Famous Reporter # 40 - poetry, Richard Lemm: 'Mountain Creek Homesick Blues'

RICHARD LEMM

Mountain Creek Homesick Blues

How did I end up

this far from home? On a pastoral

island with no real mountains

within hundreds of miles. No glacial

run-off and lakes, no plunge and tumble

down cliffs, over deadfalls. No streams

cascading, speaking to me

in the clear, cool flow over boulders,

bubbling eddies, swirling pools,

in the voices of cork-booted ancestors

pausing from the work of axes and saws,

from the toting of buckets for cookstove

and washtub, the bending of aching backs

to inhale the creek’s breath, and drink.

The salmon bucking upward to spawn

and die, eagles in the trees and the great

bears feasting, the young coho and chinook

gliding down, past the horses watering,

the girls wading, my grandmother’s and

my mother’s voices among them, flashing

in the sunlight with ouzels, northbound warblers

dabbing their gold on the willows,

the splash and creak of paddles

at the mill, the voices of my great uncles,

the twins, across the millpond, gunshots

echoing through the cedars, not deer this time

but quarrels with a rival clan over timber rights,

Walter washing Winfred’s wounds in the stream.

The voice of my first lover shrieking

as she dove and rose in the roiled snowmelt

below Cougar Falls, the water’s white

lightning in her brain, her temples

throbbing, her eyes gleaming with mica

and quartzite, her tongue a creek-polished

stone warmed alive by the sun. Today,

back in my first home, I sit beside

Lithium Creek, its waters that drew

seekers of serenity a century ago, those

burdened with malaise in their parlours

wainscoted with wood from my ancestors’ mill.

I am not in the high-country meadows,

not above tree line, not where the creek

descends through the patchwork quilt

of forest and clear-cut I saw from the plane.

I am near boutiques and bistros, artisans’

booths along the creek’s banks, the edifices

of the continent’s grandest Shakespeare

festival lifted above hemlock and rhododendron,

cappuccino and gelato stands, a shop

crammed with Native American art.

Upstream, in Lithium Park, the voices

purl in the water, liquid words

from the icebound syllables above,

all those laments and sighs and rejoicings

ever-returning from snow clouds and sun bake,

and sitting on a boulder embraced by cedar roots

just below the trail where Tilley-hatted

camera-wielding seekers of refreshment walk by,

I am suddenly weeping, then remember

the words of B.B. King, that the blues

are not about being sad, but about washing

away the sorrow. The water rushing

toward me and beyond, but never gone.

The water rushing toward me and beyond

but never gone. All the voices

pooling beside me, every single one.

Ashland, Oregon

Prince Edward Island

RICHARD LEMM was born in Seattle and lived for several decades in the Pacific Northwest, often hiking the mountains and wilderness beaches of western North America. He moved to Prince Edward Island on the Atlantic coast in 1983, and teaches creative writing and Canadian and post-colonial literatures (including Australian) at the University of Prince Edward Island. He has published four books of poetry, a collection of short fiction (Shape of Things to Come), and Milton Acorn: In Love and Anger, a biography of the PE Islander who became the "People's Poet of Canada." His forthcoming poetry collection is Burning House. He has received the PEI Heritage Award and the Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Literary Arts on Prince Edward Island. He was writer in residence in Hobart in August-September.