Canadian Dreams

Night trains scream around the bend, rattle brittle dreams as sleeping loons drift apart beneath the Corn Moon.

They say the crumbling shacks at the edge of town are where Ojibwe elders go to die.

At dawn, birds cry out to mates— beavers slap, birchbark canoes glide silently to the other side.

We fry northern pike for breakfast, watch fat bubble to the surface, tails curl as if in final, futile resistance.

From here, you can smell the fire-forged knife edge of everything, trace sinew-sutured lines on parchment maps to the end.

Wild blueberries glisten after a passing storm— we climb the hill to gather basketfuls for cobbler, listening for ghosts in lodgepole pines.

Light slants through broken plywood walls— an elder takes last breaths in a box as we sup on taken fish and fruit.

Beneath a northern star