Re-visiting Windigo ( a poem I wrote about a place I loved)

I know I’ve posted this before but I ventured to submit it to Northern Cardinal Review, an online magazine I happened upon today:

 

Windigo

Ripples lick the rocks

As the pines and birch politely applaud

Gulls catching their petits déjeuners

In the waking lake.

 

Sky’s amethyst shroud cascades

Towards the western shore

And the water’s silky blue

Becomes the pewter and emerald of armour.

 

The fleeting storm rumbles to the west and north

Dragging a chair across a distant wooden floor

But our only thunder is from a train

Rolling to market behind its mournful whistle.

 

The winds shift, the shroud – like a chameleon -

Becomes soft pillows of gray and white.

Lake Simcoe’s armour is but a duvet;

The white top-sheets being turned down toward Windigo.

 

Once here, and with dusk approaching,

The sheets are smoothed, the pillows fluffed

And the sun sinks past the foot of the bed

Leaving colours of peace and wonder.

 

No sooner are distant pinks orange, and oranges purple,

Then a star pierces the darkening blue

And the trees begin to sigh, knowing the moon’s glow

Over Windigo will keep watch another night.

 

Kenn Chaplin

(July 30, 1993)

 

Kenn Chaplin is a Toronto, Ontario blogger, amateur photographer and long-term survivor of HIV/AIDS. Windigo is the name of a cottage on Lake Simcoe, north of Toronto, which support groups for people living with HIV/AIDS were graciously loaned, in the late 1980s and early ’90s, as a place of quiet retreat. Kenn was grateful to have been a part of several of these retreats. In one group photo he is the lone survivor, apart from the facilitators who – in the case of that particular group – were not HIV-positive.