Push Day

By MIKE FISH

Seven portages already, muskeg up to here

Big water, stiff headwind all day

Hands hard, good mates, no fear

Where’s the site, you say

Around the bend and through the narrows

Sun baking down, visions of a place

Esker topped with pine, plenty of space

Shoulders sore, fading daylight

Where, where’s that site

Round the bend and through the narrows

Hailstorm of insults, hate all round

Grotesque

Rights pushed underground, free press?

Where — oh, where — is that new sight?

Round the bend and through the narrows

Reaching Hudson Bay by canoe – after 50 days of paddling – takes a bit of work. Even a push day or two.

No roads. And no tolls. Except two-load portages, clouds of black flies, and splitting standing dry wood for 150 meals.

This poem, born by a river in early 2017, is dedicated to journeys that matter. Around the bend and through the narrows. Perhaps we’ll get there.

Mike Fish, former reporter for The Post-Standard of Syracuse, is Assistant Editor of Nastawgan, the quarterly journal of the Wilderness Canoe Association in Toronto.