First Spring Walk in the Mountains


The valley is filled with light and shadows,

yet awakening from winter snows.

Already in May the mosquitoes

create a huzza around me.


There is nothing in this half of the world—

only mountains, forests and ravens.

Why do they change me,

make me breathe in a different way?


My thoughts have been frozen

in the plastered rooms of buildings

isolated from the warmth of this land.

Now they trickle like water

through the rocks of the culvert.


The path opens up

and the earth’s stones

viewed on various levels

assume the shape of a collage of jewels.


Here, I breathe the land

the pure ozone, scent of blossoms, damp moss.

To love the land you have to see it,

go beyond your skin

take it into yourself.

You have to love the cold,

the fires at night, the lonely snow.

You have to see the slender dandelions—

a row of Degas ballet dancers.


Each individual thing speaks out of itself.

Take and hold it

until it becomes the thing in your mind

and you can hear the rocks sing.

The Red Nib Pen


A modern version of the quill

in that tradition of Shakespeare and Dickens

or the art of Chinese ideograms.

In autumn of grade eight,

attaching the nib to the pen,

I tried to master the art of penmanship,

the loops of the “f ” or “l ”

or the curve of “a ” or “r ”

the symmetrical “k ” or the eccentric “q ”

with the sound of a skater scraping

over hard ice, I was grooving the letters

onto the blue lines of the foolscap.


I copied Bliss Carman’s, “Songs of a Vagabond,”

formal treaty articles of England and America

ending the war of 1812,

Thomas Edison’s inventions,

the story of intergalactic space travel.


Then one day we put away the pens.

They disappeared like the scarlet CN trains

or passenger ships on the Great Lakes.

The next year in high school

in the factory-like typing class

Underwood typewriters clanged

their bells at the end of every line.

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© Copyright, 2015, Laurence Hutchman.
All Rights Reserved.