The Moose

From narrow provinces / of fish and bread and tea, / home of the long tides / where the bay leaves the sea / twice a day and takes / the herrings long rides, // where if the river / enters or retreats / in a wall of brown foam / depends on if it meets / the bay coming in, / the bay not at home; // where, silted red, / sometimes the sun sets / facing a red sea, / and others, veins the flats’ / lavender, rich mud / in burning rivulets; // on red, gravelly roads, / down rows of sugar maples, / past clapboard farmhouses / and neat, clapboard churches, / bleached, ridged as clamshells, / past twin silver birches, // through late afternoon / a bus journeys west, / the windshield flashing pink, / pink glancing off of metal, / brushing the dented flank / of blue, beat-up enamel; // down hollows, up rises, / and waits, patient, while / a lone traveller gives / kisses and embraces / to seven relatives / and a collie supervises. // Goodbye to the elms, / to the farm, to the dog. / The bus starts. The light / grows richer; the fog, / shifting, salty, thin, / comes closing in. // Its cold, round crystals / form and slide and settle / in the white hens’ feathers, / in gray glazed cabbages, / on the cabbage roses / and lupins like apostles; // the sweet peas cling / to their wet white string / on the whitewashed fences; / bumblebees creep / inside the foxgloves, / and evening commences. // One stop at Bass River. / Then the Economies— / Lower, Middle, Upper; / Five Islands, Five Houses, / where a woman shakes a tablecloth / out after supper. // A pale flickering. Gone. / The Tantramar marshes / and the smell of salt hay. / An iron bridge trembles / and a loose plank rattles / but doesn’t give way. // On the left, a red light / swims through the dark: / a ship’s port lantern. / Two rubber boots show, / illuminated, solemn. / A dog gives one bark. // A woman climbs in / with two market bags, / brisk, freckled, elderly. / “A grand night. Yes, sir, / all the way to Boston.” / She regards us amicably. // Moonlight as we enter / the New Brunswick woods, / hairy, scratchy, splintery; / moonlight and mist / caught in them like lamb’s wool / on bushes in a pasture. // The passengers lie back. / Snores. Some long sighs. / A dreamy divagation / begins in the night, / a gentle, auditory, / slow hallucination.... // In the creakings and noises, / an old conversation / —not concerning us, / but recognizable, somewhere, / back in the bus: / Grandparents’ voices // uninterruptedly / talking, in Eternity: / names being mentioned, / things cleared up finally; / what he said, what she said, / who got pensioned; // deaths, deaths and sicknesses; / the year he remarried; / the year (something) happened. / She died in childbirth. / That was the son lost / when the schooner foundered. // He took to drink. Yes. / She went to the bad. / When Amos began to pray / even in the store and / finally the family had / to put him away. // “Yes ...” that peculiar / affirmative. “Yes ...” / A sharp, indrawn breath, / half groan, half acceptance, / that means “Life’s like that. / We know it (also death).” // Talking the way they talked / in the old featherbed, / peacefully, on and on, / dim lamplight in the hall, / down in the kitchen, the dog / tucked in her shawl. // Now, it’s all right now / even to fall asleep / just as on all those nights. / —Suddenly the bus driver / stops with a jolt, / turns off his lights. // A moose has come out of / the impenetrable wood / and stands there, looms, rather, / in the middle of the road. / It approaches; it sniffs at / the bus’s hot hood. // Towering, antlerless, / high as a church, / homely as a house / (or, safe as houses). / A man’s voice assures us / “Perfectly harmless....” // Some of the passengers / exclaim in whispers, / childishly, softly, / “Sure are big creatures.” / “It’s awful plain.” / “Look! It’s a she!” // Taking her time, / she looks the bus over, / grand, otherworldly. / Why, why do we feel / (we all feel) this sweet / sensation of joy? // “Curious creatures,” / says our quiet driver, / rolling his r’s. / “Look at that, would you.” / Then he shifts gears. / For a moment longer, // by craning backward, / the moose can be seen / on the moonlit macadam; / then there’s a dim / smell of moose, an acrid / smell of gasoline.