Brian Purcell #27 The Boys In The Canoe

This is my last post for my month in Project 365 + 1 - thanks for the opportunity to contribute as a guest - perhaps I can return later!

 The Boys In The Canoe

                                                                     

                                                          The Point, Bellingen, Summer

                                  I

The boys in my canoe have plumbed the river

shot the rapids and returned a secret way

spooked by an eel longer than their oar,

stood up to drink in the secrets of the new

ways unsettling their consciousness

stars above their mountain,

a priest on the sandbank turning

from a drinking fountain while other boys

climb trees, hold ropes in a revelation

how many times singing my son, my son

running from the steep bank swinging on a rope

hungry for life and letting go for life

that comes splashing up twice his height

age not ardor, a blue heeler leaps up

for drops of water big as marbles

and down he goes into the golden water

so deep and immense he cannot open his eyes.

They say a bull shark’s down there

carried up with the floodwaters

now trapped and lonely biting into eels

half as long as cars, no metaphor needed since

the river is itself idea, essence, experience

the mauling cauldron of our hopes and fears and families

lie unselfconsciously and float and sink like gods

                                  II

while King Parrots peck out the eyes of the sun.

Below the kids press mud into their dripping hair

swear like their fathers losing jobs, emptying cartons

their grown brothers throwing wasted bottles of bourbon

into the man-high reeds spattering girlfriends

and wives with the cold spray of failures.

Meanwhile the boys stand in the canoe like sailors

looking for much more than they might expect at home

Dissolving in the water when their need is supreme

finding a purity in the icy depths

whose surface bounces hard-edged screams

of frustration rebounding on and on

while the river swoons at our passionate calls and embraces

a teenage boy accuses the other of being a girl and maybe

desires it they take turns to drown each other like unwanted cats.

The road offers its way out if only an unbudgeable tree

at its soft-edged side, the roots drinking the endless blood

of the lost boys and girls while the untroubled sky looks down

like a feckless king or queen on what it cannot touch

on all that it has seen.

                                  III

Bewildered tourists take rope swings from outstretched sticks

and flop predictably not far from the treacherous clay

sliding down into the waiting mouths of gigantic eels at play

or blundering down the rapids in their hostel innertubes

past the island that is no longer theirs the flying foxes

wrapped in skins of glory squeal plaintively at the tourists

roasting and floating on their black bladder boats

as they inch their way to Lavender Bridge.

From where do tourists come but our breaking hearts?

Sad vagrants wandering the face of the earth

driven by our laughter from remotest Bellingen

carrying with them the salt of our tears

and our children, following these stoned Pied Pipers

to cities of hard angles and cacophonous tar

neon-lit vistas of limitless opportunity

to wholly remove themselves from what they are.

They carry with them an exuberant light unfurling

from their spines like a flag of profound liberty

but on turning they see a dark, flaring shadow

unscrolling as they walk through the outskirts of the city.

                                  IV

Satellites observe them and their progress

cataloguing loneliness and gradual heartbreak

waiting for their tears to rise to heaven.

They enter the golden arches we have created

and eat and eat as there is no satisfaction.

How do the inhabitants of Eden know it is Eden?

There are leeches and ticks that can bring down a horse

the water is not golden only muddied by the children

but the snakes are benign, beautiful and cannot reason or talk.

At night stepping out from their work in a backlane kitchen

bodies sharpened by angles of artificial passion

the children huddle beneath bridges and crumbling arches

immense structures whose smiles stretch towards heaven

to which there is no entrance and no way out.

As they close their eyes they’re startled by the vision of this cauldron

the façade of the riverbank and massed ascending gums

see the faces of their friends moving in the branches

and weep for the ignorance that is past

for the hours in a cathedral of wood and light and air

and the boys in the canoe drifting slowly beneath them.

.