Sir Charles G.D. Roberts - The Solitary Woodsman

When the grey lake-water rushes
Past the dripping alder-bushes
And the bodeful autumn wind
In the fir-tree weeps and hushes, -

When the air is sharply damp,
Round the solitary camp,
And the moose-bush in the thicket
Glimmers like a scarlet lamp, -

When the birches twinkle yellow,
And the cornel bunches mellow,
And the owl across the twilight
Trumpets to his downy fellow, -

When the nut-fed chipmunks romp
Through the maples' crimson pomp,
And the slim viburnum flushes
In the darkness of the swamp, -

When the blueberries are dead,
When the rowan clusters red,
And the shy bear, summer-sleekened
In the bracken makes his bead, -

On a day there comes once more
To the latched and lonely door,
Down the wood-road striding silent,
One who has been here before.

Green spruce branches for his head,
Here he makes his simple bead,
Couching with the sun, and rising
When the dawn is frosty red.

All day long he wanders wide
With the grey moss for his guide,
And his lonely axe-stroke startles
The expectant forest-side.

Toward the quiet close of day
Back to camp he makes his way,
And about his sober footsteps
Unafraid the squirrels play.

On his roof the read leaf falls,
At his door the bluejay calls,
And he hears the wood-mice hurry
Up and down his rough log walls;

Hears the laughter of the loon
Thrill the dying afternoon;
Hears the calling of the moose
Echo to the early moon.

And he hears the partridge drumming,
The belated hornet humming, -
All the faint, prophetic sounds
That foretell winter's coming.

And the wind about his eaves
Through the chilly night-wet grieves,
And the earth's dumb patience fills him,
Fellow to the falling leaves.

---

Further adventures in 'The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse'. I'm a sucker for a piece of work with a strong sense of place, which this has; and yet it also appealed to me for its similarity to Clancy of the Overflow - the fantasy of an educated, middle-to-upper class man concerning the supposed simplicity of life enjoyed by an outdoor rural workman.

I like the rhythm and rhyme here, although some seem forced or fall wrong - is it just me, or would 'One who has been here before' fall better if it were 'One who here has been before'?

This jaunt through 18th century Canadian poetry is serving well to contextualise L.M. Montgomery's poetry, especially that in The Blythes are Quoted (new critical edition, parts previously published as The Road to Yesterday). For the most part I find her poetry artificial and over sentimental - and likewise her contemporaries in the Oxford Book! - but gaining a better sense of the structures and common artifices of the period is illuminating.

There are times I wish I didn't have a boyfriend

Not times I wish I didn't have this particular boyfriend (well, there are those too, particularly over such contentious issues as whether or not I can be trusted to order food in French), but any boyfriend.

Today, for instance, it took me quite some time to convince a barber that I really did want a buzz cut. This was negotiated in English, in which the barber was fluent, so language wasn't the problem. No, he just didn't believe a white woman* was really serious about wanting all her hair chopped off (note: I had less than an inch of growth on my scalp when I walked in there). He started with #3 clippers and insisted on working down from there rather than going straight to #1.

Eventually he cottoned on that I was serious, and I liked my hair almost non-existent. At that point, he said to me:

"Does your boyfriend like it, what you've done to your hair?"

It's times like that, I wish I didn't have a boyfriend. 'Don't have one, don't care' would be a pretty good response (but it might get me a lecture on what The Men Like, too).

The best snappy answer would be one involving the words "my girlfriend likes it just fine".

Questions like that would annoy me were I straight, of course. But I'm not, and every time I get asked them I feel stuck, because given a few different turns of chance, the snappy lesbian comeback could've been mine. "My boyfriend has long enough hair for two of us", while a good answer in itself, isn't fixing the fact that some guy with a hairdressing qualification has utterly failed to consider that unusual hairstyles might also go with statistically unusual sexual orientations.

It's a feminist problem, naturally: the assumption that all or most women's lives and choices hang on a male partner's life and opinion. But there's also assumed heterosexuality. Denying the existence of the boyfriend would be a lie, but I feel like I'm somehow lying by admitting to having a boyfriend, as well.

The same thing happens when one is single, too. All possible answers to 'do you have a boyfriend' become lies on some level. "No, I don't (but even if I were dating it might not be a man, except also it might be, aaargh, let's not even start)". About the ONLY time when, as a bi lady, I've felt like I was honestly answering that question, was when the answer was "No, but my girlfriend..." (And then only if the conversation participants had met prior boyfriends.**)

In other news, I hear today is Bi Visibility Day.

And my boyfriend's punishment for his part in the heteropatriarchy shall be that he must clipper my head, or at least find me a cheap barber near his abode.

~

*He acknowledged, slightly sadly, that he has given close crops to many African women. He was nappy-haired himself, with a rather cute crop of coils 1-2 inches long.
** Of the two lies, I'd rather be taken for a lesbian. It feels to me as if the assumptions people make based on 'interested in women' are more accurate w/r/to me than those based on presumed heterosexuality. Or it's homophobic stereotypes, which I don't wish to disown or evade just because I happen to date men too.