Seasonal Zine

Zine Theme - Seasons

Vol 1 Issue 1

How I found the Labrador Diary:

In the 1970's I was in Labrador teaching video shooting & editing to various groups.  We arrived in the small community of Nain.  A storm arose and twenty of us stayed at the house of Sigfried Hettash.  He was away and sent word that all stormbound folk could gather at his house.

The next morning the snow began to clear and the Otter was ready to fly - we had fifteen minutes - then I found this diary - which I call simply, Labrador Diary.

In 1944 a US plane crashed only kilometres from a base in Labrador.  So near help, but not knowing it, the crew settled in and decided to wait for help - a fatal error.

The first entries are simple, they relate to being able to stay alive; the dressing of wounds, the boiling of tea, the dividing of rations, the caring for each other.  Details - mundane.

By the time a rescue crew found them - all the men were dead.  One of them made this last entry.  The handwriting was different for all other entries, and this poem was born.   I was so moved by yet another of the poems of the greatest of all poets - Anon.

In deepest winter/when the ice freezes us to metal - yet,l the whole world may dissolve under the poet's touch - the wild and wonderful garden covering snow, faces, plane, and then being dusted from a frozen page.

A flying poet - caught in earth's trees, lying last by the plane, a logbook left in the middle of all.  Words burn thru the frost.  A simple Labrador Diary.

And snow

the mother of our deer

reaches

through our eyes

and falls

wherever we look

as slowly

the dome turns/

slowly we turn /

in

a cooling

universe/

tiny frozen heart beats

before the opening

or the closing/

That deer-hide neck

This set of bellows

neck/hide

seeks

the snow deer's

shadow

LABRADOR DIARY

Yet if the taste of kisses went

and strawberries came

the year around 

half of the joy

would be gone

from the world.

There is no wonder we kiss

for when mouth comes
to mouth in all its stillness

breath joins breath
and taste joins taste.

Warmth is enwarmed

and tongues

can move in a soundless language.

& those things are said that cannot be said,

have a name

or know a life in the pitiful faults of speech.

There is nothing to be done with the ear,

so
back we come to the organs of taste and smell.

It is temple of the voice,

keeper of the breath,

treasurer
of tastes, and home of the noble tongue.

And its portals are firm,

yet soft with the warmth of a
ripeness unlike the rest of the face,

rosy and in
woman with a conkling

red tenderness of the taste.

Not to compare with the wild strawberry feeling,

and
too far from the organs of taste

and smell and far
from the brain,

and an arms length from the heart.

I had eaten of the tree.

Eve was still warm under
me.

There is strange, and yet

not strange in the
kiss.

it is strange

because it mixes stillness with tragedy. 

And yet not strange

because there is good
reason for it. 

The hand is too hard and too used
to doing all things with too little

and deeper

and

closer.