UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LINKS
John Steffler : Poems
Collecting, Bay of Islands, 1998
John Steffler
| Collecting, Bay of Islands, 1998 | |
| June | |
| 23 Benoits's Cove Bib Shadow Faun Shadow |
today a calm, thinking of Joseph Banks I fished out the open car window with my eyes and at once just west of Benoit's Cove caught (1) a Bib Shadow, Umbra fimbriata, which spilled from the foot of a poplar stump on uneven ground, it had somewhat the form of a cast-aside skirt or slip, dark indigo among dandelions & new grass, also (2) a Faun Shadow, Umbra variata, occurring where an aspen tree's leaves sifted the falling sunlight into a school of ovals, soft yellows and greens swimming on a blistered blue clapboard wall, the whole aggregation fading and reappearing now and then as though frightened into some refuge by (3), Umbra nebulosa, shadows of clouds cruising overhead |
Dismem- berment |
My blood was up finding such varied species close together, yet underneath I had the persistent faint sensation of being nothing more than a ribcage, flayed eviscerated, like that of a sheep hanging at the butcher's, the sea air, the odours of buds and pollens pulled through my chest cavity by the working ribs. Perhaps with what I collect I hope to flesh myself out, reconstruct my anatomy in a form less human, less estranged. Or is it characteristic of the creatures I search for to erode or digest their observers? If so, I should list my sense of dismemberment as one of their properties. |
Cobblies |
sighted also 2 examples of what the local people call Cobblies, Phantasma lascivum, one (4), probably a Bell Sprite [Phantasma medusum (S.)], flashing in the corner of my right eye between the blue house and the road, domed & transparent with his edges pink-tinted and a little fringed, or so it appeared in passing -- whether an effect of light reflected off the waves of Humber Arm distorted in the heated air along the road or some as yet unstudied life-form lacking material substance, I know not -- the other (5), Phantasma voluptum, is in the form of an infinite series of naked female legs high-kicking above the footlights of a stage, this occurring in my imagination upon seeing a row of white birch trunks, Betula papyrifera, diminishing down the grassy slope to the northwest |
| 24 Aquatic Faun |
today being also fine I was at the mouth of Blomidon Brook early and took what I hope will prove a complete aquatic variant of No. (2) [Umbra salvelinalis fontinalis (S.)], this, having mobile crescents of light in opposed pairs like wings fluttering in abundance, resided under two feet of blended salt and fresh water on a bed of ridged sand in the background, car noise swelled and tapered |
| 26 Geological truancy |
yesterday & today low concourse of cloud obscuring the tops of the Blomidons, no doubt the rock outcrops and shrubby knolls are dissolved and widely dispersed in the intense mist, an absorption of elements I am convinced the rocks respond to freely, ranging far in a blind conversation of touch |
Rain |
loose herds of rain mammoths, shag-sided the colour of rough-hatchelled tow, blunder out of the northwest very cold, thrash through the spruce and alder knocking branches to either side, not a fit day for venturing out |
John Steffler's works copyright © to the author.
