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Poem Details  

Title: Ode to the girl in the bow:
Author: Theodore
Date Submitted: 7/8/2006

 
Poem: In a Yukon guide survival skills are found:
erect a sturdy shack, pen serviceable verse,
and fill out Ottawa forms.
While leafing the northern lore my heart
is highjacked by a black and white image, a woman in a canoe, paddling on river;
shot taken from stern, perhaps by a man,
where I would like to be.

She was buck naked, paddling a canoe,
on the Yukon River, pathway to the Gold Rush.

I'd like to be Beaufort-bound, on the Mackenzie;
or on Nahanni flats north of sixty. Just a thought: it's not this girl, but a way to flee town, away from silk ties and broken dreams where any a fool would see it's just empty seats and positions, spots and spaces but not me!

Perhaps it's the combination of canoe and woman:
vessels of life!

'Our' canoe is aircraft aluminum, it's fascinating to me the stories I could tell...I explained to the commodore my yacht's a Grumman seventeen point five, a river yacht. No match for his steel-hull ocean-going yawl so that leaves you to impress...Where were we?

My paddle's carved from cherry, it's a religious symbol, it means so much. I keep 'your' paddle on the floor, as a spare: in case I drop my staff in the water. I hope someday you'll use it. Yours is carved from oak.

More whimsy: I'm not a tyrant, but don't expect Victorian picnics in a Peterborough skiff, but I say, love that Cowichan hat, its dangling flaps, the earthy colors.

As a lark, let's go to service at Saint Peters, on Stony Lake, hoop and bonnet, tail and hat; after that: just stuff the rags in Duluth bags.

We'll drive to Musee de canoe, oogle dugouts n' relics and absorb the culture of 'my' chosen conveyance, then portage our gear and canoe on Thule rack to Algonquin, but you know what? I'm sick of canoes and canvas sacks, put me on the train to the city, I want a twenty once coffee and the New York Times!...