I become then

by GABRIELA HALAS

No human company sought or delivered. The red-breasted robin and her territory, this emerald field. Her body still only when constant provision fills mouths, grows songs. That is company enough, however quick-hearted. But I am not bird shaped. The wary robin eyes my limbs as I give space, move into soggy tundra. I see cotton grass coil through flatness, like soft first snow. I pull crimson berries off their trailing oval stems and roll them like old stories in my palm. Their delicate sponged meat rests on my tongue. Settles into the fondness of microscopic trenches. Pluck dwarf Labrador tea, push the white petals under my nails and smell an old home. From further north. My feet sink on, advance across muskeg. There is activity here I can only guess at and culture unwrapped far from human form. The water, quiet, at a distance. Then, a twist, each pulse after bend, the indistinguishable descent of land. The stream has a voice. Let’s not forget voice. Tannin-rich pools, and the snipe calls an echo across a landscape. I become then, myself.

My mouth quivers with tender meat. I eat my work. For death I brought, unabashed; I do not balk. I cut a body open. I cut a hundred more. To urge forward to rhythm some reconcile to paths.  Others to the trickery of light, fooled in water by a mirror of stones. The way the stream’s surface tension claims a modest area, a traveling bed for leaves suspended. The way of least resistance; I could learn from this humble address. Some die on dry pebbled beds, pluck the meat. Others find cool pockets of release; an unnamed route offers hope. One more day with life. I wade in the river beside them. Wash my arms and the back of my legs. The fold of my elbows, brown. The river’s headwaters dive from a willow embankment, thrust canyon-ward, then supple display. I offer trade, yield to paradox. I become then, myself.

I came from somewhere, am here now. Be thrilled with time. It spills off the mountains to the east and travels slow on a solstice midnight. The gnarled branches of cottonwoods and the tall white spruce arc to music, to song, to voice. Let’s not forget voice. It stitches fragments of time like pond lilies, filling space. We made it this far they shake, my attention theirs. We made it this far, I answer back. Questions that filled me before, rest in the dirt below. Something in my throat free of language helps clear the way. Surrendered, the arches of my feet test tussocks and the depth of spaces in between those ancient mounds. The sound of joints and tendons and resilient willows bend, not break, under pressure. Vibrations in place of words linger. There is the winnow of the snipe I love, imploring. I merge my body with his. I became then, myself.