Jean Rivard - University of British Columbia

N i c h o l a s v o n M a l t z a h n
Masham Road
Thaw. South wind. The sky is paler
each day now as a high haze
brightens down to the white horizon.
Snow is quickening to water.
Granite becomes earth, and then again cattle.
A crow cries out in transformation:
a woodpecker and again those sparrows.
A pick-up truck revving in the mud
is first snowmobiles, a chainsaw
and that hammering, then also voices.
A jet streaming across the bluest part
of heaven, now a car on a wet road.
Hills turn to barns, spruce to birches,
valley is river, interest desire,
telephone poles branch as maples with sap.
North becomes south. The ridge-line falls
away to wide lowlands darkening with thaw.
All these fresh certainties I cannot watch easily.
Looking out from the escarpment,
catching my breath, I see how the slope
is marked by the black track of my climb.
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