Lock - Michael Ondaatje

[Lawrence Robinson]

Lock

Reading the lines he loves
he slips them into a pocket,
wishes to die with his clothes
full of torn-free stanzas
and the telephone numbers
of his children in far cities

As if these were
all we need and want,
not the dog
or silver bowl
not the brag of career
or ownership

Unless they can be used
—a bowl to beg with,
a howl to scent a friend,
as those torn lines remind us
how to recall

until we reach that horizon
and drop, or rise
like a canoe within a lock
to search the other half of the river,

where you might see your friends
as altered by this altitude as you

The fresh summer grass,
the smell of the view—
dark water, August paint

How I loved that lock when I saw it
all those summers ago,
                        when we arrived
out of a storm into its evening light,

and gave a stranger some wine
in a tin cup

Even then I wanted
to slip into the wet dark
rectangle and swim on
barefoot to other depths
where nothing could be seen
that was a further story

	- Michael Ondaatje