Head east on Broadway.
Make a right at the Safeway.
Keep going until you get to the intersection with a Superlube.
Turn left.
This road turns into Highway 20. Keep right. Get off at the first exit.
Follow onto Goldwheat. Then to River Road.
House number 330. The red one.
On the right. The wide driveway. The vegetable garden.
The rope mattress. The part-time actor explaining
everything. The enormous kitchen stove. The wooden cradle. Winter
hanging over each word like a millstone. Summer beckoning like a faded serigraph
on the wall; the wildflowers on the table stunned with silence. Your hands
remain there, poised over a piano key; this is the wake of someone
you knew; or an office Halloween party: everyone smiling
as if into a flurry, red-eared, endearing ourselves
to our self-effacement: the soft eradication
of one more dream into the details
of waking.
A version of “Louis Riel” first appeared in Prism International, Vol. 45 No.1,Vancouver, BC, 2006.