Turcotte, Gerry

English

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Kunapipi Volume 23 Issue 2 Article 7 2001 FATHOMS: the cartography of ghosts Gerry Turcotte Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi  Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Turcotte, Gerry, FATHOMS: the cartography of ghosts, Kunapipi, 23(2), 2001. Available at:https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol23/iss2/7 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: research-pubs@uow.edu.au FATHOMS: the cartography of ghosts Abstract Poem This journal article is available in Kunapipi: https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol23/iss2/7 94Gerry TurcotteFATHOMS:the cartography of ghostsMaps unfold beneath my cartographic palmsI touch Vancouver like an afterthought leaving death behind, fleeing continentsnow there is no one else there is no forwarding addressare letters without destinations still letters?are journeys without goals still voyages?let me press against the silence of returnsThe map, after all, has not changed the streets still sparkle languidlyas though space had not shifted as though my grief had not imploded sucking all coordinates towards meplanes turn my way now explorers seek me out following their compass needlesyesterday Captain Cook pencilled me in between his islands — 'I will delete this entry here,’ he said, ‘make room for you,'Fathoms 95rubbing until the resin in the map was gone until his ink scarred — until the vellum tore and there beneath the skin my pale face ruptured forth, pleadingthe piper marched behind my mother's grave — a military tattoo.She was laid to rest beside her parents where the piper had played so often — where ‘Scotland the Brave' met ‘Ave Maria' till I weptThe ground was so thickly frozen the year beforethat my father was left behind to be buried in the springI never visited his grave when I tried he eluded methe stones stared back blankly with unwritten historiesThe unmarked graves,' my uncle later said,‘are hangings — deserters, criminals — an absence now'.I couldn't find his place... did I make the same of him?*  *  *my mother led me to the cemeterywhere we wound our way, reading all the names but hisShe held her side, her eyes just lipped with white:‘One more minute. How far's the car?I should remember...Not so fast'.96 Gerry TurcotteI sighed in silent fury as we waited in the grass.Impatient with departures. Angry at her loss. She was dying on this consecrated ground, and I didn't even know.Would it please my God, in retrospect, to let me claw the harshness from my words?Columbus clears his blind eyes and asks me what has happened My father's passing has brought explorers to my door The tall resplendent masts weave in my front yard The music groans, out of placeHe spreads the scroll — smooths the skin and points:‘Here, we were here.And then ... nothing'.He is speaking Spanish or Portuguese — but 1 understand every word. ‘Nada. Aca nada.' Canada. ‘There is nothing there.'I know how he feels. This emptiness.This desert that was once so green.He has lost his way.I hurry him along — there are others waiting some torn, encrusted with the sea, their faces drawn and barnacled.Others are burnt and fractured with the desert rainThe sand is plastered to their overcoats I resist the temptation to brush their sleeves dust their bent shouldersI want to protect them against their age, their wearinessI want to hold them close against meFathoms 97tell them ‘You've done well'.Sometimes I think I've spoken.More often I forget.It's hard to be eloquent here where words are so plentiful. They bring me labels: ‘This is what the island's called — this is what the landscape means — but it escapes m e...'.I am weary of these journeymen asking me the time — as if it mattered.We are speaking of the age. We are making nations through elisions. We are swallowed by the absences that we label and secure with gestures in a darkened roomThe landscape is hardly real, after all. It is all inventedspaceColumbus bristles guiltily.There are others waiting. But he will not be moved.He tells me: ‘There was nothing here beforethe compass pricked the page —until we sought to conquer it with words.We spoke it into being — and our fables fell like rain.Building layer by layer, they formed a reef, an atoll, an island.Then we crashed into it with our ships,our own imaginings ripped our hulls to shreds:it is a terrible thing to dream beyond ourselves'.His body turns away,even though he scarcely moves. He knows my thoughts. He answers before I have a chance to speak.‘Most dreams are built on other people's land.Most dreams are constantly undone.They already scratch my works, uncovering what I find,98 Gerry Turcotterewriting what I name.When everything's discovered you wipe away the chalk, begin again — this palimpsest amnesia — but it is always there'.He pauses.Sees the ghostlike stirrings from the shadows.They are getting restless in the wings.What can I possibly tell them that is worth more than an island?These sailors who spent years at sea, praying for a slice of landWhy are they pressing in on meas though I were a harbour— a dock for ships whose timber is so swelledwith rain they could be sponges?I push my finger through a hull that comes too close ...I feel it suck me in.I dodge the figurehead and pull away.My seaming palm emerges glistening and wet.The desert travellers eye me thirstily.I have no time for them. They've had their day.*  :|:Were my father here he'd shrug his shoulders and repair the hole. He'd lift his restless hammer and position the first nail.‘This,' he'd say, ‘is Cedar'. He’d name it, but would tame the substance through the act.I'd  hold my hand like his, poised to do the same.We'd move in unison.-I- '!' *My mother would hover like a chimera unwritten in our explorations holding out a hand, including herself through unacknowledged gesturesFathoms 99How could I turn from her so thoroughly?Why did I not accept her sere geographies the heritage she proudly offered up?Why did I speak to her in tongues pretending not to be of her?* * 5!«And what of the legacy of wives and guides who bore explorersthrough uncharted worlds?How can I know their stories when my mother's stays unread —  unrecognised.Is there a door nearby that stands ajar?A room whose musty lace and fine embroideries aren’t even tinted yellow from the sun because the curtains have stayed closed so long?Have I walked past it daily in my search for him?If I crane my neck and tear myself away from influence will Florence Baker meet my glance?Will Sacajawea stare me down, her newborn child reproachful in her arms?Will Mrs Parks or Lady Franklin fight my cause?Why do I leave that space untouched?The darkened room, the day I packed my bags, echoed with the hollow clockmuffled in the box that held it.Outside the snow was scratching patterns in the glass. We sat on dusty steps rehearsing our goodbyes.All I could do was shout although I never said a word.She shook her head despairingly reading every thought.100 Gerry TurcotteHere is the silver touch of evening,Where memory is the pressure of a handthe leather creaks like tinwhen I lift the suitcase from the icy porch‘Goodbye," I breathe.In winter, weather mocks uncertainty freezing syllables in the airI leave all my unspoken rage in that one dark breath between usand find it again, ten years later, hovering, still, over her deathbedAt night, when the lights go down, and morphine runs its fiery course through the lakes and rivers of her veins,and when she has stopped suffocating and pressing drunkenly at the bars that hold her in and when she has stopped trying to mouth the words she has always generously said and when I have won my battle with the intern who will not kill her pain — and when the ward is silent with relief and even footsteps have long since stilledAnd when at last I have my chance to rub away the resinof that long dark breathand show her what I really meant to saythe darkness presses down on me and I run from the room,out into the gothic shadows of the Sacred Heart fleeing, as always, fleeingMost explorations are escape not searchWhen I return, at last, prepared to conquer shadows, prepared at last to wrestle ghosts,Fathoms 101her face has pierced the darkness that I feared. I never said farewell.* * *And so they both have sailed while I wandered inland and apart.I make my way blindly through the bodies that are pressed against me in the church whispering their fondness for the dear departed pressing paper prayers at me as though I'll one day trade them in for cashI hold this compass firmly in my hand.It points to every corner of the globe.This perfect compass rose that fails to bloom.How could I know that the magnetic north pole was not at the true north pole at all?Where was I heading when I wandered off?How could I know the needle could be swayed by filings on the ship, by iron or steel, by rivets and the like?That alcohol was used to float the compass card, that fathoms were another way to tell the time.* * *There are stories that Franklin visited my home though he refused to queue.He saw the sodden carpet, the fractured hulls, he studied the animology of ships:the fox, the rabetts. An ark of shiply pieces.102 Gerry TurcotteHe rejected its domestic space:its bonnet, apron, shoe and cap.He held the prayer-book open at regret — the holystone for scrubbing decks — inspected all the sails — the worming, the parceling of cloth —sprinkled sand across the planks for me to wash them down.‘A fiddlehead turns inward*, he might have said, his fingers lingering on battened ribs,planked skin too battered to resist.When I probe the room I notice he has gone.How can such absences be made so easily?% *They carried him away.My mother, in her own time,watched the ambulance disappearing like a ship,believing my father would return. I shared her hope.But the Northwest passage was never found.It never can be found.Don't believe them if they tell you otherwise.Maps are just fictions that articulate our griefand grief a map of where we've failed to anchor a record of the journeys undertaken the shoals we've foundered on the nights we've crossed ever silent, ever painful, ever dark.

FATHOMS: the cartography of ghosts

https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2018&context=kunapipi

FATHOMS: the cartography of ghosts

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