Sheila Nickerson
Traveling Highway 16, British Columbia
Along Highway 16, between the ocean and the Coast Mountains,
women disappear, some into black trucks,
others into black space.
Now it’s called the “Highway of Tears,”
with billboards warning women not to hitchhike,
but they do.
There are more missing-person cases now than towns,
and the god of lost cartography needs to make
a new map, replacing Prince Rupert, Terrace, Smithers,
and Burns Lake with Ramona, Roxanne, Lana, Tamara.
We must find Nicole along the rushing Skeena
and travel from Alisha to Delphine and on to Gloria
to find the abandoned hamlet of Maddy, once loud
but now a silent grove. We must search the black
lakes and follow black bears and ask the old, black trees
where these lovely spirits fled, and where,
as they resettled, they shed their bones and shoes.
Observations for My Friend Pete Isleib, the Birder,
Crushed to Death on His Fishing Boat, Prince William Sound
Pete, it is winter now.
I have moved far down the coast,
bought stronger binoculars,
gotten closer to the birds.
Today, in the Low Country,
I went at dusk all the way
to the end of Folly Island.
Ruddy Turnstones, up and down
mud avenues, paid no attention
as I entered and looked
around their town. But you
are in another―off the map―
that place where Asian vagrants
home and every bird off course
is found. Tonight, Pete,
as I walked home on the moon’s path,
I saw where you had gone, so fast,
carrying your checklist:
into an unknown village
where doors and windows opened,
birds of every shape flying
out to welcome you and help
you to lay your guide books down.
Riding in the Burren, County Clare, Ireland
We met the horses at Carran, on the mountain top, in mist. One
horse went lame and needed to be exchanged. While we waited, Brendan
told us stories of the fairy, or ghost, horses―how three men had seen
some while on their way to a wedding just down the hill.
Then, as we continued to wait in mist―I was to ride Falcon, a
small gray mare―he told us the story of his daughter who died at 26
in the Canary Islands and her husband soon after, leaving an orphaned
child. He had her body brought back for burial. Now he goes to her
grave two or three times a week, making requests of her. Whatever
he asks for, Brendan said, she grants.
Later, on the famine trail overlooking Galway Bay, there were
more accounts of fairy horses. We stopped at broken famine cottages.
We stopped at holy wells. We listened to our horses’ hooves clanging
on the shattered limestone, the only sound in all that fog.
Years have passed. Still, Falcon, I reach―for the warmth of
your neck, for the tangled handle of your mane―and wonder how and
what you are in that place where nothing can be buried, nothing lost,
but only changed in shape.
Sheila Nickerson, a resident of Bellingham, Washington, is a former Poet Laureate of Alaska. Her poems have been widely published in magazines, chapbooks, and anthologies and have won two Pushcart Prizes. Three are included in the Inaugural Edition of Thrush. Her nonfiction titles include: Disappearance: A Map and Midnight to the North: The Untold Story of the Inuit Woman Who Saved the Polaris Expedition.
Return to November 2012 Edition
Along Highway 16, between the ocean and the Coast Mountains,
women disappear, some into black trucks,
others into black space.
Now it’s called the “Highway of Tears,”
with billboards warning women not to hitchhike,
but they do.
There are more missing-person cases now than towns,
and the god of lost cartography needs to make
a new map, replacing Prince Rupert, Terrace, Smithers,
and Burns Lake with Ramona, Roxanne, Lana, Tamara.
We must find Nicole along the rushing Skeena
and travel from Alisha to Delphine and on to Gloria
to find the abandoned hamlet of Maddy, once loud
but now a silent grove. We must search the black
lakes and follow black bears and ask the old, black trees
where these lovely spirits fled, and where,
as they resettled, they shed their bones and shoes.
Observations for My Friend Pete Isleib, the Birder,
Crushed to Death on His Fishing Boat, Prince William Sound
Pete, it is winter now.
I have moved far down the coast,
bought stronger binoculars,
gotten closer to the birds.
Today, in the Low Country,
I went at dusk all the way
to the end of Folly Island.
Ruddy Turnstones, up and down
mud avenues, paid no attention
as I entered and looked
around their town. But you
are in another―off the map―
that place where Asian vagrants
home and every bird off course
is found. Tonight, Pete,
as I walked home on the moon’s path,
I saw where you had gone, so fast,
carrying your checklist:
into an unknown village
where doors and windows opened,
birds of every shape flying
out to welcome you and help
you to lay your guide books down.
Riding in the Burren, County Clare, Ireland
We met the horses at Carran, on the mountain top, in mist. One
horse went lame and needed to be exchanged. While we waited, Brendan
told us stories of the fairy, or ghost, horses―how three men had seen
some while on their way to a wedding just down the hill.
Then, as we continued to wait in mist―I was to ride Falcon, a
small gray mare―he told us the story of his daughter who died at 26
in the Canary Islands and her husband soon after, leaving an orphaned
child. He had her body brought back for burial. Now he goes to her
grave two or three times a week, making requests of her. Whatever
he asks for, Brendan said, she grants.
Later, on the famine trail overlooking Galway Bay, there were
more accounts of fairy horses. We stopped at broken famine cottages.
We stopped at holy wells. We listened to our horses’ hooves clanging
on the shattered limestone, the only sound in all that fog.
Years have passed. Still, Falcon, I reach―for the warmth of
your neck, for the tangled handle of your mane―and wonder how and
what you are in that place where nothing can be buried, nothing lost,
but only changed in shape.
Sheila Nickerson, a resident of Bellingham, Washington, is a former Poet Laureate of Alaska. Her poems have been widely published in magazines, chapbooks, and anthologies and have won two Pushcart Prizes. Three are included in the Inaugural Edition of Thrush. Her nonfiction titles include: Disappearance: A Map and Midnight to the North: The Untold Story of the Inuit Woman Who Saved the Polaris Expedition.
Return to November 2012 Edition