Excerpt from Bearmen Descend Upon Gimli | Issue 10

by D.A. Lockhart

Oct 30, 2021

Artificer of Ice

Know that all things commence
in layers laid down as if it a lineage
of sediments over epochs, glacial
in the sense that time passes only
as it will not as one believes it must.

Season after season returns, departures
become muscle twitch, arrivals 
the necessity of being and each layer
a testament to the way we react
to the world we are given. Follow
as he outlines the means to execute
an end, facilitate the gentle sweep
of broom over ice, the granite cascade
as rock carries a touch’s momentum,
outstretched hand dangled in mid-slide.

Time is marked by layers we move upon
and by those we must leave behind. Bits 
of slow fought work must reach through
to both proper ends. In marten spirit, 
dancing cold foot forward, side glances,
this one man mists another layer into
being, softly leaves ice beads indiscernible
to those that will play out resultant ends
on the sheet cast in lineage partially his own.

Northwind Returns to Curling through the Preparation of Beef and Greens

Begin in iron cast black as lake bottom
fat rendered to coat its surface in an oil 
slick most modern Indians come to fear
or fight or worse. But this timeless way
to render sweetness from bitter plant,
this gift thar glistens as it receives browned 
flesh, awaits the tenderness of cooked leaves, 
warms the air, sweetens the room around it. 

Return to the clap of broom ends and cheek
bone, return to the ecstatic glide atop ice, 
swirl the flesh in the bath of agitated oil 
and heat, feel that every motion of arm,
every passion of anger leads a man here,
to gifts being doled out, roles to be honoured
with. Together, heat, oil, flesh, and greens
are the love that no woman, no trophy gives.
Northwind faces west, soon to eat alone
at a Giant Tiger card table to CBC Radio. 

The love part, he is sure perched beneath
the peat of the Orkey Islands, reserved
for men with fine whisky last names,
but passions can be unqualified affairs
and the places where history and curling 
meet extend outward from there. As if
glaciers have returned with mastodons, low
seas, and free movement, he awaits cooked
romance, dreams of the way history 
returns with a single plea into a winter sky.

The Arrival

In the world that would see Pelletier
and Means as sentinels to that line 
that cuts treaty land from prison, 
their names would be shouted out, 
across ice that transforms this lake 
into a highway, booming outward
like the grand entrance call bringing 
in dancers straight off Rocky Boy plains,
Northwind can hear them descending.

Throughout this poorly insulated night, 
drafty like an Indian Affairs trailer, 
they arrive in the red-glow night light
cast by a GMC Conversion the colour
of last spring’s run-off and Redbone doing 
their best to coax Gale Whitefeather back 
to the campground with each easy croon. 

It is all come and get your love and the quiet
of warriors before putting down camp. Arrival,
in this world cast after sunset, they pull
up before Northwind’s place and unload
every last man and their gear before any
treaty agents could make note of the newest
conversion van to hold-up outside Northwind’s
lakeside single-wide on the outskirts of town.

Night returns to the hustle of clouds ushered
across open spaces of stars against the deep
blue of groaning ice and distant restless trees.

Sixteen Stones in Staggered Motions

With each end measured
in sixteen individual 
releases, 
through eight distinct 
points 
of friction

10 ends,
73 minutes,

the civilized means
measured rounds 
of conflict. Staggered
in turns. Redcoats 
in regimental lines
ripe for harvest
ripe for killing
ripe for honouring
the warriors
who knew better
than to the leave
the tree line.

7 rinks
5 days

certainty afforded by vision
the willingness to dance
through process, to feel
loss and know that fires
will follow. Know that vision
has foretold the future. 
We must now simply
dance ourselves to the end.

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D.A. Lockhart is the author of seven collections of poetry, including Devil in the Woods (Brick Books 2019) and Tukhone: Where the River Narrows and the Shores Bend (Black Moss Press 2020). His work has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry in English 2019, TriQuarterly, ARC Poetry Magazine, Grain, Belt, and the Malahat Review among many. He is a Turtle Clan member of Eelünaapéewi Lahkéewiit (Lenape), a registered member of the Moravian of the Thames First Nation, and currently resides at the south shore of Waawiiyaatanong (Windsor,ON-Detroit, MI) and Pelee Island. He is the publisher at Urban Farmhouse Press and the Poetry Editor at the Windsor Review.

Bearmen Descend Upon Gimli

by D.A. Lockhart

Frontenac House, 2021

Publisher’s Description

Bearmen Descend Upon Gimli is a contemporary myth told in lyric form. The poems in this collection follow Raymond Northwind, a past-middle-aged Odawa guy, who happens to be the icemaker and custodian for the Peter Glint Memorial Curling Club. Fate finds Northwind in his Gimli, Manitoba exile and because of it, he brings forth a semi-supernatural curling team of Cree “bearmen” to face off against the best teams from around Canada for a large and prestigious prize. Below the surface of these poems there are meditations on the role of ceremony, the place of sport in culture, the spirit of the land, and those that come to inhabit it. This work inhabits the intersection of cultures in Canada as facilitated by what is often seen as a quintessentially Canadian sport, curling, in a place that is the geographic midpoint of Canada.

Issue #10 of Send My Love to Anyone

Micro Interview with Casey Plett

Excerpt from Bearmen Descend Upon Gimli by D.A. Lockhart

October 2021 Recommendations

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