The Cottage

 Ordering my third beer an hour out of Union Station,

I'm intent on a woman I don't know across from me

who is in turn intent on Ontario's north shore south:

a child's drawing of lake and sky,

framed in hair and nape and gaze.

*** ***

I'm on my way to a friend's birthday.

Polly's a painter, the mistress of a married man,

the brother of the woman from the Shuffle Demon night.

I barely know either. I wish he'd go back to his wife.

*** ***

I drink too much, too quickly,

I stopped for a year and a half;

then started again with the usual excuses.

*** ***

I'm stumbling my way back to Golgotha,

not sure where the Cross is anymore,

willing only to maintain

I'd seen Calvary last spring.

*** ***

I like trains,

they're like being backstage in touring theatres:

nothing is built for the view.

*** ***

Driving in a taxi from the station, a colonial stone church

open to reveal the Sunday-best of Brockville, I stop

in a Becker's for a toothbrush – civilized as I remember

to be at the last minute. Ten minutes down Highway 2 west

the cab slows through wooded lanes and clearings,

shadowed boughs cresting the rocks

as we come to a stop on an outcrop of Canadian Shield.

A cottage perches above the St. Lawrence rolling seaward.

I'm the first here.

The keys are where they're supposed to be, hidden

beneath the porch. I'll wait for dark or my hostess …

A new moon sickles over Shield mounds

worn on the landscape like a clasp.

*** ***

The river lays itself around rock islands like

my hostess in my dreams, naked on blue sheets and pillows.

Mosquitoes disintegrate dusk and drive me off.

*** ***

Night falls Gothic outside the cottage,

the others still to arrive.

The building creaks heat from its joints.

The wind stalks leaves.

Motorboats growl demonically.

Mosquitoes draw blood.

Night swims like waters I've never been in.

Rooms from which there may be no escape

glare down at me.

I remember this place now:

every bolt-right awakening with which I once

wrenched myself from sleep insists

that this is that "Cottage", the one

where the walls bled chill winds through

too many nights.

*** ***

Fumbling with the key, intent on entering against reason,

I push open the door: blackness fades blue,

a wisp of must meets my hellos.

Invited, and yet trespassing, I stay on the stoop

as wall shadows still through the kitchen,

a silence of pantry and beyond.

History of which I know nothing surrounds me:

the possible dead whose names I've never heard

rustle in as the door closes. I leave the lights off.

Tongue and groove creak echoes the twenty-third psalm

over a long banquet table and off broad,

barely seen porch screens.

A hall turns right passed a room gaping

porcelain dolls on dressers, white faces watch my back

as I squeeze by a book-bordered room. 

Round-shouldered couches and chairs brood under a mantle.

A second floor balustrades up.

The living room vanishes as I climb. Expectations

of my ankle being grabbed from below greet each footfall.

On the top step, mid-hall, I dare not move a finger

either side of the opening.

Here is where the walls gaped,

here are the bedrooms where I slept cities away

and awoke to see them vanish as they now won't.

I leave the stairs, and turn left, not even looking right,

letting my back to fend for itself.

There are two rooms, half moonlit, sparsely furnished;

the neat beds and chairs are shuttered in.

Behind me, a black closet bores into my spine,

The arms of sleeves and the feet of slippers

hold their breath in the dark, waiting

for me to leave. Down the hall again;

past the stairwell I find other rooms,

other closets.

I come to a threshold

too black to see beyond.

I feel stairs climb. Before me – though not in the attic

or in the darkness itself; is a room in my memory where

fear like fever shudders and slowly subsides.

*** ***

Downstairs, the cottage is serene under lamplight,

the book-bordered room is sky blue: a painter's cottage, clouds drifting across walls,

 all that's left of one summer in the 1920's.