Kamouraska

Kamouraska, Rimouski, Rivière-du-Loup, Trois-Pistoles
We lived in the sea once, all life did
How did those cells assemble, microbial
How did they coordinate, communicate
And when did we crawl out of the sea?
Was it shocking, did land and air feel strange?
When did land become home?
I seem to recall a relationship between the sea and blood
A salty brine, liquid life soup
Alex boiled the potatoes in seawater
At low tide we collected salicorne
It grows light green in the cracks of the exposed rock like tiny cacti
Licorne is French for unicorn Margaret tells me
So we translate salicorne as salty unicorn
En route to Québec we pass fields of sunflowers
Single blooms on each thick stalk, all turned in one direction
Faces watching a distant drama
Atlantic tides are more regular than the Pacific
The Pacific such a large body of water, the moon has less influence
The house we stayed in had a tide clock, a barometer, and a regular clock
At the point where the Saint Lawrence widens out like a giant mouth
Drinking in the Atlantic
Or the Atlantic drinks the Saint Lawrence, in slow steady gulps, the tides backwash
They move towards each other, fresh and saline
Two bodies, one body that has no end
Headwaters, channel, peninsula, cove, cliff, beach, dune
Cloud, fog, mist, pool, pond, lake, waterfall, cataract, rivulet
At what point does the Saint Lawrence become the Atlantic?
The seals know, but they don’t care
The seals contain the sea
Body of water, chain of lakes
Composition of tears—more or less saline than blood?
Do seals cry?
Margaret says she has heard them cry in the night
Cathy has two vials of holy water on her windowsill, one for each of her twins
Every town in Québec is named for a saint
Saint-Polycarpe en route to Mont Sainte Anne where we would go skiing as a family
Families perform for one another, don’t they?
Le fleuve, la rivière, la mer, le marée
Some secrets are not mine to tell
The secret of being a man, the secret of being a woman
The secrets of families
The seals have secrets that they carry out to the mouth of the river
The wind understands
The wind can’t understand anything
The wind rips shingles off rooftops and beats against wooden walls
The wind whips up the water and capsizes boats
So don’t think the wind is your friend
Even if it stirs so gently as you glide on the glassy water at high tide
Watch the sky melt into sea and the first stars come out in the deepening blue
Watch love find you
Margaret, love has found you
Margaret, derived from Persian and Sanskrit meaning “pearl” or “cluster of blossoms”
Saint Marina, she watches over the sea, she is the sea itself
She is shown slaying a dragon with a single horn coming from its head
Swallowed by a unicorn she makes a miraculous escape
Garnishes her salads with salty unicorn
The sunflower, helianthus, has an unquestioned relationship with the sun
Imagine a field of sunflowers
All twisted in different directions
Because they had their own ideas about where to look
But the heart isn’t a sunflower
It came from the sea, it lost its gills
It grew an opposable thumb, four fingers, five toes, a pair of lungs, shed some tears
There is this: like the sunflower, the heart is covered in eyes
Numberless
Fully transparent, secret, without quantity
This is a secret I could tell
If words could tell it