Sylvie Hill

Verbal Vomit (on moving)

In my packing for my moving
I’ve been weighting shit
and getting rid of things.
Wondering sometimes
when I lift a box here
or there
how is it when you moved
from London
back to New Zealand?
How do you decide what stays
what goes?
Is that why you didn’t have records:
heavy, not practical?
By God I can just imagine
how you’d package pottery bowls!
Those fuckers’d survive a tsunami
knocked about heads of the dead
I bet you’re a killer packer:
accurate, marker, precision.
(Ah my non-real over-familiarity
about who you are and assumptions I entreat.)
And while brushing my teeth
it occurred to me
that I will enjoy so much
living in the City!
Finally: the boulangeries,
fromageries, marchés, boucheries!
Remember the letter I wrote you
About Parc Laurier, it was so exciting!
But I’ve loved my cabin-country.
Solitary, more than with
old lovers who took over.
“I like chainsaws and shit.”
Ah, we used to speak of fires and water.
And I smiled just now
– needed to write this random missive
– that while I’ve forgotten you a bit (as if)
– yet your name is on my new couch
– while I hadn’t remembered you a bit (as if)
I was looking at your photograph
In the last minutes.
And I smiled and to write this…
That just as you left your country
for the city and back again
in the cove bay of where you restaurant
I, too, will leave for the City,
and the immigrants.
But maybe save for a place back in the country?
By the kaffe on the water?
With the sunrise on the ripple
growing older in my 60s in retirement
amongst a garden, a walk to the pub
the air, a dock and me alone again
in nature
in thought
in remembrance of what I had, lost
in nature smiling at reflections in a pond
untangling toes from moss
hanging with fishes I’ll fish for my lunches.
Yes! I will go first to where there are people
LIVE LIFE FINALLY I HOPE TO BE INSPIRED!
But maybe return like you did…
Follow in your footsteps…
returning to your homeland…
Why did you change your mind
like you told me they said you would
and return
to nature,
is that your nature?
“They don’t understand my life.”
Well I have no one in mine
to draw me to a lifestyle or a way of life.
No one to say they know me and will support me
I’m a long way off from where they made me.
My hometown is in Calgary.
Ukrainian food and Russian eyes, accents, embroideries.
In fact, the politics and antics of my French Canadian family
have always scared the shit out of me.
So we’ll see:
In my packing for my moving
I’ve been weighting shit
and getting rid of things.
Wondering sometimes
when I lift a box here
or there
how is it when you moved
from London
back to New Zealand?
I try to pack my memories
Store those little sad things.
I’ve since thrown away entreaties
of you as a guide, for some reason
it’s died…
numb; a testament to the poetry being shit
or maybe “open” and calm?
Nonetheless the writing isn’t fit
when you’re not mainlining a muse anymore
it’s just real life, grocery lists,
and verbal vomit, innit?

Sylvie Hill December 23, 2018