Memoirs of an Almost Expedition

MEMOIRS
OF AN ALMOST
EXPEDITION

BARBARA SCHOTT

Brick Books

CANADIAN CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Schott, Barbara, 1960–
    Memoirs of an almost expedition

Poems.
ISBN I-894078-O3-9

1. Title.

PS8575.C4594M45 1999    C8n′.54    C99-931663-x
PR9199.3.S36M45 1999

Copyright © Barbara Schott, 1999.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the
Arts for our publishing programme. The support of the
Ontario Arts Council is also gratefully acknowledged.

Cover art:
    The Reactor Series, Panel 4,
    by Wanda Koop

Brick Books
Box 20081
431 Boler Road
London, Ontario
N6K 4G6
Canada

www.brickbooks.ca

‘Forgive me for having given you a name
to call you towards me.’

This book is for no one

Come, we must go deeper, with no justice and no jokes.

Michael Ondaatje, Coming Through Slaughter

Contents

Memoirs of an Almost Expedition

Ballad of a Good-Hearted Woman

Hymens*

Love & the Afterlife

MEMOIRS
OF AN ALMOST
EXPEDITION

Every journey is a return.

Robert Kroetsch, The Missing Book of Cucumbers

… she loves him, it alters him, she's the light of his life. What happens after that pulls at their heartstrings. And sends them home kinder, and better Canadians.

Margaret Sweatman, Fox

Winterkill

was the reason you left
the dusty green of the farm
you were running
from water
the botanical gardens
you grew in the 50 gallon drum
of rainwater
behind the house

every house had one

and went north
into the perspiring white
hectares of fallow ice
where you could stand and
look south of your shoulder
to the subliminal treeline
and you liked the glassy
look, the liquid
space where you felt
baroque and
residual

You have been
to winterkill
and now you're haunted
by the colour
of your eyes
you didn't come here
to grow things
your insides turning
to glass, tongue
sticking to the ribs

if you leave
if you leave it will be
because the cold leaves tubers
sprouting along your spine
bruises of light
that flower on your skin

this isn't why you came

to find growth rings
in a section of your arm
the galvanized air you exhale
becoming just like you
and if you had known
that the ice too is a garden
for black fungus
you would have been mining
for water instead
you would have borrowed
a ladder, lowered it
and climbed in
to preserve the shape
of the spleen
the bird
panting in your chest

Driving Mostly Prairie

I want your bathtub where you can find
me. Like the night before last. Haven't

seen an antelope in years. It was a dry
spring. A day like any other. But how

do we read the simile. The sloped leaves
of the wild sorrel. I can't cope with

the logic of those rock piles you keep
pointing out. I realize your father was a man

of science. If I wasn't so particular it
wouldn't matter. What I want is

a river of my own.

Leach the sky of stars, the night-teal drain.
The moon is a plug. It's you who tells me

you're over your head. The dripping
outside the window is no illusion.

Icicles fall from the eaves and decay,
the jade plant drops a leaf. Pure thought

is not possible. It seems you can come
to harm just closing your eyes. There are bits

of myself in the tub, if you care
to look.

If I hadn't spent myself
on my otherness. If I had the strategies

of a single river. In time I will learn to forget
myself, step out, indifferent as rain.

You mustn't compare me
to the landscape. I wasn't with you.

Grass is inconsolable. In Saskatchewan
the sun travels along

railroad tracks. The whip-poor-will sleeps
by day. But the stars shine for anyone.

Endangered Blue I

Far be it
from me to say that
half of nothing
is nothing

First we must
forgive ourselves
our circumstantial
presence here

And then respond
to each in
turn
the incidence of line
in any given landscape
the calibrated
blues of larkspur
the optional
cry of the cormorant
as it nicks
wave after wave

Endangered Blue II

having confused
sky & water
clouds rootbound
as trees

rowing towards
a centre
not even there
making it up
as you go
lost

& broken
into seeing what you want
until there is
no sky