On The Outer Islands: Pointe Au Baril

John Bruce

These precambrian humps and folds
Solid on the water's astonishment of colour
Conceal magicians of survival;
Some numerous as motes,
Skittering in and out
Of their submersible shadows
With twitched precision
And indivisible demands;
Others, sly to our sight
Watch us unwatching,
Meshed in the sparse foliage
And stretched silences.
There is something stumbling here.
In all this life sublated;
What seems so still if you listen
Is listening too, charged
With cool stony caution.

We however, clumsily human,
Caught in this present tense
Of our minds autonomy,
Are the least of predators,
Wholly above our history
And the frail image
Of our failing sight.


Pointe au Baril: a town and a promontory on the west coast of Georgian Bay, Ontario
sublated: a term in logic meaning denied, disaffirmed
Poems selected and prepared by Hugh MacCallum and Ian Lancashire.

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6

John Bruce's works copyright © to the author.