Look at that, blood
to blood, my grandpa used to say.
at sunset or sunrise, that's all it is, ones'
the back end of the other, take your pick. It's 1912,
July, after dawn, and they're looking to take
some brookies from the Little Beaver, lighting out
on his bike, in overlappings of fog
though underfoot
little brightnesses explode
from the flinty gravels,
likewise from the handlebar bell, the earpiece
of his glasses, what might be a ring
on my mother's hand. They're lighting out,
but posing too, It's so early in the morning,
my mother's thinking
the little trout must be asleep.
just as she'd like to be,
that dew is still settling without brilliance
onto the cattails, and the redwings
haven't gotten around to being
awake yet, only an occasional dazed cheep
or whistle from the ditch, or from deep
in the marsh grass. Skunks
and raccoons must be still up and about, the sun
is the barest of reddenings over the spruce
from east of Joe's Island, and just beginning to pink
the first frettings of wind on Bawbeese Lake. The world's
fragrant - marsh mud and cedar, a faint
fishiness to the air, dust that smells like dust
one minute after rain. I get this, all of it
except for the color and the smells, which I'm obliged
to make up, sounds too: birds,
the scouring of bike wheels
Over gravel, And one or two
small motions: dew falling, the tiny
surgings of grass, unfoldings
of violets, mallows, wild roses. I get all this
from the murky photograph, taken
too early in the morning, not near
enough light. My mother's young,
she's hanging on to my grandpa's checkered shirt
with one hand, with the other
a Prince Albert can which must
be full of worms, the old paper
is cracked across her face which she turns
to look back at someone
or other's camera. She's wearing
white stockings, high shoes, gray cloche, gray
gloves, my grandpa's got on
a boater, he's carrying the rods
across his handlebars, he's troubling
to keep upright and still
be slow enough for the Brownie's lens,
and the bike is listing, front wheel sharply
angled. Ahead of them the marsh
is a low gray hedge of shadow readying itself
for light, for birdsong, for a fullness of sun, for all
the various blossomings they probably expect - and that
is where they're going to, that
is where they're lighting out for,
ready to follow the long
slow leap of their shadows before them,
the night distending into dawn.
There I hold the picture
at a certain angle to the sky
and my mother and my grandpa disappear
in a little square of light, a dull fire
that from somewhere deep
in the dimensionless old paper
has stirred, found fuel, surfaced, ignited. ~John Engels
