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© 2011 Colin Morton Colin Morton is author of ten books of poetry and fiction including The Cabbage of Paradise (2007), The Local Cluster (2008), and The Hundred Cuts (2009). He lives in Ottawa, where he has twice received the Archibald Lampman Award for Poetry. Website: www3.sympatico.ca/cmorton "Takkakaw Falls" was published overseas in the print annual Voices Israel.

Takkakaw Falls

We thought it a romance for newlyweds
in zip-together sleeping bags,
the roar of the falls unremitting
through loving days and nights
in a pup tent at the top of a switchback road.

At the cold and rainy end of summer,
firewood too wet to burn
too hard for my hatchet,
we dined on cold sandwiches and looks
that made other campers wonder
if our marriage would last till we got home
to our waterless basement room in the city.

"Young and stupid," you have said,
and because of it our love survived.
We clung to each other through cold nights
more smoke than fire,
climbed to the Cave and Basin
to get warm in the public baths
before the homeward drive in silence.

Our life together in front of us,
surrounded by jagged peaks
capped with freshly fallen snow,
the day's last reflected sunlight
dazzling in your eyes.

 

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