Paths and empty halls
-by Nathalie Roy
Whichever way I walk,
I would come upon an empty hall.
There’s a path to the front door of my house
that leads down a slope to the river,
The River of Abundance and Time.
She’s frozen over now, in most places.
Coyotes cross over in the night.
Ice feathers cling to Her.
Rising early, I can see steam rising
as the Sun’s rays are cast.
My nostrils tingle with freeze.
There’s a door in my house that leads to the pantry
and on the other side of that, the cat porch.
I start my days there.
I’m in farm clothes with moose hair tufted mitts.
It’s time for morning chores.
Farm clothes are garments, ripped and stained,
getting washed doesn’t change much.
Most nights now, my dear old dog Boss sleeps inside the wood room
He and I walk out into the day together,
slowly most days..
The trails I walk everyday fork here and there,
maple sap collecting paths and
paths along the swamp to my neighbour’s houses,
One leads to a banquet hall,
dozens of picnic tables
which an older neighbour built, stacked high for winter.
One leads to a teaching hall,
where benches and sheepskins are piled,
hand-woven carpets and cushions too.
The town doesn’t plow the long lane,
so oftentimes, on my way to chores,
I wave to my two neighbours
both out shovelling.
The chicken palace is a hand-hewn homesteader’s house
the door and latch handles carved by candlelight.
We moved our chicken family over late last fall,
us ladies on the lane so glad for the new coop.
The new-old barn has a barn cat,
queen of the place. I feed her.
Low morning sunshine darts through the barn boards
onto the stacked hay bales.
Dust rises without a cause.
The sheep bleat in the barnyard.
Stephen and Dustin lifted these buildings, with help
from trees they felled by the swamp over these last few years.
All are fed so Boss and I walk a loop
along the very same paths that hundreds of our guests and
scholars of the Orphan Wisdom School have walked.
Sometimes we make it as far as the Great Hall,
a.k.a. Big Hall,Teaching Hall, Meade Hall.
Where the path from the old barn crosses with the one to the banquet hall and the meade hall, there are often traces in the snow of a midnight assembly; paws, claws, hoof marks, wingtips brushed into the snow.
Sometimes, I sing.
I’ve heard my old man say there’s a kind of “orchestra in a human heart”.
These words keep me lit.
May it be so for you too.
Yes, we have closed the doors to our beloved Orphan Wisdom School.
Yes, I together with a few alumni scholars, am opening those doors again
for something different, for something else, something whose time may have come.
I welcome you to The Scriptorium ~ Echos of an Orphan Wisdom ~