Vol 1 No 1 2007
A Perishable Art
I found my mother’s footprints in the snow
still fresh, she’d passed this way only moments before.
Her tracks climbed and crossed the treeless hills at the skyline.
Her heels were halfmoon gouges in the white crust, glowing.
The prints held no warmth. Their shapes already changing.
Surprising how directly she had managed
to shear through that wandering terrain, as if
something unusual in the windempty range
of hills had captured her eye and drawn her on
with a purpose. And in fact all the signs there were
pointed to this—the long intervals between prints
suggesting haste, their unfaltering
evenness betraying a certain intensity, a certain
determination. I followed them some distance, saw nothing
but blue sky white hills and shadows between hills
and the prints themselves receding, as if by plan
clean as a survey trail or concession road. . . .
Before dark it grew windy. Powder snow
rippled like gauze curtains between hills, and quickly
filled in footprints—mine behind me
and my mother’s before.
Reproduced with permission from The Address Book, House of Anansi, 2004
Steven Heighton