Rising Dust (by Margaret Avison)

Rising Dust (by Margaret Avison)

Original Text
Margaret Avison, Concrete and Wild Carrot (London, Ont.: Brick Books, 2002). This poem is reproduced on the Griffin Prize Web Site (from the winning volume on the Canadian Shortlist 2003).
1The physiologist says I am well over
2half water.
3I feel, look, solid; am
4though leaky firm.
5Yet I am composed
6largely of water.
7How the composer turned us out
8this way, even the learned few do not
9explain. That’s life.
10And we’re in need of
11more water, over and over, repeatedly
12thirsty, and unclean.
13The body of this earth
14has water under it and
15over, from
16where the long winds sough
17tirelessly over water, or shriek around
18curved distances of ice.
19Sky and earth invisibly
20breathe skyfuls of
21water, visible when it
22finds its own level.
23Even in me?
24Kin to waterfalls
25and glacial lakes and sloughs
26and all that flows and surges,
27yet I go steadily,
28or without distillation climb at will
29(until a dissolution
30nobody anticipates).
31I’m something else besides.
32The biochemist does not
33concern himself with this.
34It too seems substance,
35A vital bond threaded on an
36as-if loom out there.
37The strand within
38thrums and shudders and twists.
39It cleaves to this
40colour or texture and
41singles out to a rhythm
42almost its own, again,
43anticipating design.
44But never any of us
45physiologist or fisherman
46or I
47quite makes sense of it. We
48find our own level
49as prairie, auburn or
50snow-streaming, sounds forever
51the almost limitless.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2011