Clea Roberts, Here Is Where We Disembark

Commute in Summer

Suddenly, the ice

is gone from the rivers

and the summer workers

are riding their bicycles.

The gravel crackles

under their tires

as they swoop

through the streets

clean and bright

as gulls.

They are commuting

to their summer jobs

in shops and hotels

where things are uncomplicated.

They punch tills or make beds

and take their lunch hour

in the park

by the clay cliffs.

Somewhere 10,000 hectares

of forest are burning

but the smoke

hasn’t reached us,

just the CBC news.

Canoes float by

on roof racks.

I’d rather be on the river,

but the shape

of a keel is a consolation of sorts

and the prettiest thing

I’ve seen—that,

or the pink haze

of fireweed growing

out of a burned forest,

or how a cyclist

must raise her hip a little

and renew her grip

on the handlebars

before she pedals away.

Writing from her “northerly edge,” is Whitehorse, Yukon poet Clea Robertsin her debut collection, Here Is Where We Disembark (Calgary AB: Freehand Books, 2010). Built with a storytelling ease, hers is a collection that writes of her geographic immediate, the surroundings and domestic and moments of simply living. Beyond the arc of straightforward narrative, where her writing compels is in the small moments, writing out not arcs but specific points, the pinpricks of smallnesses, such as in the piece “Seasonal Adjustments” or “Sunset, Little Atlin.” These pieces etch out almost like little koans, writing:

The light

has chosen

a path across

the water.

There were sections of the collection that read as too straightforward, requiring more nuance, some tightening up in spots, to let the compelling phrases and sections really come out. Still, hers are contemplative poems on a roughneck and potentially aggressive wilderness, letting the breath show where the breathing lies, suggesting so much more nearly as matter-of-fact, such as the poem “What to Carry With You,” that opens:

In august of the year that

ruined and saved us

we ride toward autumn

on the Fish Lake road,