Their North Atlantic Home
Oct 27 2014


My house is 2 shades of brown
with a beige interior.
It is camouflaged by trees,
so I look out
from the high bedroom window
at a soft green canopy,
into trembling leaves, and dappled light.
As if I lived in the upper branches,
the tree-house
of every boy's dream.

If I lived in the North Atlantic
in the grey light, and fog
clinging to scoured rock
I would paint in primary colours.
Like Iceland, or the Labrador,
fishing shacks, tumbling down the rocks,
small salt-box homes
immaculate.
How hard men
who work with their hands, and prefer not to talk
state their claim,
a defiant antidote
to bleak, and marginal, places.

But here, where the forest is lush
and quickly swallows-up

any man-made structure
I keep my head down.
Defer to the majesty of trees;
which break the wind, and soften light,
invite restraint.

So I am the tree in the forest,
deep
in fertile subsoil.

In the Travel section, there was aerial picture of Reykjavik. I was struck by the colourful houses, and immediately thought how much in common they had with Newfoundland: as if colour could be an antidote to their mutual home in the harsh North Atlantic.

In the crowded city, an act of such eye-catching colour would be almost anti-social: in the hyper-stimulation of busyness and density, one tries to be easy on the eyes and not stand out. And in a softer place -- like the temperate rainforest of the Pacific coast, where nature is magnificent and generous and fecund -- colour is restrained, because one doesn't presume to compete.

I admit, I've always been afraid of bold primary colour. I tend more to faded blue jeans and pastel paints. But it seems odd that you have to go to such bleak isolated places to find colour. And that it's not the product of artistic types or effete metropolitans; it's the product of hard men who work with their hands, and prefer doing to saying.

I started this poem wanting to depict that iconic Newfoundland outport, and somehow draw a line connecting it with this new image of Iceland ("new" because we are usually struck by Iceland's natural beauty, not the man-made). But I had trouble finding my way in; until I realized it had to be personal, and begin here (even though this is also a somewhat marginal place, and hardly the Pacific northwest!)

When I walk up to the 3rd floor of my back-split, and look out the big window into the canopy of white pines, it's easy to think of a tree-house. Not just the view, but the accident of colour choice: the lower floor its trunk, in dark wood and soft yellow; and the upstairs of pastel green, its leaves. I think "the tree-house/ of every boy's dream" may be my favourite part; perhaps if only because I've often thought and enjoyed this idea, but never shared it in a poem.

On the other hand, I really love the line in the 2nd stanza that begins "Like Iceland ...". Unfortunately, that stanza also contains the part I think a good editor would probably urge me to lose: " ...a defiant antidote/ to bleak, and marginal, places"; which is not only essentially redundant, but "says it" more than "shows it", which is always less powerful. What led to this is not unusual. It's a result of these blurbs, and the different way I both think and express myself when I'm writing prose instead of poetry: both more wordy, and more explicit. So the words "marginal" and "bleak" and "antidote" appeared as I wrote this piece, and then I couldn't resist revisiting the poem and shoe-horning them in. I'm afraid I have a very bad tendency to fall in love with the sound of my own voice!

I can suggest one reason I'm inclined to stick with the status quo, and it has to do with sound. I like the way "antidote" picks up "Labrador" (as well, in an even more sideways rhyme, "immaculate"); and how -- working forward instead of back -- "place" resonates with "restraint", ending both stanzas with the same finality. The trouble is, I wonder whether I only hear this because I'm anticipating the words, know what's coming -- something that would be lost on the naive reader; or whether the sideways rhyme would act, anyway, even if not explicitly noted. This is the trouble with any kind of writing, and poetry in particular: as the writer, you never really get to read it for the first time. I think a lot of the time I spend writing is spent trying to empty my mind, so I can go at it again as if I had no idea what's coming.

One final note: I hope "break the wind" is not taken the wrong way!