The Middlewesterner

LINES FOR DECEMBER 31

We think
we are

busy,
busy –

we leave
so much

undone.

LINES FOR DECEMBER 30

Knowing
and not

knowing
are both

kinds of
blindness.

LINES FOR DECEMBER 29

What does it mean?
What does it matter?

All of it is
nothing and more than

we can master.

LINES FOR DECEMBER 26

Toll of a clock
in another room.

A cold turn to
the cold season.

The fire has been
banked and again

we disappear
into ourselves.

LINES FOR DECEMBER 25

The universe
spins, pin-
wheels, spirals –

we're here, we have
so far to go.

LINES FOR DECEMBER 24

What the mind
turns to it
returns to.

Habits of
attention
become des-

tination.
Tomorrow
is what we

have already
chosen.

LINES FOR DECEMBER 23

Grey spit of day –
leaves won't fly, yet

I must travel.

LINES FOR DECEMBER 22

What always
saves us is

the mere
possibility

of redemption,
the promise

that spring will
follow winter.

LINES FOR DECEMBER 19

Each season
has its own –

spring the musk;
and summer, fire.
Fall bears failure.

Winter? Winter
is seasoned
with absence.

LINES FOR DECEMBER 18

Ah, Robert,
friend, wind

is what
trees need.

LINES FOR DECEMBER 17

Determination

pushing into
darkness. There

is no place
for retreat.

LINES FOR DECEMBER 16

Music lifts
like wind in

the year's
last leaves.

LINES FOR DECEMBER 15

The top of
us, bottom

of the sky.

LINES FOR DECEMBER 12

Clouds

in the west
dark as crows

flying that way,
dark as the

black dog.

LINES FOR DECEMBER 11

Grey sky.
The land

lies down.
Winter's

coming,
pushed up

against
sorrow.

LINES FOR DECEMBER 10

Wish

all you
wish.

It changes
nothing.

LINES FOR DECEMBER 9

Empty field
like a dark

lake.
The waiting.

LINES FOR DECEMBER 8

The weight of God
upon us. A day

we can't take back.

LINES FOR DECEMBER 5

The weight,
today, of

winter,
waiting.

LINES FOR DECEMBER 4

Geese
on the water –

a busy print
on grey cloth.

LINES FOR DECEMBER 3

Two geese set
their wings, glide
to landing –

wet sky to
cold field.

LINES FOR DECEMBER 2

Green field
at the edge
of winter.

Something
weighs on
the world.

Something
ticks beneath.

THE DEMON DRAGONFLY
& THE BURNING WHEEL
by Peter Fergus-Moore
(Eolipile Publishing, 2008)

If you've clicked the link in my sidebar to see Black Pete's responses to my "Lines" each day at his blog Red Wine & Garlic, you may already know that he recently published a little noir story called The Demon Dragonfly & the Burning Wheel. Black Pete is a blog-friend, you should know that, and we met each other at his home in Thunder Bay last June when I spent a week at the lakehead. Black Pete partly makes his living teaching people to read, so it seems somehow appropriate that he writes in his spare time.

Some people will call The Demon Dragonfly a mystery, and there are elements of the mystery genre about it. Some people might call it an action-thriller, and there is action and it is thrilling. Some might think Black Pete a fabulist and, yes, there is plenty of fabrication here. Black Pete himself calls it a spy thriller. I would call it the prose equivalent of film noir, with a dark and bitten narrator/protagonist, Laurence Speke, who tells a dark and bitten story set in pre-war (1936) Port Arthur/Fort William, Ontario.

There are Nazis entwined in this plot, out to do Speke in; and there are Ojibways involved, out to mend Speke after his untoward encounter with the Nazis and a waterfall called Kakabeka. There are hi-jinx in high places, and you know the hero must survive his encounters with evil, the story being told in the first person and all.

I am the fellow who says, "Life is too short for fiction," but I relent for Black Peter's tale is short enough for life. And the dark and bitten Speke has a dark and bitten voice that compels one to keep reading. I think I digested the book in two long sittings.

I like the local elements in the story, the locale that underlays the telling, and the cultural elements which make it believable. Some might dismiss this as a "regional" mystery, yet in truth all writing, if it's any good, is regional. Everyone has to be some place, if they're to come to life, and these exist in the region that is now Thunder Bay. And I am pleased with the character of the character, Speke, who now - with the revelations at the end of the book - may be asked to become something else. This is the mythic hero's journey through a noir landscape to re-birth. The shape of the story is what I tell my students is "The Last Lap" story-shape. You start close to the end of the action, then tell how you got into this predicament, and end by telling how you get out of it. A mythic telling and a classic story-shape, in well-written and interesting prose, I'm pleased to say.

Yet it is too big a story to end at the end. There is a sequel already in the works, with a different narrator, a woman who has come to Port Arthur looking for Laurence Speke. I have no inside word about the mythic content of the sequel, nor about its story shape, but if it's anything like The Demon Dragonfly & the Burning Wheel, it will be well worth reading, too.

LINES FOR DECEMBER 1

The sky
broken.

The white
slide of

winter
a-comin' in.