On Colville’s French Cross

By Robert Omura

Grey cloud tugs up linen memories
hung on ribbons and lace,
painted moon against a prairie sky,
where he stabs a French cross next to tide
to nail down a forgotten past.

 

Iron sundial measures time
by shadow and season,
year after year, waiting for her return.

 

Ghosts etched in rust,
Evangeline’s bust,
tilts head south and turns globe,
compass point spins,
eyes flare skyward,
to light a way back to her Grand Pré garden.

 

No birds lift on updrafts, or circle,
above a dirt road and wire fence, marking
an impermanent fence-line between then and now.

 

Scrub and cottonwoods sigh and moan,
“Mon dieu.” Tears and shame blow cold,
where lupines fold
and groan of wooden boats,
wet with indifference,
pushed out to sea centuries ago.

 

A young Chinese girl rides astride a horse
trots toward a digital future,
along a fractured line between past and present;
dark eyes cast back,
she reaches to her mother’s heritage,
and wonders if she has the strength
to reclaim her Acadian past. 

Published October 2007