Non-Subscriber Extract
‘Holy Tuesday’
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| 11 September 2002 |
The Muskoka Lake has been a bright blue for thousands of years,
Cold, shivering, mackerel skinned and paternal,
Nothing except black-fly affects the sheer satisfaction,
The trees are relative newcomers clinging to the shoreline, unsure why they can’t move,
They are caught by the lake’s bright, quick permanence.
A group of women speaking Serbian step knowingly into the wrinkled Aberdeen water,
Confident that the New World is a better clearer blue,
They swim without fear or reflection,
They have a future for a thousand years.
Hours pass and we discuss dinner with the seriousness of warfare – knowing it is not as important as what is said in some of the newspapers,
They are full, awfully brimming with the terrible anniversary.
A year ago by another lake high up past Calgary and Yellowknife,
The news of murder and devastation was patched through to us after dark in the Arctic Circle,
The Northern Lights boiled bright from every horizon,
As again tonight with a trembling memory of white and black clouds,
Then we did not worry about the brutal scavenging brown bears.
Nothing touched the Arctic blue lake until the floatplane came splashing,
It flew us forward a thousand years to the heart stomping, burnt-out stench and smoking towers of Holy Tuesday’s 911.
Howard Monroe
September 2002
Ontario, Canada