1. Calliope at Marathon

There. Hear that? Somewhere far on the water, bleating metallic G-sharp modulating to A-flat , its dull echo lingering on the silent edge of twilight, along the lost, silver skim of the horizon, slowly drifting in toward the foam laced rocks of the chill shore.

Melodramatic? Romantic? Perhaps, it’s not hard to lose track of your talk here at this Superior, the darkening edge of an inland sea.

The distant klaxon most likely isn’t meant to signal us, of course, and yet the heart, even full fathom within a warm body, cannot help but feel fear. Something out there urgent and unknown. A common wonder, it’s an old story, Donne’s bell or Ariel’s dingdong drowned man, the neon yellow lorry taking poor father to hospital, floating dead beneath all their pinball lights, electrodes and dials, the choked siren still groaning. What does the sailor hear, alarm or call, making his way along the endless, flat expanse midships between stern and wheelhouse? What is it he thinks himself called to? Work, sleep or warm food? Does he sniff blood, grease, or rot; the damp salt smell of shore or nocturnal sperm? Is what he hears between the klaxon bleats the oily crackle of chips frying in the galley or flesh on fire, muffled panic in the dark hold below?

Does he feel swell rising, storm welling, fog descending, or merely the dry blast of flame from the bulkhead hatch? Does he mark shift’s end or shipmate’s death? Dream of home or tavern, wife's plump breast or whore's hard, the forbidden flank and muscle of other men, the taste of whiskey. O listen. Birds far from shore. Who can know? Who cannot but want to, hearing this sound. This is why I love to come here, North to me. Calliope funnel of world’s sounds ears hear here, as likewise here too shine and dance Northern lights to all eyes.

Even so I do truly fear that far sound. All evening I’ve heard it at intervals, each bleat tracing the ship’s progress on an arc across an imagined horizon as clearly as on the phosphor cyclops eye of a radar scope. Each time halfway wondering what to do, or in fact whether there is anything one could do. What to say to the constable: No sir, no coordinates to speak of, and no, no radio contact either. A sound solely. This urgent, and (forgive me) despite its mechanical wail, ancient sound. Te deum.

Oh but the constables are boys anymore: one among the ways you know you’ve aged. His black patent leather Sam Brown belt fitted with shiny brass cartridges, each in its own cinch, crisscrosses over blue starched OPP shirt pressed into creased square panels. Behind him the radio in the cruiser also bleating static calls of auto collisions, domestic incidents, and tavern brawls. Each time he speaks puffs of warm breath bloom before his face like a cartoon character; my fingers beginning to freeze in their several gloves as night settles into this forlorn northern shore.

“The world is full of troubles, sir, some of them at a distance...,” =smiles, “I’m sure we would have heard,” =thinks you mad.

Each returns to his own car. Deep soft seats and blessed warmth inside the idling Lincoln illuminated only by the sweet green light of the familiar controls on the dash before me, whence pours forth Petula dulcet over CBC.

I walk/ a/lone /and won/der, /Who Am I? (in a diatonic spiral sings she as the hands begin to warm against the soft belly of the hot water bottle)