from “Running Away” by Don McKay

I was four

and leaving Cornwall,

Ontario, for a life at sea.  What

¶

possessed me?  Not the effects

of the Howard Smith Paper Mill’s emissions on my

innocent sinus passages, nor the H-bomb,

¶

nor the arrival of my younger brother

and the sudden fall from myth

to politics and history.  I blame

¶

Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain, whose

watercolour illustrations led the eye along the sweet

curl of the waves and the Brave

¶

Sea Captain’s pipe smoke into the wide-

open page where who

knew what.

from “Running Away”

Another Gravity

Don McKay