The Invitation
The Invitation
Erin Wilson
“I want the vibrating sub-stratum of the repeated word sung in Gregorian chant.”
Clarice Lispector, Água Viva
Some summers ago, I was on a run,
nearing the lake that punctuates the dead end
after the fork in the road, readying myself
to take in the little painted turtles that sun themselves
all summer long, interrupted/uninterrupted, on/off
the fallen logs that become slick and slicker
in shallow shore waters, one year after the next,
when my mind twitched, balking at incomprehension
and was taken upward in a chaotic cloud.
It was a baffling moment.
Four miles from town and yet suddenly,
where I was usually alone,
a people-generated sound
was winding its way around the bay,
wending its way into my consciousness,
working and raking through my body,
pinning my mind to a wall.
I heard it!
I narrowed in on the lake.
Or at least I thought I heard it.
(I must have heard it.)
I was feeling it too.
(Was I?)
My eyes searched the landscape:
fir trees, jack pines, hardwoods,
water, sedge grass, granite,
the turtles plopping into the lake,
awaiting some new brand of normal.
Why was it my eyes were so recklessly alert?
Understanding requires every sense, I suppose.
But can sound be seen?
And while I didn't see it, as I scanned the horizon,
meeting every bole, twig and lily pad I'd known before,
I began to understand.
It was Gregorian chant!
But how? Was the earth itself singing? (A serious
consideration because of the vibrations in my limbs.)
As I ogled the scene, befuddled, a heron I hadn't noticed before
strode once, twice, from the frame's edge, then rose from the reeds,
rowing its boat of a body, dragging beneath it its dappled feet, dripping,
working away, away.
And as this graceful awkward bird, improbable, paddled off,
the music altered.
Or my head turned, and so my ears changed.
Or my thinking did.
It wasn't Gregorian chant at all — just music. Ordinary.
Maybe even only (god help me) new country.
But, oh lord, how the bay had bent the sound,
causing it to low, praise and reverberate.
Amazed with misunderstanding,
I turned more from the lake,
and there at the crest of a ridge
stood a man with a dark dense beard,
so intensely manly,
holding hands with a little boy.
They were both dressed in white
and were paused, gazing into the distance,
every tendril of hair on their heads shining,
their skin sparkling as though
it had just been christened.
They didn't see me.
(I thought somehow they couldn't.)
After a moment or so of looking,
they turned back towards
what must have been a yard full of guests,
for (I'm supposing) a wedding party.
I was left alone. Or almost alone —
the little painted turtles' noses had broken
the surface of the water once again,
a litmus test for trouble.
Reality restored, I trembled still.
I had been changed. Rent.
A veil had been broken.
Every day before this, without my knowing,
I had been in wait for such a moment.
And I have been in wait ever since.
Erin Wilson
Poet
Erin Wilson's poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Relief, A Journal of Art and Faith, Trinity House Review, CV2, Channel Magazine, The Inflectionist Review, and in numerous other publications and anthologies internationally. Her first collection is At Home with Disquiet. She lives in a small town on Robinson-Huron Treaty territory in Northern Ontario, the traditional lands of the Anishnawbek.
Photography by Clay Banks