Rivering: The Poetry of Daphne Marlatt

Walking out

Walking walking out, walking our solid and intimate bodies down neighbouring streets lesbian-friendly or not, noting the houses other dykes enter, the rooms of artists of one stripe or another. taking note of averted faces, elderly shoppers, ferocious dealers and those strung-out. or those who nod and smile hello. walking our passing bodies down streets of layered lives, lapidary, set in cement. the remains of stories. touching the tree touching the fence alley alley home … or moments like that warm expanse of shallow ocean coming in, body of water rippling sandflat history in names (Malaspina, Narváez). cool up to our knees, the dog cavorting free of heat stupor (Sutil, Mexicana and Discovery). fur sprinkles glisten. late light’s almost amber, super-natural, islands to the west mere silhouettes (Valdéz, Galiano, all that’s left of their encounter with Vancouver some two centuries ago and just offshore – the same and not the same river-ocean then). we cavort, wade, turn to go – and there, hallucinatory, banked in ahistorical distance, a vertical construct of glass and concrete flares its dazzle, flashes “world-class city,” the city Vancouver did not know that there would one day be.… 52 / Rivering ...