Deux Montagnes, Quebec
Each hurt swallowed is a stone.
-Rita Dove
Quebecois frogs sing
a familiar, comforting song,
duets with crickets, shrill and trilling.
I palm a smooth flat rock,
and stare into its grey surface,
like a mirror of the water.
This bank could be home,
my back to a decrepit farmhouse
with three cats, two black, one grey
waiting their turn to curl on my lap
as I sip green tea and read
in the circle of light from my mother’s table lamp,
passed to her from family in the hills of Ohio.
Instead I am 1200 miles north
of my parents’ Wisconsin home
on the bank of the Lac des Deux Montagnes.
Behind me is a house devoid of cats and table lamps,
infused instead with the smooth tenor of French,
a nonsense lullaby that soothes me into sleep,
but by daylight locks me out.
I send my flat rock sailing,
arching out into the cool darkness.
Its edge hits, shattering the glass surface.
It skids across the water and skips twice
before sinking out of sight,
interrupting the frog song for only a moment.
With eyes closed, I hear only
the splash of the breaking water,
the brief missed beat
of the banks’ insistent opera.
I can pretend my silence is a comfort,
that I am not swallowing my only voice,
not throwing stones to break the peace,
because I love you.
September, 2000