This island campsite paddles by without a paddle.
This isn’t so peculiar here. When the breeze stretches out,
and hums in your ear, you travel backwards
and scent the smoke of burn four years ago.
We were here before that. Moss was our shoes.
Trees greenly stirred the blueberry sky.
You waged sword fights on edges of rocks
while your brother swam the lake.
Today, the trees are black as spears,
so I’d like to tell myself he dives like a root in new soil
and the swish from a sword is a young jack pine in
the simple wind.

– Woodland Caribou, ON