The Land Of Look Behind Part 5

Once, when the sky was young and the spirits were expressing their wishes, peals of light and thunder damaged the heavens until they were swollen and purple. Rain fell like leaves as the victors banished the fallen from the clouds. The vanquished were ordered to supply the empty lakes with forms fitting their previous ways. Swimming in oblivion, they only stopped to rest in reed beds on August days when the Great Spirit smothered his anger.

The evil ones a.s.sumed the course of large blood fish sc.r.a.ping the silt bottoms in reminder of their reduced state. All sorts of creatures--the catfish with his whiskers to remind the new creature man of his pre-human state and the eel and lamprey with their sharp eyes to disclose to the world the inherent baseness of their rebellious nature.

The giant of the deep--the sturgeon--had a sucker form mouth. Every time man lifted him across the keel of a boat he would see his obsequious face panting to the sky.

In fact, when sturgeon or the spirit commanded to be pike were caught, the thrash of their tails sent small tears as ripples across the lake.

These stirred sand people and minnows were born. Each sob from dying pike's tail, doomed to a long toothy snout for her disobedience by Manitou, formed a larger fish. In this way, fish were ever reminded of their punishment and man kept fed.

The Indians enjoyed new food as plenteous as the grains of golden earth on each lake's face.

THE GARDEN PATCH

Gourd was taken to task when she understood the limitations the garden patch had placed upon her people.

It was early fall and the dancers of the vegetable kingdom paraded their charms in bright, full regalia. Across the earth in splotches of colour, the tomatoes scented a good fall. So, too, the kingly husks of corn and the melons, spinach and cuc.u.mber in turn eyed the approaching season in growing faith. Each had a succulent function and dangled their inviting flesh to the beholder.

But, alas, what did gourd promise? She was deeply conscious of lacking the forward brightness of tomato and pumpkin. She lacked leafy greens so evidently prized and when her fellow vegetables covered the brown soil in preparation for the fine day they would bask across a kitchen table, it was almost too much for the sensitive gourd to stomach. Why even squash, which she felt closest to, had more of a function than she. So versatile did the big neighbour seem in comparison to herself, the ugly dwarf.

She was on the verge of casting herself in despair across the rickety fence or joining the long, black embers of a dead fire young boys had prepared months back. Surely, she was the outcast of the plant world.

How grotesque her features were, so hard and unpliable seemed her flesh. Even her skin tones were half-caste. No recipes called for her presence. A mood of growing helplessness seemed to envelop her.

A boy, the earlier fire setter, is describing an odd vegetable, tubular and often misshapen, that was excellent for all sorts of childhood pursuits--making paperweights, building scarecrows and decorating mantles.

"If only people knew," he bubbles.

"Still more success stories," the little gourd cries on hearing the child's comment.

"At least I won't have to be humbled in her presence," the gourd thought, her self confidence shattered.

And with that the little gourd approached the Vegetable King and asked to use her remaining wish. For in those days all living things were handed one means for improving themselves.

"I resolve to be a new edible," she sighed, "something other than a gnomish gourd. Make, O King, a glorious . . . pumpkin." But the Vegetable King decided not to abandon his earlier invention and so gourds live on. Distant relatives of the bright, new pumpkin, but their inspiration nonetheless.

THE MONARCH

She wanted her beauty too soon and must now forfeit it for the moment.

One day, when the Earth was a glorious garden and ruled by a brilliant sun flower towering above the plants of her domain, Monarch b.u.t.terfly, not yet her familiar orange, complained she wished to be large as a bird with petal wings translucent to the sun, folding with the rain.

Sunflower, taken back by this unusual demand, sought to humble Monarch.

"Henceforth for your imprudence, each one of your race must toil for your wings. No more shall you enjoy fruits without labour. By daring to be mighty you will begin existence as a pale, green egg hardly distinguishable from the lowliest leaf. Moreover, as a reminder of your insolence, you must pa.s.s through four purgatorial stages. The bitterest bane of your people will be the bread of the milkweed."

"You wish to aggrandise yourself? So be it--you will shed your skin like a snake and hang upside down in stupor for weeks on end. Only then, will I allow you to retain your former excellence."

And with that, sunflower drew hard upon her curse and winter formed.

She, too, planted seed-eggs across the face of the earth. Her face lost its radiance by fall and her petals cried to the ground. Even today, when people eat of her wealth they devour it with salt. This is in remembrance that, in cursing Monarch, she, too, felt her own wrath for salt is more bitter than the bane of the milkweed.

BReBEUF

Brebeuf is looking at the land that bears his namesake. He has no recollection of the horrors to come for his gaze unfolds as if in a dream.

The wide expanse of blue water pleases him. Certainly the area holds potential--many hard and softwooded trees not unlike his native Brittany. In the warm glow of a July morning, he belittles his misfortunes, the present trials sapping little Ste. Marie.

The kindly father dashes the recent sleep from his eyes with cold brook water. The s.h.i.+mmer seems to fit the haze his current thoughts pivot in.

Sweet water country might yet prove both fortress for Christian souls and strength at feeding Louis' New French dream.

The sun is no longer in the sky. Instead a ghoulish orange disc fastened between sharpened sticks is brought closer and closer to the white face. He is maddened with pain. The circular nature of the mind in torment flits to the earlier morning rumination. Someone spills part of a hissing kettle on the fire in mock ritual of the Baptism. Too abundant waters, ah yes that could prove a difficulty in cultivating this pleasant land. The swinish feast in preparation re-echoes thoughts of ample provisions so vital to this distant land.

An Indian brave stands holding the scalp, his face with all the leer of a carnival barker three centuries hence intent on making a sale.

CITY THE INSECTS INVADE

"From the indigo straits to Ossian's seas, on pink and orange sands washed by the vinous sky, crystal boulevards have just arisen and crossed, immoderately inhabitedby poor young families who get their food at the green grocers. Nothing rich-the city." Arthur Rimbaud

The old man sleeps with his weeping. Another old one pauses with her cats on a fire escape while nursing a sore like a precious stone. A garbage can is an herbivore grazing on stalks of ringworm. Vermin are the pool sharks of this brothel polis.h.i.+ng off the tenements' fur lined rails.

At last, the skid of tires tears a hole in the river bank. Sand-fleas and blowflies become nightriders marauding a new turf of G.o.dzilla cars.

An urchin dangles his stolen wrist.w.a.tch like a fish in a bottle while shoals of centipedes make a beeline in a poseidon stampede. Filthy rags are prayer cakes left over from the last sabbat and become holed coffins for those still searching for involvement.

Islands drift into protoplasm atolls as the city stalks itself.

c.o.c.kroaches are the plumbers of eternity. Rapid fire legs sidestep the etchings of industrious ants while silverfish are the boatmen trouncing human oars. Living is a Stegasorous swinging its tail.

Sc.r.a.ps are inviting guests as insects lord over a habitat free of blight and homuncular stain.

PLAUDITS

Loki, the Norwegian G.o.d of mischief, sends out a lithesome blonde with a slinkiness that ravishes the libido. She presses her dream-like form against the windowpane. The night is soft about the city's lights.

Water cascades in the distance, while small, black crickets' shovel sounds around p.r.i.c.ked ears. The diminished man ignores this, instead busying himself with drawing lions on a vast sheet of blank paper.

There is no word for happiness in the Malawi tongue and this disturbs him. What far reaching implications for the people of Africa.

He stands and downs a drink to ease his parched mouth. A moisture ring blurs one of his lions, and, again, he will lose the battle against the king of beasts tonight.

SUMMER'S CLOCK

"And the day is a wounded boy." Garcia Lorca