Crossing with Tiff

Crossing with Tiff LORNA CROZIER When I was invited to be part of Tiff's celebration, I wanted to write something new that came directly from his work. I reread Not Wanted on the Voyage, one of the most delightful and darkest novels in Canadian literature, and wrote two poems as a result. There were dozen of images that resounded and wouldn't let me go, but being limited for time, I chose two: Mrs Noyes, waking from sleepwalking, finds she is stroking the forehead of a weeping bear; after the rains have stopped, Ham, his mother and Mottyl stand on the deck of the ark, the moon and stars visible for the first time in days. On the plane from Vancouver to Toronto, I reread The Piano Man~ Daughter and tried to write a kind of ghazal that pulled actual phrases from the novel that I pieced together and sometimes expanded or used as springboards to something else (as in the ending three lines). And finally, at the conference banquet Bill told the wonderful story oflosing Tiffon Salt Spring Island. He set out to find him and there he was in the middle of the road, stopping traffic. A slug was crossing. When I got home, I couldn't resist using that marvellous anecdote, that so sums up Tiff's generosity and care, in a poem. Woman with Bears Noah's wife stepped into the pungent dark. Sleepwalking , when she woke she was stroking the wide forehead of a bear. The bear was weeping, its muzzle wet, its mate a denser darkness behind her in the cage. What to do but keep on stroking till the animal lowered its head to her lap and closed its eyes. She, too, and when she woke again, a bear slept on either side. One could be death, the other tenderness. She thought of her firstborn son, killed at her breast for his hairy arms, his wet fur head; one could be pity, the other desire. She thought of her husband, Journal ofCanadian Studies Vol. 33, No. 4 (Hiver 1998~99 Winter) 28 smooth and hard in their bed; one could be terror, the other grace. Could she rise without disturbing such a sleep, wade into the world as it had been, bears in the woods pawing berries, tongues purple and plush, she on the porch with Mottyl in her lap, the boy curled in her womb's watery cage, his small mouth opening. One could be forgiveness; the other, memory. Nothing resembles what this one knows. (first appeared in Nimrod International Journal ofProse and Poetry) On the Ark, The First Night ofStars He stood with his mother on the deck, Matty1in her arms. Everything gleamed from the cold scrubbing of the rain, its hands not small after all, the moon finally visible, doubled in Mottyl's blue-white eyes. He wondered if the cat could sense it there, wondered if it changed anything she couldn't see. Charlie's Poem (from The Piano Man's Daughter) Things pushing up to heaven, others bending down to hell. And in between the living walking sideways on the earth. Crablike, crowlike, the charred ankle-winged glide of lovers: Ede and the Piano Man, Revue d'etudes canadiennes Lily and Pan, Lily and Ned; in our own way, dare I say, my mother Lily and me. She said, I was struck like a match, I had no option but to bum. The cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, all kinds of music shall fall down. In the garden, greenaproned soldiers never spoke. They unearthed such darkness with a spade, they deadheaded. Living things should not be speechless, my mother said. The piano's gleam lit up the silence until the thunder of a passing storm shook the wires. I lift the lid, I pry into my life. The skull's a cave the mind lights paper matches and snuffs them out, memory a smudge that keeps on burning. We remember nothing. We forget nothing. There is no contradiction. My mother embroidered my name above the pocket of my sunsuit, red threads flickering above my heart. My breath made them start and flare, nibble at my throat...