CHARLES DE LIN - “Tower & Bear”

Refuse litters

the first floor:
    rusting stovepipes,
    rusting stove,
    broken chair,
    forgotten raincoat
    hanging from a peg
    beside the rickety
    ladder stairs.

Up those stairs,
dust lies thick as neglected dreams
there,
in that forgotten tower;
up again,
one more floor,
into the wizard’s hat now,
where a mountain range of
shin-high bat guano
strides across the water-stained wood,
skitter-skree of bats
in the crown of the raftered hat above,
but you can see,
through the trees,
a glimpse of water,
you can understand
how the tower came to be,
    if not why it was forgotten.

The road that once
wound up the hill
is so overgrown now
you need imagination
to mark its turns,
but I don’t ever follow that road;
I cut through the woods,
up the hill,
above the lake;
I step over fallen snags,
work my way through the new growth,
over the humped bones
of granite behemoths
    more forgotten than any wooden tower;
for a time
I follow the swath Jim and Paul cut,
    removing dying trees
    for firewood,
then I slip into the deeper woods,
through the sudden surprises
of small sunned meadows,
past the dry paper football
of a hornet’s nest
hanging from
an impossibly thin twig,
down into a gully,
scramble up again
and then I see it,
first the wizard’s hat,
    shingles black,
then the tower.

I sit
where the moss makes no differentiation
    between limestone and granite
    and fallen snag,
where the goldenrod rustles
and the birch and maple murmur,
and I listen to their gossip,
all the gossip
   —because even
    the silent stone underfoot
    and the motionless Queen Anne’s lace
    has a voice;
the only sound I make
is the faint skritch of pen on paper,
waking the tower
in my sketchbook,
    ghostlike, at first,
lines so faint, they mean nothing,
but connecting, one to the other,
gathering volume and shape,
until there are two towers
in the wood,
upon the hill,
above the lake:
one an echo,
the other forgotten.

And that would be enough:
the tower, the gossip,
the insect hum,
the sunlight an Impressionist’s dream
as it patterns the hilltop,
    yellow on green,
    violet on green,
    green on green on brown,
the maples red,
the tower brown and grey,
as though it had grown,
    moss-like from the forest floor,
    rather than raised by human hand.
My heart is so full,
it would be enough.

But the forest allows me
one more gift:
    a rustle in the berry bushes
    down in the gully.
The bear seems as
surprised as I am
- delicate for all his bulk;
coat, a midnight black;
nose lifted as he senses me
sensing him;
eyes the dark of the shadows
that collect at the bottom
of the lake.

He stands so close,
not ten feet from me,
I could count the hairs on his muzzle,
were I so inclined,
but at that moment
my gaze encompasses everything:
no one detail,
    but all details at once.
My pulse drums,
    first with fear,
    then with awe,
    then with a gratefulness
    that words cannot express.

I hold my breath
and know that,
although I am only a guest here,
    for one brief moment,
I may call this home;
I have been given,
    for one brief moment
    which lasts a lifetime,
a glimpse into the Otherworld
from which all our spirits
once came.

Then my host turns,
broad black back
slipping away among the trees
    like water running downhill,
    retreating
    like a faerie glamour,
and he is gone.
But the wonder remains,
lodged inside my spirit,
and know I will never forget
the tower,
the bear,
the gift I was allowed,
there in the woods,
upon the hill,
above the lake.

         Ottawa,
         November 12, 1992

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