Coming Home

St. Lawrence River in Quebec

“You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”

—19th century French author and Nobel laureate André Gide

Coming Home

an early morning Neptune mist

rises from the river

and lasts ‘til early afternoon

* the afternoon is bright and sunny

and so Canadian

the Gaspé wafts slowly by

lingering faintly on the horizon

and who could believe

it’s been there for millions of years

perhaps

*

always so blue

or perhaps bluer

*

and the still river

like rippled glass

has flowed for centuries

and longer

*

and how can we so easily glide

over its surface

how can i believe

this is really Canada

*

and now the evening

has settled on today

and on all who lived today

like it has done without change

forever

*

a crimson edged cloud

sticks like feathery paper

on a turquoise heav’n

*

so at peace

and noiseless in the river

“We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment”

—19th century French-English writer Hilaire Belloc

I dug into my personal history for this poem. I wrote it many years ago as I arrived home to Canada on a ship, after two years of travelling and living abroad. I tried to capture that feeling of nostalgia and history and permanence upon catching those first glimpses of home after years away and after days at sea. We entered Canada through the Gulf of the long, wide St. Lawrence River (on whose shores I once lived as a child and whose length I so often sailed on my family’s schooner) and spent the day navigating its length to arrive at our port.

I will leave you today with an excerpt from one of my favourite poems, Don Juan, by the English Romantic poet Lord Byron, written more than 200 years ago, as he so well expresses leaving a country behind.

Juan embark’d—the ship got under way,

The wind was fair, the water passing rough;

A devil of a sea rolls in that bay,

As I, who’ve cross’d it oft, know well enough,

And, standing upon deck, the dashing spray

Flies in one’s face, and makes it weather-rough:

And there he stood to take, and take again,

His first—perhaps his last—farewell of Spain.

I can’t but say it is an awkward sight

To see one’s native land receding through

The growing waters; it unmans one quite,

Especially when life is rather new:

I recollect Great Britain’s coast looks white,

But almost every other country’s blue,

When gazing on them, mystified by distance,

We enter on our nautical existence.