The ice that made it has weakened back to lake.
It is disdainful. I feel it scrape my body, my canoe.
Under northern lights, it breathes, deserve, deserve.

Deserve cross bow cut, draw, feather. Deserve
White-tailed deer, deserve marsh, cold lake,
Deserve the light green and silver leaves of birch,
Deserve that call into those bones, that loon
Which cannot bear its own weight on land. Return
What doesn’t deserve to yourself, stay in your canoe.

Some people say it welcomes them. They canoe
Sitting up. On the seat! They switch sides. Loons
Dive deep under them and hide, holding all lake
And breath within them. Only who deserves
To see them, does. Loon birth is only seen by birch,
Hatching, hatching from its own bark. People return

Every year here. They build and they return
To land the land knows they don’t deserve.
I return and my skin breathes in the oil of loon
Feathers. In my dreams I paddle my red canoe
And lie low within, watch a bear lick up a lake.
Canada teaches its girls how to sit silent as birch.