Tout Va Bien

The night is lit by a phospherescent moon.

The ashphalt presses, imprinting my thin soled moccasins, soft and pliable worn treadless, perfect for tracking in the mid places between wood and field where the animals hold court. I hunt secret moments there, perfecting the slowest of silent motion.

This evening we make our way down Ashmore, still, after some 25 years, always towards the river at the end of the street. I think ever since Prince Rupert by the Skeena, I've been hooked on life by the water. Or, perhaps it's just been that way since Sea Scouts at St.Andrews in the Heights?

It's August and the levels are down. The warm stink of algae, exposed rock bed and dead sunfish waft along Rue de Salabery past the football field at St.Francis. But it's not bad, no it's even charming. Well, perhaps not so much charm, but dependable, as an old welcoming blanket of familiarity.

In the faster parts where the Heron stands guard studying runes delicately etched in ancient polished stone beneath the surface, seeking signs, omens, of that which has passed before and will never pass again, the flow of things known and unknown trickle and whisper, the secret just on the tip of the tongue. Still, so very still, he stands, calm, listening, -hearing the river's mantram, at one with the flow where his eternal present melts a visible future into eternal escaping distant past, memory- an illusion to allow some peace before certain end.

The song by Beau Domage plays in my mind - 'Harmonie Du Soir A Chateauguay', Les pieds pendants au bout du quai,...La riviere joue l'harmonica, Les mouches a feu font des folies...', what a lovely tune, the soul of Chateauguay.

If you ever have a chance to come back to Quebec, Montreal, to really explore, not as a tourist, but as a cultural voyeur, go to Rue St.Denis and sit in a cafe, not in front, but find one with an interior court yard and yearn to recall the words left behind in faded books, the code that opens the door to that other solitude within our cultural looking glass. You might hear strains of 'Ginette' -the song of a young quiet man whose soul is opended to the maigic of the night by a dancer "...avec tes seins pis tes souliers a talons hauts...".

Ah! Surely I will die an old man in this Province, smiling as the sun tries in vain to kiss the moon.