Isle Des Soeurs, Montreal

Late night Québécois cable TV.
A white haired man talks to camera.
He tells a story, subtitled, of two trappers
Arrested in his youth. One Indian, the other white.
Near Uranium City. For maybe killing a child.
And eating that child. Released a month later,
One of them might have died. They were poor
Trappers. Lean, pitiable, when the caribou was plentiful.
A hundred dollars bought a lot of food in those days,
He adds. Two hundred buys next to nothing now.

In Mont Tremblant, the forest still possesses
Its own autonomy. Planes could crash there,
People vanish; the forest would still as perfect be.
A fawn tiptoed across the road, looked over its
Shoulder, moved on, sighting that rare species
And thinking nothing of it. There’s no place more
Beautiful, save a hundred thousand others,
Accessible to none but deer and their Indian
Spirit trackers. We passed through, on our way back
To civilisation: none the richer or poorer, just bitten by
An image on the retina, to take to our graves.


19.06