Return Smile of the Gods, Bay of Saronikos, always great blessing of our ship’s route we could hear the roar of the high seas as easily as the calmness of your depth under the morning dew like a dove with its body’s nonchalance: Athens shivers and revels like a nymph that longs for the faraway sun. Because the sky shines, blonde mane of Pegasus, Fate of the Parthenon glass that Zeus keeps upside-down that the dream-light is poured a flood prodigal son, I return to you swaying like a flower in the breeze earth, sky and you, oh sea of Attica, to whom I owe all my Songs!
It must have been three o’clock at night. Joel awoke to the rumble of a vehicle pulling into the ranch yard. Peering out the kitchen window, Joel confirmed what he already knew from hearing the distinct sounds of the engine. It was Harry pulling in with the old half-ton. Harry parked behind the ramshackle caboose that served as his home, shut off the truck, and disappeared inside. Joel couldn’t sleep. When the clock on the wall finally showed five he rose from the chair that had become his bed and started his routine. It was six by the time he was down to the barn and he was surprised to see that Harry was already at work. After exchanging cordial “mornings,” the two men went about their routine of brushing and then saddling the three-year-olds. The engineer in him told Joel that it would be far more efficient if they saddled more than two horses at a time, but with only two saddles between them this was the best they could do. And besides, Joel was starting to enjoy the break between working horses that allowed him to think about what he had accomplished with the last horse, what he would do differently the next time out, and what he would do with the horse he was about to ride. As he became handier at saddling and unsaddling, Joel was finding that he had less time for this kind of thinking. As he learned more and more from watching the old cowboy he didn’t need nearly as much time to think about his game plans for the schooling that day. Without a doubt,
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them the benefit of the doubt. They’re Ruby’s niece and nephew and her children’s cousins, so maybe she does love them, and wants to give them a home.” For a few minutes they lay silently in the stillness of the house. A faint breeze riffled the curtains at the window, and Tyne felt its cool fingers on her shoulder. The tensions and sadness of the day had been made more oppressive by the heat, and she welcomed the respite of the night. “We hardly knew the children until two weeks ago,” Morley mused, “which makes me realize we should be more involved with people in the community.” “But you have been involved, Morley,” Tyne protested. “Look how much you did to get a new hospital in Emblem. And you’re on the Board of Directors.” “But that doesn’t mean I know what’s going on in families and what their needs are.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t know the answer, Tyne. I just know that, as good Christians and good citizens, we should be more open to the needs of people around us.” Tyne snuggled her head against his chest. “You’re a good man, Morley Cresswell.” She smiled into the darkness. “You know what? I’ve come to love those kids. Is it possible to become so fond of them in such a short time, or is it a passing phase, like a person becomes infatuated with a member of the opposite sex?” Morley chuckled. “Ah no, I know what you mean, hon. It’s nothing like infatuation. I’ve fallen in love with them, too.” “You know,” Tyne said, “I have to confess I was scared to death of them coming here. I didn’t know how to handle kids, and I wasn’t sure I would even like them very much.” “You’ve done a good job with them, Tyne.” “Thanks for saying that, honey. But when Rachael yelled at me the other day, saying I’m not her mommy, it really hurt. I wondered where I’d gone wrong.” Morley’s arm tightened around her. “She’s hurting, and she’s angry. It wasn’t anything you did or didn’t do.” “I know,” Tyne whispered. “I’m too sensitive.”
Ken circled around the stone people, which he later learned were called Inuksuit. Around and around he walked, occasionally reaching out a hand to touch them in a dazed kind of wonderment and awe. For the first time in many weeks, his spirit began to lift. I thought I was quite a well-informed person on a variety of subjects, given that in my upbringing, acquiring general knowledge was considered important. General knowledge led you to being a generalist and it’s the generalists that run the world so you want to have vast amounts of knowledge in a variety of areas. So, you learn about the pyramids and the sphinx and Stonehenge and Easter Island and all of that. But here were these strange human-like figures made of stone that I had never heard of – and at that point, I started to come out of my stupor. These figures got a hold of me. This was something that captured my attention in a major way. He set up his tent some distance from them, thinking perhaps they were sacred symbols and while he struggled with his tent, he kept glancing at the stone men, reluctant to look away even for a moment lest he lose the magic. With his little tent tamed, and his camp set up on the windy plain, he dug out one of his rolls of paper – from the depths of his backpack – and began drawing. He rolled the paper farther after each drawing and began another. He couldn’t stop; he was infused with the same energy he had felt when he first began drawing, in Portugal, as a young boy. When his stomach let him know he was hungry, he walked down to the river and caught a fish. Cooking was a challenge because there was so little wood of any kind to burn. He had learned to start a fire with dried moss and then add bits of shrubbery to get an intense blaze that lasted mere minutes. He usually managed to cook one side of the fish over the flame. Then he had to start a fresh fire to cook the other side. In time, he learned to eat and enjoy raw fish because it was so much simpler. While camped near the Inuksuit for several days, making drawing after drawing, he noticed a group of people setting up camp some distance from him near the river. The people on the west side of the river didn’t acknowledge these people on the east side, and they in turn did not speak to the people on the west bank. Ken concluded that these were Eskimos, the people he had been searching for. The Eskimos paid no attention to Ken and he did not try to make contact. Instead, he continued to draw, fish and cook his meals. He was consciously becoming a silent person and the deeper he fell into the stillness, the greater the solace he found. One day a woman with a deeply lined and weathered face carried some fish and bannock on a flat stone to Ken’s tent, placed it on the ground and walked back to her camp. Ken ate gratefully. “How shall I respond?” he wondered.
and when I arrive at the last step of this dark ladder and I open the door of the room I, then, sense that the room was is big garden filled with music and paintings a room full of bed sheets thrown in the garden bed sheets some fluttering like flags and like windowpanes and others were thrown down like mirrors and others
Jennifer had the feeling she’d been checkmated. He had not been concerned at all about her disappearance—he only wanted to ensure she did more than her part. “Which students?” “David needs to develop better written skills. This is a credit course for him, and right now I can’t give him a passing grade. And then there’s Lona. Don’t know what to make of her. She wants a grade for the course, too.” His voice descended to a hush. “I really don’t consider her a serious student.” He hesitated and Jennifer remembered that she was supposed to be finding out Lona’s agenda and reporting back to Chopyk. It didn’t seem very important to her. They had reached her room, but under no circumstances was Jennifer inviting Chopyk in. “I’ll deal with the students, Professor,” she said abruptly. “Goodnight now.” He harrumphed by way of comment, bowed, and left her. By the time her head hit the pillow she had already forgotten how irritating he was. She dreamed a familiar dream. She was hovering over a lake or a pond—sometimes she was in the lake—but this time she floated above it. Her fingernails had unaccountably grown extra long like those of a Chinese mandarin, and she clawed the water searching for the face that she knew would be there. The eyes that stared up at her from among the water weeds were usually familiar eyes—her little brother—and she must save him. She alone could save him. But her outsize talons snarled in the weeds and she could not scoop up the boy. Water trickled through her fingers. And when she gazed into his eyes—now she was closer, inches above the water—she saw not her brother at all, only the blue grey eyes of the attractive stranger, sinking fast.
Asians, every kind of European and Latin American, Africans, and of course the original First Nations people, the victims as Eteo considered them. The First Nations people whom the ruthless Europeans of two centuries ago, with their rifles and guns and chicken pox and diphtheria and polio and alcohol, almost exterminated, slowly and methodically. The Europeans who came with their tall ships ready to carry out whatever barbarisms suited their purposes, all while proselytizing, yes, the Europeans who wanted to turn the First Nations people into good Christians such as themselves only to exterminate them tribe after tribe, only to ostracize them clan after clan, only to enclose them at the peripheries, closely guarded by the always repressive word or sword, whichever worked best. Eteo kept walking, now with a fire in his chest. His steps led him to the familiar dock at the end of 22nd Street. He reached the edge of the dock and leaned against the framed barrier, letting his gaze travel over the shiny water. It at least reflected a natural balance, unlike the human world, its natural balance permeating everything, part of the balance cosmos has invented and into which even the unbalance of people blends and gets absorbed. His eyes encompassed the gleam of the water and the green background on the far side of English Bay in the university neighbourhood, where more rich Vancouverites lived, where houses sold in the millions and one wondered why. Who had induced such lunacy in the housing market while thousands in East Vancouver were homeless or paying half their meagre incomes on rent? Whose game was being played in the Lower Mainland housing market to favor one area against the other? Eteo let his attention dive into the shallow water under the dock where small crabs went about their business on the sea floor and the small perch fed on the barnacles of the dock’s piles. A few starfish decorated the sandy floor while seaweed floated left and right like orchestra that a conductor directed its myriad violins in this naturally balanced world beyond human influence, a balance suddenly interrupted by his mobile phone. Yannis was ringing him. “Hello, John.” “Hi, how are you?” Yannis asked
Manolis Aligizakis 