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The Wonder Tree: a Group of Seven Sequence, by Bruce Rice

10/12/2023

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Picture
The Wonder Tree (also called The Magic Tree), detail, by F.H. Varley (Canada) 1924

The Wonder Tree

Arcs of carmine follow the hills
the forest won’t be subdued

no gaunt thought of November
as the painter faces the washstand

soapy water splashed on his whiskers
hands quivering

like wings of a bird
that has flown too far

he turns to the sputtering stove
doesn’t know when grace became a tired thing

he closes his eyes
buttons his shirt        and still

the red flag waving
come to the dark tree

Picture
Georgian Bay, November, by A. Y. Jackson (Canada) 1921

Georgian Bay
                          
These will become
the famous pines

the before and also
the after

Precambrian
scraped

birches gripped 
to the stony point

dead leaves mute
from a hundred years

of hanging on

Picture
Newfoundland Sketch, by Lawren A. Harris (Canada) 1921

Newfoundland Sketch​

Follow the glassy green stroke
your heart’s joyful disorder

Quidi Vidi from Portuguese
the beautiful place 

too small for a port
sheltered between

the endured and the easy
the old shore heaves

like sudden May light
on a white shed roof

Picture
A Breezy Day, by A.J. Casson (Canada) 1926

A Breezy Day

Low clouds streak in like torpedoes
the blown leery trees

weathering the edge
of ten thousand days 

storm light and bluster
the world made of paper

Picture
The Lumberjack, by Edwin Holgate (Canada) 1924

Fire Ranger

Fabriqué à la main
(the frame)

taking his time
with a story

he’s probing the vale
for a distant flag of burning air


born in rough country
it’s kind of work he let into himself

a tower     filled with voices of birds
the landscape steep     escarpé

twenty years tapping his pipe
as he slowly becomes the watching itself


**

This poem was written after Fire Ranger, by Edwin Holgate (Canada) 1926. An image could not be found. The pictured artwork is in the same style by the artist.

Picture
Isles of Spruce, by Arthur Lismer (Canada) 1922

Sketch and Finished Work, Isles of Spruce

Some say
not a living thing stirs

but you know better
“Isles of Spruce”                                              

you could love
this wavering place

erased 
then redrawn

don’t you miss
the colour you couldn’t put down
                                                                        
its freedom
the way you miss a child’s
                                                                        
green eyes
her questions

and what the world seemed to be worth
when she asked them

Picture
Kitwancool Totems, by Emily Carr (Canada) 1928

Kitwancool Totems

As far as this old cart will take me
Kitwancool totems

see what the carver has done
as the world rises up

or lies where it falls
if not for beauty

everything falls
I am Emily, Mister Woo*

the sky
I should say 

is a turquoise
stone


*Mr. Woo: Emily Carr’s famous Javanese macaque monkey and companion on her painting expeditions.


Picture
The Pointers, by Tom Thomson (Canada) c. 1916

The Pointers

The royal blue hill of the mountain
hauled up from September

the hired barge 
two sorrels matched
                                                                        
in stillness
twenty-one men
                                                
three red pointers
as the luxuriant hour recedes

the gold epaulettes
so sure of their money

as if God
wanted someone to see


*pointer: wooden oared boats pointed at both ends, once used on the Ottawa and other rivers.
Picture
Rainbow, Lake O'Hara, by J.E.H. MacDonald (Canada) c. 1930

Rainbow, Lake O’Hara

In the reaches of Yoho
a rainbow’s arc straddles

the haste of the river coming
so far to be emptied

Spilt over rock
our blessedness cleft

by the rush of the world
by the root of a tree

Bruce Rice

​This poem was long-listed in the 
CBC Poetry Competition, 2022.
​

Bruce Rice is a previous Saskatchewan Poet Laureate. His most recent collection is The Vivian Poems (Radiant Press), on the life and work of street photographer, Vivian Maier. Ranging from family stories, the vanishing prairie and the North, to the Statue of Liberty, art is a presence in most of his work. Bruce lives in Regina on Treaty 4 territory and the homeland of the Métis, where he spends the summer conversing with coyotes and the trout he keeps in his brother’s dugout.

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