Poetry Series: Fontaine de Jouvence; Purple Finches; Dead Men鈥檚 Clothes
By Matt Bernier
Fontaine de Jouvence
As an attorney, he always began with the facts鈥
how many salmon he鈥檇 caught and their lengths鈥
but after the first scotch the Maritime rivers
turned mystical, infused with dancing golden light,
as though the few extra minutes of daylight
on summer solstice were a suspension of time,
no one aging, which is how he says he found
the fountain of youth, actually, a spring seeping
into a pool on a tributary to the Miramachi River鈥
dark backs of adult salmon swaying in the
cool eddy like the discarded clothes of lovers鈥
he鈥檇 cast toward a suspended salmon and then
reel them in as 2-year old parr, which leapt
into the warm air arched like tiny rainbows鈥
I pointed out that the thermal refugia must
have held brook trout too, but he raised his
hand in lawyerly objection, refilled his glass
and mine, so that we pondered the magic of ice,
groundwater seeping out of a gravel streambank
in remembrance of a glacial past, ice a mile thick,
water cycling from winter to summer like the
elliptical journey of an Atlantic salmon, up to
Greenland and then back to natal rivers, asking
whether we should still refer to jetstreams as
鈥渃urrents鈥 when they stalled in the future with
climate change, remembering the lost runs of
Downeast 海角社区鈥攖he Narraguagus, Machias,
East Machias, Pleasant and Dennys Rivers鈥
he鈥檚 chasing the Atlantic salmon north, he says,
New Brunswick then Newfoundland then Labrador,
but eventually he鈥檚 going to run out of road, find
find himself at the edge of a trackless wilderness,
dark robes of spruce trees in judgement before him鈥
鈥淪o fountain of youth it is,鈥 he rests his case,
which I tell him is 鈥渇ontaine de jouvence鈥 in Quebec鈥
because everyone鈥檚 guilty of something.
Purple Finches
Another farmer鈥檚 obituary in the newspaper today,
and purple finches strafe over the unmown field
as if they own the place,
grasses bent over with burdens as invisible as wind,
single thistle plant rising above the dusting of snow
like a control tower;
and when they extended the runway and cut the trees,
taking his land, they say he fell quiet, watching
migrations out his window
across the patch of remaining hayfield, white as a
bandage, burning the last of the cleared oak trees in
his rusting woodstove
as the contrails crisscrossed the sky like cracked palms,
until even making a strong cup of tea felt like work;
its own reward, yes,
cup on the windowsill defrosting a hole so he could
see whom he would leave it all to, purples finches in a
gathering flock,
dressed in the pinstripes of a long ago baseball team;
all that mowing, Little League diamond and hayfield
now roughly grown up,
no time for games, everyone hopping on airplanes and
outracing great flocks of geese with plumes of carbon
and headphone rock-and-roll,
snowy owls flushed by hunger from tundra to tarmac
until they鈥檙e chased away, everyone with their wide
wings outstretched
thinking they can fly, that they invented flight and the
common sense idea of going someplace warm in winter,
cheating the seasons of life.
Dead Men’s Clothes聽
Morning sun streams through the front window
of a thrift shop in a coastal 海角社区 town
and it dawns on me that the best clothes
belonged to dilettantes,
men who owned cable stitch fishermen鈥檚 sweaters
and never set a trap or net, gentlemen farmers
who never wore out the seats of their overalls
mowing their lawns;
but that鈥檚 alright, we 海角社区rs are in solidarity
with landfills not metastasizing like cancer;
there鈥檚 a quiet reverence, almost a holiness,
holding up flannel shirts
to an LED sunrise in a downtown storefront
on a reborn Main Street, staid and plaid,
occasional artifacts of the homegrown
industries of yesteryear
hugging us like Hathaway dress shirts sewn
beside a frothy Kennebec River in Waterville,
or Bass penny loafers handstitched in Wilton,
heels ticking across floors like time;
the all wool, all cotton, Made in 海角社区 quality
that has no right to outlast us but often does,
a legacy of keeping next generations warm,
an afterlife, a reincarnation,
for dead men鈥檚 clothes.