Arrival

Trapped in the bear-claw bear hug
Of lowering stony mountain skies and hills that lie
Like sleeping wooded dogs, a slow boat
Drifts the channel

(avoiding storm tossed logs)

Wrapped clammily
In fog
Below a hooded dawn
Of wet snow, rain
And the distant spray of humpback heraldry
The morning broke with a light to splinter glass.
Sharp and brittle winter sun
Piercing clouds
And fiercely pulling back the shroud of loss
And change.

We gently pass.

All things familiar are never the same.
All things impassioned, yet tedium reigns.
All things of welcome that push us away.
All things of colour appearing in nothing but grey.

Black-grey humpbacks
Rising and falling
In symphonies of frozen bubbles.
The rolling trouble of the white-grey sky.
The flow of the green-grey trees.
The blue-grey patina of distant snow.

And southwards we go.

The mouth of the river
A tumult of white caps
And uneasy, turbulent motion.

Winding east from the ocean.

Trace the rocks
And displace migrant flocks
Of wintering ducks
In a ruckus of quacking
And wild wings
And splashing
And flashes
Of black and white feathers.

Light fell into the late winter
Afternoon shadows.
Around the wind-felled tree (off Promise)
We see the curve of houses.

The tiny village.

The breakwater eagles
And circling seagulls
And small crowd of people.

The concrete dock sways
From the wake
And the shock of arrival.
The pending descent
After leisurely wending in bitter winds.

Slide to the slushy ground.

Glancing around at the watchful, warning, wary,
Bitter eyes of welcome.

And the bear-claw bear hug
Was clenched in false friendship that day.