Controlling the Silver

Dear Cousin

5 Dear Cousin i We might not reach in time to de-ice you into renew. You lie in the foothills of Calgary and I’d like to be able to tell you that the azure harbor ahead is the horseshoe of Lucea Bay, but those white horses run too fierce. You have the eye, from the foothills you can discern the washed bones of many million drowned on the Atlantic side, where long-meter waves hexameter swell: Wild horse, mounted militia, martial law search and destroy, thundering buffalo, bull bucker, overseer, guineagogue, badlove-takelife waves, gathering brute force to draw you under, come girl, wash your heart, with heart-rinse of machete-split coconut. 6 ii They packed you in ice early up north where you plied your wordsmith’s trade, rubbing the salve of convince on dry tongues which became then sure and swift of speech. Your own tongue aches from tip to root; you want to assuage it with water coconut, for killer crab and that low grey lizard beneath the water jar have harmed you. When at age seven our two eyes made four, you were my first cousin who taught me how a river named by our generations was benign, would not harm, but pull and haul, bank to bank safety. You said to me, sit there on the grave stones town girl, sit and learn how to discern between one good duppy and a bad one. Under the damp, dirt cellar of the Harvey house we exhumed porcelain bowl shards, buttons of bone, blank-stare dolls with decayed bodies, and nacred spoons we used as earth-moving tools for finding Harvey roots. ...